Posted on 11/11/2004 3:44:08 AM PST by Lindykim
Agreed. And she's done more than her share.
But honest fundamentalists very seldom even get involved in trying to overthrow the scientific paradigm. I'm not even sure that Alamo-Girl, regardless of her religious beliefs, should be put on the side of outright idiots like NoDataDoofus or MM or HL or AC or ...
I think she's in her own category. She's a very good person.
We're talking about you.
Personal integrity is not a function of either religious beliefs or scientific understanding. And I think most of us on this side understand that.
“The important point about the standard evolutionary story is that the human species and all of its features are the wholly physical outcome of a purely physical process…If this is the correct account of origins, then there seems neither need, nor room, to fit any nonphysical substances or properties into our theoretical account of ourselves. We are creatures of matter. And we should learn to live with that fact.”
– Paul Churchland
But the question, “Has Darwin Become Dogma?”, is to me more of a; “Can Darwinism become dogma?” – “Why does Darwinism become dogma while other aspects of science don’t?” – “Why does neo-darwinism need to rule out any intelligence and design in regard to mankind and science?”
And for the people who think Darwinism cannot become dogma:
SELECT FROM users where clue is > 0
no rows returned >
Mind you, I think Darwinism falls apart on the fossil record and irreducible complexity issues, but ignoring that for the moment, why do so many evolutionists treat ID theory like the boogyman? Why is it a threat?
I think Dawkins let slip the answer: Darwinism makes it possible to be an intellectually-fulfilled atheist (or agnostic, or deist, or whatever one's prefered form of non-theism). As soon as you enter a Designer as the root cause, regardless of your theories on evolution after that you loose that intellectual fulfillment. It's as much an attack on the atheist's creation myth as "primordial soup" Darwinism is on Genesis--and those wed to this myth react with the same outrage as a religious zealot.
If we could remove the invective from the conversation (not just here on FR, but in the media and scientific community as well), I think we'd get more done.
"Darwinism" is a construct of Creationists.
The fossil record supports the Theory of Evolution in all particulars.
And, finally, "irreducible complexity" does not exist. Or, at least, all examples put forth so far have been demonstrated to have evolutionary predecessors.
... but ignoring that for the moment, why do so many evolutionists treat ID theory like the boogyman?
Very simple. Scientists understand that it is not a scientific theory - it is not even a valid scientific hypothesis. Did you overlook post #114 directed at you? Do you want to try to address it now? Do I need to repeat it to you?
But yet...
Biology = function -> structure -> sequence
It is reverse engineering and quite frankly, looking at technology far more advanced then anything man has created.
We have always underestimated cells. . . . The entire cell can be viewed as a factory that contains an elaborate network of interlocking assembly lines, each of which is composed of a set of large protein machines. . . . Why do we call the large protein assemblies that underlie cell function protein machines? Precisely because, like machines invented by humans to deal efficiently with the macroscopic world, these protein assemblies contain highly coordinated moving parts.
Bruce Alberts, "The Cell as a Collection of Protein Machines: Preparing the Next Generation of Molecular Biologists," Cell 92 (February 8, 1998): 291.
Now what stops science from viewing this obvious design and what is the difference between what Albert says and what Dembski says here?:
Organisms display the hallmarks of intelligently engineered high-tech systems: information storage and transfer capability; functioning codes; sorting and delivery systems; self-regulation and feed-back loops; signal transduction circuitry; and everywhere, complex, mutually-interdependent networks of parts. For this reason, University of Chicago molecular biologist James Shapiro regards Darwinism as almost completely unenlightening for understanding biological systems and prefers an information processing model. Design theorists take this one step further, arguing that information processing presupposes a programmer?
- Dembski
Overlooks that ID, like so much of creationism, is sniping at evolution without advancing a story of its own. Overlooks that so much of that sniping consists of mantras directly cribbed from creationism. Overlooks that the ID advocates below the level of Discovery Institute staffers are creationists pure and simple (no wordplay intended).
Creationism has studied from the political left and discovered the concept of "front movement." I can remember considering myself an environmentalist until the early 80s, about the time Greenpeace was calling for the unilateral disarmament of the west. It hit me then: these people are communists out to destroy traditional western society and masquerading as people caring about something else in order to do it.
I would have had to be dumb as a brick not to see the light when I did. I would say the same about anyone who doesn't realize that an ID advocate is a religiously motivated anti-science crusading witch doctor.
Already answered multiple times, but hey, what's 1,216,165,244 times between friends: You mean except for that annoying lack of gradualism that inspired Stephen J. Gould to come up with punk-eek in the first place? Come on, guys, if the fossil record supported Darwinism as it was proposed and as it's taught to kids in school and on the tube, it wouldn't have been necessary to explain the lack of continual transitions away like that. When you have twenty fossils of one species and twenty of its nearest "cousin," but no gradual succession linking them, you have a problem that even Darwin acknowledged as being the biggest argument against his theory. If Evolution were true as it's conceieved, finding two virtually identical fossils should be the exception rather than the rule.
And as for calling it Darwinism instead of simply evolution, we do so to avoid the third-grade mentality that refuses to distinguish micro-evolution from the Theory of Evolution.
And, finally, "irreducible complexity" does not exist. Or, at least, all examples put forth so far have been demonstrated to have evolutionary predecessors.
As is so often the case with evolutionists, your rhetoric far exceeds your evidence. I defy you to present a sequence by which the forty protein components of the rotary motor of a bacterial flagellum could come together one small mutation at a time, with each stage increasing (or at the least not decreasing) the organism's survivability, and then present the mathematical odds of each individual protein falling into just the right place in the right sequence to so advance the organism. Here's an article on the problem facing you on this one relatively simple organ on an extremely simple lifeform. Start adding up all those little changes that are necessary, and you end up with a real mess for Darwinism to have to explain away.
(Sentence structure and wording of prior post excluded)
Or I might be an agnostic--there's a really good chance on that one--or a theistic evolutionist. But thanks for confirming once again where your problems with mainstream science arise.
If you are a ‘theistic evolutionist’ than you believe an intelligent force intervened at ‘some’ time.
I've got you pegged as a Methodist.
Typically, once--at the very beginning. You could ask Junior, Lurking_Libertarian, or Physicist.
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