Posted on 03/11/2003 3:01:59 PM PST by Remedy
A university professor said she was asked to resign for introducing elite students to flaws in Darwinian thought, and she now says academic freedom at her school is just a charade.
During a recent honors forum at Mississippi University for Women (MUW), Dr. Nancy Bryson gave a presentation titled "Critical Thinking on Evolution" -- which covered alternate views to evolution such as intelligent design. Bryson said that following the presentation, a senior professor of biology told her she was unqualified and not a professional biologist, and said her presentation was "religion masquerading as science."
The next day, Vice President of Academic Affairs, Dr. Vagn Hansen asked Bryson to resign from her position as head of the school's Division of Science and Mathematics.
"The academy is all about free thought and academic freedom. He hadn't even heard my talk," Bryson told American Family Radio News. "[W]ithout knowing anything about my talk, he makes that decision. I think it's just really an outrage."
Bryson believes she was punished for challenging evolutionary thought and said she hopes her dismissal will smooth the way for more campus debate on the theory of evolution. University counsel Perry Sansing said MUW will not comment on why Bryson was asked to resign because it is a personnel matter.
"The best reaction," Bryson says, "and the most encouraging reaction I have received has been from the students." She added that the students who have heard the talk, "They have been so enthusiastically supportive of me."
Bryson has contacted the American Family Association Center for Law and Policy and is considering taking legal action against the school.
Out for a bit.
Abiogenesis is not central to the theory of evolution. Your primary argument against it is the old "impossible because it's random" argument. Evolution is NOT random. I'm not a biochemist, but I'm willing to bet that abiogenesis is also NOT random either. Also, you're Pasteur example is not very good. Pasteur was looking for bacteria growing in an organic broth. Bacteria did not spontaneously appear in broth then, and noone is suggesting they spontaneiously generated way back when. The question of life's first origins is tricky, particularly because I don't think anyone's found fossilized organic sludge to give us an idea of what that early life might have looked like. However, this is a limitation of observational capabilities rather than an indictment of any theories about this period in Earth's history.
They keep bringing up the Pasteur thing. Months ago, over and over, we linked to scholarly discussions of Pasteur's work. Once I even linked to the Pasteur Institute in Paris. Countless times this "Pasteur proof" that abiogenesis is impossible has been debunked. Any creationoid who has been here for a few months has already been shown the error of that argument. Many times. Yet it keeps coming back. These "creation science" people are impossible to deal with. Utterly impossible.
The support of my position is in relation to the confusion that certain people rely on when evolution is discussed. Evolution is a theory in terms which we are discussing now. Evolution as a fact depends on the fact.
It is a fact that this is(represents) a fossil.
It is not a fact that it represents a stage of dinosaur evolution(fact or theory?).
It is a fact that this is a weed.
It is a theory that it evolved into Senecio eboracensis.
And what some say is that the facts do not support that theory. Archeopteryx is older that any purported predecessor, and the Oxford ragwort is itself a hybrid as is the Senecio. Here is what Dr. James Shapiro has to say.
Yaakov ...
James Shapiro |
Unless you've got something else, maybe?
The alternative explanation is the other side of the debate, right? (ID)
BTW, cannot both species have lived at the same time? For example, the two species sharks and men are currently living at the same time. If a billion years from now someone dug both sets of bones up in a different depth of soil would that someone "know" and say "proof" exists that a million years separated the time of the shark and man of today? Probably so, and that future someone would also be making an invalid assumption
An assumption is not proof.
First off, welome to these threads. I just started myself not too long ago, and I'm already thoroughly addicted!
