Scientist: Evolution debate will soon be history

San Francisco Chronicle ^ | May 26, 2012 | FRANK ELTMAN

[eekitsagreek]

Richard Leakey predicts skepticism over evolution will soon be history.

Not that the avowed atheist has any doubts himself.

Sometime in the next 15 to 30 years, the Kenyan-born paleoanthropologist expects scientific discoveries will have accelerated to the point that "even the skeptics can accept it."

"If you get to the stage where you can persuade people on the evidence, that it's solid, that we are all African, that color is superficial, that stages of development of culture are all interactive," Leakey says, "then I think we have a chance of a world that will respond better to global challenges."

[OldNavyVet]

Oppressive colonialism.

Another factor in the religion of Islam ... where the (now) underlying message is "Convert or die."

[exDemMom]

The conflict is not with religion; the conflict is between mathematics, often called the queen of the sciences, and evolution which ought to be called the knave or joker of the sciences. Evolution is basically an ideological doctrine masquerading as a science theory. It requires an endless series of probabilistic miracles and posits that you should view your neighbor as a meat byproduct of random processes, rather than as a fellow child of God.

In real life, our living world is based on information and an information code more complex than C++, Java, or any other information system which man has yet devised:

What makes you think that the study of evolution is completely divorced from mathematics? They go hand-in-hand; without the heavy use of mathematics, there would be no study of evolution. This paper on the (independent) evolution of electrical systems in fish, for example, relies on some pretty heavy-duty mathematical analysis. Although the mathematical formulae are not presented in the paper, they are referenced.

Calling evolution an "ideological doctrine" rather than a basic theory of biology is nothing more than a malicious misrepresentation of what science is about. One needs look no further than organizations such as "Answers in Genesis" who promote "creation science" to realize the truth of that. To date, there is not a single FDA approved drug or medical treatment that was developed as a result of examining the Bible.

In real life, our living world is based on information and an information code more complex than C++, Java, or any other information system which man has yet devised:

In real life, the information code that organisms use is based on the four letters of DNA. That's all. Everything else is just the biological mechanism of converting that information into structure. And I really don't want to watch a 45 minute video which is most likely nothing more than an oversimplified version of what I spent years learning. The problem with simplification of science is that, often, it loses accuracy along with detail. I do not, as a rule, watch science programs aimed at lay people.

[MD Expat in PA]

Google searches on 'dinosaur' and 'soft tissue' or 'tyrannosaur' and 'soft tissue' turn up the fact that researchers have been finding soft tissue in dinosaur remains for the past ten years or so: which indicates that dinosaurs died out much more recently than 60M years ago.

No. No it doesn’t, not really and not at all. First of all the jury is still out whether what Mary Higby Schweitzer found back in 2005 was in fact dinosaur soft tissues but rather modern biofilm. “The scientists also dissolved bone in acid, as had been done previously, and found the same soft tissue structures. They conducted a comparison using infrared mass spectroscopy and determined the structures were more closely related to modern biofilm than modern collagen, extracellular proteins associated with bone. Carbon dating placed the origin at around 1960.”

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/07/080729234140.htm

And contrary to the claims of creationists who think this proves that dinosaurs died out within the last four thousand years, what other scientists after Mary Higby Schweitzer found was also not “red juicy meat”, or complete intact soft tissues but collagen, and that the found fragments all came from the same innermost part of the fibrils that make up microfibrils. The research team suggests that because they were so tightly wound, the microfibrils could have survived over millions of years. Again we are not talking about big chucks of red meat but of, after dissolving long ago fossilized bone in acids, rather finding microscopic fragments of what suggests or appears to be some sort of soft tissue fragments, blood cells and evidence of blood vessels. This does not prove the findings are “modern” or only a few thousand years old nor do the real scientists examining them claim them to be such, but it “may” further our understanding of how fossilization works and the timeline over which some tissues may be preserved under unique circumstances. Again the jury is still out on this one.

