Posted on 06/09/2006 6:16:57 AM PDT by tomzz
You can't help but notice that there is a very vocal sort of a little clique of evolutionists on FreeRepublic, and there has always been a question in a lot of people's minds as to whether or not the theory of evolution is in any way compatible with conservatism.
This new book ("Godless") of Ann Coulter's should pretty much settle the issue.
Ann does not mince words, and she has quite a lot to say about evolution:
"Liberals' creation myth is Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, which is about one notch above scientology in scientific rigor. It's a make-believe story, based on a theory which is a tautology, with no proof in the scientists laboratory or the fossil record, and that's after 150 years of very determined looking. We wouldn't still be talking about it but for the fact that liberals think evolution disproves God....
It gets better from there, in fact a lot better. Ann provides a context for viewing the liberal efforts to shut down everything resembling debate on the subject in courtrooms and makes a general case that it is the left and not the right, which is antithetical to science in general. Anybody interested in this question of American society and the so-called theory of evolution should have a copy of this book
I did, and do.
I will be reporting this to the Moderator as an ABUSE of Posting privileges.
Hope this helps
FReegards
Well, Ok. (?)
Popper's argument was almost entirely based on the tautology issue, and he later admitted that he had not appreciated the basic argument of natural selection. Furthermore, he retracted his statements in later publications and agreed that natural selection was as valid as any other scientific theory (Sonleitner, 1986). However, some authors still cite Popper's earlier statements on natural selection, then equate evolution with natural selection, and conclude that the whole of evolutionary biology lacks any scientific validity.
Interestingly, Coulter elsewhere quotes Popper, who advanced the tautology argument, so she presumably knows this. Still, she left it out of the book. So much for intellectual honesty.
You're going to report me for assuming that everybody including you knew that NA stood for Not Applicable? How about in the future I use http://www.NotApplicable? Clear enough?
I already did.
Hope this helps
FReegards
Exactly the kind of dumb canard unworthy of a serious and honest discussion. The worse news is the ditzy blonde got it from Ditzy Dembski.
Supposedly, "random" doesn't go anywhere--but it does--and variation is "random." (However, it wouldn't matter if it was somewhat non-random.) Supposedly, "natural selection" means just "the survivors survive" and that's a tautology and a tautology doesn't say anything so that doesn't count. Tah-dah!
Evolution results from the joint operation of variation and selection. Populations vary within themselves from individual to individual. Some but not all individuals live to reproduce. The difference is based mostly on heritable attributes. There's an admixture of luck, but it's the differential success of one attribute versus another that really drives evolutionary change.
Both things, variation and selection, going at once produce a convergence of the surviving population upon being well-adapted to current conditions. The joint operation of both things is not random and not a tautology.
It's a mechanism. Until Darwin had his insight, people didn't know the mechanism. People had proposed before then that evolution happens--there had been obvious evidence for it for some time--but they had very poor ideas of why or how it would happen.
At this late date, 150 years after Darwin clearly nailed it, one has to be very stupid or very dishonest to be playing idiotic lawyer's games with the words. At best, one can't have any idea at all of how things look.
I doubt if you can give a two or three sentence summary, in your own words, of evolution. I doubt if you understand what you criticize. Prove me wrong.
Can science demonstrate that there was a supernova in the 11th century that was seen by humans on earth?
I think you may also be getting the "go tattle to Nanny" treatment that evos give any opponents.
(1) Darwinism doesn't claim mutations are 'utterly random'.
(2) In fact, in every species, there is a huge variety of transitional animals with very small mutations. They're called single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). That's why DNA identification works; if we weren't all slightly different from each other (except for identical twins) we could never identify a rapist from his DNA. On the other hand, the animal kingdom evolved lungs once, and wings three or maybe four times, in half a billion years, so there's no reason to expect DNA sequences leading to proto-wings or proto-lungs to be particularly common.
That's why her book is so bad. Almost every sentence is wrong or at best a distortion.
Unlike most high school bio teacher lying to your children about evo, Darwin was at least aware of what the fossil record ought if his theory was correct..."interminable varieties connecting together all the extinct and existing forms of life by the finest graduated steps." AC quoting CD.
The fossil record was very limited in Darwin's day. It's far better now, and we do have well-graduated progressions for most of the major transitions between higher organisms. Example.
We may be on the same page, brother,but you are barely clinging to the edge on the far left :)
* Lead me not into temptation, brother Prof. Do you have any idea how many quips are suggested when "CYA" acronym is applied to Ann Coulter?
Ann also gives a ripping expose of the true nature of the Scopes trial (her best book is Treason, where she takes on the shibboleths of McCarthyistic Victimhood).
"The real story of the Scopes trila is told in the book--Summer For The Gods by Edward Larson. The Scopes trial was nothing but a publicity stunt. The idea for a trial on evo was hatched by the ACLU in NY and seized upon by the leaders in Dayton, Tennessee, as a way to drum up publicity for the town. Scopes was in on the prank, agreeing to be prosecuted even though he had never taught evo and was not even a bio teacher.
There follows several pages of how it transpired. Inherit the Wind, indeed. I had never seen this account of the Holy Scopes trial before. This is a good read.
Using the language of my youth, let's just say I don't find AC to be an Occasion of Sin. Pretty chassis, but the engine is rotten. :-)
But, there is no shortage of Eisegesis either. Beware alert to that :)
Don't tell me you actually believe that Jonah was in a whale's belly for three days and survived.
As an evolutionary biologist, Ann Coulter's a so-so constitutional lawyer.
Supposedly so. And yet this evolutionary change has never been directly observed to produce anything but minor tweaks within limits. It hardly merits extrapolations into the amoeba-to-man history so loftily espoused as a "scientific reality" in many public school textbooks. Correlations in morphology do not necessitate the conclusion of a historical relationship. While such extrapolations may be made on the basis of common sense (just as ancient peoples did long before Darwin), they fall outside the realm of empirical testing.
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