Posted on 03/11/2003 3:01:59 PM PST by Remedy
A university professor said she was asked to resign for introducing elite students to flaws in Darwinian thought, and she now says academic freedom at her school is just a charade.
During a recent honors forum at Mississippi University for Women (MUW), Dr. Nancy Bryson gave a presentation titled "Critical Thinking on Evolution" -- which covered alternate views to evolution such as intelligent design. Bryson said that following the presentation, a senior professor of biology told her she was unqualified and not a professional biologist, and said her presentation was "religion masquerading as science."
The next day, Vice President of Academic Affairs, Dr. Vagn Hansen asked Bryson to resign from her position as head of the school's Division of Science and Mathematics.
"The academy is all about free thought and academic freedom. He hadn't even heard my talk," Bryson told American Family Radio News. "[W]ithout knowing anything about my talk, he makes that decision. I think it's just really an outrage."
Bryson believes she was punished for challenging evolutionary thought and said she hopes her dismissal will smooth the way for more campus debate on the theory of evolution. University counsel Perry Sansing said MUW will not comment on why Bryson was asked to resign because it is a personnel matter.
"The best reaction," Bryson says, "and the most encouraging reaction I have received has been from the students." She added that the students who have heard the talk, "They have been so enthusiastically supportive of me."
Bryson has contacted the American Family Association Center for Law and Policy and is considering taking legal action against the school.
He'd be perfect, in a world where every crime is a miracle.
Those who can count...
And those who can't!
/end-Creationist-mode-nonthink
Prediction 1:
According to the creationists who honor the Bible there will come a time when you will either have previously chosen to bow your knee to the Creator or you will choose to have the Creator positively reinforces, via higher knowledge of the truth, to bow your knee.
Direct your anger or disgruntlement at the author of the message, not at the messenger. He may answer you as He has many other highly intelligent, and educated individuals.
Prediction 2:
Israel will become a Nation again. (Already happened)
Prediction 3:
People will not achieve peace on earth. (No matter how advanced their technology or science)
Prediction 4:
Science and technology cannot overcome the SUPERNATURAL highly illogical hate for Israel. (France, Germany, Middle East...)
Hopeful Prediction 5:
Junior and his friends will begin to see the Supernatural pattern to history and give Jesus a consideration of their loyalties, by personally investigating Gods word.
BTW, several evolutionists on this forum (myself included) are Bible-believing Christians. However, we see Genesis as an allegory rather than being literal.
I can think of a few. Because -- according to creationism -- all species were specially created at virtually the same time, and did not gradually evolve from earlier forms:
1. There should be no transitional species.I shall call these The Five Failed Predictions of Creationism.
2. There are most certainly no pre-human species.
3. There should be no evidence, whether in fossils or DNA, showing the chronological evolution of life.
4. There must surely be at least one species, and probably several, having no genetic similarities with any other life on earth.
5. The fossil record must show all kinds of species living together at the same time.
Whether it is inconsitent with evolution, we can leave for another day. However, the discovery of the platypus is inconsistent with the so called 'science' of paleontology. It is because paleontology puts all species in a procrustean bed of its own making and assumes characteristics for which it has absolutely no evidence (such as live birth for all mammals) that it cannot provide evidence for evolution. When a profession cannot provide new evidence but just recycles what is already known and uses it to reinforce its preconceptions it cannot be called a science.
And do you really not think that T.rex, sauropods and the various sabre-toothed mammals had any unique features (discernible from the fossil record) not found today?
That's a very convoluted sentence, and methinks purposely so. I certainly do think that there are numerous features of many species which we would not know about from the fossil record. Everywhere we look in the animal and plant kingdoms we find quite unique features in numerous species which we would never know of unless we had living examples of them. Just in modes of reproduction, there are numerous curiosities such as parthonogenic snakes, live bearing sharks, species like butterflies and frogs that are 'reborn' and much else. We would never know these things which all constitute severe challenges to evolution from fossils. In fact, the reason why there is still so much disagreement over dinosaurs, in spite of numerous fossil examples of them, is that we have no living examples and paleontology can tell us very little for certain about them.
4. There must surely be at least one species, and probably several, having no genetic similarities with any other life on earth.can't yet be accounted as totally failed predictions. In fairness, all we can do is point out that the predicted evidence has not yet been discovered. (And given the lack of actual research being conducted by creationists, it is unlilely to be discovered.)
5. The fossil record must show all kinds of species living together at the same time.
*Ahem*
Sorry, just had to get that out of my system.
That is a good statement of why old species are still around, however it contradicts the basic postulate of evolution that species transform themselves into new species out of necessity, and that those who do not change, die. If necessity was the causal factor for evolution, then there should be no 'old' species around, they should have been long ago destroyed for failing to keep up.
Species do transform out of necessity. If there is no real necessity, they don't change. If they succesfully occupy an ecological niche, they multiply and prosper. Frogs as a class occupy certain specific places in the ecosystem. They do not compete with alligators or chimps, and in fact are depended on by other species as a food source. Plants were not "replaced" by animals. Animals in fact require plant life to survive. If a group of species like frogs is more succesful in their niche than a competing species of reptile, the frogs win. It doesn't matter if the reptiles are more "advanced" in some ways. As far as competing for food and reproductive capability, frogs do fine.
This does NOT contradict anything in evolutionary theory. In fact it is at the heart of the theoretical framework. And before you go claiming that this a departure from the "party line", here's an excerpt from your own post on Darwin:
These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the external conditions of life, and from use and disuse;. a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms.
Less-improved forms, here, refers to organisms with inferior reproductive capabilities, NOT overall complexity. Bacteria, ants, and frogs by virtue of their survival and reproductive capabilities, are equally deserving of the "improved form" distinction. This sort of mis-interpretation of "improved" is one of the biggest sources of misunderstandings about evolution and the basis of all too many ill-aimed attacks.
