Religions > Atheism > Darwinian Theory Has Become An All-Purpose Obstacle To Thought
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18 Aug 2006 07:45:00 AM |
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Darwinian Theory Has Become An All-Purpose Obstacle To Thought |
http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=3Dview&id=3D3631
Evolution and Me
By: George Gilder
National Review
July 17, 2006
Editors Note: Discovery senior fellow, technology guru and conservative
economist George Gilder has a major essay in the new issue of National
Review, entitled "Evolution and Me: Darwinian Theory has Become an
All-Purpose Obstacle to Thought Rather than an Enabler of Scientific
Advance."
The piece offers a unique and fresh perspective on the issue of
materialism vs. design and is a breakthrough description of the case
against Darwinism and for intelligent design based largely on
information theory and our understanding of information in the age of
supercomputing and instant information delivery. It turns out that
Darwin's theory is especially vulnerable to the analysis of life from
the hierarchical structure that Gilder says a 21st century
understanding of modern physics, mathematics and computer science
provide.
Gilder's penultimate point? "Wherever there is information there is
a preceding intelligence."
"Everywhere we encounter it," Gilder writes, "information does
not bubble up from a random flux or prebiotic soup. It comes from mind.
Taking the hierarchy beyond the word, the central dogma of intelligent
design ordains that word is subordinate to mind. Mind can generate and
lend meaning to words but words in themselves cannot generate mind or
intelligence."
Throughout the article Gilder shows how irreducible complexity in
mathematics, in logic, in computer science, in physics, all point to a
similar irreducible complexity in biological systems as well. He winds
through information theory and economics, moving smoothly from quantum
physics to mathematics, all the while showing how "Darwinism is a
materialist theory that banishes aspirations and ideals from the
picture. As an all-purpose tool of reductionism that said whatever
survives is, in some way, normative, Darwinism could inspire almost any
modern movement, from the eugenic furies of Nazism to the feminist
crusades of Margaret Sanger and Planned Parenthood."
You'll want to read Gilder's view on why Darwin's theory of
evolution falls down, and why intelligent design is a better
explanation.
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I first became conscious that something was awry in Darwinian science
some 40 years ago as I was writing my early critique of sexual
liberation, Sexual Suicide (revised and republished as Men and
Marriage). At the time, the publishing world was awash with such titles
as Desmond Morris's The Naked Ape and The Human Zoo and Robert
Ardrey's African Genesis, which touted or pruriently probed the
animality of human beings. Particularly impressive to me was The
Imperial Animal, a Darwinian scholarly work by two anthropologists
aptly named Lionel Tiger and Robin Fox that gave my theory of sex roles
a panoply of primatological support, largely based on the behavior of
patriarchal hamadryas baboons.
Darwinism seemed to offer me and its other male devotees a long-sought
tool - resembling the x-ray glasses lamentably found elsewhere only
in cartoons - for stripping away the distracting d=E9cor of clothing
and the political underwear of ideology worn by feminists and other
young women of the day. Using this swashbuckling scheme of fitness and
survival, nature "red in tooth and claw," we could reveal our
ideological nemeses as naked mammals on the savannah to be ruled and
protected by hunting parties of macho males, rather like us.
In actually writing and researching Sexual Suicide, however, I was
alarmed to discover that both sides could play the game of telling
just-so stories. In The Descent of Woman, Elaine Morgan showed humans
undulating from the tides as amphibious apes mostly led by females.
Jane Goodall croodled about the friendliness of "our closest
relatives," the chimpanzees, and movement feminists flogged research
citing the bonobo and other apes as chiefly matriarchal and frequently
homosexual.
These evolutionary sex wars were mostly unresolvable because, at its
root, Darwinian theory is tautological. What survives is fit; what is
fit survives. While such tautologies ensure the consistency of any
arguments based on them, they could contribute little to an analysis of
what patterns of behavior and what ideals and aspirations were
conducive to a good and productive society. Almost by definition,
Darwinism is a materialist theory that banishes aspirations and ideals
from the picture. As an all-purpose tool of reductionism that said that
whatever survives is, in some way, normative, Darwinism could inspire
almost any modern movement, from the eugenic furies of Nazism to the
feminist crusades of Margaret Sanger and Planned Parenthood.
So in the end, for better or for worse, my book dealt chiefly with
sociological and anthropological arguments and left out Darwin.
Turning to economics in researching my 1981 book Wealth & Poverty, I
incurred new disappointments in Darwin and materialism. Forget God -
economic science largely denies intelligent design or creation even by
human beings. Depicting the entrepreneur as a mere opportunity scout,
arbitrageur, or assembler of available chemical elements, economic
theory left no room for the invention of radically new goods and
services, and little room for economic expansion except by material
"capital accumulation" or population growth. Accepted widely were
Darwinian visions of capitalism as a dog-eat-dog zero-sum struggle
impelled by greed, where the winners consume the losers and the best
that can be expected for the poor is some trickle down of crumbs from
the jaws (or tax tables) of the rich.
In my view, the zero-sum caricature applied much more accurately to
socialism, which stifles the creation of new wealth and thus fosters a
dog-eat-dog struggle over existing material resources. (For examples,
look anywhere in the socialist Third World.) I preferred Michael
Novak's vision of capitalism as the "mind-centered system," with
the word itself derived from the Latin caput, meaning head. Expressing
the infinite realm of ideas and information, it is a domain of
abundance rather than of scarcity. Flouting zero-sum ideas, supply-side
economics sprang from this insight. By tapping the abundance of human
creativity, lower tax rates can yield more revenues than higher rates
do and low-tax countries can raise their government spending faster
than the high-tax countries do. Thus free nations can afford to win
wars without first seizing resources from others. Ultimately capitalism
can transcend war by creating rather than capturing wealth - a
concept entirely alien to the Darwinian model.
After Wealth & Poverty, my work focused on the subject of human
creativity as epitomized by science and technology and embodied in
computers and communications. At the forefront of this field is a
discipline called information theory. Largely invented in 1948 by
Claude Shannon of MIT, it rigorously explained digital computation and
transmission by zero-one, or off-on, codes called "bits." Shannon
defined information as unexpected bits, or "news," and calculated
its passage over a "channel" by elaborate logarithmic rules. That
channel could be a wire or another other path across a distance of
space, or it could be a transfer of information across a span of time,
as in evolution.
Crucial in information theory was the separation of content from
conduit - information from the vehicle that transports it. It takes a
low-entropy (predictable) carrier to bear high-entropy (unpredictable)
messages. A blank sheet of paper is a better vessel for a new message
than one already covered with writing. In my book Telecosm (2000), I
showed that the most predictable available information carriers were
the regular waves of the electromagnetic spectrum and prophesied that
all digital information would ultimately flow over it in some way.
Whether across time (evolution) or across space (communication),
information could not be borne by chemical processes alone, because
these processes merged or blended the medium and the message, leaving
the data illegible at the other end.
While studying computer science, I learned of the concept of a
universal computing machine, an idealized computer envisioned by the
tormented genius Alan Turing. (After contributing significantly to the
Enigma project for decrypting German communications during World War
II, Turing committed suicide following shock therapy -
"treatment" for his homosexuality.) A so-called "Turing
machine" is an idealized computer that can be created using any
available material, from beach sand to Buckyballs, from microchips to
matchsticks. Turing made clear that the essence of a computer is not
its material substance but its architecture of ideas.
IDEAS SUPREME
Based as it is on ideas, a computer is intrinsically an object of
intelligent design. Every silicon chip holds as many as 700 layers of
implanted chemicals in patterns defined with nanometer precision and
then is integrated with scores of other chips by an elaborately
patterned architecture of wires and switches all governed by layers of
software programming written by human beings. Equally planned and
programmed are all the computers running the models of evolution and
"artificial life" that are central to neo-Darwinian research.
Everywhere on the apparatus and in the "genetic algorithms" appear
the scientist's fingerprints: the "fitness functions" and
"target sequences." These algorithms prove what they aim to refute:
the need for intelligence and teleology (targets) in any creative
process.
I came to see that the computer offers an insuperable obstacle to
Darwinian materialism. In a computer, as information theory shows, the
content is manifestly independent of its material substrate. No
possible knowledge of the computer's materials can yield any
information whatsoever about the actual content of its computations. In
the usual hierarchy of causation, they reflect the software or
"source code" used to program the device; and, like the design of
the computer itself, the software is contrived by human intelligence.
The failure of purely physical theories to describe or explain
information reflects Shannon's concept of entropy and his measure of
"news." Information is defined by its independence from physical
determination: If it is determined, it is predictable and thus by
definition not information. Yet Darwinian science seemed to be reducing
all nature to material causes.
As I pondered this materialist superstition, it became increasingly
clear to me that in all the sciences I studied, information comes
first, and regulates the flesh and the world, not the other way around.
