Posted on 04/07/2006 4:16:49 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
Even as the evolution wars rage, on school boards and in courtrooms, biologists continue to accumulate empirical data supporting Darwinian theory. Two extraordinary discoveries announced this week should go a long way to providing even more of the evidence that critics of evolution say is lacking.
One study produced what biblical literalists have been demanding ever since Darwin -- the iconic "missing links." If species evolve, they ask, with one segueing into another, where are the transition fossils, those man-ape or reptile-mammal creatures that evolution posits?
In yesterday's issue of Nature, paleontologists unveiled an answer: well-preserved fossils of a previously unknown fish that was on its way to evolving into a four-limbed land-dweller. It had a jaw, fins and scales like a fish, but a skull, neck, ribs and pectoral fin like the earliest limbed animals, called tetrapods.
[big snip]
Another discovery addresses something Darwin himself recognized could doom his theory: the existence of a complex organ that couldn't have "formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications," he wrote in 1859.
The intelligent-design movement, which challenges teaching evolution, makes this the centerpiece of its attack. It insists that components of complex structures, such as the eye, are useless on their own and so couldn't have evolved independently, an idea called irreducible complexity.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
We is us . . . don't be so difficult [grin]
"There are quite a few SuperHeros.."
Not for me there aren't.
"Wearing a SuperHero suit don't make you a SuperHero.."
The only Super Hero I know wore a robe and sandals (or so it is to be presumed).
"A real SuperHero don't even need a suit.."
Indeed, He does not (see immediately above).
LoL.. Would make a good movie with adequate cinematography..
I prefer Citizens of the Universe though..
It makes a more humble and gracious statement....
I see then, I got it all..
Of a truth though, many object to string theory precisely because it is not yet testable under laboratory conditions or observable by telescope. To these, the effectiveness of math in natural systems is moot, the formula is the construct of the geometer - it isn't "real" to them. The Strominger/Vafa computation of the Bekenstein/Hawking black hole entropy leaves them yawning.
Indeed, I imagine nothing outside of the "microscope to telescope" paradigm would be "real" to them - including universals, form, information, mathematics, geometry, physical laws, qualia (likes/dislikes, pleasure/pain, etc.) --- and so on. To them, a tree falling in the forest makes no sound if no one is around to hear it.
For them, the mind is merely an epiphenomenon of the physical brain - a secondary phenomenon which can cause nothing to happen. Jeepers...
Thank God there is only one "master of the universe" (Colossians 1:12-20)
Thank you oh so very much for your kind words and encouragements, dear YHAOS!
Lovely construct this.. Very telling display...
But then thats what we all do.. Looking for a string of light on some issue.. and holding it as something precious.. The pride of knowing things.. Knowing right vs. wrong, good vs. evil. accurate vs. inaccurate, debits vs. credits, beauty vs. ugly, precious vs. base, real vs. imaginary, and more and the degrees between those dualities.. Geometers of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.. expanded through century's of synonyms... same fruit..
From the book of Geneis when mankind was set out to find the answers to those question by himself.. And for millinia mankind on this planet has searched for proper answers on his own.. resulting in epic parasitic behavior and disgraceful conduct.. All trying to answer what is the good versus the evil.. decided by personal morality..
My hope is for an end to the hopeless search, for many.. For really only God can answer what is the total good against the total evil.. Man just does not have the equipment to properly make those judgements on his own.. proven for millinia in myriad ways..
Maranatha Jesus..
Maranatha, Jesus!
They can theorectically mate just fine and produce fertile offspring, so they are not separate species, I don't care how you slice it. That defines a species within a genus.
What on earth is "theoretical mating"? Can you imagine a chihuahua mounting a great Dane? or vice versa?
Suppose I were to state
"The Universe is composed of Energy and Matter(Mass)."
What if there is, in reality, one more thing?
I could build all my Theories and Laws based on that statement. But that statement is an ASSUMPTION.
Is that why a Unified Theory has proven to be so difficult.
Leave out one element because you can not measure it and then make Theories.
This sounds like the reasoning of a civilization that existed once, Long ago in a far and distant planet in a far and distant galaxy far far away.
You are simply totally and absolutely wrong. Modern genetics is based upon Evolution theory and it proves out daily. Btw, my daughter is a geneticist and she finds it hysterical that there is a suggestion that any serious life scientist would question evolution. It would be like a physicist questioning celestial mechanics.
An assumed civilization.. lol..
Well, there's time and geometry, two of A-G's favorite things. And, I read of a particle, detectable though it has no mass. It seems to me that there is much more than 'one more thing' that we, in reality, don't know.
But, it's not enough to simply say that we don't know everything, therefore anything is possible, even if it is true that definitive judgements are not possible about systems of which we know little. I don't know where some people get the idea that the fact that we don't know everything is used as an excuse not to look. I think maybe that accusation is more a hope than a thought.
"Is that why a Unified Theory has proven to be so difficult."
Is that what has the Masters of the Universe nervous? What might be found among the so-called hidden dimensions as the result of an attempt to integrate what we know with what we might find out? Permit no connections until it's certain there will be no uncontrolled, or 'surprise' consequence? Who cares what the consequences are; let the chips fall where they may. Do you know something here? or are you simply speculating? (no offense intended).
"Long ago in a far and distant planet in a far and distant galaxy far far away."
And once upon a time.
Christians who have received a direct revelation from God - that Jesus Christ is Lord and are thereafter indwelled by the Holy Spirit - do in fact observe, or experience if you will, the supernatural. The experience cannot however be conveyed to another through language, measurement and such. Like qualia (pain/pleasure, likes/dislikes), the only way another can understand is to have the experience himself.
In the absence of time, there can be no event. In the absence of space, there can be no thing. Without space/time, there is no causality.
Thus space/time is more fundamental to physical reality than energy/matter.
So if the question turns on 'one more thing' then the answer is dimensional (either spatial or temporal).
Because Evolution deals with speciation, not origins. You might as well fault the Theory of Gravity because it fails to explain the origins of mass.
It would be helpful if critics of evolution could at least understand what they are criticizing and not attack strawman arguments they don't even know they are constructing.
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