Fact, Fable, and Darwin (If you haven't read this already, you should!!!)

American Enterprise Magazine ^ | 8/04 | Rodney Stark

[whattajoke]

You're the best! you are my favorite creationist. You have a knack for stumbling and bumbling over and through pretty much every goofy creationist idea, with no regard for what you are actually typing. Awesome. How do you know a bat without wings never existed.

Um, because they wouldn't be bats, by definition. (Keep in mind, please use a dictionary or zoology text when looking up what bats are. For, as I'm sure you know, the Bible calls bats "fowl," which, as I'm sure you know, happen to be avian, something which, as I'm sure you know, bats are not. Bats are mammals. Not birds. Fowl are birds. Not mammals. Careful where you learn your biology from.

Of course, bats are a creationist favorite (after the eye and bombadier beetles) since someone once learned that their fossil record is spotty (due to their habitats and tiny/brittle bones). So they get picked on. But, if you did a google search and weeded out the creationist sites, you could actually learn a thing or two.

And btw, why would I particularly care one way or another if either foxes or squirrels can glide?

Well, I think I know why you wouldn't care. Because you have no thirst for knowledge about the natural world around you. Others, however, may find gliding mammals (and reptiles and fish) rather an interesting evolutionary adaptation. "Hmmm," an inquisitive bloke might say, "All the squirrels I know can't glide. I wonder why these particular ones do. Perhaps, in their niche, their is an advantage to gliding, whereas in my backyard there isn't. I wonder why that is." Then they'd google something.

[Right Wing Professor]

Creationists have rightly responded by pointing out that Archaeopteryx is a mosaic of fully-formed reptilian features and fully-formed avian features, not a half- reptile/half-bird.

Then they're wrong. Archaepoteryx's wing is certainly not the fully formed wing of a modern bird.

And you haven't given a usable cite to Gould and Eldriodge 1977,

BTW, have I mentioned that I love Google...,

You're evidently one of the many under the mistaken impression that cutting and pasting other people's statements is the same as writing a response.

[gobucks]

The people on FreeRepublic who defend Evolution seem to principally argue from an Ad Hominen stance. Get used to it. Sigh.

The attacks can indeed be biting; can't say I really blame them for the intensity of their defensiveness. I would offer the following, however.

A Darwinist, like a Creationist, or Buddaist, or Hindu, or Red Chinese Communist Party Politboro member ... they all have in common a hard-wired need for 'God' (their hot denials notwithstanding). A Darwinist is especially vocifierous b/c of the limits of their experience.

But I have met several highly trained scientists who are also ardent Christians (and I haven't met a single Christian who utterly rejects outright ALL science) ... and for these Christians, an extra dimension of experience is theirs from which they draw knowledge ... and security. Not so for a Darwinist who KNOWS that to acknowledge a creator is to essentially kill an identity within himself. And thus, out of all faiths, fundamentalist Christianity is the greatest perceived threat to their survival. To them, it really is all about survival, spiritual survival.

Why submit to a 'Jealous God' who seems to endlessly limit the whims of appetite, when their experience base reveals that pleasure is obtained through pursuing the pulses of appetite (primarily the hunger for the lime light in scientific conferences/journals) - and the imitation spiritual experiences embedded therein?

If imitation is the best there is, by gum, its the REAL DEAL ... so how DARE Christians attempt to point the way to a more 'authentic' way of life?

That all said, I wouldn't 'get used to it'. The very fact so many of them bother to attempt to engage so many of us, even on so negative terms, is a very good sign. We're to heed them as they arise...and witness to the extent we can. Ridicule is a far better indicator of what we're about than indifference.

[Right Wing Professor]

No, I think it's clear in the discussion what has been talked about.

Yes, it is quite clear. You said in 112 that there are no transitional fossils. I gave one. You haven't made any serious attempt to dispute that Archaeopteryx is transitional.

Show the fish growing legs, arms and lungs, etc.

I have a reptile with wings and feathers. I can give you a fish - amphibian transitional if you want, but let's have the verdict on my reptile-bird transitional first. Why isn't it a transitional?

[Lurking Libertarian]

Transitional placemarker.

[Right Wing Professor]

Your trantional placemarker isn't really transitional, it's a fully-developed placemarker. A transitional placemarker wouold look like this:

Tr_ns__onal _lace_ark__

Science has never found one of those. Therefore evolution is wrong.