“The unfortunate side story to all the research done so far though, including these latest findings, is that thus far there is no way to definitively prove whether the soft tissue found inside that T. rex bone was in fact a remnant from its original owner, or something that came after. Thus, claims from both those supporting the idea that dinosaur tissue could have survived for millions of years, and those that think it’s nonsense, are likely to continue.”

http://phys.org/news/2011-06-evidence-dinosaur-soft-tissue.html

I would also point out that Dr. Schweitzer, while an evangelical Christian does not subscribe to “young Earth creationism” or that the dinosaur fossils she found and researched are only a few thousand years old.

“Young-earth creationists also see Schweitzer’s work as revolutionary, but in an entirely different way. They first seized upon Schweitzer’s work after she wrote an article for the popular science magazine Earth in 1997 about possible red blood cells in her dinosaur specimens. Creation magazine claimed that Schweitzer’s research was “powerful testimony against the whole idea of dinosaurs living millions of years ago. It speaks volumes for the Bible’s account of a recent creation.””

This drives Schweitzer crazy. Geologists have established that the Hell Creek Formation, where B. rex was found, is 68 million years old, and so are the bones buried in it. She’s horrified that some Christians accuse her of hiding the true meaning of her data. “They treat you really bad,” she says. “They twist your words and they manipulate your data.” For her, science and religion represent two different ways of looking at the world; invoking the hand of God to explain natural phenomena breaks the rules of science. After all, she says, what God asks is faith, not evidence. “If you have all this evidence and proof positive that God exists, you don’t need faith. I think he kind of designed it so that we’d never be able to prove his existence. And I think that’s really cool.”

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/dinosaur.html#ixzz1w5lAeNq7

A Google search on "Haldane dilemma", on the other hand, turns up the fact that the amount of time evolutionites actually NEED is going to be measured in quadrillions of years and not millions or hundreds of millions or billions or even trillions.

“Haldane's Dilemma refers to a limit on the speed of beneficial evolution, first calculated by J. B. S. Haldane in 1957, and clarified further by later commentators. Creationists, and proponents of intelligent design in particular, claim it remains unresolved. Contrary to creationist claims, Haldane's dilemma is of no importance in the evolutionary genetics literature. Today, Haldane's Dilemma is raised mostly by creationists opposed to evolution, who claim it is evidence against large-scale evolution, and a supposed example of negligence on the part of the scientific community.”

”Haldane stated at the time of publication "I am quite aware that my conclusions will probably need drastic revision", and subsequent corrected calculations found that the cost disappears. He had made an invalid simplifying assumption which negated his assumption of constant population size, and had also incorrectly assumed that two mutations would take twice as long to reach fixation as one, while sexual recombination means that two can be selected simultaneously so that both reach fixation more quickly. The creationist claim is based on further errors and invalid assumptions.”

For further debunking of the supposed Haldane dilemma by creationists read: http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2007/07/haldanes-nondil.html

Other evidence supports a much more recent die-out of dinosaurs; Google searches on "ica stones" as well as on 'dinosaurs' and 'petroglyphs' turn much of that up.

The “inca stones” were debunked as a modern hoax years ago although that doesn’t stop creationists from falsely claiming they are old and that they depict dinos roaming central America with modern humans, and those who also think the very same stones depict “ancient aliens” – queue the pic of the crazy ancient alien guy with the equally crazy hair. LOL!

Some petroglyphs said to depict dinosaurs have similarly been debunked or have been grossly misinterpreted. The very highly stylized and fanciful drawings are probably the artists’ representation of living creatures and or of imaginary creatures of the individual artists own creation and imagination. The ancient Greeks and Egyptians similarly depicted mythological beasts in their art work; three headed monsters and human animal hybrids but most rational and educated people do not interpret this to mean that Harpies and Gorgons and Centaurs and Cyclopes actually existed.

