Posted on 04/18/2008 4:04:57 PM PDT by PurpleMountains
Amen, amen, amen!
This article states: Darwinism is the foundation science of modern liberalism ...
That statement so destructively confuses symptoms with causes. Truth sets us free, and those who deny truth deny GOD. I am leery of religious people who foment this anti-Darwin hysteria because I see so much falseness in their position. People who deny truth in the name of God are wrong. Maybe because of pride, maybe because of ignorance, but they are still wrong.
Modern liberalism has politicized scientific discoveries about our eons-long worldy material history, and used it to rationalize twisting away from Judeo-Christian rules that say: shun envy and greed. Embrace love. Take a day off once a week. Don't steal, don't murder, don't cheat on your wife or husband, don't lie. Condemn open homosexuality. Treat others the way you'd like for them to treat you. Honor your parents. Be merciful and forgiving and generous. And understand that there is only ONE God, the one Who is telling you these truths that are the key to human thriving and He promises, eternal life.
Modern Liberalism REJECTS all those things not because of Darwinism, but because Liberalism denies God's laws. Liberals may use "survival of the fittest" (a expression that many wrongly conclude endorses moral ruthlessness in seeking survival) to justify their wickedness, but that is separate and apart from the issue of how we in this worldly plain created by God reached this state.
The most ironic thing of all is that all those Judeo Christian rules listed above are our OWN SPIRITUAL Darwinian gift for survival, to thrive, to live in glory! As a matter of fact, civilizations that don't adapt to those immutable truths of God always fail. Miserably they fail, and civilizations fall. People die off. They fail to survive because they have not adapted.
There is a lot of human pride behind this controversy.
“If I showed you, would you believe?”
The whole discussion about Ring Species is just the sort of stuff I was talking about. They came up with a new definition of ‘species’ to fit the data so they evolutionists could declare victory.
If by ID you mean not-by-chance, you might read Dr. Lee Spetner's book by that title which I mentioned earlier in this thread.
I wonder: when you look at the collection of rocks at Stonehenge do you think they might have been carried to their present position by some sort of great storm; or do you think there is no probability whatsoever that the arrangement there is random?
ML/NJ
Do you have 500,000,000 years to wait?
‘as opposed to ever having proved evolution to yourself by evolving a human from a single-cell organism in “Evolution 101” lab’
Sort of the same way that modern Christianity rejects most of the laws in the old testament?
“Can YOU provide empirical evidence of ID?”
Absolutely not. No one can, because it’s not science. It’s a set of beliefs based on certain observations and assumptions. No one was here to watch the earth and the universe formed so there’s no way to say what happened. And there is no way to conclusively test for God, either. It’s a matter of faith.
But Evolution is not science, either. At least not the way it’s taught today in school. It’s also based on lots of assumptions and ‘could have happened’ scenarios which can’t be repeated, which is not how science is done. Evolution can’t actually be tested in a lab or observed to have happened because it takes so long.
Just to be clear, I’m separating Evolution from Natural Selection. NS can be evaluated under controlled conditions, and there are probably millions of times it’s been tested and observed. But there have been no observations of NS causing a new species to develop (except for the ridiculous twisting of the concept of ‘species’ to include ‘Ring Species’ and such).
My whole issue with Evolution is that it has practically destroyed the concept of science. It used to be that if something could not be tested and observed then no scientist would assert their ideas as fact. Now we have many downright silly statements coming from supposed scientists that are in opposition to the most basic scientific principles.
For example, Dawkins said that ID could be possible if aliens came from another planet and planted the seeds of life BUT it would only be possible to have aliens on another planet if they evolved. Yes, I realize he doesn’t believe in aliens and all that, but the point I want to make is that he makes an unscientific conclusion if he says that the ONLY way aliens could come from another planet is if they had evolved. How does he know that this is the only way it could have happened? Has he surveyed every planet in every galaxy? Was he there to examine the data?
This is the stuff I am talking about. It is normal nowadays for highly regarded scientists to make all sorts of untestable statements as fact and no one points out how ridiculous it is. Dawkins’ statements are nothing more than a dogmatic assertion, something usually regarded as ‘faith’ or ‘belief’ in any other context but accepted as conclusive when the great Oracle of Evolution speaks.
“Many experiments have been done on the capacity of living systems to respond to selective pressure.”
And after all those experiments on those organisms, what do you have as a result? They are still bacteria, aren’t they?
Obviously Natural Selection is testable and repeatable.
But that’s the problem with Evolution. No one actually observes the jump from one organism to a different one under controlled conditions. There are differences in characteristics but it’s still classified as the same type of organism.
There’s something really bothering you guys. Maybe you are not aware of this.
No, you’ve got it backwards. Absolute truth establishes religion.
Please think about it a little.
Maybe if you guys post your arguments repeatedly in as many threads as possible, you can prevent a significant number of people from thinking about the issue.
Maybe then there will be less chance that traditional biology will change.
When you look at the earth it appears flat. It isn’t.
Please see my earlier post about ring species. If we create a new species in a lab with genetic engineering, will you then accept evolution?
What Dawkins is using is logic, a part of science. What he is doing is uncovering the fundemental lie of ID, that everyone knows it is just Creationism in disguise. It is disguised so that it can be tought in school.
At least we have an argument. I still haven’t seen any IDer offer any supporting effort for ID.
All I see from them are poorly formed opinions on evolution theory.
If you all would just admit that your reason for hating evolution is religious, I’ll go away. Darwin was a brilliant man, particularly a great observer of nature. He was also a scientist, something IDers are not.
It is the same definition as everyone else uses. The two birds were always considered separate species. The ring phenomena was discovered later. Nice try though.
Of course it does. Just like "Sicko" exposes the health care industry and "An Inconvenient Truth" presents the undeliable facts on global warming. Anyone with an ax to grind can throw together a movie that proves their case. All they have to to is be selective in what they present.
How does evolutionism make our modern military possible? Or conversely, why would our military not be possible without evolution?
Since you are an atheist, you wouldn’t believe what people here say anyway.
The entire PE theory or “gloss” on neo darwinism (as Dawkins describes it) derived from microevolutionary (changes within a species, particularly at the cellular level) studies in the 1950s and which continue today.
The synthesis theory, which now predominates, indicates that microevolution and macroevolution (species level and above) are one process. In fact, creationists don’t uniformly deny microevolutionary processes, but they do deny macroevolution. Mainstream scientists insist, correctly, that macroevolution has occurred and speciation is recognized at the point where a major morph occurs (i.e, feathers on dinosaurs). Creationists deny major morphing ever occurs; major morphing (I’m making that term up, btw), is the “punctuated” part of the PE theory. Otherwise, it’s basically gradualist. In other words, as Dawkins has indicated PE is really not a theory of evolution at all, but a way to describe particular changes that are only observable—as you state—in a fossil record as changes within a species are not visible in the record. On the other hand, PE can be noted quite frequently in virus studies, I would think.
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