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 am a real Christian, that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus Christ. [12] Thomas Jefferson >>
Restornu -- Jefferson, as 1000, pointed out, did not believe in the divinity of Jesus. He held the ethical teachings of Jesus in very high regard. In that sense, I agree with Jefferson.
He was not a Christian in the sense that the majority of evangelicals would accept -- or in the sense that the majority of Mormons would accept. And since Mormons and evangelicals disagree on just what I Christian is -- and since I am neither one -- I'll let you and 1000 work this one out between yourselves.
Jefferson and I are going to go to bed now.
What hath light to do with darkness?
As I pointed out in my post 499 I am so use to folks misquoting or deliberty omit, edit or distort another wording being LDS I have come across this endlessly, but the damage is done the water is muddy and most folks will not take time to seek truth of what was verbatim said.
They only remember what shock or distrub them!
History is important from the beganning truth is always taking a beating!
I may have dyslexic etc. but I had something far greater of a treasure that is being a seeker of truth and excellant discernment knowing when one is trying to play games.
sadly I can't always express what is in my heart and mind on paper!
I know that because there is discrpencies in the Bible it will cause good people to stumble over errors and others to lose their faith!
But I have vision to know we don't have all the pieces to the puzzle yet we have enought to know there is more and also both sides would have harmony and not discord if only they would be patient for a day will come when more will surface to resolve these man made flaws!
Be of Good Cheer!
<< what about my question about ethics? >>
<< What hath light to do with darkness? >>
Yes -- I know the drill by heart. We nonChristians have no real ethics, no morals, no truth at all. We can't be trusted to tell the truth or get anything right. I know -- I know. We get it.
Now -- with that understanding, why can't you take a look at my question and tell me if I understand just a little bit, even with my unregenerate, Satan-controlled mind. If you will just take a look and see if you think I have a tiny inkling of an understanding of at least one ethical standard that a normal, decent, God-fearing Christian would want to adhere to.
NOT that I would ever claim to be able to live up to such a standard -- no way! After all -- I am completely engulfed in Satanic delusion. But -- at least maybe I understand just a tiny bit about it -- as an outsider and a throwaway? Maybe I have articulated, even if poorly and accidentally, something that is a good ethical standard for Christians -- whom I could never hope to even unlatch the sandals of -- to adhere to when they have to deal with us filthy reprobates? Maybe?
Can you just toss that one little crumb to us dogs? How about that? If you would do that, as distasteful and as sickening as it is to have to deal with me -- a filthy apostate -- I would be ever so grateful as I slither off to my well-deserved eternal doom.
Considering the ban/suspension score for the day was creationists 1, evolutionists 0, I'd say your bias has blinded you.
I am writing to you because I feel that your coverage of Dr. Schweitzer's dinosaur fossil research has been grossly unfair and misleading. AIG has misrepresented Dr. Schweitzer's research, slandered Dr. Schweitzer and her colleagues by accusing them of attempting to "explain away" their findings, and swept under the rug a follow-up paper published by Dr. Schweitzer which presents some inconvenient evidence indicating that birds and theropod dinosaurs are genetically related.
My letter is prompted by your March 6 article "The Scrambling Continues" regarding Dr. Schweitzer's discovery last year of an unusually well-preserved Tyrannosaurus rex fossil femur. When the fossil was retrieved the femur was broken. The internal cavity had an unusual porous appearance, so Dr. Schweitzer took some small fragments of the bone and soaked them in a solution that removed all of the minerals. It is important for the sake of accuracy to emphasize that the samples removed from the fossil were indeed hard and mineralized, not soft like raw marrow as some sources have stated (based I believe on your misleading commentary). After the minerals were removed the end products were tiny fragments (most less than 1/8 inch in diameter) of a network, with some fragments (or sections of a fragment) brittle and fragile while other fragments were spongy and flexible, resembling connective tissue and blood vessels. Under the microscope in the vessels Dr. Schweitzer could see structures resembling cells and with some type of internal structure. I'll quote the conclusion of Dr. Schweitzer's paper (1):
"The elucidation and modeling of processes resulting in soft-tissue preservation may form the basis for an avenue of research into the recovery and characterization of similar structures in other specimens, paving the way for micro- and molecular taphonomic investigations. Whether preservation is strictly morphological and the result of some kind of unknown geochemical replacement process or whether it extends to the subcellular and molecular levels is uncertain. However, we have identified protein fragments in extracted bone samples, some of which retain slight antigenicity (3). These data indicate that exceptional morphological preservation in some dinosaurian specimens may extend to the cellular level or beyond. If so, in addition to providing independent means of testing phylogenetic hypotheses about dinosaurs, applying molecular and analytical methods to well-preserved dinosaur specimens has important implications for elucidating preservational microenvironments and will contribute to our understanding of biogeochemical interactions at the microscopic and molecular levels that lead to fossilization."
