Posted on 12/09/2003 7:47:21 AM PST by PatrickHenry
The Roman Republic lasted longer than 200 years.
Creationists claim evolution is not a legitimate theory, because it can't be reproduced in the laboratory. And when it is reproduced in the laboratory, they claim it isn't evolution, because there's human intervention!
It's a perfect argument, unless you care about reason, logic, and intellectual honesty
As did Athens. Praise Zeus!
Time flies like a jet plane, fruit flies like a little footsie.
http://www.hyperdictionary.com/dictionary/chromosomal+mutation
Here is how a PERFECT (notice that it was the scientist that claimed this perfection) experiment to prove that evolution brings about new species would work--
The lab would have to recreate the natural conditions--the isolation and environmental "rewards" that a species reportedly enjoys upon its fortuitous mutation. In thousands (millions?) of generations of fruit flies playing out their agonies in laboratories, this has yet to happen.
So the scientist speeds up the (natural, we assume) process by delving into the cell and its DNA--with powerful digital microscopes, I presume. This cannot possibly happen naturally on its own--how can this reasonably be called anything but a genetic model? This is just a kind of cloning, utterly artificial.
It's based on the same overweening, breathtaking assumption that evolutionists have always made--
This "perfect" experiment is to evolution as cloning is to natural reproduction.
The Roman Republic is closer to Saudi Arabia in freedom and wealth than it is to the USA.
Of course, you're well aware that since evolution under 'natural conditions' for higher animals takes hundreds or thousands of years, this is impossible.
When people study the reactions in the sun's core, do you need to build a mini-sun to understand them? Of courese not; physicists extrapolate from data obtained in accelerators, and from QCD models of the nucleus. But they've never probed matter at the temperatures and densities in the sun- that would be utterly impossible.
Likewise, we are sure that neutron stars exist, and we understand a lot of their behavior. Yet it is unlikely we can ever create bulk matter condensed into neutrons, because the densities necessary to do that are beyond our capabilities to create. We extrapolate their properties from data collected under other conditions, assuming the same scietific laws prevail.
In many scientific fields, we sometimes extrapolate from laboratory experiments to natural systems which are much bigger, change more slowly, or are at temperatures and pressures we can't attain. Why is it only when evolution does this that people object?
That might be a good analogy, but only if there were people running around claiming that reproduction of any kind is entirely impossible. All that you've done here is beat up on a strawman.
On the other hand, there actually are people (creationists) who have been running around for generations claiming that speciation is impossible, never been observed, can't happen, mutations are either deadly or accomplish nothing, each biblical "kind" is immutable, and any new species is therefore a divinely caused miracle. That, in a nutshell, is the central "scientific" claim of creationism.
The import of the experiment is its demonstration that speciation is not only possible, but it's something that even we mere mortals can accomplish in a short period of time. The same mechanisms -- not this exact example, of course -- played out "in the wild" over millions of years (which is evolution in a nutshell) are therefore possible, comprehensible, and [gasp!] not miraculous.
Saudi Arabia is a monarchy. The Roman Republic was indeed a republic; it gradually increased the franchise, eventually to include all Roman citizens (just as the US did), and in fact enfranchised all of Italy; it became very wealthy by the standards of the time after the Punic Wars. The Roman republic was taken in many places as a model for the US constitution; the authors of the Federalist papers called themselves Publius, and the author of the anti-federalist papers Brutus.
The notions of political freedom of the Enlightenment owed far more to Greece and Rome (both polytheist societies where the gods were not by and large the source of or models for ethics) than to anything in the Judaeo-Christian tradition. The Jews never had a republic; and Christianity was largely authoritarian, the Pope having essentially monarchical power for much of Christian history. The non-Christian world of 1000 BC - 0 BC probably was far more democratic than the world in the first millenium of Christian ascendancy (say 300 AD - 1300 AD).The middle ages were in general undemocratic.
Finally, a quote from Federalist 63 (Madison), discussing the need for a Senate:
It adds no small weight to all these considerations, to recollect that history informs us of no long-lived republic which had not a senate. Sparta, Rome, and Carthage are, in fact, the only states to whom that character can be applied....
In the most pure democracies of Greece, many of the executive functions were performed, not by the people themselves, but by officers elected by the people, and REPRESENTING the people in their EXECUTIVE capacity.