The pattern seemed to echo some familiar wisdom. Could it be, I asked
myself one day in astonishment, that the opening of St. John's
Gospel, In the beginning was the Word, is a central dogma of modern
science?
In raising this question I was not affirming a religious stance. At the
time it first occurred to me, I was still a mostly secular
intellectual. But after some 35 years of writing and study in science
and technology, I can now affirm the principle empirically. Salient in
virtually every technical field - from quantum theory and molecular
biology to computer science and economics - is an increasing concern
with the word. It passes by many names: logos, logic, bits, bytes,
mathematics, software, knowledge, syntax, semantics, code, plan,
program, design, algorithm, as well as the ubiquitous
"information." In every case, the information is independent of its
physical embodiment or carrier.
Biologists commonly blur the information into the slippery synecdoche
of DNA, a material molecule, and imply that life is biochemistry rather
than information processing. But even here, the deoxyribonucleic acid
that bears the word is not itself the word. Like a sheet of paper or a
computer memory chip, DNA bears messages but its chemistry is
irrelevant to its content. The alphabet's nucleotide "bases" form
"words" without help from their bonds with the helical
sugar-phosphate backbone that frames them. The genetic words are no
more dictated by the chemistry of their frame than the words in
Scrabble are determined by the chemistry of their wooden racks or by
the force of gravity that holds them.
This reality expresses a key insight of Francis Crick, the Nobel
laureate co-author of the discovery of the double-helix structure of
DNA. Crick expounded and enshrined what he called the "Central
Dogma" of molecular biology. The Central Dogma shows that influence
can flow from the arrangement of the nucleotides on the DNA molecule to
the arrangement of amino acids in proteins, but not from proteins to
DNA. Like a sheet of paper or a series of magnetic points on a
computer's hard disk or the electrical domains in a random-access
memory - or indeed all the undulations of the electromagnetic
spectrum that bear information through air or wires in
telecommunications - DNA is a neutral carrier of information,
independent of its chemistry and physics. By asserting that the DNA
message precedes and regulates the form of the proteins, and that
proteins cannot specify a DNA program, Crick's Central Dogma
unintentionally recapitulates St. John's assertion of the primacy of
the word over the flesh.
By assuming that inheritance is a chemical process, Darwin ran afoul of
the Central Dogma. He believed that the process of inherita The Origin
of Species, though, Gregor Mendel showed that genes do not blend
together like chemicals mixing. As the Central Dogma ordains and
information theory dictates, the DNA program is discrete and digital,
and its information is transferred through chemical carriers - but it
is not specified by chemical forces. Each unit of biological
information is passed on according to a digital program - a
biological code - that is transcribed and translated into amino
acids.
THE MEDIUM NOT THE MESSAGE
Throughout the 20th century and on into the 21st, many scientists and
politicians have followed Darwin in missing the significance of the
"Central Dogma." They have assumed that life is dominated by local
chemistry rather than by abstract informative codes. Upholding the
inheritability of acquired characteristics, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck,
Trofim Lysenko, Aleksandr Oparin, Friedrich Engels, and Josef Stalin
all espoused the primacy of proteins and thus of the environment over
the genetic endowment. By controlling the existing material of human
beings through their environment, the Lamarckians believed that
Communism could blend and breed a new Soviet man through chemistry.
Dissenters were murdered or exiled. (The grim story is vividly told in
Hubert Yockey's definitive 2005 book, Information Theory, Evolution,
and the Origin of Life.)
For some 45 years, Barry Commoner, the American Marxist biologist,
refused to relinquish the Soviet mistake. He repeated it in an article
in Harper's in 2002, declaring that proteins must have come first
because DNA cannot be created without protein-based enzymes. In fact,
protein-based enzymes cannot be created without a DNA (or RNA) program;
proteins have no structure without the information that defines them.
As Yockey explains, "It is mathematically impossible, not just
unlikely, for information to be transferred from the protein alphabet
to the [DNA] alphabet. That is because no codes exist to transfer
information from the 20-letter protein alphabet to the 64-letter
[codon] alphabet of [DNA]." Twenty letters simply cannot directly
specify the content of patterns of 64 codons.
But the beat goes on. By defrocking Lawrence Summers for implying the
possible primacy of the genetic word over environmental conditions in
the emergence of scientific aptitudes, the esteemed professoriat at
Harvard expressed its continued faith in Lamarckian and Marxian
biology.
Over at NASA, U.S. government scientists make an analogous mistake in
constantly searching for traces of protein as evidence of life on
distant planets. Without a hierarchy of informative programming,
proteins are mere matter, impotent to produce life. The Central Dogma
dooms the NASA pursuit of proteins on the planets to be what we might
call a "wild goo chase." As St. John implies, life is defined by
the presence and precedence of the word: informative codes.
I began my 1989 book on microchips, Microcosm: The Quantum Era in
Economics and Technology, by quoting physicist Max Planck, the
discoverer of the quantum, on the resistance to his theory among the
scientific establishment - the public scientists of any period whom I
have dubbed the Panel of Peers. By any name they define the
"consensus" of respectable science. At the beginning of the 20th
century, said Planck, they balked at taking the "enormous step from
the visible and directly controllable to the invisible sphere, from the
macrocosm to the microcosm."
But by entrance into the "microcosm" of the once-invisible world of
atoms, all physical science was transformed. When it turned out early
in the 20th century that the atom was not a "massy unbreakable
particle," as Isaac Newton had imagined, but a complex arena of
quantum information, the classical physics of Newton began inexorably
to break down. We are now at a similar point in the history of the
sciences of life. The counterpoint to the atom in physics is the cell
in biology. At the beginning of the 21st century it turns out that the
biological cell is not a "simple lump of protoplasm" as long
believed but a microcosmic processor of information and synthesizer of
proteins at supercomputer speeds. As a result, breaking down as well is
the established biology of Darwinian materialism.
No evolutionary theory can succeed without confronting the cell and the
word. In each of the some 300 trillion cells in every human body, the
words of life churn almost flawlessly through our flesh and nervous
system at a speed that utterly dwarfs the data rates of all the
world's supercomputers. For example, just to assemble some 500
amino-acid units into each of the trillions of complex hemoglobin
molecules that transfer oxygen from the lungs to bodily tissues takes a
total of some 250 peta operations per second. (The word "peta"
refers to the number ten to the 15th power - so this tiny process
requires 250x1015 operations.)
Interpreting a DNA program and translating it through a code into a
physical molecule, the cells collectively function at almost a thousand
times the processing speed of IBM's new Blue Gene/L state-of-the-art
supercomputer. This information processing in one human body for just
one function exceeds by some 25 percent the total computing power of
all the world's 200 million personal computers produced every year.
Yet, confined as they are to informational functions, computer models
stop after performing the initial steps of decoding the DNA and doing a
digital-to-analog conversion of the information. The models do not
begin to accomplish the other feats of the cell, beginning with the
synthesis of protein molecules from a code, and then the exquisitely
accurate folding of the proteins into the precise shape needed to fit
them together in functional systems. This process of protein synthesis
and "plectics" cannot even in principle be modeled on a computer.
Yet it is essential to the translation of information into life.
WORRYING THE WORD
Within the Panel of Peers, the emergence of the cell as supercomputer
precipitated a mostly unreported wave of consternation. Crick himself
ultimately arrived at the theory of "panspermia" - in which he
speculated that life was delivered to the earth from other galaxies,
thus relegating the problems of creation to a realm beyond our reach.
Sensing a crisis in his then exclusively materialist philosophy,
neo-Darwinian Richard Dawkins of Oxford coined the word "meme" to
incorporate information in biology, describing ideas as undergoing a
Darwinian process of survival of the fittest. But in the end
Dawkins's memes are mere froth on the surface of a purely chemical
tempest, fictive reflections of material reality rather than a
governing level of information. The tongue still wags the mind.
These stratagems can be summed up as an effort to subdue the word by
shrinking it into a physical function, whimsically reducing it to a
contortion of the pharynx reflecting a firing of synapses following a
mimetic emanation of matter from a random flux of quanta shaking
physical atoms. Like the whirling tigers of the children's fable, the
recursive loops of names for the word chase their tails around the tree
of life, until there is left at the bottom only a muddled pool of what
C=2E S. Lewis called "nothing buttery."
"Nothing buttery" was Lewis's way of summing up the stance of
public scientists who declared that "life" or the brain or the
universe is "nothing but" matter in motion. As MIT's Marvin
Minsky famously asserted, "The brain is nothing but a 'meat
machine.'" In DNA (2003), Crick's collaborator James Watson
doggedly insisted that the discovery of DNA "proved" that life is
nothing but or "merely chemistry and physics." It is a
flat-universe epistemology, restricted to what technologists call the
"physical layer," which is the lowest of seven layers of
abstraction in information technology between silicon chips and silica
fiber on the bottom and the programs and content at the top.