Think of it this way, say 20,000 years from now, a new human civilization with very little understanding or knowledge of our time and civilization except for a very few fragments of our existence, excavated the site of one of our modern art museum and came across a perfectly preserved Picasso painting from his “cubist” period and interpreting that to mean that humans 20,000 years ago must have looked like this:

People who have done the math claim that even if evolution could account for our present biosphere (it can't), it would take quadrillions of years to do so.

Yet these very same creationists like yourself have no problem what so ever claiming that ancient geologic features of the Earth like the Grand Canyon and the Himalayan Mountains came into existence some four thousand years ago over the course of a few weeks or months after a single flood. LOL!

[hopespringseternal]

And yes, I do mean sell: Gish, Behe, especially Hovind, all get money from going around peddling anti-science.

Please refute Behe by citing the scientific papers detailing the biochemical mechanisms 1) of evolution and 2) how certain biochemical mechanisms that Behe mentions actually evolved.

His charge is simply that you aren't doing your homework.

As far has making money on it goes, that is a standard democratic/leftist tactic. I am sure writing pro-evolution pieces is equally lucrative. Why the concern over having competing ideas? Isn't wanting to shut people up a little Orwellian?

[trubolotta]

If I took your response and substituted the words “common design mechanism’ for “evolutionary mechanism,” you would have obtained the same experimental results regardless of which theory is correct because they both allow the same outcome within the limits of your experiments. You made use of observed facts and knowledge you had acquired, not the theory of evolution (or intelligent design for that matter) itself.

Apparently, you had to account for micro-evolutionary, or what I prefer to call adaptive biological changes to provide some form of control for your experiment. Were you concerned the species under observation would change to another species? I don't think so. It might mutate, but it would still be a bacteria or whatever it was.

Your experiments prove neither evolution nor intelligent design, not that it was your intent. All I am saying is that your experiement considered known effects and the theoretical cause was not important since it was not your intent to prove that cause.

Things are “discovered” because people make observations or acquire existing knowledge and then ask questions. Without inquisitiveness, scientific discovery comes to a halt. It's one reason I find it objectionable to restrict scientific inquiry based on dogmatic beliefs, whether they are “accepted” or not. Evolutionist want to shut down any inquiry or discussion into the origin of species that does not conform to but one single criterion - there is no Creator, not stated as a theory, but as fact.

[exDemMom]

You say the Cambrian “explosion” took 70-80 million years, as if that is established fact. There is still massive debate over whether this took 10 million years or 100 million. And frankly, nobody knows. Did it take 80 millions years to develop eyes or develop skeletal systems? Call me skeptical, because the record doesn’t seem to show it.

The best estimates are that it took place over a span of 70-80 million years, but the fact is that the exact amount of time is irrelevant, even if it were knowable. We don't know exactly when Jesus was born, either, and that took place only 2,000 years ago. Should we doubt that Jesus was born because we don't have an exact time and date? No, no more than we should doubt that the Cambrian "explosion" actually took place over a vast period of time just because we can't determine exactly how long it took. The big picture take-home message is that it was not a sudden process, and it took place over a sufficient period of time to account for all the phyla that appeared in that time.

And, as to how long did it take to develop eyes or skeletal systems? I don't know. Furthermore, such a question cannot even be answered without precisely defining what you mean by each term, and exactly which kind of eye or skeletal system you are referring to. By skeletal systems, do you mean the crystalline skeletal systems of single cell diatoms? Or are you referring to the exterior chitinous covering of insects? Or maybe you mean the single structure that helps to stiffen squids, which is often found in parakeet cages? By eyes, do you mean the light-sensing spot of unicellular euglena, or the eye pits of many gastropods?

Thanks for informing me that the experts can identify the entire line of horses back to the fish. Please do me a favor and just list 20 or so predecessor creatures down the chain of evolution for the horse, in the direction of fish. Just the names are fine. I can Google the pictures.

