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.
So with the input of energy from the sun, heat can flow uphill without a living process? True or false?
You notice wrongly.
I must have mistaken you for some other poster on this thread. Sorry.
True, for the case of evaporation. The entropy increases.
Luke 24:33-36
And they rose up the same hour, and returned to Jerusalem, and found the eleven gathered together, and them that were with them..And as they thus spake, Jesus himself stood in the midst of them, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you.
Two seperate events. He was seen during a 40 day period after His raising from the dead.
It is saying that Enoch was the seventh generation.
Good night.
A cute question is: given a system (ideal gas, for example) changing from volume and temperature (V1, T1) to (V2, T2) by two methods: first, reversibly and second, irreversibly; what is the difference in entropy in the two resulting systems?
Another: take an evacuated bottle (full of vacuum); open a valve letting air in until pressure is equilibrated; then, what is the temperature of the air inside the bottle? (Hotter, colder, the same as the ambient air.)
Paladins are Lawful Good. Anti-Paladins are Chaotic Evil. You're not doing well lately in the "Getting Things Right" department.
When it is taught in schools that man is the end product of a series of accidents and not the result of Divine Direction, then the school is teaching theology, i.e. Atheism. They are straying from the processes of Evolution into the realm of Theology.
Zoology courses and biology courses should restrict their teachings to the subject of biological functions and processes and leave the teleological implications of Evolution to theologians and/or the personal opinions of the students.
Mayer is straying from the biological to the theological in making his pronouncements that man is the end product of a mere series of fortuitous accidents, and, in this regard, he is no more or less qualified to opine you or I sir, and as such should not be dignified with a public quotation in the media.
However, since the atheistic media has a theological ax to grind of their own, i.e. to refute Judaeo-Christian beliefs and attack funbdamental Christinity with a viciousness which should be reserved for murdering Islamic radicals, they are only too eager to cite the mouthings of a senescent Atheist who also happens to be a biologist.
Reminds me of that horrible SF story I read as a child wherein the spacecraft's hull was breached, allowing the vacuum to "rush in."
New Math? New Sciece?
There is nothing in this article that refutes creationism, just an old man with an old itch.
Sort of wrecks any impression that things might be getting better out there, doesn't it?
If that's the case, and if he didn't expect the fossil record to be filled in, at least to some degree, over time, then his theory rests on pure speculation.
Here you flat-out admit that you don't know what he said, even though you later quoted a paragraph therefrom. I want to get one thing straight. This statement from you is false:
I think Darwin thoroughly refuted himself a century and a half ago when he said that the theory of evolution would be disproved if the fossil record did not, in the century to come, show itself to be replete with transitional forms.
That's what you said in 288. The obviously quote-mined paragraph you cited later does not agree with the characterization you make of Darwin's opinion.
Darwin had a surprisingly modern view of the geological record and its limits. He also virtually anticipated punctuated equilibrium. None of you ignorant witch doctors who run around putting words in his mouth have the faintest idea what he actually said. This is not surprising, since in your dungeons and dragons universe you go to Hell for letting such blasphemous ideas into your head.
Once again it is necessary to remind you that it isn't 1859 anymore. In science, unlike religion, the state of the evidence actually changes. A lot of what Darwin could only predict would turn up has actually turned up. He's the luckiest charlatan of the 19th century, because he directly predicted Precambrian fossils, land ancestors of whales, and an ape-human series (this last comes in The Descent of Man). Those are explicit. However, in fact his theory implicitly says there existed a transitional series for every modern form, so that the dino-bird, fish-amphibian, reptile-mammal, and every other series which has become known to us is also a fulfilled Darwinian prophecy.
The response from the superstition crowd varies from kicking the evidence under the rug to saying, "God could have done THAT too." Neither activity is very useful or scientific.
And, of course, pointing to the shrinking volume (but growing number) of gaps! Not only the remaining gaps in the fossil record but the remaining gaps in our knowledge. All hail the still-unknown and undiscovered, for He lives there!
The veneration of ignorance, a perfect complement to the wishing away of what we have learned in a century and a half.
It does? Perhaps you could elaborate on this?
The fossil record, as a rule, exhibits morphological stasis within species. Creatures disappear from the fossil record in the same form that they appeared. Moreover, we have examples of "living fossils," creatures that seem to have failed to have evolved over the course of thousands of years. Finally, supposed "transitional forms" like archaeopteryx exhibit morphological stasis in the fossil record. Seven fossilized archaeopteryx's have been found, all exhibiting the same morphology.
Some species may well remain constant.
