Posted on 09/20/2006 9:51:34 AM PDT by SirLinksalot
This is a statement of the main points of why a lot of mathematicians, when they consider the evidence, tend to be skeptical about the Darwinian theory of evolution.
I'll make some popcorn.
10...9...8...
(countdown to the arrival of the militant anti-Creationists)
If evolution is an ongoing process, and all living things start at the same point, then by now there should be not only sentient humans, but fish, birds and reptiles, etc. Why would just one of the myriad species evolve to a superior position, and not the others......
Bookmarked - thanks for posting.
$1,000,000 reward to the first evolutionist to get life to evolve from any sort of primordial soup in a reproducible fashion. Or shut up.
IMHO, random genetic mutation is almost certainly not the change agent of evolution. I'm not saying I know what is, but the evidence is against this.
It is amusing to watch all this dialog about irreduceable complexity, as if it had suddenly been "discovered" by the Intelligent Design "movement." William Paley (1743-1805) spoke of this very thing in his Natural Theology, showing how ecological interrelationships and interdependences made no sense under evolutionary assumptions; but he did not have the tools then to extend his argument all the way into topics like mitochondrial processes, the intricacies of repair and replication of DNA or RNA etc.
Evolutionists used to reject the teleological argument (design logic) until, they said, someone could show that certain natural assemblages in nature had a machinelike quality. Modern biochemistry has now shone exactly this--over, and over, and over.
Make mine non-fat kettle corn please!
Ping!
"$1,000,000 reward to the first evolutionist to get life to evolve from any sort of primordial soup in a reproducible fashion. Or shut up."
I'll take option two. I will become an evolutionist this afternoon - then I will shut up. I will email the bank account number into which to deposit the funds.
And thanks!
Wait. If I become an evolutionist, option two is not possible. Never mind...
What if he prays for success and gets it? =]
Never mind them, I'll do their work for them:
"The author of this piece is an idiot, with a diploma from a degree mill, who is such a fool, he probably couldn't even get a job teaching at Bob Jones."
I'm sure they will have some invective of their own, but that should give them a good start.
How utterly predictible. Yawn.
Evolution: The Hopeful Monster Theory :-)
The problem is that this is not an issue of the evidence or the facts but the stories that connect the evidence and the facts. That is, can I concoct a credible explaination for the facts I see?
The answer is, of course I can. And when I do, I will concoct one that fits with my worldview because that's the framework from which I view the evidence.
Today's scientists try to pretend they have no worldview and therefore the stories are as valid as the evidence or the facts they use to construct them. If they want to make their research really useful, they will admit the worldview at the start. This gives them both a coherent framework within which to work, and a view of that framework from which to critique their work. Both are invaluable in moving from the story to the truth.
Shalom.
There's the flaw in his argument. He's demanding a specific change, and saying it either requires long odds or teleology. He's right...but that's not how evolution works.
In the real world, random changes occur first, and only afterwards is it selected based upon fitness. But fit for what purpose? Even that is unspecified before the change occurs! Organisms either find uses for the changes that their given, or they don't. If they find a use, and it helps the organism survive, then the change looks somehow preordained, and the odds against it seem long. But it's only teleological in the Pee-wee Herman sense: "I meant to do that!"
Your definition of "superior" is biased. Intelligence is not necessarily an advantage. If deer devoted a higher percentage of their bodymass to their brains (and became smarter), then a lower percentage of their bodymass would be devoted to muscle and digestion.
That may not seem like a big deal, but a smart deer that can't outrun a wolf is dinner. Moreover, a smart deer that doesn't have a gut complex enough to digest cellulose isn't going to survive. If you look, you'll see that extant species have evolved to reach "superior positions" -- biologists call that finding a niche. But that niche can take any number of forms.
Okay, then why did humans continue to evolve if there was no impetus to do so?.......
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