Try googling the phylogenetic trees. You're basically insisting that I provide a name for every point along a continuum, which no one can do. And then, maybe you can answer this question, which I found here:

Creationists who wish to deny the evidence of horse evolution should careful consider this: how else can you explain the sequence of horse fossils? Even if creationists insist on ignoring the transitional fossils (many of which have been found), again, how can the unmistakable sequence of these fossils be explained? Did God create Hyracotherium, then kill off Hyracotherium and create some Hyracotherium-Orohippus intermediates, then kill off the intermediates and create Orohippus, then kill off Orohippus and create Epihippus, then allow Epihippus to "microevolve" into Duchesnehippus, then kill off Duchesnehippus and create Mesohippus, then create some Mesohippus-Miohippus intermediates, then create Miohippus, then kill off Mesohippus, etc.....each species coincidentally similar to the species that came just before and came just after?

(I will point out that I do not use the term "creationist" as the word was used in the above quote without specifying that I only refer to those who believe the book of Genesis is a literal account of a creation event that occurred 6,000 years ago--eDM.)

[varmintman]

“Haldane's Dilemma refers to a limit on the speed of beneficial evolution, first calculated by J. B. S. Haldane in 1957, and clarified further by later commentators. Creationists, and proponents of intelligent design in particular, claim it remains unresolved. Contrary to creationist claims, Haldane's dilemma is of no importance in the evolutionary genetics literature. Today, Haldane's Dilemma is raised mostly by creationists opposed to evolution, who claim it is evidence against large-scale evolution, and a supposed example of negligence on the part of the scientific community.”

As I mentioned previously, the Haldane dilemma is basically arithmetic and not mathematics and is simple enough that I believe I could explain it to dogs and cats and most of them would understand it.

[trubolotta]

What makes you think that the study of evolution is completely divorced from mathematics? They go hand-in-hand; without the heavy use of mathematics, there would be no study of evolution. This paper on the (independent) evolution of electrical systems in fish, for example, relies on some pretty heavy-duty mathematical analysis. Although the mathematical formulae are not presented in the paper, they are referenced.

From what I could learn from that article, the fish are still fish. The data analysis, whether it proves convergence or divergence, is just a tool. The same for the time line regressions. The product of the tool is no better than the assumptions that went into its use. I'll take the article at face value proving that beneficial traits can be enhanced in similar species over some period of time. It is not a rigorous mathematical treatment of the time line because it is dependent on assumptions for initial conditions and regression rates. Choosing the right assumptions, I could use those formulas to prove the fish changed in one week. I don't belive that, but my perfect math would lead to ridiculous conclusions.

[MD Expat in PA]

As I mentioned previously, the Haldane dilemma is basically arithmetic and not mathematics and is simple enough that I believe I could explain it to dogs and cats and most of them would understand it.

So Arithmetic is not at all related to Mathematics? On what alternate mathematically impaired universe do you live in? Never mind, you are a creationist and so math and time and physics means whatever you want it to mean based on whatever biblical narrative you wish to “explain” away in contrary to what is known of the physical world.

Of course you can also teach a simple horse to count and do simple Arithmetic or simple Mathematics like 1+1 = 2 but that doesn’t make the horse a Mathematician or well versed in Arithmetic or Calculus or in Biology, but it does make a for a pretty cool parlor trick for the very gullible like yourself.

Counting Horse

[trubolotta]

Try googling the phylogenetic trees. You're basically insisting that I provide a name for every point along a continuum, which no one can do. And then, maybe you can answer this question, which I found here:

I see convincing proof of microevolution, but not macroevolution. What happened to the fins, gill slits, scales, mud puppy legs, claws, feathers or whatever there was before it looked like a horse? They all look like horses to me. Also, the assertions in the quoted passage are just straw men. The author can't win the logical argument so he'll make the opposition look like morons by claiming they have beliefs that they don't.

