Posted on 05/08/2006 1:17:07 PM PDT by mlc9852
Human interaction with animals could be causing evolution to go into reverse, says a report by the Royal Society, Britain's science academy.
A study of finches on the Galapagos Islands in the Pacific – finches are the same birds that were said to have inspired Charles Darwin's groundbreaking work on evolution - has shown that some could be losing their distinctive beaks in response to living near humans.
Finches on the islands have developed different sizes of beak - but when people live in close proximity to the birds, their beaks revert to an intermediate size, the report says.
Andrew Hendry, a professor at McGill University in Montreal who led the study, told the Independent newspaper that the evolutionary split within the species was being reversed.
(Excerpt) Read more at english.aljazeera.net ...
That's just mean.
God's not dead. He's hired contractors.
;)
Hey!
I wanted to be the know-it-all. I just have too much work to do.
I'm staring at the tube with tunnel vision now. Maybe I should go back to the backward light thread.
:)
Thanks for the response
When did I say I could not make sense of my own posts? You really don't like to make sense - do you? You create so many straw-men you can not see the forest for the staw-men (so to speak)
I should point out however, that I had an exchange with a creationist who insisted that television could've existed in the beginning of the 19th century.
Ok - that is pretty weird - what was the context of the comment?
BTW: I am not a creationist nor have I ever claimed to be doing God's work here (or any of the other baseless statements that have been thrown at me)
He was subsequently banned.
Banned for making a silly comment - oh no, we are all in trouble.
:-)
You can't be banned for making silly statements on a crevo thread.
That's what they're for. ;)
Good point - I missed that.
I sure appreciate this notice that my opinions will be closely monitored. Do you have a list of acceptable remarks that will get an ollie-ollie oxen free pass? Are you part of a committee of Regulators, or is this a personal Jihad?
”I am 60 years old and have never in my personal experience seen anyone behave badly because of a philosophy.”
Kindly reconcile this last sentence with your first statement.
”On the other hand, some of the worst people I have met have been nonstop spouters of moral platitudes.”
Oh, I know. The worst sort just seem to be everywhere anymore. I hope to tell ya; ain’t it the truth?
Information theory is one of but a few areas of science that really captures my interest. So, I’m always grateful when you shoot me a ping. Thanks.
Actually csense, I wasn't aiming at "misdirection," but for "inclusion."
How to put this in as few words as possible. Maybe a table would help.
(1) Francis Bacon first formalizes what would later be called the scientific method. His main motivation is to remove all subjective apperceptions from science; that is, to expunge any hint of philosophy from its practice, which was intent on investigating "actual creature," up close and personal....
(2) Descartes elaborates the "mind-body problem," which is fine if you want to treat mind and body as discrete, separable objects of investigation. This line of reasoning actually has been amazing successful (e.g., in physics, biology, medicine, experimental psychology, etc.). I'm sure such investigations can be profitable. Yet to separate the natural constituents of living nature (including human beings) in such a manner is to lose understanding that they are, shall we say, necessarily "symbiotic." Or "complementary" would be a good descriptive word in common usage nowadays.
(3) Isaac Newton advances his magnificent laws of mechanics. They are so successful in practice, so able to fulfill the predictions they make, that people increasingly believe that science alone holds the key to producing valid knowledge about the world, and older modes of systematic thought held to be inferior, perhaps even exercises in superstition. People begin to reduce their vision of the universe to fit the Newtonian model: material bodies in motion according to law.
(4) Then Darwin came along, and produced some excellent science on the evolution of species. Still, no one has yet said that Darwin gave us any laws, in the same way that Newton did. What he gave us was a theory -- which has become a kind of leit-motif or organizing principle of a substantial body of human thought ever since.
(5) Meanwhile, Hegel and Nietzsche, and later Marx, were lurking about. I can't do this "in few words," so won't even try here. Suffice it to say, one gathers that such folk were convinced of the superiority of science with respect to anything that ever came before. If this means that the human race has to "end history," and "start over from scratch" so to manifest the newer, better principles, then so be it.
(6) Plus I left out Kant. But I do need to be brief, so please forgive me.
(7) Plus I left out all the Laws of Thermodynamics people from Carnot forward. Their work is an absolutely magnificent blessing to mankind.
(8) Ohmigod, then there's Einstein, and Bohr, and oh so many others.... All these people serve truth, IMHO.
But I must stop "the litany of the saints" and draw a concise conclusion here.
IF the human person were nothing but a belly attached to gonads (which seems to be the very reduction of human nature that scientific materialism most dearly wishes for us to accept), then science has got all the answers about him, at least in the long run.
BUT reason and experience tell me the human person is more than belly-plus-gonads: He is a spiritual reality in his own right. And that by the grace of God, which is Spirit and Truth.
Well. FWIW. Thank you csense for your very kind words. I've truly enjoyed your company and hope we will meet again.
Why do you ping me to this nonsense?
You seem to think JCEccles is the arbiter of 'design' in nature. Because it looks 'designed' to you, it must be designed. Frankly, it's all the same to me if you go through life in this state of self-aggrandizement, but I don't particularly need to be alerted to your delusions of granduer
On question (5), I neglected to point out that, of the Hegel-Nietzsche-Marx triad, two of them thought "God is dead," and the other one thought that "he was God." These thinkers were definitely not all exactly on the same page; but close enuf to it. They are collectively associated and together constitute the major theme of the age that followed them. Sprinkle in a little debased Darwinism, and you have a prescription for social disaster.
There should have been a point (9), devoted to the great mathematicians of the modern age: Reimann, Godel, Cantor, Schroedinger, Shannon, Chaisson -- oh, the list can be extended to so many other great mathematical thinkers. I don't know why it is exactly, but I feel so very grateful to them all.
Just another 2-cents worth, FWIW.
Jeepers, I left one of the most elegant mathematical thinkers of all time, Paul Dirac, off my list. Shame on me.
Demiurges? Dramaturges?
LOL! Are you beginning to see the humor in this? [Big Grin]
Another great thinker you need to add to your list is the late French combinatorialist Marcel-Paul Schutzenberger. Schutzenberger was a lead participant at the legendary Wistar Symposium held at the University of Pennsylvania in 1967. A mathematician of the highest order, like von Neumann and Godel, his mind was exquisitely fitted to slicing and dicing blather, nonsense, and overstatement masquerading as science, and he found plenty of ugly fat to carve on the carcase of Darwinism.
Thats about the best "conversation" I've seen to describe TTof.. Evolution... cudos..
? Tangential misdirection.. is what it is.. "Science" is a strawman..
sorry
You know Boopie.. you beginning get very sexy..
But I'm way out in the bush.. Cabernet?...
A Sunday kind of love is premonitive.. I like curls..
Sounds like a CONVERSATION on a slow boat to china.. Demurings and acreditaditions over wine... The truth is flesh or spirit., send your camel to bed or get jiggy.. you always stimualte me.... Your spirit is unrulely.. I LIKE THAT..
Yes unruly.. You are are nobodys "fUR"... not unlike most republicans,,,,
If he named himself after John Carewe Eccles, he's disgracing the good name of a great scientist.
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