Posted on 05/21/2003 4:53:28 PM PDT by blam
Actually they did (leaving aside for the moment that NO scientific theory is "proven"). If fact Darwin devoted and entire chapter of the Origin to hybridism.
Congratulations yourself! So you think you can justify darwinism by tweaking definitions? If so, you are drop-kicking it right back to the realm it belongs: the theoretical.
Too bad SJ Gould and a host of other professionals weren't aware of this. It would have come in handy. Despite the noisy chatter of the usual suspects, there still exist - by the admission of professional evolutionists- no transitional forms.
Well, yes, of course, but here's that moving the goal post strategy. The normal (and only reasonably objective and operational) definition of "macro-evolution" is "evolution above the species level," as opposed to microevolution being evolution which does not surpass that species level. Therefore any evolutionary process which leads to the creation of a new species is macroevolutionary.
Creationists cannot accept this definition of macroevolution, since (the vast majority) do not hold to fixity of species, and would therefore have to admit that "macroevolution" occurs. So for them "macroevolution" would mean the evolution of a new "kind". But since there is no definition of "kind," or even correspondence with the abstraction of a higher taxa, then, to adapt what you said in a prior message: "[Macro]Evolution doesn't happen because the boundaries of [the creationist] taxonomy [of 'created kinds'] are adjusted."
If only this were true. I could name names and give examples, but wish to avoid another food fight. Those who are truly "un"-postmodern would reject certain contradictory concepts such as spontaneous generation. It is characteristic of postmodernists to not only suspend logic but actually reject it when convenient. Logic tells us that it is impossible for life to create itself. It also tells us that chance could not have created this biosphere. That is why the Anthropic Principle is gaining proponents.
But the postmodern mind sees things differently. They observe that we exist and that the universe exists. They presuppose (a priori) that the cause of this existence must necessarily be limited by the constraints of materialism. They then draw improper conclusions based on improper a priori suppositions. Data that does not fit their presuppositions is simply rejected.
You are then making macroevolution dependent on the accuracy of taxonomic classifications. Taxonomy is admittedly dynamic. If evolution happened, it didn't happen because we defined it into existence. The theory of evolution should be descriptive but often becomes prescriptive and even proscriptive. Taxonomy can only be properly descriptive.
Spot On. We also find the creationists arguing, like wishy-washy libs, for intellectual affirmative action in the classroom and textbooks.
I used to go down to Austin occassionaly and listen to (fundamentalist activists) Mel and Norma Gabler at textbook hearings. It was ironic. As to every subject other than science, or even in science with respect to environmentalism, I would be cheering them on as they inveighed against special interest or socially driven relativism (e.g. history books that devoted as much space to Marilyn Monroe as to Abraham Lincoln).
With respect to every subject except evolution and the age of the earth, they argued with reasonable consistency (if, admittedly, not always with well-informed accuracy) for a hard-nosed curricula that should exclude the junk and stick to proven and recognized scholarship. When it did come to evolution their arguments, with adjustments for context, were the same as feckless liberals who wanted inclusion of, or more sensitivity towards, various minority viewpoints.
The contrast and gear-shifting was dramatic, not that they would ever notice.
Well then what are we to make from this comment in another portion of your cited source?
Coelacanths have not changed much over the past 380 million years. The skeleton of Macropoma lewesiensis, which is known from the upper Cretaceous, is virtually identical to that of the coelacanths caught off Sodwana Bay, Latimeria chalumnae, and differs little from the skeleton of most Devonian coelacanths.
Can you provide even one example of a "professional evolutionist" (which we can take to mean an evolutionist who has published original research regarding evolution in the professional scientific literature) who hs said this in, say, the last hundred years?
Please note that this would not include evolutionist who note that transitionals are lacking in some particular lineage, or at some particular point in that lineage, or who are discussing the difficulties of working out the exact topography of thereof (i.e. saying what precisely is directly ancestral to what). I want an evolutionist who clearly says there are no transitionals AT ALL, because this is what you just claimed.
O.K., so far so good. All evolutionists here that I know of do indeed reject spontaneous generation (as the term is normally used, in the sense the Pasteur for instance addressed it, meaning the origin of life from non-life as a mundane and recurring process of nature). Many of us presume that life probably did arise initially through some process of chemical evolution, but not by "spontaneous generation".
Logic tells us no such thing.
Neither does logic tell us this. What fairy dust sprinkles your logic?
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