Posted on 07/04/2004 5:19:27 PM PDT by PatrickHenry
Professor Ernst Mayr, the scientist renowned as the father of modern biology, will celebrate his 100th birthday tomorrow by leading a scathing attack on creationism.
The evolutionary biologist, who is already acclaimed as one of the most prolific researchers of all time, has no intention of retiring and is shortly to publish new research that dismantles the fashionable creationist doctrine of “intelligent design”.
Although he has reluctantly cut his workload since a serious bout of pneumonia 18 months ago, Prof. Mayr has remained an active scientist at Harvard University throughout his 90s. He has written five books since his 90th birthday and is researching five academic papers. One of these, scheduled to appear later this year, will examine how “intelligent design” — the latest way in which creationists have sought to present a divine origin of the world — was thoroughly refuted by Charles Darwin a century and a half ago.
His work is motivated in part by a sense of exasperation at the re-emergence of creationism in the USA, which he compares unfavourably with the widespread acceptance of evolution that he encountered while growing up in early 20th-century Germany.
The states of Florida, Mississippi, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky and Oklahoma currently omit the word “evolution” from their curriculums. The Alabama state board of education has voted to include disclaimers in textbooks describing evolution as a theory. In Georgia, the word “evolution” was banned from the science curriculum after the state’s schools superintendent described it as a “controversial buzzword”.
Fierce protest, including criticism from Jimmy Carter, the former President, reversed this.
Prof. Mayr, who will celebrate his 100th birthday at his holiday home in New Hampshire with his two daughters, five grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren, was born on 5 July 1905 in Kempten, Germany. He took a PhD in zoology at the University of Berlin, before travelling to New Guinea in 1928 to study its diverse bird life. On his return in 1930 he emigrated to the USA. His most famous work, Systematics and the Origin of Species, was published in 1942 and is regarded still as a canonical work of biology.
It effectively founded the modern discipline by combining Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection with Gregor Mendel’s genetics, showing how the two were compatible. Prof. Mayr redefined what scientists mean by a species, using interbreeding as a guide. If two varieties of duck or vole do not interbreed, they cannot be the same species.
Prof. Mayr has won all three of the awards sometimes termed the “triple crown” of biology — the Balzan Prize, the Crafoord Prize and the International Prize for Biology. Although he formally retired in 1975, he has been active as an Emeritus Professor ever since and has recently written extensively on the philosophy of biology.
Evolutionists would argue that those living without meaning would do exactly that, kill themselves, such that only those who possessed the idea that lives had meaning would survive.
Unitary placemarker.
and im not being difficult, im stating the simple fact that depending on your view, even math is subjective to a degree.
this is far from "clintonian" i already said the qualifications i was using. i did not go later to make a point that led you to believe whatever you want. i stated how things are, and you refuse it. no skin off my teeth.
the point i was making was that it is simply inconclusive. you're looking at one of those pics that could be two faces or a vace, and asking "which is it?" it's both!
LOL
Style over substance.
I think I am beginning to see why you have trouble communicating on this thread.
No, it equals 1720
I didn't say you were difficult, I asked you to stop being evasive and and please answer the question.
.... im stating the simple fact that depending on your view, even math is subjective to a degree.
I'm hard-pressed to think of anything that is more removed from reality than this gratuitous assertion. As it was offered gratuitiously, I will simply deny it, gratuitously.
this is far from "clintonian" i already said the qualifications i was using. i did not go later to make a point that led you to believe whatever you want. i stated how things are, and you refuse it. no skin off my teeth.
I have no idea what you just wrote is supposed to mean. What you stated originally was:
3/3 = .999999....? no, it is 3 divided by 3, or "1"
AND I'm STILL patiently waiting for you to tell us that since you've stated that 3/3=.9999.... and 3/3=1, whether or not you think 0.999.... is exactly equal to"1" or not.
Let me make it simpler for you: do you agree or deny that equivalence relations are transitive? IOW, if a=b and b=c, then a=c. Do you agree or not?
the point i was making was that it is simply inconclusive. [snip]
So, is it your position that the question "does 0.999... exactly equal '1'?" is undecidable? If so, why do you think it is indecidable? Do you think it is a Gödel statement?
No. I have made no theology statements.
... "if something has no purpose, it cannot exist"..
I don't know where this statement comes from. I never made it. "Purpose" generally implies teological content. Existence need have none.
...they feel math is the only source, and they reject the idea that math had to come from somewhere as well...
No again. I know no one (except for fundamentalists Pythagoreans, maybe) who feel that math is a source. Math is a tool invented to describe the universe. It's easy to know where it came from. People invented it. I have even invented parts.
What you are speculating about gravity doesn't agree with general relativity. You should think about an experiment that can disprove your ideas. Even if such in experiment isn't feasible, trying to come up with one will help sharpen your suggestions.
Your post number is your own inversion.
do you know what the hypothetical "cluster" phase is?
Sqrt(i)=Sqrt(2)/2*(1+i). Proof by manipulation. (The other Sqrt(i) is left to the reader.)
that part i just suggested is entirely based on the idea that the source of gravity is still not entirely understood.
i know that "clusters" are entirely hypothetical, but the idea is that at a certain number or molecules of a given set of molecules, they behave in ways that are not like any other number of the same elements.
this is a realy new idea, and i simply suggested it as a possible "uncertain" outcome from such a phase.
i will state it one more time.
"does 3/3 = '.999...' or '1'?"
yes.
yes.
If you think that, then does 0.999.... =1 ?
"The failure of creationism to make any such testable predictions only shows that creationism fails to rise to the level of a theory. At best it's just bible-babble."
you renouce the idea of soemthing else making existance. this is where i see you saying "there is no God"
this is my basis for assuming you are secular and deny God could exist. that is a theology statement, as it attacks the idea of God.
.999... about= 1.
it is NOT noted as "1" so it is taken for face value ".999..." which approaches one, as i have said over, and over again.
you can draw your own conclusion, but from what i acn tell you, any end in thought on it is going to be incorrect, as it's not supposed to have one answer.
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