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Evolution's bottom line
National Center for Science Education ^ | 12 May 2006 | Staff

Posted on 05/12/2006 12:13:47 PM PDT by PatrickHenry

In his op-ed "Evolution's bottom line," published in The New York Times (May 12, 2006), Holden Thorp emphasizes the practical applications of evolution, writing, "creationism has no commercial application. Evolution does," and citing several specific examples.

In places where evolution education is undermined, he argues, it isn't only students who will be the poorer for it: "Will Mom or Dad Scientist want to live somewhere where their children are less likely to learn evolution?" He concludes, "Where science gets done is where wealth gets created, so places that decide to put stickers on their textbooks or change the definition of science have decided, perhaps unknowingly, not to go to the innovation party of the future. Maybe that's fine for the grownups who'd rather stay home, but it seems like a raw deal for the 14-year-old girl in Topeka who might have gone on to find a cure for resistant infections if only she had been taught evolution in high school."

Thorp is chairman of the chemistry department at the University of North Carolina.


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KEYWORDS: butwecondemnevos; caticsnotchristian; christiannotcatlic; crevolist; germany; ignoranceisstrength; ignorantcultists; pavlovian; speyer
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To: mjolnir
Given that there's not much potential for producing testable hypotheses in the case of panspermia theory...

I'm not making a hypothesis, but there is evidence against the "germs in space" version.

Collecting samples of interplanetary and interstellar dust and never ever once finding a microorganism tends to cast doubt. Also, there was nothing remotely organic found in the Lunar dust.

901 posted on 05/14/2006 11:44:58 AM PDT by Virginia-American
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To: r9etb
However, the "anti-ID claim" is that, essentially, it would be impossible to detect design. Perhaps -- or perhaps not...

If the hypothesized designer is powerful enough, it is impossible to make any prediction based on the design hypothesis - anything goes.

For example, say that a genetic marker is found in both domestic dogs and domestic cats. The ToE allows the prediction that the same marker will be present in all species of dog, all species of cat, all species of bear. A designer could have put the marker anywhere.

The point is, the ToE puts severe constraints on what can be expected to be found. Unless some limits are put on the hypothetical designer's powers, there are no limits on what can be expected.

This problem doesn't arise in archeology, since we know, broadly speaking, what people can and can't do. In SETI searches, they're looking for a narrow-band carrier wave, since again, broadly speaking, we know that natural processes can't produce them.

But until someone actually shows that evolution is incapable of producing some structure (the flavor du jour is "irreducibly complex") there is no basis for assuming that it can't, and that some unspecified "intelligence" must have been involved.

902 posted on 05/14/2006 12:13:57 PM PDT by Virginia-American
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To: Virginia-American

Good points. I expect that Hoyle would say that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence and that we have yet to examine enough of the universe to test panspermia.

ccp_hater made the point earlier in the thread that

"We have very very little available data regarding life on other planets. We do not even have access to a near complete data set on the items within our solar system let alone galaxy (billions of solar systems) or our universe (multiple billion galaxies). I would say we do not have the information available to us to say life elsewhere is unlikely. In fact it is highly likely just given the numbers we are dealing with but really, at this time we just can't know."

I responded that, given points like you make, it seemed to me that if one accepted the Copernican Principle in even a weak form, one must then also expect that life is extremely rare or perhaps even nonexstent everywhere else.

What do you think? Is other life in the universe unlikely or just the odds that it would find its vay here via panspermia?


903 posted on 05/14/2006 12:17:57 PM PDT by mjolnir ("All great change in America begins at the dinner table.")
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To: Virginia-American
Collecting samples of interplanetary and interstellar dust and never ever once finding a microorganism tends to cast doubt. Also, there was nothing remotely organic found in the Lunar dust.

But organic molecules abound out there. Meteorites discovered to carry interstellar carbon. Maybe we'll get around to having another thread on that topic.

904 posted on 05/14/2006 12:45:39 PM PDT by PatrickHenry (Unresponsive to trolls, lunatics, fanatics, retards, scolds, & incurable ignoramuses.)
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To: Havoc
Havoc, I've been reading reading your posts, and I have a question for you.

If "works" is irrelevant to salvation, what then is the distinction, useful or otherwise, between good and evil.

905 posted on 05/14/2006 12:48:31 PM PDT by csense
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To: freedumb2003
Well here is a bald assertion that you never backed up below in the blue italics, it looks like you tried to cast it as something else so you could have a side door out. Several of your posts have been deleted and entire threads deleted too. BTW you guys are very practiced at issuing demands and on the flip side never actually answering anything yourself except by inference and/or suggestion. Most everyone sees it BTW.

//Using the explicit criteria established by Religion, one can find that Christ, muhammed, charles manson and satan worshippers are all equally "correct."//

Here is another by one of your most prolific evos (not you) and this post was also a religion thread.

//Let me guess. You're a troll here to perpetuate the myth that conservatives are a demented bunch of ignorant anti-science psychopaths//

BTW, on that one I put his text back to him almost verbatim and my post was deleted for 'personal attack' but his styed up there. Even avowed atheists have freepmailed me in the past noticing the bias that goes down here.