AIG has reported this recovered material as strictly organic. This is a conclusion not warranted by the evidence, as a close reading of Dr. Schweitzer's original article and even a cursory reading of the accompanying commentary article (2) in the same issue of Science would show:
"Hendrik Poinar of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, cautions that looks can deceive: Nucleated protozoan cells have been found in 225-million-year-old amber, but geochemical tests revealed that the nuclei had been replaced with resin compounds. Even the resilience of the vessels may be deceptive. Flexible fossils of colonial marine organisms called graptolites have been recovered from 440-million-year-old rocks, but the original material--likely collagen--had not survived."
Some of the tougher biopolymers (especially chitin, lignins and proteins) may degrade very slowly in a fossil. Some arthropod fossils from 25 million years ago contain a small amount of chitin (3), although insects preserved in amber from about the same time period show complete diagenetic alteration (fossilization) in spite of the superb morphological preservation (4). Likewise, in spite of the excellent morphological preservation of this fossil Dr. Schweitzer clearly states that it is unknown at this time whether the actual original cellular and organic material is present. The preservation of intact organic material from a long-extinct species would be a wonderful scientific find, however it is most likely that Dr. Schweitzer and other molecular paleontologists will have to settle for studying the typical biomolecule degradation products found in fossils (5). It may actually be that some fraction of organic matter was preserved, and the supplemental material Dr. Schweitzer published indicates that this may be true as the sample extracts showed some affinity for antibodies against bovine osteocalcin and chicken type I collagen. This leads to the exciting possibility of extracting collagen or other structural proteins from the T. rex sample and comparing these to avian proteins to help clarify the evolutionary relationship between birds and theropod dinosaurs. However, it is unfortunately more likely that the sample will prove to be fully mineralized and lacking any utilizable amount of untransformed biomolecules. If this is so AIG will have egg in its face after its trumpeting of the T. rex sample as "unfossilized soft tissue" ("Still Soft and Stretchy," 25 March 2005).
When I read "The Scrambling Continues" it led me to see if any new papers on this fossil have been published since last year. Sure enough, my search revealed a Science paper from June 2005 (6). This paper is foreshadowed by a line in the initial paper: "In addition to the dense compact bone typical of theropods, this specimen contained regions of unusual bone tissue on the endosteal surface." I'll quote from the June paper:
"The location, origin, morphology, and microstructure of the new T. rex tissues support homology with ratite MB [medullary bone]. The T. rex tissues line the medullary cavities of both femora of MOR 1125, suggesting an organismal response. The tissues are similar in distribution to those of extant ratites, being more extensive in proximal regions of the bone. They are clearly endosteal in origin, and the microstructure with large vascular sinuses is consistent with the function of MB as a rapidly deposited and easily mobilized calcium source. The random, woven character indicates rapidly deposited, younger bone. Finally, the robustly supported relationship between theropods and extant birds (15–18, 24, 25) permits the application of phylogenetic inference to support the identification of these tissues (26, 27)."
Medullary bone is a particular type of bone laid down in the endosteal cavities of female birds to allow storage and rapid mobilization of calcium for egg-laying. This type of bone has only been found in birds, so its discovery in a dinosaur fossil ought to be noteworthy to anyone interested in science. This uniquely avian trait in T. rex adds another piece of evidence supporting the evolutionary origin of birds from theropod dinosaurs. I'm certain that your researchers must have run across this article while checking to see if Dr. Schweitzer had published a follow-up paper. Your failure to mention this article's findings in your rather snide article indicates to me that AIG is not so much interested in the pursuit of knowledge as the promulgation of anti-evolutionary propaganda.