After 100 years or so of attempted philosophical leveling, however, it
turns out that the universe is stubbornly hierarchical. It is a
top-down "nested hierarchy," in which the higher levels command
more degrees of freedom than the levels below them, which they use and
constrain. Thus, the higher levels can neither eclipse the lower levels
nor be reduced to them. Resisted at every step across the range of
reductive sciences, this realization is now inexorable. We know now
that no accumulation of knowledge about chemistry and physics will
yield the slightest insight into the origins of life or the processes
of computation or the sources of consciousness or the nature of
intelligence or the causes of economic growth. As the famed chemist
Michael Polanyi pointed out in 1961, all these fields depend on
chemical and physical processes, but are not defined by them. Operating
farther up the hierarchy, biological macro-systems such as brains,
minds, human beings, businesses, societies, and economies consist of
intelligent agents that harness chemical and physical laws to higher
purposes but are not reducible to lower entities or explicable by them.
Materialism generally and Darwinian reductionism, specifically,
comprise thoughts that deny thought, and contradict themselves. As
British biologist J. B. S. Haldane wrote in 1927, "If my mental
processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain, I
have no reason to suppose my beliefs are true . . . and hence I have no
reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms."
Nobel-laureate biologist Max Delbr=FCck (who was trained as a physicist)
described the contradiction in an amusing epigram when he said that the
neuroscientist's effort to explain the brain as mere meat or matter
"reminds me of nothing so much as Baron Munchausen's attempt to
extract himself from a swamp by pulling on his own hair."
Analogous to such canonical self-denying sayings as The Cretan says all
Cretans are liars, the paradox of the self-denying mind tends to
stultify every field of knowledge and art that it touches and threatens
to diminish this golden age of technology into a dark age of
scientistic reductionism and, following in its trail, artistic and
philosophical nihilism.
All right, have a tantrum. Hurl the magazine aside. Say that I am some
insidious charlatan of "creation-lite," or, God forfend,
"intelligent design." "In the beginning was the Word" is from a
mystical passage in a verboten book, the Bible, which is not a
scientific text. On your side in rebuffing such arguments is John E.
Jones III of central Pennsylvania, the gullible federal judge who
earlier this year made an obsequious play to the Panel of Peers with an
attempted refutation of what has been termed "intelligent design."
But intelligent design is merely a way of asserting a hierarchical
cosmos. The writings of the leading exponents of the concept, such as
the formidably learned Stephen Meyer and William Dembski (both of the
Discovery Institute), steer clear of any assumption that the
intelligence manifestly present in the universe is necessarily
supernatural. The intelligence of human beings offers an "existence
proof" of the possibility of intelligence and creativity fully within
nature. The idea that there is no other intelligence in the universe in
any other form is certainly less plausible than the idea that
intelligence is part of the natural world and arises in many different
ways. MIT physicist and quantum-computing pioneer Seth Lloyd has just
published a scintillating book called Programming the Universe that
sees intelligence everywhere emerging from quantum processes themselves
- the universe as a quantum computer. Lloyd would vehemently shun any
notion of intelligent design, but he posits the universe as pullulating
with computed functions. It is not unfair to describe this ubiquitous
intelligence as something of a Godlike force pervading the cosmos. God
becomes psi, the "quantum wave function" of the universe.
All explorers on the frontiers of nature ultimately must confront the
futility of banishing faith from science. From physics and neural
science to psychology and sociology, from mathematics to economics,
every scientific belief combines faith and facts in an inextricable
weave. Climbing the epistemic hierarchy, all pursuers of truth
necessarily reach a point where they cannot prove their most crucial
assumptions.
IRREDUCIBLE
The hierarchical hypothesis itself, however, can be proven. Kurt
G=F6del, perhaps the preeminent mathematician of the 20th century and
Einstein's close colleague, accomplished the proof in 1931. He
demonstrated in essence that every logical system, including
mathematics, is dependent on premises that it cannot prove and that
cannot be demonstrated within the system itself, or be reduced to it.
Refuting the confident claims of Bertrand Russell, Alfred North
Whitehead, and David Hilbert that it would be possible to subdue all
mathematics to a mechanical unfolding of the rules of symbolic logic,
G=F6del's proof was a climactic moment in modern thought.
This saga of mathematical discovery has been beautifully expounded in a
series of magisterial books and articles by David Berlinski, notably
his intellectual autobiography Black Mischief (1986), The Advent of the
Algorithm (2000), and Infinite Ascent: A Short History of Mathematics
(2005). After contemplating the aporias of number theory in Black
Mischief, he concluded, "It is the noble assumption of our own
scientific culture that sooner or later everything might be explained:
AIDS and the problems of astrophysics, the life cycle of the snail and
the origins of the universe, the coming to be and the passing away. . .
.. Yet it is possible, too, that vast sections of our experience might
be so very rich in information that they stay forever outside the scope
of theory and remain simply what they are: unique, ineffable,
insubsumable, irreducible." And the irreducibility of mathematical
axioms translates directly into a similar irreducibility of physics. As
Caltech physicist and engineer Carver Mead, a guiding force in three
generations of Silicon Valley technology, put it: "The simplest model
of the galaxy is the galaxy."
The irreducibility takes many forms and generates much confusion.
Michael Behe, author of the classic Darwin's Black Box (1996), shows
that myriad phenomena in biology, such as the bacterial flagellum and
the blood-clotting cascade, are "irreducibly complex" in the sense
that they do not function unless all their components are present.
It's an all-or-nothing system incompatible with an evolutionary
theory of slow, step-by-step incremental change. Behe's claim of
"irreducible complexity" is manifestly true, but it thrusts the
debate into a morass of empirical biology, searching for transitional
forms in the same way that paleontologists search for transitional
fossils. Nothing definitive is found, but there are always enough
molecules of smoke, or intriguing lumps of petrified stool or
suggestive shards of bones or capsules of interesting gas, to persuade
the gullible judge or professor that somewhere there was a flock of
flying dragons or a whirling cellular rotaxane that fit the bill.
Mathematician Gregory Chaitin, however, has shown that biology is
irreducibly complex in a more fundamental way: Physical and chemical
laws contain hugely less information than biological phenomena.
Chaitin's algorithmic information theory demonstrates not that
particular biological devices are irreducibly complex but that all
biology as a field is irreducibly complex. It is above physics and
chemistry on the epistemological ladder and cannot be subsumed under
chemical and physical rules. It harnesses chemistry and physics to its
own purposes. As chemist Arthur Robinson, for 15 years a Linus Pauling
collaborator, puts it: "Using physics and chemistry to model biology
is like using lego blocks to model the World Trade Center." The
instrument is simply too crude.
Science gained its authority from the successes of technology. When
Daniel Dennett of Tufts wants to offer unanswerable proof of the
supremacy of science, he writes, "I have yet to meet a postmodern
science critic who is afraid to fly in an airplane because he doesn't
trust the calculations of the thousands of aeronautical engineers and
physicists that have demonstrated and exploited the principles of
flight." Dennett is right: Real science is practical and
demonstrable, following the inspiration of Michael Faraday, Heinrich
Hertz, Thomas Edison, William Shockley, Robert Noyce, Charles Townes,
and Charles Kao - the people who built the machines of the modern
age. If you can build something, you can understand it.
The Panel of Peers, however, is drifting away from these technological
foundations, where you have to demonstrate what you invent - and now
seeks to usurp the role of philosophers and theologians. When Oxford
physicist David Deutsch, or Scientific American in a cover story,
asserts the reality of infinite multiple parallel universes, it is a
trespass far beyond the bounds of science into the realm of wildly
speculative philosophy. The effort to explain the miracles of our
incumbent universe by postulating an infinite array of other universes
is perhaps the silliest stratagem in the history of science.
Darwin's critics are sometimes accused of confusing methodological
materialism with philosophical materialism, but this is in fact a
characteristic error of Darwin's advocates. Multiverse theory itself
is based on a methodological device invented by Richard Feynman, one
that "reifies" math and sees it as a physical reality. (It's an
instance of what Whitehead called "the fallacy of misplaced
concreteness.") Feynman proposed the mapping of electron paths by
assuming the electron took all possible routes, and then calculating
the interference patterns that result among their wave functions. This
method was a great success. But despite some dabbling as a youth in
many-worlds theory, Feynman in his prime was too shrewd to suggest that
the electron actually took all the possible paths, let alone to accept
the theory that these paths compounded into entire separate universes.
Under the pressure of nothing buttery, though, scientists attempt to
explain the exquisite hierarchies of life and knowledge through the
flat workings of physics and chemistry alone. Information theory says
this isn't possible if there's just one universe, and an earth that
existed for only 400 million years before the emergence of cells. But
if there are infinite numbers of universes all randomly tossing the
dice, absolutely anything is possible. The Peers perform a
prestidigitory shuffle of the cosmoses and place themselves, by the
"anthropic principle," in a privileged universe where life prevails
on Darwinian terms. The Peers save the random mutations of nothing
buttery by rendering all science arbitrary and stochastic.