Well, it's time for me to stretch my Neanderthal knuckles and drag them over to the wife and retreat to our cave. It's been interesting and I truly appreciate all the links that everyone was kind enough to provide. Thanks.

[varmintman]

What I meant was that the Haldane dilemma is so simple that it's basically unarguable. Once again:

Imagine a population of 100,000 apes or “proto-humans” ten million years ago which are all genetically alike other than for two with a “beneficial mutation”. Imagine also that this population has the human or proto-human generation cycle time of roughly 20 years.

Imagine that the beneficial mutation in question is so good, that all 99,998 other die out immediately (from jealousy), and that the pair with the beneficial mutation has 100,000 kids and thus replenishes the herd.

Imagine that this process goes on like that for ten million years, which is more than anybody claims is involved in “human evolution”. The max number of such “beneficial mutations” which could thus be substituted into the herd would be ten million divided by twenty, or 500,000 point mutations which, Remine notes, is about 1/100 of one percent of the human genome, and a miniscule fraction of the 2 to 3 percent that separates us from chimpanzees, or the half of that which separates us from neanderthals.

That basically says that even given a rate of evolutionary development which is fabulously beyond anything which is possible in the real world, starting from apes, in ten million years the best you could possibly hope for would be an ape with a slightly shorter tail.

---

The ONLY halfway rational argument I'd ever expect to hear would be that changes must have occurred in bunches. The problem is that if such a thing as a "beneficiial mutation(TM)" exists at all, it's hellishly rare, and the overwhelming bulk of all mutations are harmful. Therefore if mutations occur in bunches, the species will die out.

Haldane himself was a committed evolutionite and assumed he'd discovered a minor logical problem with the theory and that somebody would eventually figure out what he was looking at the wrong way, but nobody ever did. The man who has brought the topic back into vogue recently is Walter Remine. Evolosers hate it, but they don't have any real argument or case against it.

[varmintman]

Google searches on 'dinosaur' and 'soft tissue' or 'tyrannosaur' and 'soft tissue' turn up the fact that researchers have been finding soft tissue in dinosaur remains for the past ten years or so: which indicates that dinosaurs died out much more recently than 60M years ago.

No it doesn’t, not really and not at all.

http://www.icr.org/article/4827/

"....Yet another hadrosaur has been described by UK scientists as "absolutely gobsmacking."8 Its tissues were "extremely well preserved" and contained "soft-tissue replacement structures and associated organic compounds."9...."

[SoFloFreeper]

On the bright side, Leakey at least ADMITS he was born in Kenya.

[exDemMom]

Please refute Behe by citing the scientific papers detailing the biochemical mechanisms 1) of evolution and 2) how certain biochemical mechanisms that Behe mentions actually evolved.

First of all, biochemical mechanisms of evolution do not evolve: they are the physical consequences of matter behaving according to immutable physical law. Furthermore, the term "biochemical mechanisms of evolution" is rather vague. Does that refer to the processes that alter DNA bases (e.g. A becomes G)? Or to one of the many processes of DNA repair that have widely variable rates of accuracy? Does it refer to the mechanisms of chromosome cross-over and rearrangement? Gene duplication? Horizontal gene transfer? Or, maybe could that be a reference to transposons? Perhaps those "biochemical mechanisms of evolution" do not refer so much to the behavior of DNA as a result of the laws of physics so much as they refer to the environmental pressures that cause organisms with certain configurations of DNA to survive better than those with other DNA configurations. I really can't tell.

His charge is simply that you aren't doing your homework.

No, I've done my homework. Behe is simply a charlatan who has a legitimate degree in biochemistry and chooses to use it in a dishonest, anti-science manner. He's not the first person to misuse a good education for personal profit, and, sadly, he won't be the last.

As far has making money on it goes, that is a standard democratic/leftist tactic. I am sure writing pro-evolution pieces is equally lucrative. Why the concern over having competing ideas? Isn't wanting to shut people up a little Orwellian?