But I would like to hear it from you how "Using the explicit criteria established by Religion, one can find that Christ, muhammed, charles manson and satan worshippers are all equally "correct.""

Wolf
906 posted on 05/14/2006 12:54:22 PM PDT by RunningWolf (Vet US Army Air Cav 1975)
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To: RunningWolf
"Using the explicit criteria established by Religion, one can find that Christ, muhammed, charles manson and satan worshippers are all equally "correct.""

I stand by that statement. It is logically correct. The explicit criteria established by Religion is "I believe." Since belief is the basis for all these theologies, they are equivilant. I was comparing it with science, which requires a strict and rigorous methodology.

The best you could do was that quote? It is quite benign. Just because you reel back and say, Kerry-like, "How DARE You," it doesn't change the logic of my position. Nor is it an attack on Christianity. You need to get some comprehension lessions.

You're a troll here to perpetuate the myth that conservatives are a demented bunch of ignorant anti-science psychopaths

Again, how does this attack Christianity and/or Catholicism? In fact, since Catholic Docrtine is that TToE is valid, this is the OPPOSITE.

You really, really, really need help with reading and comprehension.

Having failed your task of supporting your assertion, do you want ME to go and get quotes where CRIDers have attacked Evos, using Guilt by Association, calling us Athiests and anti-Christians? I can start with your post that began this discussion.

907 posted on 05/14/2006 1:08:06 PM PDT by freedumb2003 (Any guest worker program that does not require application from the home country is Amnesty)
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To: andysandmikesmom
You are right everyone makes mistakes and if you say it was one time and not plural, I take your word at it.

And I would like to take you more seriously but that is difficult for statements like this mock invocation
//"Ah, Grand Master, give me the strength to resist posting with scolds, fools, and drunks..."//
or from people that take part in the FSM sacrilegious mocking parodies.

Do you take part in those threads?

Wolf
908 posted on 05/14/2006 1:23:50 PM PDT by RunningWolf (Vet US Army Air Cav 1975)
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To: RunningWolf
or from people that take part in the FSM sacrilegious mocking parodies

You still don't understand the point behind the FSM, do you? It ain't sacrilege.

909 posted on 05/14/2006 1:27:26 PM PDT by freedumb2003 (Any guest worker program that does not require application from the home country is Amnesty)
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To: mjolnir
What do you think? Is other life in the universe unlikely or just the odds that it would find its vay here via panspermia?

I think life is extremely likely elsewhere. Unfortunately, at the present time, we only have a sample of one, but we can still draw a few tentative conclusions.

Life appears in the fossil record very early on (~4 billion tears ago (bya), within half a billion after the Earth formed). It remained strictly prokaryotic about 2.8 billion years (BY), and mixed prokaryotic and euckaryotic for 1.2 BY. The Cambrian "explosion", is about -.5 bya, dinosaurs and mammals maybe 0.3 bya, and flowering plants about 0.1 bya.

So if the Earth is typical, one would expect life in many places, but only at the level of bacteria. Once a "hump" (probably sexual reproduction, which makes evolution more efficient) is passed, it seems to very quickly gain in complexity.

910 posted on 05/14/2006 1:33:38 PM PDT by Virginia-American
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To: r9etb
That's true -- no one claims it isn't possible. Until, that is, it's put forth as a hypothesis.

No, not even then.

And then it becomes, somehow, a "non-scientific" position. And therein lies the complaint: that the unarguable validity of the hypothesis is dismissed out of hand.

Wrong, it already is an unscientific position but for completely different reasons which have been presented to you on numerous occasions.

Verification of the hypothesis is, of course, another matter. However, the "anti- ID claim" is that, essentially, it would be impossible to detect design. Perhaps -- or perhaps not -- but the claim itself is completely unscientific: is it really impossible to detect it, or merely rhetorically convenient to make the claim?

You cannot determine if a pattern was designed only from the information that is intrinsic to that pattern itself. What you need is additional information i.e. a model of the designer.
The ID "model" of the alleged designer is one with infinite degrees of freedom which makes it compatible with just about any observation. In other words, from a scientific point of view it is worthless because it doesn't provide any additional information.

The fact, however, is that design is a perfectly valid hypothesis, precisely because it has been demonstrated.

Not if the alleged designer is some unknown entity with unknown abilities and limitations, who uses unknown methods and for inscrutable reasons.

911 posted on 05/14/2006 2:19:23 PM PDT by BMCDA (If the human brain were so simple that we could understand it,we would be so simple that we couldn't)
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To: Virginia-American
You're hinting here that evolution infers a natural cause for the inception of life. I was under the impression that evolutionary theory is completely silent on such matters. That said, from whence does such induction originate within your deliberations?
912 posted on 05/14/2006 2:37:22 PM PDT by csense
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To: csense

Evolution is silent on biogenesis, but biologist aren't. There are many biologists studying biogenesis.


913 posted on 05/14/2006 2:39:25 PM PDT by js1138 (Well I say there are some things we don't want to know! Important things!")
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To: PatrickHenry

"abound" is a little overstated, isn't it?