Science still falls far short of developing satisfactory explanations
of many crucial phenomena, such as human consciousness, the Big Bang,
the superluminal quantum entanglement of photons across huge distances,
even the bioenergetics of the brain of a fly in eluding the swatter.
The more we learn about the universe the more wide-open the horizons of
mystery. The pretense that Darwinian evolution is a complete theory of
life is a huge distraction from the limits and language, the rigor and
grandeur, of real scientific discovery. Observes Nobel-laureate
physicist Robert Laughlin of Stanford: "The Darwinian theory has
become an all-purpose obstacle to thought rather than an enabler of
scientific advance."
In the 21st century, the word - by any name - is primary. Just as
in Crick's Central Dogma ordaining the precedence of DNA over
proteins, however, the word itself is not the summit of the hierarchy.
Everywhere we encounter information, it does not bubble up from a
random flux or prebiotic soup. It comes from mind. Taking the hierarchy
beyond the word, the central dogma of intelligent design ordains that
word is subordinate to mind. Mind can generate and lend meaning to
words, but words in themselves cannot generate mind or intelligence.
Retorts the molecular biologist: Surely the information in DNA
generates mind all the time, when it gives the instructions to map the
amino acids into the cells of the brain? Here, however, intercedes the
central dogma of the theory of intelligent design, which bars all
"magical" proteins that morph into data, all "uppity" atoms
transfigured as bits, all "miracles" of upstream influence. DNA can
inform the creation of a brain, but a brain as an aggregation of
proteins cannot generate the information in DNA. Wherever there is
information, there is a preceding intelligence.
At the dawn of information theory in 1948, MIT cybernetician and
Shannon rival Norbert Weiner defined the new crisis of materialism:
"The mechanical brain does not secrete thought 'as the liver does
bile,' as the earlier materialists claimed, nor does it put it out in
the form of energy as the muscle puts out its activity. Information is
information, not matter or energy. No materialism that does not admit
this can survive at the present day."
This constraint on the Munchausen men of the materialist superstition
is a hard truth, but it is a truth nonetheless. The hierarchies of life
do not stop at the word, or at the brain. The universe of knowledge
does not close down to a molecular point. It opens up infinitely in all
directions. Superior even to the word are the mind and the meaning, the
will and the way. Intelligent people bow their heads before this higher
power, which still remains inexorably beyond the reach of science.
Throughout the history of human thought, it has been convenient and
inspirational to designate the summit of the hierarchy as God. While it
is not necessary for science to use this term, it is important for
scientists to grasp the hierarchical reality it signifies. Transcending
its materialist trap, science must look up from the ever dimmer reaches
of its Darwinian pit and cast its imagination toward the word and its
sources: idea and meaning, mind and mystery, the will and the way. It
must eschew reductionism - except as a methodological tool - and
adopt an aspirational imagination. Though this new aim may seem
blinding at first, it is ultimately redemptive because it is the only
way that science can ever hope to solve the grand challenge problems
before it, such as gravity, entanglement, quantum computing, time,
space, mass, and mind. Accepting hierarchy, the explorer embarks on an
adventure that leads to an ever deeper understanding of life and
consciousness, cosmos and creation.
Mr. Gilder is editor-in-chief of Gilder Technology Report and
co-founder of the Discovery Institute. His most recent book, The
Silicon Eye, was a finalist for the Royal Society's Aventis Prize for
science.
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| User: "Budikka666" |
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| Title: Sound Of Trumpet Has Become A Complete Moron |
20 Aug 2006 12:54:36 PM |
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Ian Musgrave Slaps Silly a Leading Proponent of Intelligent Design:
http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2006/08/wells_vs_tiny_f.html
Budikka
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| User: "Bret Cahill" |
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| Title: Re: Sound Of Trumpet Has Become A Complete Moron |
20 Aug 2006 02:49:34 PM |
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Ian Musgrave Slaps Silly a Leading Proponent of Intelligent Design:
http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2006/08/wells_vs_tiny_f.html
How do you know the fundy wasn't silly to begin with?
Bret Cahill
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| User: "Budikka666" |
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| Title: Re: Sound Of Trumpet Has Become A Complete Moron |
20 Aug 2006 03:27:07 PM |
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Bret Cahill wrote:
Ian Musgrave Slaps Silly a Leading Proponent of Intelligent Design:
http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2006/08/wells_vs_tiny_f.html
How do you know the fundy wasn't silly to begin with?
Bret Cahill
My bad! I should have said "Slaps More Silly"!
Budikka
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| User: "Bret Cahill" |
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| Title: Re: Sound Of Trumpet Has Become A Complete Moron |
20 Aug 2006 09:40:37 PM |
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Ian Musgrave Slaps Silly a Leading Proponent of Intelligent Design:
http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2006/08/wells_vs_tiny_f.html
How do you know the fundy wasn't silly to begin with?
My bad! I should have said "Slaps More Silly"!
Supposing the fundy was ALREADY 100% silly?
Bret Cahill
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| User: "Budikka666" |
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| Title: Re: Sound Of Trumpet Has Become A Complete Moron |
21 Aug 2006 06:55:19 PM |
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Bret Cahill wrote:
Ian Musgrave Slaps Silly a Leading Proponent of Intelligent Design:
http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2006/08/wells_vs_tiny_f.html
How do you know the fundy wasn't silly to begin with?
My bad! I should have said "Slaps More Silly"!
Supposing the fundy was ALREADY 100% silly?
Bret Cahill
You appear to be seriously underestimating just how silly a fundie can
become. Do you *really* believe they don't have the capacity to exceed
100%?!!
Budikka
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| User: "Bret Cahill" |
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| Title: JayeEEEesus Said Evolution Was Fact |
22 Aug 2006 08:27:13 PM |
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If you don't believe in what JayeEEEesus sez then you'll fry in eternal
damnation.
Bret Cahill
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| User: "Mark K. Bilbo" |
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| Title: Re: Darwinian Theory Has Become An All-Purpose Obstacle To Thought |
18 Aug 2006 08:31:48 AM |
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On Fri, 18 Aug 2006 05:45:00 -0700, Sound of Trumpet wrote:
http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=3631
Evolution and Me
By: George Gilder
National Review
July 17, 2006
Editors Note: Discovery senior fellow, technology guru and conservative
economist George Gilder has a major essay in the new issue of National
Review, entitled "Evolution and Me: Darwinian Theory has Become an
All-Purpose Obstacle to Thought Rather than an Enabler of Scientific
Advance."
What would an idiot from the Dishonesty Institute know about thought?
Obstacles to thought maybe...
--
Mark K. Bilbo
--------------------------------------------------
"As hip as it is for outsiders to blame New Orleans
for everything bad that happened during and after
Hurricane Katrina, the truth is that the people
who lived here were much more prepared for a big
storm than the federal government that promised
us flood protection." [Jarvis DeBerry]
http://makeashorterlink.com/?V180525DC
"Everything New Orleans"
http://www.nola.com
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| User: "Tommo" |
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| Title: Re: Darwinian Theory Has Become An All-Purpose Obstacle To Thought |
18 Aug 2006 10:19:00 AM |
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Sound of Trumpet spewed forth:
[snip, snip, snipety, snip]
Gilder's penultimate point? "Wherever there is information there is
a preceding intelligence."
"Everywhere we encounter it," Gilder writes, "information does
not bubble up from a random flux or prebiotic soup. It comes from mind.
Taking the hierarchy beyond the word, the central dogma of intelligent
design ordains that word is subordinate to mind. Mind can generate and
lend meaning to words but words in themselves cannot generate mind or
intelligence."
[lots of snipping]
Trumpet, I didn't read *all* of your posting for two reasons.
First, it is nearly 6,000 words long (can you try a bit of editing next
time?).
Second, and more importantly, the opening paragraphs (above)
demonstrate that Gilder is fundamentally looking at things from a
creationists view - I agree that complex beings do not simply come into
being out of 'prebiotic soup', but his jump in logic that this must
therefore mean it comes to mind is the usual non-sequitur.
Remember: when it comes to postings, quality *not quantity* counts.
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| User: "Colin Day" |
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| Title: Re: Darwinian Theory Has Become An All-Purpose Obstacle To Thought |
20 Aug 2006 09:05:44 AM |
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Tommo wrote:
Sound of Trumpet spewed forth:
[snip, snip, snipety, snip]
Gilder's penultimate point? "Wherever there is information there is
a preceding intelligence."
"Everywhere we encounter it," Gilder writes, "information does
not bubble up from a random flux or prebiotic soup. It comes from mind.
Taking the hierarchy beyond the word, the central dogma of intelligent
design ordains that word is subordinate to mind. Mind can generate and
lend meaning to words but words in themselves cannot generate mind or
intelligence."
[lots of snipping]
Trumpet, I didn't read *all* of your posting for two reasons.