Let me see--scientists who want to publish their "pro-evolution pieces", i.e., the results of their research, do not get paid for publishing these results. Some journals charge publication fees; PLoS One, for example, charges a fee of $1,350. Journals also charge more to print color graphics than black and white (and almost all scientific publications contain some sort of graphics). With the hefty fees so many journals charge for publishing, I fail to see how any scientist can make money by publishing.

On the other hand, I can look at websites promoting young earth creationism and see that they both ask for donations and sell merchandise. For example, right at the top of Answers in Genesis (.org), there is a store offering several categories of merchandise, as well as a "support" where you can volunteer your time, make donations, and even set up regular monthly donations. Apparently, anti-science is quite lucrative, for those with no morals.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

I seriously doubt this debate will ever be over.

[exDemMom]

From what I could learn from that article, the fish are still fish. The data analysis, whether it proves convergence or divergence, is just a tool. The same for the time line regressions. The product of the tool is no better than the assumptions that went into its use. I'll take the article at face value proving that beneficial traits can be enhanced in similar species over some period of time. It is not a rigorous mathematical treatment of the time line because it is dependent on assumptions for initial conditions and regression rates. Choosing the right assumptions, I could use those formulas to prove the fish changed in one week. I don't belive that, but my perfect math would lead to ridiculous conclusions.

That article was discussing merely one facet of the independent evolution of a similar trait--that of being able to generate electricity--that arose independently in two different species of fish. Like millions of other scientific articles, it was focused on one aspect of the evolution of one trait, and was not meant to be an all-inclusive review of the entire evolutionary process that led to the existence of the two fish species being discussed. Of course those fish are still fish. My purpose in linking that article was to give a small idea of how much the science of evolution--whether one is considering the evolution of a single trait, or the evolution of an entire population--is dependent on the discipline of mathematics. That particular paper depended heavily on statistics. Others use different mathematics disciplines to analyze their data. In any case, I was rebutting the claim that evolution science is somehow divorced from mathematics, which it is not.

That post which I was rebutting also made another error that I did not correct, which is that mathematics is a pure science. It isn't: mathematics is the method we use to try to describe the physical world in terms humans can understand. Physics, not math, is the basis of all science.

[exDemMom]

I see convincing proof of microevolution, but not macroevolution. What happened to the fins, gill slits, scales, mud puppy legs, claws, feathers or whatever there was before it looked like a horse? They all look like horses to me. Also, the assertions in the quoted passage are just straw men. The author can't win the logical argument so he'll make the opposition look like morons by claiming they have beliefs that they don't.

Well, it's time for me to stretch my Neanderthal knuckles and drag them over to the wife and retreat to our cave. It's been interesting and I truly appreciate all the links that everyone was kind enough to provide. Thanks.

The only reason "microevolution" exists is that the evidence of evolution is so voluminous that the charlatans who sell young earth creationism had to come up with *some* way to explain away the evidence while still claiming to support young earth creationism. Scientifically, the only difference between "microevolution" and "macroevolution" is the scale. Furthermore, "microevolution" is not supported by Genesis any more than "macroevolution" is.

BTW, you might want to look again at the earlier "horses". They look more like dogs. It took several million years for a distinctly equine animal to develop.

[exDemMom]

If I took your response and substituted the words “common design mechanism’ for “evolutionary mechanism,” you would have obtained the same experimental results regardless of which theory is correct because they both allow the same outcome within the limits of your experiments. You made use of observed facts and knowledge you had acquired, not the theory of evolution (or intelligent design for that matter) itself.

Actually, not. The way I phrase the assumptions that go into my hypothesis drastically affect the final formulation of the hypothesis, and the experiments I design to test it. If I were to assume "common design" instead of natural physical processes, the resulting hypothesis would be completely different, and it is doubtful that any experiment I could design to test it would return useful results. GIGO is just as relevant to biology as it is to computer programming.

