Posted on 12/03/2005 5:28:45 PM PST by Right Wing Professor
TO read the headlines, intelligent design as a challenge to evolution seems to be building momentum.
...
Behind the headlines, however, intelligent design as a field of inquiry is failing to gain the traction its supporters had hoped for. It has gained little support among the academics who should have been its natural allies. And if the intelligent design proponents lose the case in Dover, there could be serious consequences for the movement's credibility.
On college campuses, the movement's theorists are academic pariahs, publicly denounced by their own colleagues. Design proponents have published few papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Whoa. I never saw those quotes before.
Yes. Many, many specific locations To expect all species that carry this ERV to have inserted the retrovirus in the same place beggars belief.
I'm not quite satisfied with the answer to my question.
How can we tell the difference between right and wrong?
There are many, many more, but those ones are less obvious about the identity of the author :)
Well Marxists delare communism to be scientific.
Curious how the most extreme opponents can agree. Biblical Literalists hold a single error of fact in the Bible will invalidate everything within. Who agrees with them? Militant atheists.
Evolution is irrelevant to that question. That's like asking that if germ theory is valid then how do we tell the difference between right and wrong.
In any event your question is fallacious - the consequences of a discovery have no bearing on it's validity.
You use your judgment, and follow the values inculcated into you by your parents and the rest of the society that you grow up in. We are descended from a long line of people who managed to co-operate with each other sufficiently well to form societies that out-competed the less co-operative societies. There is every reason to suppose that such co-operation is at least partly genetic. Most "right" and "wrong" issues are to do with co-operation.
If rejection of the theory of evolution is what keeps you from being a serial killer, then please continue to reject it. Some of us are not quite so close to the edge of maniacal conduct.
My question was not based on sympathy for the criminal or any suggestion that he should be allowed to rob and rape. What I hoped to elicit from you was some recognition that evolution could be used by those with their own selfish agenda, from the lowly criminal to Hitler himself. What better way to justify their crimes (in their own minds)?
How can we tell the difference between right and wrong?
The strong surviving and the weak not surviving is the very basis of Darwin's theory, is it not? Einstein was a weak little old man, and criminals, who are strong, would have had no appreciation for his finer points. You might say Einstein has to survive for the sake of our civilization, or our species, but how could you convince the criminal of that? Is he really interested in "cooperation?"
And what has that got to do with whether evolution is true or false? In the past some people have justified appalling acts by using the Bible. Does that falsify Christianity?
Actually, for Pascal, it was a Christian God in communion with the Bishop of Rome.
Sorry, Patrick, my reply to you was addressed mistakenly to Dimensio. Why do you accuse people who debate with you of being "maniacal?"
You could make that case about anything - including religion in general and Christianity in particular. Did you see the unattributed religious quotes earlier? Guess who the author is.
Societies that enforce cooperation work. Societies that don't enforce cooperation don't work. Collectively we have learned to value the contribution of "weak little old men", and we act (more or less decisively) to restrain those who do not.
No it is not. Bacteria are the most successful form of life the earth has ever seen.
Drop in the bucket, compared to the enormous benefit the Bible has been to mankind in terms of its ethical content. Evolution's ethical content consists of the idea that the strong MUST survive, and I'm saying that continuing to teach this theory must have its consequences.
Again that is a comic book version of evolution. It has nothing to do with the actual theory of biological evolution.
"The strong surviving and the weak not surviving is the very basis of Darwin's theory, is it not?"
No. The best adapted will have a better probability of reproducing is the basis of Darwin's theory. *Strength* and *Weakness* are terms that have no absolute fitness values. The physically strongest often are not the best adapted to a particular environment.
"Einstein was a weak little old man,"
Not when he was young. :) He was also very very smart; that can be an adaptive advantage.
Ideas have consequences.
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