OK, so where are their ancestors? Where are the fossils of the countless transitional forms that must have lead up to the temporary state of stasis?
Another interesting problem with strict, materialistic evolution is the fact that it contradicts the first principle of medicine, the restoration of health to the body. How can health, or the proper operation of the body, be defined in an evolving life form? Logically, no species is fixed, but instead is in a state of perpetual evolution.
This makes absolutely no sense and seems built not only upon a fundamental misunderstanding of evolution but also a misunderstanding of "species" and a semantic argument regarding disease.
Have human beings evolved? Yes or no. Are we evolving? Yes or no? How do you know?
When you have a cold, it's because a virus is interfering with the efficiency of your body. When you do things to facilitate recovery from a cold, you're working to aid your body in overcoming the effects of the virus.
The question is, should I aid my body in recovering from a cold? Maybe I'm being culled from the herd. Should I act to prevent my culling?
Who's to say if a disease isn't culling the herd?
A disease may well "cull the herd", creating an environment where only those able to survive the disease are able to pass their genes on to the next generation, resulting in new populations that are resistant to the disease.
Do you have an actual point here?
Do you consider medicine to be scientific? Do you consider doctors to be scientists, or practitioners of science?
If so, should doctors (scientists) work to cure disease or should they let evolution "cull the herd"? In other words, is it good or bad to allow the herd to be culled?
You say that "science does not deal in 'good or bad,'" which is why I asked you if you consider doctors to be practitioners of science. "Scientific" evolutionary theory has some very practical consequences. Margaret Sanger and Adolph Hitler were well aware of them.
In fact, how could "disease" be defined under an evolutionary rubric?
Multiple ways. Diseases caused by viruses or bacteria could be examined through the bacteria/viruses themselves. Disease can also be looked at as an environmental factor amongst the affected population.
Personally, I'm not very concerned about the fate of viruses and bacteria. I'm more concerned about diseases relating to human beings. My question is, how can human diseases be defined under an evolutionary rubric if death and destruction is part of the evolutionary process, or "the survival of the fittest"?
If "science does not deal in 'good or bad,'" science must remain agnostic regarding the cure of so-called "diseases," correct? Or should scientists work to combat "diseases"? Are they judging diseases to be bad?
Are mutations good or bad?
Science does not deal in "good or bad".
Someone should tell the scientists who are working on cures to genetic diseases. They're acting as if some mutations are bad.
Would it even be possible to define a good or bad mutation?
No, because science does not deal in "good or bad".
This is a fundamental contradiction, because scientists every day are working to cure diseases. Medicine is based on the judgment that there is such a thing as health (good) and illness (bad).
The explanation lies, as I believe, in the extreme imperfection of the geological record. In the first place, it should always be borne in mind what sort of intermediate forms must, on the theory, have formerly existed...
What would be the problem with admitting that Darwin didn't say what you reported he said instead of all this dancing around? He said something quite the opposite of what you reported in 288.
It's my understanding that Chuck expected the record to be filled in over time, as do the textbook publishers who leave the mysterious blank spots in the "family tree" of all life.
He had already figured out that the fossil record did not, would not, and should not contain every transitional that ever lived...
There's a difference between the fossil record "not containing every transitional form that ever lived" and a fossil record that uniformly exhibits stasis within species.
...despite the necessity that such things must have once existed.
Where did the necessity come from? The necessity follows from the theory, but the necessity contradicts the fossil evidence.
His chapter on the imperfections of the geological record is explicit from the beginning to the end about what he does and does not predict.
OK. Either he did or didn't expect the fossil record to support his theory. If he expected the fossil record to uniformly contradict his theory, then his theory was based on pure speculation.
If he expected the fossil record to confirm his theory, then his theory is contradicted by the fossil evidence. Considering the myriad forms of existing life and the necessity, according to the theory, of the countless transitional forms which must have preceded these existing life forms, then the fossil record should not uniformly exhibit morphological stasis within species.
A citation reference from On the Origin of Species would be nice.
"Though nature grants vast periods of time for the work of natural selection, she does not grant an indefinite period"Chuck "Charles" Darwin
The Origin of Species, p. 102
"[S]tasis, or nonchange, of most fossil species during their lengthy geological lifespans was tacitly acknowledged by all paleontologists, but almost never studied explicitly because prevailing theory treated stasis as uninteresting nonevidence for nonevolution. [T]he overwhelming prevalence of stasis became an embarrassing feature of the fossil record, best left ignored as a manifestation of nothing (that is, nonevolution)."Gould, S.J. (1993)
"Cordelia's Dilemma"
Natural History, February, p. 15
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