914 posted on 05/14/2006 2:58:18 PM PDT by furball4paws (Awful Offal)
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To: js1138
Evolution is silent on biogenesis, but biologist aren't. There are many biologists studying biogenesis.

Biogenesis states that life arises from preexisting life. I think you understand the argument, but you chose an ineffective term.

Seeing how you've taken the up the mantle for VA, then propose an argument that can support the notion that life is probably typical throughout the universe, without referencing evolution in any way whatsoever.

915 posted on 05/14/2006 3:00:27 PM PDT by csense
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To: csense
You're hinting here that evolution infers a natural cause for the inception of life.

That wasn't my intention. I think that a natural cause is by far the most likely, but the ToE is independent of the origin of life.

That said, from whence does such induction originate within your deliberations?

If I understand you correctly, you're asking why I think that natural abiogenesis is the most likely scenario. There are a couple of reasons.

First off, life seems to have appeared rather quickly after the Earth was cool enough. (No more than 0.5 billion years, perhaps much sooner than that)

Secondly, I've been studying Kauffman's The Origins of Order : Self-Organization and Selection in Evolution. He makes a fairly strong case that complex chains and cycles of metabolism and copying can be expected in a sufficiently complex chemical medium, and that life would "condense" from such systems. The weak point is the development of these complex chemical systems, but given millions of years and the complex chemistry around undersea vents, it doesn't seem unlikely to me at all.

The third reason is simply that science has a remarkable track record in searching out natural explanations of complex phenomena, and there is no a priori reason to think it will fail in abiogensis.

916 posted on 05/14/2006 3:07:34 PM PDT by Virginia-American
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To: mjolnir

I will agree that your response is emotional and doesn't address the point. As for your point regarding faith, I would counter that everyone has faith in something. Everyone. It isn't having faith alone that counts. It is what you're putting your faith in that counts. And putting your faith in fraud will reap you a crop of fraud. Cause and effect. If you're putting your money into a con-man's pockets thinking you're buying a house only to find out that there is no home..
Yeah, you had faith. What was your reward.


917 posted on 05/14/2006 3:09:00 PM PDT by Havoc (Evolutionists and Democrats: "We aren't getting our message out" (coincidence?))
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To: Virginia-American; andysandmikesmom

The begging off that people can't maintain that a group is a cult is ludicrous. This is like saying that one can't maintain over time that a union is a union or that a Mob family is a criminal enterprise.

Groups are cults whether one has the will to face the facts or not. The brainwashing and indoctrination that goes along with the cults along with the controlling natures often leave their members confused, angry and disillusioned. They keep their members in line in a lot of thuggish ways that aren't necessarily always obvious. They stand to lose everything - family, friends, associations, even their liveliehoods if they leave the cult. There are a lot of ex-Catholics that can vouch for this just as there are many ex-Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses that can say the same.
But there is no mob in America.. lol.


918 posted on 05/14/2006 3:19:10 PM PDT by Havoc (Evolutionists and Democrats: "We aren't getting our message out" (coincidence?))
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To: csense
If "works" is irrelevant to salvation, what then is the distinction, useful or otherwise, between good and evil.

Works do not earn you salvation. They are irrelevant to salvation. They are not irrelevant as a sign of who you are. Let's examine two things from Christ:

Matthew 12:34 O generation of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good things? for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.

Luke 6:45 A good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is evil: for of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaketh.

It isn't just what a man says; but, what he does that reveals the abundance in his heart. If a man is full of evil, his heart will move him to do what is evil. On the other hand, even mobsters have a conscience.. something in them that makes them want in some way to make up for some of what they know they've done wrong. That is the strength of Good over evil. It only takes a little and people can do something good against their own tide of evil. At the same time, great guilt and conviction can cause rage from those that get even a whif of truth from someone.

Good and evil bear their own fruit. Evil largely breeds a path of distruction and leaves a trail of weeds and poison. That's why Christians Build Hospitals and learning institutions While radical islamists build suicide bombers and live in refuse spouting racism, fear and generating terror. Christians will invest in aid to foreign countries, poverty relief, and helping people help themselves. Bin Ladin's people - well, they felt it useful to raise and sell hemp while keeping their people living in a backward society and without hope.

The differences between Good and evil are pretty transparent. But that doesn't mean one has to work for salvation. Has nothing to do with it. Christ and the Apostles stated clearly and in no uncertain terms that Salvation is the GIFT of God. You don't work for a gift. You either accept it or refuse it. You do not work for it.

919 posted on 05/14/2006 3:34:16 PM PDT by Havoc (Evolutionists and Democrats: "We aren't getting our message out" (coincidence?))
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To: js1138
Correction: just one point to make. Evolution is Currently backpeddling on biogenisis and wishes everyone else would be silent about it. It's a change in debate tactics over time. Distance yourself from something that is hurting you because you lose bigtime on the point.
920 posted on 05/14/2006 3:36:51 PM PDT by Havoc (Evolutionists and Democrats: "We aren't getting our message out" (coincidence?))
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