First, it is nearly 6,000 words long (can you try a bit of editing next
time?).
Sound of Trumpet edit? Surely you jest.
Colin Day aa #1500
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| User: "VoiceOfReason" |
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| Title: Re: Darwinian Theory Has Become An All-Purpose Obstacle To Thought |
18 Aug 2006 09:03:28 AM |
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Sound of Trumpet wrote:
... "Evolution and Me: Darwinian Theory has Become an
All-Purpose Obstacle to Thought ...
And this person think that being clueless about biology is something to
crow about? Curious...
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| User: "Pastor Kutchie" |
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| Title: Re: Darwinian Theory Has Become An All-Purpose Obstacle To Thought |
18 Aug 2006 09:21:50 AM |
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Sound of Trumpet wrote:
http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=3631
Evolution and Me
By: George Gilder
National Review
July 17, 2006
Editors Note: Discovery senior fellow, technology guru and conservative
economist George Gilder has a major essay in the new issue of National
Review, entitled "Evolution and Me: Darwinian Theory has Become an
All-Purpose Obstacle to Thought Rather than an Enabler of Scientific
Advance."
The piece offers a unique and fresh perspective on the issue of
materialism vs. design and is a breakthrough description of the case
against Darwinism and for intelligent design based largely on
information theory and our understanding of information in the age of
supercomputing and instant information delivery. It turns out that
Darwin's theory is especially vulnerable to the analysis of life from
the hierarchical structure that Gilder says a 21st century
understanding of modern physics, mathematics and computer science
provide.
Gilder's penultimate point? "Wherever there is information there is
a preceding intelligence."
Wrong. The writer has reality exactly back to front.
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| User: "Immortalist" |
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| Title: Re: Darwinian Theory Has Become An All-Purpose Obstacle To Thought |
18 Aug 2006 11:46:26 AM |
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Sound of Trumpet wrote:
http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=3631
Gilder's penultimate point? "Wherever there is information there is
a preceding intelligence."
"Everywhere we encounter it," Gilder writes, "information does
not bubble up from a random flux or prebiotic soup. It comes from mind.
Taking the hierarchy beyond the word, the central dogma of intelligent
design ordains that word is subordinate to mind. Mind can generate and
lend meaning to words but words in themselves cannot generate mind or
intelligence."
There are some things that just cannot be said. As long as no one tries
to say them, there is no trouble. But if anyone does try to say them he
must take the consequences. We ought not to try to express the
inexpressible. The things that some people try to say belong to the
class of things that just cannot be said. The way out of the worry is
retreat into silence.
If one believes that something is inexpressible, then one quite
literally has nothing to say and should therefore "retreat into
silence." Any attempt to talk about the unknowable will eventually lead
to strange and paradoxical assertions, such as "that mind is perfect
which, through true faith, in supreme ignorance supremely knows the
supremely Unknowable..."
Adapted from George H. Smith
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/087975124X/
Speculative reason will be mis-applied beyond the limits of possible
experience while considering such topics. The contradiction arises
because valid arguments can be made in favour of both views. If
unresolved this antimony could lead to 'the euthanasia of pure reason'
(AKA skepticism).
They are contradictory, but validly proven pairs of claims that reason
is compelled toward. The contradictory claims could both be proven
because they both shared the mistaken metaphysical assumption that we
can have knowledge of things as they are in themselves, independent of
the conditions of our experience of them.
An antinomy produces a self-contradiction by accepted ways of
reasoning. It establishes that some tacit and trusted pattern of
reasoning must be made explicit and henceforward be avoided or revised.
http://www.faithnet.org.uk/Philosophy/kant.htm
###################################
Your Error; Noted in 1781 by Kant;
http://www.google.com/search?q=critique+of+pure+reason
###################################
Your contention commits the first antinmoy and raises a contradiction
not resovable with pure reason;
Thesis
The world has a beginning in time, and is also limited as regards
space.
Antithesis
The world has no beginning, and no limits in space; it is infinite as
regards both time and space.
--------------------
Thesis Proof
If we assume that the world has no beginning in time, then up to every
given moment an eternity has elapsed, and there has passed away in that
world an infinite series of successive states of things. Now the
infinity of a series consists in the fact that it can never be
completed through successive synthesis. It thus follows that it is
impossible for an infinite world-series to have passed away, and that a
beginning of the world is therefore a necessary condition of the
world's existence. This was the first point that called for proof. As
regards the second point, let us again assume the opposite, namely,
that the world is an infinite given whole of co-existing things. Now
the magnitude of a quantum which is not given in intuition [i.e.
perception] as within certain limits, can be thought only through the
synthesis of its parts, and the totality of such a quantum only through
a synthesis that is brought to completion through repeated addition of
unit to unit. In order, therefore, to think, as a whole, the world
which fills all spaces, the successive synthesis of the parts of an
infinite world must be viewed as completed, that is, an infinite time
must be viewed as having elapsed in the enumeration of all co-existing
things. This, however, is impossible. An infinite aggregate of actual
things cannot therefore be viewed as a given whole, nor consequently as
simultaneously given. The world is, therefore, as regards extension in
space, not infinite, but is enclosed within limits. This was the second
point in dispute.
----------------------
Antithesis Proof
For let us assume that it has a beginning. Since the beginning is an
existence which is preceded by a time in which the thing is not, there
must have been a preceding time in which the world was not, i.e. an
empty time. Now no coming to be of a thing is possible in an empty
time, because no part of such a time possesses, as compared with any
other, a distinguishing condition of existence rather than of
non-existence; and this applies whether the thing is supposed to arise
of itself or through some other cause. In the world many series of
things can, indeed, begin; but the world itself cannot have a
beginning, and is therefore infinite in respect of past time. As
regards the second point, let us start by assuming the opposite,
namely, that the world in space is finite and limited, and consequently
exists in an empty space which is unlimited. Things will therefore not
only be related in space but also related to space. Now since the world
is an absolute whole beyond which there is no object of intuition, and
therefore no correlate with which the world stands in relation, the
relation of the world to empty space would be a relation of it to no
object. But such a relation, and consequently the limitation of the
world by empty space, is nothing. The world cannot, therefore, be
limited in space; that is, it is infinite in respect of extension.
----------------------------
These proofs really only use one argument, that an infinite series
cannot be completed ("synthesized") either in thought, perception, or
imagination. That was roughly Aristotle's argument against infinite
space.
There are two arguments here: First, that there is no reason for the
universe to come to be at one time rather than another, where all
points in an empty time are alike. Second, that objects can only be
spatially related to each other, not to empty space, which is not an
object.
Page 399 (cpr)
http://www.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Philosophy/Kant/cpr/16ant1-4.htm#399
http://www.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Philosophy/Kant/cpr/
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| User: "Tron" |
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| Title: Re: Darwinian Theory Has Become An All-Purpose Obstacle To Thought |
18 Aug 2006 12:35:01 PM |
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"Immortalist" <reanimater_2000@yahoo.com> skrev i melding
news:1155919585.982888.128620@74g2000cwt.googlegroups.com...
If
unresolved this antimony could lead to 'the euthanasia of pure reason'
(AKA skepticism).
Agree, mostly, except that, while breathing high levels of antimony can
affect eyes, lungs, heart and stomach, it does not directly damage the
brain.
T
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: Darwinian Theory Has Become An All-Purpose Obstacle To Thought |
20 Aug 2006 01:53:19 PM |
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Tron wrote:
"Immortalist" <reanimater_2000@yahoo.com> skrev i melding
news:1155919585.982888.128620@74g2000cwt.googlegroups.com...
If
unresolved this antimony could lead to 'the euthanasia of pure reason'
(AKA skepticism).
Agree, mostly, except that, while breathing high levels of antimony can
affect eyes, lungs, heart and stomach, it does not directly damage the
brain.
What happens if you decide something is unknowable but you must make a
choice or die?
Error Management Theory & Pascals Wager?
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.angst/msg/6259808bd1f89e4d
T
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| User: "Tron" |
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| Title: Re: Darwinian Theory Has Become An All-Purpose Obstacle To Thought |
21 Aug 2006 03:04:22 AM |
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<extropy1@hotmail.com> skrev i melding
news:1156099999.283238.296630@h48g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
Tron wrote:
"Immortalist" <reanimater_2000@yahoo.com> skrev i melding
news:1155919585.982888.128620@74g2000cwt.googlegroups.com...
If
unresolved this antimony could lead to 'the euthanasia of pure reason'
(AKA skepticism).
Agree, mostly, except that, while breathing high levels of antimony can
affect eyes, lungs, heart and stomach, it does not directly damage the
brain.
What happens if you decide something is unknowable but you must make a
choice or die?
Error Management Theory & Pascals Wager?
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.angst/msg/6259808bd1f89e4d
But what has this got to do with the 51. chemical element, Sb (antimonium)?
