Posted on 04/07/2006 4:16:49 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
Even as the evolution wars rage, on school boards and in courtrooms, biologists continue to accumulate empirical data supporting Darwinian theory. Two extraordinary discoveries announced this week should go a long way to providing even more of the evidence that critics of evolution say is lacking.
One study produced what biblical literalists have been demanding ever since Darwin -- the iconic "missing links." If species evolve, they ask, with one segueing into another, where are the transition fossils, those man-ape or reptile-mammal creatures that evolution posits?
In yesterday's issue of Nature, paleontologists unveiled an answer: well-preserved fossils of a previously unknown fish that was on its way to evolving into a four-limbed land-dweller. It had a jaw, fins and scales like a fish, but a skull, neck, ribs and pectoral fin like the earliest limbed animals, called tetrapods.
[big snip]
Another discovery addresses something Darwin himself recognized could doom his theory: the existence of a complex organ that couldn't have "formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications," he wrote in 1859.
The intelligent-design movement, which challenges teaching evolution, makes this the centerpiece of its attack. It insists that components of complex structures, such as the eye, are useless on their own and so couldn't have evolved independently, an idea called irreducible complexity.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Spam origami.
What a concept...
Why do you always print the links to the original source material for that in such small font?
an entity such as God raising one or a handful of dead folks does not negate the evidence that, excepting divine intervention, once dead you stay that way.
an entity such as God transmuting water into wine does not negate the physical fact that, excepting divine interference, instantly transmuting a cask of water into wine would release enough energy to knock a hole in the world.
an entity such as God could do anything he pleased.
however, creating the universe in six days some 6000 years ago while at the same time creating an infinite amount of evidence indicating an ancient universe and long/ancient ancestral chain of life is a somewhat different problem.
It was/is wishful thinking.
What was thought to resemble feathers turned out to be decomposed skin.
oh, that is sick. heretical: true faithful KNOW that one can only fold spam once!
The fable of evolution is the religion of the athiest materialist who desires to throw off all moral laws and indulge in the sexual desires of their arrogant heart.
Wait, what was it that God said about false witness, again?
In 2003, the GCSSEPM celebrates the 50th anniversary of its founding. The Section was established for the purpose of "promoting the science of stratigraphy in the Gulf Coast states through research in paleontology and sedimentary petrology, especially as it relates to petroleum geology". The Gulf Coast Section is the largest section of SEPM and is likely the most active.
...
Since its inception in 1953, the GCSSEPM has fostered the science of stratigraphy in a number of ways: through co-sponsoring the Annual Convention and its published Transactions with GCAGS; in sponsoring field trips; by publishing field guides and special research reports; and importantly, in producing the Annual GCSSEPM Research Conferences and Conference Proceedings volumes.
...
This 50th anniversary sees Section membership at 487, a number that has been relatively stable for decades despite downturns in petroleum industry employment. At its peak in the early 1980s, the Section had more than 600 members. Though primarily drawing from the Gulf Coast region, the Section has members from across the United States and has 25 members from other countries. The geographic distribution of our membership is testament that the Section has earned recognition for service to scientific excellence from a community of petroleum industry geoscientists, university faculty and students that now extends worldwide.
I'm from Houston, and when I worked in the oil industry I knew some geologists and petrophysicsts who were members of this society as well as the Houston Geological Society. It's a relatively small professional society.
Often times in these threads you hear how evolutionary theory has no real world applications, and other garbage like that. This position is laughable to people who work in oil exploration.
For the purposes of this discussion, I am going to post the introduction page from the GCSSEPM on this topic:
THE GCSSEPM FOUNDATION
CREATIONISM: not just a phantom menace!
Why we are reprinting these articles
The American educational system has been under attack for some time as doing a poor job of educating students; many of the criticisms are very justified. However, parts of the cure are worse than disease. One of the cures that religous Christian fundamentalists propose is the teaching of creationism as a viable alternative to evolution. Creationists generally state that they do not deny the tenets of science, just that evolution did not occur. Unfortunately, this comment is generally not true: if you are a true Creationist, you also deny some fundamental principles of physics. Once this is accepted, science becomes witchcraft.
...
Evolution is Not Anti-Religous. The hostility of creationists toward the sciences that deal with human and cosmic origins stems from fundamentalist conviction that evolution threatens religion. This is not true.
The sciences concerned with the past can discover much of what happened long agol how, where, and when events occurred. But they can not discover the purpose or destiny of human existence. Such ideas lie within the mind of each individual and are the domain of religion, mortality, and philosophy. Science can not, and does not, pretend that it will ever be able to answer all the questions of life.
The great philosopheers and scientists who illuminated the 17th and 18th centuries- so called Age of Reason- taught that science was a way of learning about God by studying His creation, and this view is still held by many religous Americans today. To attack science in the name of religious orthodoxy is detrimental to both science and religion.
Because of the seriousness of the situation, the New Orleans Geological Society has published two articles on the subject written by Clifford Cuffey. We salute their foresight and courage. We are pleased to reproduce the articles here with their permission.
Evolution, Scientific Creation, Uniformitarian Geology, and Flood Geology
The Fossil Record: Evolution or "Scientific Creation"
Don't you find it interesting that a bunch of people with no education or experience in an area can look at a picture on the Internet and declare thos who do have education and experience to be fools and not able to see the critter for what it really is.
Arrogance City.
Or simple fear.
I go back and read evo threads from 2000, 1999, 98 before I started posting here, and I'm appalled at seeing the same thing over, and over again that I see today. Instead of thanking these people for their time and effort in answering questions, they're roundly condemned as being money-grubbing atheist tools sucking at the goverment teat. It's not that people just don't understand science. There's a culture of hostile, willfull ignorance that I find personally repugnant. Someone else mentioned on another thread that it's just like the Cindy Sheehan phenomenon: A know-nothing cheered on by a bunch of know-nothings, who don't realize how clueless they are, don't want to know how clueless they are, and resist any effort to show them how clueless they are.
Oh Lord not you again.
Is that a yes?
Maybe ..... maybe not
I have noticed that, thus far, you have offered absolutely no substantiative argument whatsoever against evolution in general, or against individual finds -- such as the subject of this article -- that support the theory of evolution. Why is that?
Actually it's the bacteria that no one can do without.
Look you posted to me first.
I was doing just fine without you
and your same old questions.
So why don't you go bother someone
who posted to you?
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