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.
When it has been shown that you manufactured a false and deceptive quote, you respond that the falsehood was part of your understanding. What God do you worship that requires falsehood?
I haven't read Darwin, but Philip Johnson has, and that's how he described Darwin's position. So did the evolutionist I quoted. I generally distrust the judgment of evolutionists because they're atheists. But I trust Philip Johnson.
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. Since fossils are by definition, how are they supposed to be anything but static?
The problem is that as a rule many (hundreds?) fossils are discovered of the same species in various geologic features, indicating that the species remained in the same morphological state for the duration of its existence.
You demand transitionals between ancient ape fossils and modern humans, and transitionals are found.
Where are they? How do you know that they're transitional forms and not simply different creatures, especially if they retain the same morphology over time?
Gould says that the history of most fossil species includes two features particularly inconsistent with gradualism:The chart included here is very instructive.1. Stasis. Most species exhibit no directional change during their tenure on earth. They appear in the fossil record looking much the same as when they disappear; morphological change is usually limited and directionless.
2. Sudden appearance. In any local area, a species does not arise gradually by the steady transformation of its ancestors; it appears all at once and ‘fully formed.’7
You demand transitionals between land animals and whales, and transitionals are found. You demand transitionals between reptilians and birds, and feathered dinosaurs are found. All of these are consistent with the predictions of Darwin.
Almost. Again, the problem is that the fossil record shows that these creatures remain the same over time, as I explained above.
In denying the validity of biological science...
I'm simply saying that evolution is bad science, or poor speculation.
Doc, I didn't suggest the Earth was a closed system. Dimensio observed that the "only" closed system we know of is the universe itself. And I asked how he knew this was a true statement: How do we know the universe is NOT exchanging energy with something else? Do we really know this for an absolute "fact"?
But we were originally speaking about abiogenesis. May we return to this contentious topic?
It appears that the probabilities of abiogenesis would be far greater if we had an open system with an energy source that maintains the system far from equilibrium. This presumably would avoid the setting in of the disorder that occurs pursuant to the Second Law in equilibrium processes.
The earth has a constant energy source in the Sun; but I have doubts that energy source alone is sufficient to support abiogenesis. It seems to me that, for abiogenesis to occur, the energy flow must have a mechanism whereby sufficient information content can be generated into inert matter. For living systems are such as they are by virtue of the information content they contain, which even in the most humble organisms is an enormous amount of specified instructions. Complexity of information content is said to be the principal characteristic of living matter.
It seems to me to know life's origin requires an explanation of the development of molecules with intense information content. But by what means does the energy flow keeping a system far from equilibirum generate information content? How does a mechanism that stores, transfers, and directs information arise spontaneously -- from balrog666's famous primaeval muck as it were? The sun can beat down on a mud puddle all day long, and still we would not see a living organism spring up as a result.
How can natural selection be a viable explanation for the origin of DNA and enzymes when natural selection does not exist in prebiological molecules? How did we get to "here" from "there?"
It seems that for life to begin, energy flow must be directed to produce information content in inert matter. This seems to be the fundamental problem of the origin of life, not the influence of the Second Law -- which has been so exhaustively studied in gasses. (Life is more than gasses.)
When I suggested that material systems are "closed," obviously I did not mean this in the same sense as Dimensio's definition. To me, any system lacking in intelligence is "closed."
This probably won't help you much, but here's an ancient quote I like a lot:
The world has a body that a man can see, and an intelligence that a man cannot see. And it takes both to make a living world.
FWIW. I'm having a busy work day, so must run for now. I'll try to come back latter. So much to do, so little time....
I strongly suggest that you vote for George Bush this fall. In my judgement he's better qualifie than either Kerry or Nader.
What a d@mning rejection of critical thought! It's only a book - read it yourself before you lose any more credibility.
balrog, long before there were scientists, man has wondered and marveled about the origin of life. Which, I might point out, is not something we typically find scientists doing these days. As I've already pointed out ad nauseam, Darwin wasn't terribly interested in the problem of life per se; just in how it got from one stage to the next, after it "arose." Often scientists seem too busy cataloguing and classifying to pay attention to the really big picture; and in any case I have been informed by scientist friends that the most liberating question known to man -- WHY? -- is a distraction, at best.
I suppose evolution is millennia-old. Surely it didn't start yesterday.
I noted before that the energy transferred from the sun to Venus is probably more than that transferred to the Earth.