T
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| User: "helios" |
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| Title: Re: Darwinian Theory Has Become An All-Purpose Obstacle To Thought |
20 Aug 2006 11:20:18 AM |
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Tron wrote:
"Immortalist" <reanimater_2000@yahoo.com> skrev i melding
news:1155919585.982888.128620@74g2000cwt.googlegroups.com...
If
unresolved this antimony could lead to 'the euthanasia of pure reason'
(AKA skepticism).
Agree, mostly, except that, while breathing high levels of antimony can
affect eyes, lungs, heart and stomach, it does not directly damage the
brain.
T
People who believe in ghosts are stupids that could not tell from his
own right hand or his left hand.
Guess there are so many morons that abode under the canopy of religious
congregations, that if put together could be as high as the Eiffel
Tower; notwhitstanding their numbers or yelpings, their ideas keep
being stupids.
They believe there is a super ghost somewhere ( in ancient past was in
the sky, but now they don't know where it is, thanks to the Sputnik),
they believe Man was a special creature made personally by a super
ghost in the sky (pre Sputnik era) and that they are special. They live
for ever, no matter if the majority would live (as they think) in a
very hot place.
The older this maggots are, the greater their desire to live for ever.
Man is not to live for ever, as he is a creature of evolution of
matter. Some day the science (and not the stupid thing called religion)
will make life longer for man; they say 5000 years will be the limit.
For the 500 next years, the life span will be of 500 years each; but
not now, and of course, not because a ghost.
Now, we must think and not repeat stupidities. Take the old book and
burn, and you'll see Earth keeps on moving, plants growing and
everything in accord to nature. Some day in the future, our Sun will
get bigger and everyone on Earth will be burned .
That is the truth. The rest are mumbo jumbo .
Some other people are in the religion bussiness, and make millions of
dollars every six months; well, those guys will certainly post in the
Internet, trying to ridicule science, trying to force the clock to goes
in reverse, but certainly, they are to be extinguished as the time goes
by. Of course, there are a lot of ignoramus on the streets, and those
guys could , for a drink of milk and a bread, say they believe in the
mumbo jumbo.
But every year they will be less and less.
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| User: "Tron" |
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| Title: Re: Darwinian Theory Has Become An All-Purpose Obstacle To Thought |
21 Aug 2006 03:04:09 AM |
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"helios" <merlone_8@hotmail.com> skrev i melding
news:1156090818.236615.138500@b28g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
Tron wrote:
"Immortalist" <reanimater_2000@yahoo.com> skrev i melding
news:1155919585.982888.128620@74g2000cwt.googlegroups.com...
If
unresolved this antimony could lead to 'the euthanasia of pure reason'
(AKA skepticism).
Agree, mostly, except that, while breathing high levels of antimony can
affect eyes, lungs, heart and stomach, it does not directly damage the
brain.
T
People who believe in ghosts are stupids that could not tell from his
own right hand or his left hand.
Guess there are so many morons that abode under the canopy of religious
congregations, that if put together could be as high as the Eiffel
Tower; notwhitstanding their numbers or yelpings, their ideas keep
being stupids.
......
But every year they will be less and less.
Yes, but what has this got to do with the 51. chemical element, Sb
(antimonium)?
T
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| User: "Budikka666" |
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| Title: Re: Darwinian Theory Has Become An All-Purpose Obstacle To Thought |
20 Aug 2006 12:41:29 PM |
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Sound of Trumpet wrote:
http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=3631
I'd be delighted to formally debate this with you or with George
Gilder. Please post your best scientific arguments for creation or
have Gilder post his, and I'll take them down.
Failure to respond to this message means that you admit that the Theory
of Evolution is indeed the only scientificly supported explantion for
the distribution and diversity of life on this planet and that the
Bible is the worst explanation.
BTW, there is no debate. Scientific issues are settled scientificly,
not by fiat from the so-called Discovery Institute.
Budikka
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: Darwinian Theory Has Become An All-Purpose Obstacle To Thought |
20 Aug 2006 02:16:48 PM |
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BTW, there is no debate. Scientific issues are settled scientificly,
not by fiat from the so-called Discovery Institute.
Budikka
But it's funny that I've not read an article where scientist, via
scientific methods in a lab, have caused evolution to occur. I've seen
scientists explain away the observable changes in, say, domestic
livestock with terms such as "genetic drift." Archaeology tells us that
humans have manipulated animals for thousands of years: dogs,
housecats, cattle, sheep, horses. All of these have changed as a result
of humans selectively breeding the characteristics we desire.
However, by your own admission, and the criteria science has adopted,
this is NOT evolution. A modern Black Angus cow, shaped by thousands of
years of human intervention, was obviously not "naturally" selected.
Nor did a Chihuahua "adapt" itself to sitting on the laps of ancient
Mayans.
So while I Have read about expanding the life-spans of fruit-flies,
or changing the color of fur, size, weight, etc of this or that
animal...well, I have never seen it happen that they flooded a
hamster's cage, waited a few generations (about 10 days for
hamsters=)), and discovered the hamsters had evolved into fuzzy-mouthed
bass.
Another incongruence is when preservationists get to see a natural
change occuring (such as different owl species mixing and breeding),
they scream about the extinction of a species. Huh? Isn't that merely
the process of evolution?!?
Exaptation is the better explanation!!!!
-->d
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| User: "Budikka666" |
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| Title: Re: Darwinian Theory Has Become An All-Purpose Obstacle To Thought |
21 Aug 2006 06:27:13 PM |
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wrote:
BTW, there is no debate. Scientific issues are settled scientificly,
not by fiat from the so-called Discovery Institute.
Budikka
But it's funny that I've not read an article where scientist, via
scientific methods in a lab, have caused evolution to occur.
Then you haven't read very much. Evolution has been observed in the
lab and in the wild.
I've seen
scientists explain away the observable changes in, say, domestic
livestock with terms such as "genetic drift." Archaeology tells us that
humans have manipulated animals for thousands of years: dogs,
housecats, cattle, sheep, horses. All of these have changed as a result
of humans selectively breeding the characteristics we desire.
However, by your own admission, and the criteria science has adopted,
this is NOT evolution. A modern Black Angus cow, shaped by thousands of
years of human intervention, was obviously not "naturally" selected.
Nor did a Chihuahua "adapt" itself to sitting on the laps of ancient
Mayans.
Evolution is a change in allele frequency in a given population.
That's all. Genetic drift is part of it, but it's not all of it.
So while I Have read about expanding the life-spans of fruit-flies,
or changing the color of fur, size, weight, etc of this or that
animal...well, I have never seen it happen that they flooded a
hamster's cage, waited a few generations (about 10 days for
hamsters=)), and discovered the hamsters had evolved into fuzzy-mouthed
bass.
Where in any evolution publication *anywhere* has *anyone* *ever* said
that's how evolution occurs?
Another incongruence is when preservationists get to see a natural
change occuring (such as different owl species mixing and breeding),
they scream about the extinction of a species. Huh? Isn't that merely
the process of evolution?!?
Exaptation is the better explanation!!!!
-->d
Mixing and breeding is not "evolution", it's mixing and breeding.
Speciation tends to occur on the fringes of a population, or when a
small sub-group of a population is isolated by some means.
Here are some examples of macroevolution:
Example A.
Fossil primate species Pelycodus ralstoni changed into two separate
species, Notharctus nunienus and Notharctus venticolus in an unbroken
fossil transition. The two later became even more distinct, and the
descendants of nunienus are now labeled as genus Smilodectes instead of
genus Notharctus.
The evolution of a new genus is macroevolution proven.
Example C.
There is more than a dozen species of Darwin's finch on the Galapagos
Islands. There's some disagreement depending on how some intriguing
populations are classified. There is even disagreement about which
genera the species are divided into. Traditionally they are placed
into four groups: the tree finches (Camarhynchus), the warbler finch
(Certhidea), the ground finches (Geospiza) and the Cocos finch
(Pinaroloxias). It's current practice to class the Camarhynchus as
three genera: Camarhynchus (the tree finches), Platyspiza (the
vegetarian finch) and Cactospiza (the woodpecker and mangrove finches).
No one disagrees, not even the creationists, that the finches all
evolved from one founder species.
The evolution of a new genus is macroevolution proven.
Example C.
In 1983 the induction of multicellularity in a strain of Chlorella
pyrenoidosa (since reclassified as C. vulgaris) by predation was
reported. It arose as a result of growing the unicellular green alga
in the first stage of a two stage continuous culture system as for food
for a flagellate predator growing in the second stage. Due to the
failure of a pump, flagellates washed back into the first stage. Within
five days a colonial form of the Chlorella appeared. It rapidly came
to dominate the culture. The colony size ranged from 4 cells to 32
cells. Eventually it stabilized at 8 cells. This colonial form has
persisted in culture for about a decade and has been keyed out using a
number of algal taxonomic keys. They key out now as being in the genus
Coelosphaerium, which is in a different family from Chlorella.