Regardless, the example I gave has not changed in 200 million years. It has survived through numerous environmental changes throught that time - as well as it having stopped mutating (as have many other species such as the shark, the coelacanth, etc.).
I think you would be hard pressed to find a specific species of frog that has survived virtually unchanged since the emergence of the class millions of years ago. The overall "format" of the frog, if you will, hasn't changed because it hasn't had to. It is adept at living and reproducing in swamp-like conditions and is superior in its own way to other potential competitors. Hence it does not go the way of the Dodo. Frog mutations do continue and in some cases are quite drastic:
http://www.pca.state.mn.us/hot/frogs.html
This is a particularly extreme and possibly human-induced example, but it shows that frogs are still in a state of change. It is HIGHLY unlikely that any mutation like an extra set of legs would be at all adventageous or widespread enough to propagate for long, but less dramatic and more functional adaptations, like a resistance to the type of pollution they are theorizing could be causing these mutations, could be very beneficial to certain species in the long run.
Further, evolutionists constantly compare modern species with other modern species to support evolution. However, according to evolution itself all species are descendants of whatever the first life was (supposedly some 4 billion or so years ago) so therefore all present species are equally far apart in time to that first supposed species and it is a complete contradiction and doubletalk for evolutionists to deny that any species has stopped changing and mutating while others have continued to do so when making such comparisons.
When scientists say things like "Chimps and monkeys are descended from lemurs.", that is really short for "Chimps and monkeys are descended from a a common ancestor that was probably very lemur-like." Modern-day lemurs are similar, but not identical to our mutual early-primate forbears. Lemur skeletons have strong resmeblences to fossils of early primates. That means that we can look at modern lemurs for clues as to how these early primates lived. Direct conclusions are tenuous, but that doesn't mean we can learn nothing. It's also a LOT easier to teach people, particularly kids, about evolution if you can point to real animals in a zoo and not just fossilized bones. Comparisons of modern-day species are useful and provide some evidence for evolution, but are not by any means the whole story. It is perfectly rediculous, as you point out, to say that we are directly descended from the Alaotran Gentle Lemur (Hapalemur griseus alaotrensis) which currently lives (for the time being) in Madagascar. That isn't how evolution works. Never has been, never will be.
You really should have read the whole thread. When we compared the homologous stretches of active (X-linked) s4 protein, there was excellent agreement; no difference between pig and human; four changes between humans and chickens.
Pigs do not have a y-linked S4, so it's unclear to me what you propose to compare it with. The human gene presumably arose from a duplication of the x-linked protein, but that duplication might have occured before pigs and humans diverged.
But if you'd like to say that because human cytochrome C is more similar to chicken cytochrome C than it is to pig hexokinase, that invalidates evolution, well, it's no less logical than most of your other posts.
Incidentally, a recent National Geographic has a very nice article on genetics and the 'tree of life'.
Species do transform out of necessity. If there is no real necessity, they don't change.
You are just repeating the contradiction. If they do change out of necessity then those that do not change should die and we would not have all these old species around. Let's remember also that because the more advance species are sexual, they require mates to reproduce so this requires that not one, but several (or perhapse the whole species) transform itself into a new more advanced species. There is also a great vacuity inherent in this argument from necessity. Need does not produce new genes, it is not a cause for new functions, just because one needs something does not mean it magically appears which is in essence what evolutionists are saying with this argument.
If they succesfully occupy an ecological niche, they multiply and prosper. Frogs as a class occupy certain specific places in the ecosystem. They do not compete with alligators or chimps, and in fact are depended on by other species as a food source. Plants were not "replaced" by animals. Animals in fact require plant life to survive. If a group of species like frogs is more succesful in their niche than a competing species of reptile, the frogs win. It doesn't matter if the reptiles are more "advanced" in some ways. As far as competing for food and reproductive capability, frogs do fine.
Frogs may not compete for food with alligators, but they may indeed become food for the alligator. This is one of the many kinds of competition which evolutionists postulate as the source of evolution, they call it the 'struggle for life' and it involves dog eat dog, dog eat mouse and dog eat the food of another species. In fact evolutionists call this all part of the environment which creates the necessity for evolution. And again one must say that no place on earth has not been to either environmental (weather, etc.) changes and the competition between species for 200 million years. Therefore it cannot be said that a frog or any kind of species that has remained unchanged for hundreds of millions of years does not disprove evolution.
I think you would be hard pressed to find a specific species of frog that has survived virtually unchanged since the emergence of the class millions of years ago.
I already gave you an example of just such a frog, with citation and link to the site. It is not just this frog though which has not changed for hundreds of millions of years. The reason we can identify these supposed 'evolutionary ancestors' of more developed species is that they are virtually unchanged since their first appearance!
You really should have read the whole thread. When we compared the homologous stretches of active (X-linked) s4 protein
I read enough to see that there were in one particular site numerous differences disproving the evolutionary tree of life. What you forget is that if the 'tree of life' was correct, the DNA differences would show in ALL genes according to the evolutionary tree. That evolutionists can pick and choose from the thousands of genes in each species from the millions of species that exist nowadays some that will seem to show a proper evolutionary tree does not prove andrew's point wrong.
Further, the whole exercise by evolutionists is totally phony because present day humans are equally far apart in time from the first bacteria as present day frogs, reptiles, birds, and other mammals. All their DNA's have had the same amount of time for changing as each other and unless you can show me that different species know when to stop mutating (or that they do indeed stop mutating) you have to acknowledge that the attempt by evolutionists to make such a claim is totally phony and contradicts their own theory.
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