It really sounds like what your'e asking for is for me to show you a frog morph into a lizard. I can't do that because the differneces between species and thus these "transitions" that everyone keeps talking about are very small. To my understanding, even punctuated equilibrium (http://ucsu.colorado.edu/~lemmon/Research/Paper-EG4-Gradualism.htm) occurs over many generations. These things have been observed in small organisms like bacteria and things with short reproductive cycles, but are usually dismissed as "microevolution" although I don't see the distinction. I CAN show you evolution in action, but you'd either have to accept fruit flies as an example or agree to wait until I find a cure for mortality in order to demonstrate "macroevolution". :)
Also, the distinction between two species is not always clear. The usual rule is that the two groups not be able to produce fertile offspring. Hence Donkeys and Horses are seperate species even though they can reproduce together, because Mules are sterile. Dogs and wolves, on the other hand, are usually classified as differnet species although I THINK they can produce viable offspring. On the other hand, Great Danes and Chihuahuas, while both undeniably dogs, would have a hard time mating naturally. The transitions get blurry. Where do you draw the line? Look at it one way and there are no transitionals, look at it another and EVERYTHING is a transitional. The distinctions we make between species are somewhat arbitrary, thus it gets easy to make unanswerable questions about transitions between species. These types of questions do nothing to disprove evolution, they merely point out difficulties in our categorization techniques.
I have a question that perhaps you can help me with. How did the billions of gallons of oil get to us? I've heard that oil normally originates from animal matter. If so, how did this happen? I personally have a hard time seeing how the oil got here if slowly evolving life has occured in the past.
The commonly accepted theory these days is that oil came from a period far in the past when there was a lot of plant life and other organic material. Very swamplike, to my understanding. This dead material decomposed and was covered up by layers and layers of soil and whatnot. These layers piled up over millions of years, burying the material under miles of rock, yadda, yadda, yadda.
The point is that oil was trapped underground because it is from primitive DEAD life forms from a SPECIFIC PERIOD in Earth's history. Life didn't go away afterwards, it just wasn't in an enviornment conducive to forming oil. That's why we have limited supplies.
So sinosauropteryx cannot be a predecessor of Archaeopteryx.
Assumptions are not proof. What we have is evidence (the fossils), a fact (that organisms change from generation to generation to fit their environments), and an inference (that critter B evolved from critter A). You might not like connecting dots, but other folks do it all the time.
I don't know what you're talking about here. Besides, Archie isn't really being proposed as a true transition between dinosaurs and birds. It's on kind of a side branch that seems to have died out. It's primary importance is proving that such a transition is clearly plausible because of it's incredible combination of dinosaur and bird features. It's just not close enough to be a true ancestor of modern birds.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/archaeopteryx/info.html#ancestry
As to the ragwort thing, check out my response to Halffull about the difficulties in drawing classification lines. Are hybrids new species? Were their 'parents' seperate species to begin with?
After disecting that enigmatic quote from Dr. Shapiro, I'd say he was accepting evolution in principle, but reconciled it with his faith by supposing the hand of a creator in subtly influencing events. (Please correct me if that's not correct, I had to infer a lot) As this position contradicts none of the evidence you've been arguing with me about, I would say that this is perfectly workable. What's the problem with evolution? What does it contradict in your faith that makes it so impossible to reconcile the two?
Good you agree. It does not jibe with what you state either. What do you stand with, your statement about finding fossils together and their relationship, or what the chart I presented illustrates?
Here's a page on how geologists determine time scales in different strata.
http://www.geo.ucalgary.ca/~macrae/timescale/timescale.html
Sharks and men might well be found in different DEPTHS but they would definitely be in the same general LAYER in geologic time. The absolute age of various strata can be determined by measuring the relative amounts of radioactive elements in them. These elements are like clocks and decay in a VERY predictable manner. Another link!
http://www.dc.peachnet.edu/~pgore/geology/geo102/radio.htm
This works best for igneous rocks, and the age of sedimentary layers must be inferred by other methods. Cool stuff.
The geology department is literally right down the hall from my office, but I know almost nothing about this kind of thing. I should try and go to a few lectures some time. That's why I love these debates, I'm constantly having to educate myself as I go along!
Dr. Shapiro has made no statement, of which I am aware, of his faith. He doubts what you appear to embrace, Darwinian or Neo-Darwinian theories of evolution. He has not expressed his view of ID, but the quote was from a discussion on "International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design". This group includes William Dembski and Michael Behe which will hurt Dr. Shapiro in the eyes of Darwininians.
The Archie is older than the Sino by about 15 million years. Plants hybridize. Animals hybridize. Are the hybrids new species? If they are does that demonstrate evolution? Is the camel/llama hybrid a new species?
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