[Right Wing Professor]

The very fact so many of them bother to attempt to engage so many of us, even on so negative terms, is a very good sign.

I engage you because I care about conservatism, and I'd hate to reliquish it to biblical literalists, because I feel that would result in it becoming a perpetually shrunken political movement.

[siunevada]

Not a single one of your mined quotes discusses "natural selection".

Thus there is a paradox. Both nucleic acids and proteins are required to function before selection can act at present, and yet the origin of this association is too improbable to have occurred without selection. (T. Dobzhansky et al, Evolution, 1977, 359)

I'm not saying this thought is so convincing that all discussion is closed. It's just a curious thing.

Keep going back on the evolutionary trail and you come to this point. How did such complex structures as nucleic acids and proteins come to be? One can't exist without the other. They are interdependent.

[Junior]

...because I feel that would result in it becoming a perpetually shrunken political movement.

"Creationism: the Ice Water of Politics" placemarker

[balrog666]

Ask, and ye shall receive.

[Doctor Stochastic]

I know many people who vote Democratic because of the perceived anti-science position taken by Republicans. Their comments run along the lines of: "If you cannot trust Republicans to do science correctly, how can you trust them with anything?"

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[Alamo-Girl]

LOLOL! What a wonderful compliment! Thank you!!!

[Dimensio]

Keep going back on the evolutionary trail and you come to this point. How did such complex structures as nucleic acids and proteins come to be? One can't exist without the other. They are interdependent.

If you are referring to the ultimate origins of the first life forms, such matters are outside the scope of the theory of evolution. If you aren't referring to the ultimate origins of life, then I'm afraid that you've lost me.

[jennyp]

>It is the same reason the frame of a Kenworth typically has holes that are not used. Several models use slightly different mounting points for different things, not to mention accessories. It is more effecient to just drill the holes in all the frames at once than to have a seperate jig for every style, or, worse, have a workman come by later and manually measure and drill every hole.

Thats applicable to a human workman who has limited time and effort available. But your God is supposed to be omnipotent. Why does an omnipotent deity need to take short-cuts? If you can say 'let there be light' and bam!, there is, why can't you say 'let there be snake' without putzing around with lizard designs?

I find it amazing when engineers cite engineering shortcuts as evidence of an infinitely intelligent creator. As a software engineer myself, it is mind-bogglingly obvious that code re-use, code stubs, or even extra mounting holes on Kenworth truck frames, are efficient ways of compensating for our finite intelligence. These kind of examples are always compelling evidence of a non-infinite intelligence behind the design.

And of course the undirected process of evolution is the ultimate in non-intelligent designers.

[Tribune7]

once God's out of the way, you see, man is completely free to do whatever he likes -- to make a better, more perfect world, for instance; or simply to indulge his own viciousness, "guilt-free," should he prefer that.

I think you hit it on the head.

[Tribune7]

:-)

[Ichneumon]

When you can make a bat out of nothing but elements, color it, size it, set it's environment and design something for it to eat all by speaking it into existance, I think at that point you'll be in a position to compare notes with God.

...and yet, that's precisely what the "intelligent design" folks presume to do. That's the entire *basis* of their "analysis".

Thanks for pointing out that the ID folks are just winging it, by presuming to know what an ultra-advanced "designer" would or would not do, and presuming to make any conclusion about whether Earthly life matches what such a designer would design.

On the other hand, life produced by evolutionary means would result in life with a number of specific characteristic features, and that's exactly what we find. Why, then, do you not accept the most obvious conclusion, which is that life arose by evolutionary means?

[jennyp]

And yes, I CAN have it both ways. God is the most creative force in AND OUTSIDE the universe. He is efficient when he wants to be, and inefficient when he doesn't.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA!!!!!!

Ahem. Giggle. smile. <big sigh>

Sorry, but after all these years on these crevo threads, it's not often that a creationist earnestly makes a totally silly argument that I haven't heard before. This one is just so funny... :-)

[jennyp]

Of course, Creationists also fail to notice that bat wings are different than bird wings. So, we've already established that the Creator is inefficient (vestigial bones in snakes and whales) and now we can see that he forgets old designs and goes to the trouble of re-inventing the wheel, or the wing. Since bats evolved after birds, why not just use the bird wing structure?

Give it up, Modernman. They've come up with the Trump To End All Trumps: He is efficient when he wants to be and inefficient when he doesn't.