Prior to the reform of Solon, Athens was governed by nine Archons, annually ELECTED BY THE PEOPLE AT LARGE. The degree of power delegated to them seems to be left in great obscurity. Subsequent to that period, we find an assembly, first of four, and afterwards of six hundred members, annually ELECTED BY THE PEOPLE; and PARTIALLY representing them in their LEGISLATIVE capacity, since they were not only associated with the people in the function of making laws, but had the exclusive right of originating legislative propositions to the people. The senate of Carthage, also, whatever might be its power, or the duration of its appointment, appears to have been ELECTIVE by the suffrages of the people. Similar instances might be traced in most, if not all the popular governments of antiquity.
Lastly, in Sparta we meet with the Ephori, and in Rome with the Tribunes; two bodies, small indeed in numbers, but annually ELECTED BY THE WHOLE BODY OF THE PEOPLE, and considered as the REPRESENTATIVES of the people, almost in their PLENIPOTENTIARY capacity. The Cosmi of Crete were also annually ELECTED BY THE PEOPLE, and have been considered by some authors as an institution analogous to those of Sparta and Rome, with this difference only, that in the election of that representative body the right of suffrage was communicated to a part only of the people.
I claim Janes Madison for my side :-)
What? This is a crevo thread. No one concedes anything. Not ever.
?? I've turned this sentence around and upside down a few times and have yet to understand it. I'd appreciate a fuller explanation. Seems to me that it's the scientists doing the running around making claims of the impossible. It's up to them to demonstrate the truth of what to me sounds like veriest dogma.
Dogma because--All ID and creationism aside, the theory of evolution as many species originating from a few has seemed to me to be absurd on its face. Evolution is a highly useful descriptive tool--but the "proof" that exists demonstrates to me, absolutely speaking, only the interrelatedness of life, not the beginnings of species. This notion of spontaneous speciation does require two to tango--so these scientists are going to have to create a female from the rib of the male fruit fly for this all to fly. In nature, something like this would have to happen at the same time the fortuitous new species develops...he needs a helpmeet. Then many other fortuitous things must happen, in fortuitous order, for that brand new fruit fly X to become....what? Among mammals, this kind of cross-speciation creates a mule, and that's a cul-de-sac, no? After a while, one can't do without laughing. It just cannot be how we happened--and this petri dish artifice proves only the cleverness (though never as clever as they think they are) of the scientists. This does not mean that ID or creationism is the answer--only that this explanation is not.
re: The import of the experiment is its demonstration that speciation is not only possible, but it's something that even we mere mortals can accomplish in a short period of time.)))
Well, we mortals are capable of all kinds of genetic tinkering. That this tinkering results in monsters both useful and curious is not surprising given our advances in microscopic "surgeries." But nature does not have a surgeon, right? If you'd care to reread your sentence above, there is an element of "we are all gods now" to it, rather than "this proves our descent from other organisms."
The hydrogen bomb was a helpful model. Sounds like you give up easily.
re: But they've never probed matter at the temperatures and densities in the sun- that would be utterly impossible.)))
Then one ought always to place qualifiers on assumptions made about the unexplorable and unprovable.
re: Of course, you're well aware that since evolution under 'natural conditions' for higher animals takes hundreds or thousands of years, this is impossible.)))
I can't deny that this is the limitation in the experiment, but at what point does this become a catchall excuse? I am reminded of Professor Hans Vaving--"And zen zis ting occurs"--with his hands waving over the inexplicably enormous assumption that must be made. Aren't scientists supposed to be skeptical of such things? Why are there fewer species of complex organisms all the time, rather than more?
re: In many scientific fields, we sometimes extrapolate from laboratory experiments to natural systems which are much bigger, change more slowly, or are at temperatures and pressures we can't attain. Why is it only when evolution does this that people object?)))
For starters, step back and taste a bit of the hubris in the atmosphere of this article's writing. You have to really search to find the qualifiers--there is no new species here that I can find, only the suggestion that there probably will be, once Mrs. Fruit Fly proves herself. And delving into the DNA may create a good model, but it has human fingerprints all over it. How can it possibly be called a natural process?
It's hard to hold back the hubris when grant money is at stake, though.
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