I agree. Here the poor old guy is...didja ever notice the creationist scientists are just asking for a place at the table, and the ones who're angry and hateful about that request are the evolutionists? Seems that way to me.
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.
Sure, THIS'LL be a quiet thread.
I say leave the poor old reprobate alone. He can take his case up with The Creator soon enough.
Prof. Mayr... was born on 5 July 1905 in Kempten, Germany.
Does not compute.
I would suggest what is bold fonted probably isn't the actual views of the scientist, but the reporter (as they often are in science stories) being an idiot.
Evolution has NOTHING to do with the "creation of the world" and whether it was divine or not; neither does intelligent design.
You can believe in the divine creation of the world and still be an ardent evolutionist.
C'mon, where's the love and tolerance? What's a matter... having trouble proving your own theory, so gotta resort to attacking someone else's? Is your theory so weak that it can't take a little competition in the arena of ideas? How pathetic. No fool like an old fool.
They meant to say he's celebrating his 99th birthday. Very few people live to be 100.
It's vacation. Tomorrow :)
A good rule of thumb is that if Jimmy Carter is on your side you are wrong :-)
I'm visiting this one again...it looks to get good. Not as good as the sex toys one, but good.
O my gawd. I didn't really mean to write like Andy Rooney sounds. Really.
"You can believe in the divine creation of the world and still be an ardent evolutionist."
If you have the time, would you please explain how? I guess it would come down to what you difine as an "ardent evolutionist." Does the belief in abiogenesis fall into your description of an ardent evolutionist? If it does, then your statement would not make sense to me. If under the right conditions "life" will "happen"(abiogenesis) then where is the need for a creator? Abiogenesis implies that "life" is an intrinsic property of matter and the "laws" of the universe. That is why NASA et. al. are so desparate to find water at an extraterrestrial location. Even though they don't directly say it, they obviously believe that if the right "mix" of things is in existence then "life" will happen. IF this is true, then why the need for a creator or intelligent designer?
Theistic evolutionists are "fence stradlers" that don't want to commit to either side, and are not respected by either side (Evolutionists or Creationists).
To have a place at that table, you have to earn it by doing good science. Theology is a totally different intellectual activity.
Somebody need to tell the eminent scientist that he's gonna be 99 tomorrow. I always thought that 2nd grade math was a pre-requisite for a PHD. Maybe I'm wrong.
The origin of life has NOTHING TO DO WITH evolution either. You can believe God created life and still be an ardent evolutionist.
Darwin didn't title his book "Origin of Life," he titled it "Origin of Species."
Evolution refers to the evolution of one species from another species, not life from non-life.
A common tactic of creationists is to change the debate from a debate over evolution to a debate over abiogenesis, either willfully (to try to find a more winnable argument) or just pure stupidity (not understanding evolution at all.)
We know a lot less about how life originated than we do about how species have differentiated, obviously, as the latter was a lot longer ago.
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