The latter is almost certainly due to lava flows (which may still be going on). In sum, current best guess is that the composition of Venus is similar to that of Earth, though probably not identical to it. I got the above information from: "Exploration of the Universe" by Abell, Morrison, and Wolff; "The Solar System" by Encrenaz and Bibring; and "The Solar System" by B.W. Jones (you may need to go to a university library to find books like these).
What is known about the Venusian interior comes primarily from the Venera, Pioneer Venus and Magellan spacecraft. Before these explorers, scientists thought that Venus would have tectonic processes similar to that of Earth's mantle convection. Venus and Earth are both similar in size and presumable the same composition. However, Venus showed no sign of plate tectonism, and appears to have a single plate which makes it very different from Earth.
The atmosphere of Venus is mostly carbon dioxide, 96.5% by volume. Most of the remaining 3.5% is nitrogen. Early evidence pointed to the sulfuric acid content in the atmosphere, but we now know that that is a rather minor constituent of the atmosphere.
Plenty of carbon is available. Where the water went to is a question. But who says life necessarily needs water? Well where is the self-organization on Venus?
http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/newton/askasci/1993/astron/AST052.HTM
http://www.solarviews.com/cap/venus/venusint.htm
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/solar/venusenv.html
From Darwin to HitlerFrom Darwin to Hitler elucidates the revolutionary impact Darwinism had on ethics and morality. Weikart demonstrates that many leading Darwinian biologists and social thinkers in Germany believed that Darwinism overturned traditional Judeo-Christian and Enlightenment ethics, especially the view that human life is sacred. Many of these thinkers supported moral relativism, yet simultaneously exalted evolutionary "fitness" (especially intelligence and health) as the highest arbiter of morality. Darwinism played a key role in the rise not only of eugenics, but also euthanasia, infanticide, abortion, and racial extermination. This thinking had its biggest impact on Germany, since Hitler built his view of ethics on Darwinian principles, not on nihilism as popularly believed.
"Information content" is a meaningless phrase in this context.
For living systems are such as they are by virtue of the information content they contain, which even in the most humble organisms is an enormous amount of specified instructions.
You mean that for currently extant organisms and include the complete arrangement of their DNA/RNA/whatever? So what?
Complexity of information content is said to be the principal characteristic of living matter.
Not by biologists.
It seems to me to know life's origin requires an explanation of the development of molecules with intense information content.
Now you want "intense" to mean something it does not. Your fuzzy thinking here is not helping.
But by what means does the energy flow keeping a system far from equilibirum generate information content?
Have you really never studied chemisty?
How does a mechanism that stores, transfers, and directs information arise spontaneously -- from balrog666's famous primaeval muck as it were?
By bootstrapping from simpler molecules. Why do you pretend you haven't read a hundred threads like this in the past? Or have you forgotten all the previous answers you've ever gotten to similar "questions"?
The sun can beat down on a mud puddle all day long, and still we would not see a living organism spring up as a result.
Molecule(s), not organism. you step too far. Oh, and by the way, those "puddles" probably comprised at least 10^18 cubic meters of chemical goo in a variety of conditions and concentrations. Oh, and "all day long" means at least 10^12 actual hours of sunlight - gee, can you calculate how much energy that is? Is it enough? How would you decide?
Evolution contradicts a literal reading of Genesis. Not all Jews and Christians take Genesis literally, and not all theists are Jews or Christians.
Actually, Hitler was a creationist:
For it was by the Will of God that men were made of a certain bodily shape, were given their natures and their faculties. Whoever destroys His work wages war against God's Creation and God's Will.Source: Book 2, Chapter 10, Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler.
-- Adolph Hitler, creationist
Get a grip, BB. People knew and speculated about gravity too but that doesn't make Newton's Universal Law of Gravitation millenia old.
Will he also tell us how he walked 20 miles to school, barefoot, through two feet of snow?
The same people who are getting all excited about this 100 year old guy 'refuting' creationism are the same ones who would just roll their eyes at him if he were to share some other tidbit of 'wisdom.'
I hear the distant wail of bagpipes.
Do the facts contained in a scholarly book interest you? Or do you normally dismiss facts out of hand?
And it's true that there are people who have attempted to turn a biological theory -- that is, a simply explanation of how the natural world works -- into a social policy
That would be Hitler and Margaret Sanger, among many others.
...and I've already pointed out that such a philosophy is idiocy.
What was wrong with Hitler's idea of weeding out the weaker members of the race? Why wouldn't his genocidal acts be considered a part of the evolutionary process?
That sounds like some people we used to know that professed to be Christians.
But, remember that Creationists prefer second-hand accounts to primary sources.
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