The evolution of a new genus is macroevolution proven.
Example D.
In 1990 it was reported that an unidentified bacterium underwent a
major morphological change when grown in the presence of a ciliate
predator. This bacterium's normal morphology is a short (1.5 um) rod.
After 8 - 10 weeks of growing with the predator it assumed the form of
long (20 um) cells. These cells have no cross walls. Multicellularity
has also been produced in unicellular bacterial by predation. In a
1994 study, growth in the presence of protozoal grazers resulted in the
production of chains of bacterial cells.
Morphological change is macroevolution.
Example E.
In the nineteenth century Spartina alternifolia was found in Townsend
harbor in southern England, it is a native of the Americas and
presumably seeds were transferred in a boat's bilge.
There already existed a European species S. maritima. Early in the
20th century a sterile hybrid of these two was found and was called
Spartina townsendii. This went through a process of diploidization
(duplication of chromosome pairs) and became a new sexually reproducing
species known as Spartina anglica.
Speciation is macroevolution proven.
Example F.
A species of grass, Anthoxanthum odoratum, growing in plots in the Park
Grass Experiment at Rothamsted Experimental Station, Harpenden, UK.,
was originally set up in 1856 to test the reactions of meadow
vegetation to
different fertilizer applications. There has been a shift in flowering
time of A. odoratum at the border between adjacent experimental plots.
Crucially, this 'inverse cline' of flowering is a signature of the
first steps along a particular road to speciation, that has been
predicted by modelling studies exploring how natural selection against
hybrids could contribute to reproductive isolation between populations
in proximity. It suggests that some species within adjacent plots in
the Park Grass Experiment are not exchanging genetic material via
pollination as frequently as would be expected. The genetic outcome of
this reproductive isolation was tested by using Inter Simple-Sequence
Repeat (ISSR) markers, which confirmed that there had been genetic
divergence between adjacent plots at these neutral marker sites.
Reproductive isolation and genetic divergence, the first phases of
speciation, had been confirmed.
Speciation is macroevolution proven.
Example G.
In the lakes of East Africa, fish of the family Cichlidae have radiated
extensively from one or a very few original founder species. At least
1500 species of fish have arisen from a common ancestor in the last 10
million years. Within Lake Malawi over 700 species have arisen within
the last 2 million years. A number of factors are at work, including
trophic specialization and sexual selection.
Speciation is macroevolution proven.
Example H.
Chorthippus brunnaeus and C. biguttulus are all but indistinguishable
grasshoppers, but they do not interbreed in the wild and so are
different species. However, they are so recently (in geologic terms)
separated that they *can* interbreed. They're induced to do so by the
temperature of their head, as determined from the rate or frequency of
their chirping. If the female is artificially warmed or cooled to the
temperature of the other species, she will breed with it, but normally
in the natural world, they do not breed. Reproductive isolation is the
first step toward speciation.
Speciation is macroevolution proven.
Example I.
Two species of planktonic foraminifera, Globigerinoides trilobus and
Orbulina universa, shared a common ancestor in the early Miocene. The
first appearance of 0. universa (~15 million years ago) was preceded by
an increase in the morphological variance of the ancestral lineage,
including the origin of several new and short-ranging morphospecies.
Biological speciation (cladogenesis) occurred priorly. Oxygen isotopic
ratios of G. trilobus and 0. universa indicate that the entire
evolutionary transition took place within mixed layer habitats similar
to those occupied by modern G. trilobus. The origin of Orbulina was a
case of sympatric speciation at shallow depths in the open ocean and
can be traced in an unbroken line.
Speciation is macroevolution proven.
Example J.
On the Faeroe Islands exists the house mouse which was transported
there by humans within the last quarter millennium. There are now
several species.
Speciation is macroevolution proven.
Example K.
Two strains of Drosophila paulistorum developed hybrid sterility of
male offspring between 1958 and 1963. Artificial selection induced
strong intra-strain mating preferences.
Speciation is macroevolution proven.
Example L.
A species of fireweed formed by doubling of the chromosome count, from
the original stock.
Speciation is macroevolution proven.
Example M.
Three species of goatsbeard flower were introduced to the USA from
Europe shortly after the turn of the century. Within a few decades the
populations expanded and began to encounter other such species in the
American West. When mixed populations occurred, the species hybridized
to produce sterile hybrid offspring, but in the late forties two new
species of goatsbeard appeared near Pullman, Washington. Although the
new species were similar in appearance to the hybrids, they produced
fertile offspring. The evolutionary process had created a separate
species that could reproduce but not mate with the goatsbeard plant
from which it had evolved.
Speciation is macroevolution proven.
Example N.
There are two distinct strains of Rhagoletis pomonella (apple maggot
fly), one in the apple, the other in the hawthorn, which breed at
different times and therefore do not interbreed in nature. The fly is
not found in Europe, but the apple is an import from Europe. This is,
therefore, an example of speciation.
Speciation is macroevolution proven.
Example O.
Theodosius Dobzhansky found that Drosophila paulistorum had started to
speciate in his lab.
Speciation is macroevolution proven.
Example P.
In 1905, Hugo de Vries found a variant among his plants. Oenothera
lamarckiana has a chromosome count of 14, yet a variant in his lab had
a chromosome count of 28. De Vries found that he was unable to breed
this variant with O. lamarckiana. He named this new species O. gigas.
Speciation is macroevolution proven.
Example Q.
Digby (1912) crossed the primrose species Primula verticillata and P.
floribunda to produce a sterile hybrid. Polyploidization occurred in a
few of these plants to produce fertile offspring. The new species was
named P. kewensis. It was noticed that spontaneous hybrids of P.
verticillata and P. floribunda set tetraploid seed on at least three
occasions: 1905, 1923 and 1926.
Speciation is macroevolution proven.
Example R.
In 1950 it was demonstrated that two species in the genus Tragopogon
were produced by polyploidization from hybrids. T. miscellus found in
a colony in Moscow, Idaho was produced by hybridization of T. dubius
and T. pratensis. T. mirus found in a colony near Pullman, Washington
was produced by hybridization of T. dubius and T. porrifolius.
Evidence from chloroplast DNA suggests that T. mirus originated
independently by hybridization in eastern Washington and western Idaho
at least three times. The same study also shows multiple origins for
T. micellus.
Speciation is macroevolution proven.
Example S.
When the radish, Raphanus sativus, was crossed with the cabbage,
Brassica oleracea sterile hybrid were produced. Some unreduced gametes
were formed in the hybrids which allowed for the production of seed.
Plants grown from the seeds were interfertile with each other. They
were not interfertile with either parental species.
Speciation is macroevolution proven.
Example T.
A prediction of the Theory of Evolution proven: A species of hemp
nettle, Galeopsis tetrahit, was hypothesized to be the result of a
natural hybridization of two other species, G. pubescens and G.
speciosa. The two species were crossed. The hybrids matched G.
tetrahit in both visible features and chromosome morphology.
Speciation is macroevolution proven.
Example U.
In 1969, almost complete reproductive isolation between two varieties
of maize was demonstrated. Not only were the varieties distinguishable
by seed color, but other genetic markers allowed hybrid identification.
The two varieties were planted in a common field. Any plant's
nearest neighbors were always plants of the other strain. Selection
was
applied against hybridization by using only those ears of corn that
showed a low degree of hybridization as the source of the next years
seed. Only parental type kernels from these ears were planted. The
strength of selection was increased each year. In the first year, only
ears with less than 30% intercrossed seed were used. In the fifth
year, only ears with less than 1% intercrossed seed were used. After
five years the average percentage of intercrossed matings dropped from
35.8% to 4.9% in the white strain and from 46.7% to 3.4% in the yellow
strain.
Speciation is macroevolution proven.
Example V.
In 1964 five or six individuals of Nereis acuminata were collected in
Long Beach Harbor, California, and allowed to grow into a population of
thousands of individuals. Four pairs from this population were
transferred to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. Over 20 years
later, when comparisons were made with wild populations, the Woods Hole
population had already shown itself at the start of reproductive
isolation. Reproduction isolation leads to speciation.
Speciation is macroevolution proven.
Example W.
Scientific surveillance has shown that compatibility of mosquito
strains seems to be correlated with the strain of the Rickettsia-like
microbe present. Mosquitoes that carry different strains of the
microbe exhibit cytoplasmic incompatibility; those that carry the same
strain of microbe are interfertile. Reproduction isolation is
speciation.
Speciation is macroevolution proven.
Example X.
An uninterrupted sequence of freshwater snail fossils in Pliocene
deposits in Yugoslavia show an unbroken sequence where one species
changes into another over a period of seven million years.
Speciation is macroevolution proven.
Example Y.
Eocoelia is a small brachiopod (this one is commonly known as a "lamp
shell") from the lower Silurian. It can be found all over the world,
including in Britain, Nova Scotia, Pennsylvania USA, Iowa USA, Siberia,
Norway, and South America. In several such places, a succession of 4
species has been found consistently over wide areas (North America and
Europe for example).