Now I have the benefit of prior knowledge of your likely response to this finding of medullary bone in a dinosaur. I mentioned my complaints about your coverage to a young-earth creationist, and he emailed you asking about this. He shared with me your response, which was that medullary bone was indeed found in other species besides birds, providing these links as support: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=1790209&dopt=Abstract, http://cal.vet.upenn.edu/saortho/chapter_53/53mast.htm. These links can be easily found by either searching Google for "medullary bone" and ignoring the multiple hits saying it is uniquely avian or by searching for "medullary bone" and excluding "avian" and "bird." The first example given is actually a misunderstanding by your staff member of basic bone growth--in a young mammal the interior of the bone is filled with spongy bone which recedes to leave a medullary cavity as the bone grows. The second example is talking about the medullary cavity and adjacent structures--it describes "medullary bone infarct," which usually occurs in the medullary cavity near the end of a long bone and results in bone marrow and trabecular bone necrosis. Both of these instances have nothing to do with avian medullary bone. Genuine medullary bone is produced by a genetically encoded organismal response to gonadal hormones in an adult female bird, leading to the deposition of bone in the medullary cavity. The gross and microscopic appearance of medullary bone is unique, and the structural composition is quite different from other types of bone (7). Indeed, osteoblasts isolated from hen medullary bone show different expression patterns of genes than osteoblasts isolated from rats, indicating that avian medullary osteoblasts are uniquely differentiated and the process of medullary bone deposition is different than mammalian bone formation (8). The fossilized bone recovered from this T. rex show unequivocal avian medullary bone, and pose quite a conundrum for those who deny evolutionary relationships.
I can hardly expect AIG to suddenly embrace an old earth and common descent. However, I'm sure that AIG would want to be seen as a trustworthy organization that can be relied upon to present the facts accurately. In light of this I am requesting that you publish a correction stating that the T. rex fossil discovered was extensively fossilized, did not have a "raw" appearance, and that the flexible fragments recovered are tiny (on the order of 1/8 inch). Additionally I request an acknowledgment of the existence of Dr. Schweitzer's paper reporting the discovery of avian medullary bone in the T. rex fossil. Finally, I request that my letter in whole be published on your site. These steps will go far towards correcting AIG's superficial coverage of Dr. Schweitzer's findings.
Thank you for your attention to these matters.
Simple answer: AIG is right, and these fools are wrong. The picture is totally unambiguous.
"I'm suspicious-minded so I don't have to treat you ethically?" My mind is boggling.
Heck, if you need some leading, gather 'round and watch me. I may not be Christian any more but I can argue without calling people names. For some on your side that would be a great improvement.
You're right, that's a simple answer. However, it's completely unsupported by any of the facts, which say that AIG are fools and the scientists are correct.
Simple. Like I say, both the pictures and the news wire stories are totally unambiguous.
Hooey. I've never heard of this guys letter but AIG answers it with the same recycled . . . how can I put this, statements that do not align with reality?
There is no evidence that any unfossilized material remains. Previous fossils have been found that were soft and flexible but contained none of the original organic material--which you ought to know had you read my letter to AIG. AIG's major mistake (which none of the scientists made, see my letter) is assuming that flexibility means the fragments are unfossilized. Your major mistake is in believing them and then taking the next step and thinking they look like "fresh meat," (which at least AIG had the decency to only suggest at, not state) although since we've explained that these bits are about 1/8 I hope you will back off on that in future. *crosses fingers*
Both you and AIG are jumping the gun, assuming facts not in evidence, and then using these fallacious assumptions to insult and smear others' reputation. I used to have some respect for the character of those at AIG, no longer.
*Jonas was real. His story was not a parable, or a metaphor, as you say. But, in this post he is not mentioned. Has a whale swallowed the context of our exchange?
Who is the exegete who taught you this? Author, book, publishing date.
As I understand it, any Christian can read it literally, and they might having been influenced by St, Basil's Hexaemeron but one is a liberty not to also.
Thanks, sister
Ain't the WEB grand!!?
I, too, have learned much; mainly that a LOT of things that I thought fit into neatly defined boxes, didn't.
Oh the data (such that it was) would map ok, but then OTHER stuff usually would come along and toss my concieved (pre or not) notions out the window.
Some days I feel just like one of the blind men, inspecting the elephant.
Yeah...
Sure....
www.playboy.com
So??
MOST won't buy ANY SPECIFIC book!
I'm sure the vast majority of Americans agree with me that Coulter is a shrill, nasty lunatic.
Been watchin' Leno??
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