Apparently, you had to account for micro-evolutionary, or what I prefer to call adaptive biological changes to provide some form of control for your experiment. Were you concerned the species under observation would change to another species? I don't think so. It might mutate, but it would still be a bacteria or whatever it was.

The term "adaptive" is highly misleading. No species actually adapts, since that implies a consciously guided process. What happens is that random mutations occur (they cannot be avoided), and the random mutants that are better suited to a specific environment have a survival advantage over those that aren't suited to that particular environment. There is no conscious thought involved, it just happens. Furthermore, the only substantive difference between "micro" and "macro" evolution is the time scale--"micro" occurs over a "short" time and "macro" over a long time, although exact definitions of either term are seriously lacking.

What I was concerned about in my experiments was that the cell lines I ended my experiments with were sufficiently similar to those I began with to be able to make the claim that I was experimenting on the same cell line throughout the course of the experiment. Even with taking precautions to avoid any kind of selective pressure on the cells, they mutate with every generation. Mutation is a main driving force of evolution and cannot be prevented. Controlling for it is a HUGE concern for anyone doing work with microorganisms or cell lines.

Things are “discovered” because people make observations or acquire existing knowledge and then ask questions. Without inquisitiveness, scientific discovery comes to a halt. It's one reason I find it objectionable to restrict scientific inquiry based on dogmatic beliefs, whether they are “accepted” or not. Evolutionist want to shut down any inquiry or discussion into the origin of species that does not conform to but one single criterion - there is no Creator, not stated as a theory, but as fact.

We use the theory of evolution because it works. Were we to try to force science to conform to a dogmatic belief like young earth creationism, scientific advance would indeed grind to a halt. Scientists can't afford to be beholden to any dogmatic belief--the public that places their confidence in our ability to advance the practice of medicine through scientific discovery wouldn't stand for it. And, despite the efforts of young earth creationist charlatans to depict us as being devoted to "proving" the non-existence of God, that really isn't what we're about. We couldn't disprove the existence of God if we wanted to; the scientific method can't do that. Religion is not a scientific exercise; science is not a religious exercise. They are separate and different, and each one has its place.

[hopespringseternal]

Perhaps those "biochemical mechanisms of evolution" do not refer so much to the behavior of DNA as a result of the laws of physics so much as they refer to the environmental pressures that cause organisms with certain configurations of DNA to survive better than those with other DNA configurations. I really can't tell.

So you know Behe is a charlatan but you aren't familiar enough with his work to have a clue what I am talking about in reference to his work?

No, I've done my homework. Behe is simply a charlatan who has a legitimate degree in biochemistry and chooses to use it in a dishonest, anti-science manner. He's not the first person to misuse a good education for personal profit, and, sadly, he won't be the last.

I am unclear, are you attacking personal profit, or Behe's charge?

Let me see--scientists who want to publish their "pro-evolution pieces", i.e., the results of their research, do not get paid for publishing these results.

I am not talking about research, I am talking about "The God Delusion", for example. Of course I would rather judge the ideas in a book, as opposed to its specific publishing arrangement with the author.

Apparently, anti-science is quite lucrative, for those with no morals.

So anyone who disagrees with you is an immoral anti-scientist out for profit? To you this is a scientific argument?

[trubolotta]

So anyone who disagrees with you is an immoral anti-scientist out for profit? To you this is a scientific argument?

That about sums up any attempt of a discussion with exDemMom. It's also frustrating when someone attaches their inferred meanings to words that have an adequately explicit and commonly accepted connotation. It becomes pointless to make an earnest reply.

I have done quite a bit of reading between posts and conclude without hesitation that most of the controversy about evolution comes from evolutionist, who must be anti-science charlatans if they contradict exDemMom.

By the way, most evolutionists are funded by research grants or the institutions that employ them. This is not work they do out of pure benevolence in their spare time. Everyone has to make a living.