Data came from fossils gathered at thirteen different depths covering
about ten million years. There is a smooth transition that starts at
one species and ends at a different species.
Speciation is macroevolution proven.
Example Z.
Elephants from the tropical forests of Africa are morphologically
distinct from savannah or bush elephants. Dart-biopsy samples from 195
free-ranging African elephants in 21 populations were examined for DNA
sequence variation in four nuclear genes (1732 base pairs).
Phylogenetic distinctions between African forest elephant and savannah
elephant populations corresponded to 58% of the difference in the same
genes between elephant genera Loxodonta (African) and Elephas (Asian).
Large genetic distance, multiple genetically fixed nucleotide site
differences, morphological and habitat distinctions, and extremely
limited hybridization of gene flow between forest and savannah
elephants support the recognition and conservation management of two
African species.
Speciation is macroevolution proven.
And here's a reference to another 530 examples:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/speciation.html
Budikka
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: Darwinian Theory Has Become An All-Purpose Obstacle To Thought |
23 Aug 2006 01:26:22 PM |
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DNorth wrote, and then...
Budikka666 wrote:
well, I have never seen it happen that they flooded a
hamster's cage, waited a few generations (about 10 days for
hamsters=)), and discovered the hamsters had evolved into fuzzy-mouthed
bass.
Where in any evolution publication *anywhere* has *anyone* *ever* said
that's how evolution occurs?
Scientific American recently had an article describing the evolution
of snake venom vs mammal eyesight/intelligence as an "arms-race." I.e.
a very specific situation CAUSED the change to occur (adaptation). This
presentation of evolution is in contrast to Darwin's idea of Natural
Selection, in which an inheritable change which is advantageous to the
individual and it's offspring is preserved and eventually alters the
nature of the population (exaptation).
Another incongruence is when preservationists get to see a natural
change occuring (such as different owl species mixing and breeding),
they scream about the extinction of a species. Huh? Isn't that merely
the process of evolution?!?
Exaptation is the better explanation!!!!
-->d
Mixing and breeding is not "evolution", it's mixing and breeding.
Speciation tends to occur on the fringes of a population, or when a
small sub-group of a population is isolated by some means.
Okay, you say right here...mixing and breeding is NOT evolution.
Let's read on.
Here are some examples of macroevolution:
Example A.
Fossil primate species Pelycodus ralstoni changed into two separate
species...The two later became even more distinct....
The evolution of a new genus is macroevolution proven.
And....what? This example does not counter my claim that the process
is not driven as an ADAPTATION to a specific circumstance.
Example C.
There is more than a dozen species of Darwin's finch on the Galapagos
Islands.
No one disagrees, not even the creationists, that the finches all
evolved from one founder species.
The evolution of a new genus is macroevolution proven.
Again, I agree that this type of speciation is an evolutionary
process, but not one driven by an external agent. Imagine this...on the
Galapagos there are many types of seeds from various plants. The
original finch flock ate what they could, but undoubtedly some seeds
were too tough for their beaks. As time passed, a mutation caused a
finch to be born with a slightly stronger beak, and this trait passed
to it's offspring. Still, they were part of the original flock, and
only a small portion of it.
Then, after more generations had passed, and with the flock's numbers
growing, the type of seed they favored began to be hard-to-find. The
finches with the stronger beak were able to eat different types of
seeds, thus they grew in numbers, while the unaltered population (still
eating the one type of seed) began to reduce in numbers. The alteration
was already present in the population, not something that was
introduced after food became scarce. THIS is the difference between
exaptation and adaptation as methods of examining evolution.
Example C.
In 1983 the induction of multicellularity in a strain of Chlorella
pyrenoidosa (since reclassified as C. vulgaris) by predation was
reported.
The evolution of a new genus is macroevolution proven.
Hmmm...so maybe I'm wrong about it not being observed in a lab, but
it is more likely that there were always individuals within that
population that had the capability of forming colonies, but had not
been introduced to the environment necessary for them to do so. I also
think that had the trigger mechanism been removed immediately, the
colonies would have dispersed themselves in the absence of danger.
However, after being kept in colonies for so long, speciation occured
in which the colonial form was selected for.
Example D.
In 1990 it was reported that an unidentified bacterium underwent a
major morphological change when grown in the presence of a ciliate
predator. Multicellularity
has also been produced in unicellular bacterial by predation. In a
1994 study, growth in the presence of protozoal grazers resulted in the
production of chains of bacterial cells.
Morphological change is macroevolution.
Darwin disagreed. Does a caterpillars "evolve" into a butterfly? Are
humans that live in cities an "evolved" form of rural human?
Example E.
In the nineteenth century Spartina alternifolia was found in Townsend
harbor in southern England, it is a native of the Americas and
presumably seeds were transferred in a boat's bilge.
There already existed a European species S. maritima. Early in the
20th century a sterile hybrid of these two was found and was called
Spartina townsendii. This went through a process of diploidization
(duplication of chromosome pairs) and became a new sexually reproducing
species known as Spartina anglica.
Speciation is macroevolution proven.
I thought you said mixing and breeding were just mixing and breeding,
not evolution!
Example F.
A species of grass, Anthoxanthum odoratum, growing in plots in the Park
Grass Experiment at Rothamsted Experimental Station, Harpenden, UK.,
was originally set up in 1856 to test the reactions of meadow
vegetation to
different fertilizer applications....The genetic outcome of
this reproductive isolation was tested by using Inter Simple-Sequence
Repeat (ISSR) markers, which confirmed that there had been genetic
divergence between adjacent plots at these neutral marker sites.
Reproductive isolation and genetic divergence, the first phases of
speciation, had been confirmed.
Speciation is macroevolution proven.
But this speciation was induced by man.
Example Q.
Digby (1912) crossed the primrose species Primula verticillata and P.
floribunda to produce a sterile hybrid. Polyploidization occurred in a
few of these plants to produce fertile offspring. The new species was
named P. kewensis. It was noticed that spontaneous hybrids of P.
verticillata and P. floribunda set tetraploid seed on at least three
occasions: 1905, 1923 and 1926.
Speciation is macroevolution proven.
And here is another example where you contradict yourself in your
zeal to label me ignorant or fundamentalist. When I stated that mixing
breeds of owls should be an example of evolution, you said...and I
quote, "Mixing and breeding is not "evolution", it's mixing and
breeding." C'mon there buddy, you can't have it both ways.
And here's a reference to another 530 examples:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/speciation.html
Budikka
Hmmm...you presented me with an incredible list of examples of
hybridization and speciation. But aside from the simple single-celled
organisms collaborating for safety, you really didn't address the issue
I presented. I do not question hybridization (remember, I said owls
were interbreeding), nor do I question speciation (I called it genetic
drift). What I questioned was the idea that only WHEN a specific
impetus is introduced do species change. You claim nobody is saying
that?
To whit, the fundamentalists are able to penetrate precisely because
of this incongruence. Have you ever watched the Discovery Channel ?!
Any of their shows discussing evolution represent it as changes to a
species resulting from an external event. Dinosaurs grew feathers to
help protect them against the inclement weather. Or that camoflage was
implemented to shield animals from predators.
I'd rather say a dinosaur was born with primitive feathers which
extended the range of it's habitation, making it more successful. I'd
rather say certain mutations in pigment caused some individuals to be
less visible to predators, making them more successful.
It's a matter of perspective, I suppose. But reading Darwin's Origin
of Species makes me certain that he would not have advocated the notion
of Natural Selection being a response to stimuli.
-->d
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: Darwinian Theory Has Become An All-Purpose Obstacle To Thought |
23 Aug 2006 11:34:32 PM |
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Exaptation is the better explanation!!!!
-->d
Example A.
This has what to do with your assinine "two separate species mate and
produce a third, distinct species and that's how evolution works"
*****?
I didn't say anything about breeding in my response to example A,
Rouge Leader...stay on target...stay on target...ADHD meds wearing
off.... Let's read on means just that...as in, eventually, my friend.
The example shows that a species split into two. It does not show that
two species interbred and produced a third.
Evolution of a new species is macroevolution. Do you actually
understand what it is that's being discussed here, because you sure as
hell don't sound like you do.
You just have to learn to concentrate, maybe turn off the PS2 every
now and then.
Example C.
No one is talking about an external agent, but to say that new species
**DEVELOPED** is not to say someone planned it.
Can you not understand how a lay-person would comprehend the
biologist's use of the word "developed" when placed in a context?
Probably not, empathy isn't shining thru as one of your virtues, my
friend.
But to say that this mutation
**DEVELOPED** in those birds is not to imply any conscious will or
plan.
No, it doesn't--and I'm glad the English lessons are coming along so
well. Up to a 3rd grade level yet?--the use of "developed" without a
referential conundrum does not imply will. But saying "developed" as an
approach to a problem does.
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