I wish you the best in that endeavor!
Scotland RULES!
Posted on 12/05/2004 1:16:27 AM PST by OnlyinAmerica
Then you failed.
Still touting the lie that Antony Flew "rejected evolution"?
A Freeper survey of 100,000,000,000,000,000 posts conclude Freepers are deeply divided on the subject.
I wish you the best in that endeavor!
I thought that the Second Law of Thermodynamics prohibited such things.
Ha! Seattle's drizzle might make him fizzle. Would that be an increase or decrease in entropy? (c;
And I'll be waiting until December 25. I only drink once a year, on my birthday.
Is this you?
"Careful. This is a trap, trying to make evolution supporters "admit" (though dishonest twisting of their statements after the fact) that they're Democrat supporters"
Yeah, probably so. I'm tired already of this blue state/red state crap, as if everyone in a respective state is either a lefty lib or a right-wing conservative.
For the record, I've yet to ever vote for a Dumocrat, but I give Creationism no credit for anything except being a decent story for children.
Another reason to drink only the best!
Happy Birthday!
Eh, last year the tropical drinks were overpriced and a bit watered down. But at least it was watered down quality rum. The problems of ocenside cabanas. At least I wasn't paying for it.
Just because someone has a Ph.D in science, does NOT make him a "scientist". There are lots of disgruntled postdocs sulking around who'll probably say anything for buck.
About 10 years ago or so, there was a flap at the editorial board of the magagazine "Scientific American." One of the editors openly expressed a belief in God -- not literal creationism, mind you; just a belief in a Creator -- and he was summarily fired. So, yes; I believe that many scientists expess a firm, positive belief in Darwinism because (a) they know nothing about it, it doesn't affect their work one way or the other, and it sounds materialist-based and scientific (they are the opportunistic fellow-travelers); or (b) they fear losing their jobs, their research money, their prestige, etc. If medical schools can use belief in abortion as a litmust test for admitting students -- and some do -- then scientific organizations (magazines, academia, etc.) can use belief in the sacred cow of Darwinism as a litmus test (and, apparently, some -- perhaps many) do. "Science" has the same sort of politics going on inside its institutions as any other field.
That's precisely the problem with neo-Darwinism. It doesn't allow for the fact that nature apparently makes huge jumps. Their position is "Natura non salta" (nature does not jump).
a. If all organisms, and all structures in organisms evolved v ia small incremental changes, each change adding to the survivability of the organism, where are all the intermediate forms? They do not exist. Honest paleontologists admit this and say the honest thing: "we don't know." Dishonest ones say the dishonest thing: "Next year, on another dig, I feel confident that we'll discover all the intermediate forms. The theory is solid, so the facts will eventually found to support it."
b. Most important biochemical processes -- the blood-clotting cascade, the vision cascade, and some others -- cannot be reduced to a series of incremental steps. It's the whole cascade or nothing, because none of the intermediate steps add up to anything biochemically significant. I.e., when you put the beads and string in the bag, even granting incremental improvements (one bead on a string, then two beads on the string during the next shake, then three, etc.), the particular process (e.g., vision) needs all the beads on the string IN THE RIGHT ORDER at once. One or two or three -- even in the right order -- don't lead to "partial vision"; it leads to nothing. Magazines with titles like "Molecular Evolution" claim that these partial strings were useful for some other process (unknown, unknowable, unstated, unproved), and then transferred over to the process of vision once the string was complete. Behe ("Darwin's Black Box") is very good at debunking these claims.
The information theory guys (especially Hubert Yockey, in his "Information Theory & Molecular Biology") show that even if you allow for one atom sticking to another atom successively during each trial, there's not enough time in the universe (as calculated by Big Bang assumptions) to permit enough trials to form a single molecule of something essential for life: cytochrome c.
c. During each shake of the bag, it's just as likely that two beads on a string could come off as come one; so "productive evolutionary change" accomplished during one trial might very well be undone during the next. That's exacly the problem with pseudo-explanations like random point mutations: most of them are destructive, even in species that have high populations and rapid reproduction (like fruit flies) allowing us to see most of the genetic changes "in vivo" in real time.
Neo-Darwinism is probably useful as a way of explaining micro changes in an already established species. e.g., how does one variety of rose morph into another? How does one kind of dog become another? etc. This is useful, but it's the kind of modest, limited knowledge that was already known in a practical "rule of thumb" sort of way by professional livestock breeders in the 19th century. Darwin was actually immensely influenced by them in his own thinking. The difference is that he took the idea of selective breeding and carried it to absurd extremes and absurd conclusions. He excised a passage from the first edition of "Origin of Species" claiming that bears probably waded in shallow waters to catch fish, venturing out farther and farther as they "adapted" to a water environment, and therefore eventually morphed into whales! Most of his peers said "You've gotta be kidding, Chuck." Breeders knew very well that if you keep altering the basic stock, trying to tease out desired traits, one of two things happen: the new species is sterile (evolutionary dead-end); or it snaps back to the original stock you started out with.
I'm acquainted with his "recantation" and purposely ignored it.
Popper died at age 94. He spent his life writing about science (and politics). His earlier views on Darwinism being a metaphysical research program (rather than a testable scientific theory) are far more numerous, and far clearer. That he -- for some reason -- issued a "recantation" is interesting, but mainly curious. First, why not just say "I thought one way about it; now I think this way. Here's where I went wrong in my earlier thinking, and here are the facts that made me change my mind." But he doesn't say that. He says "I recant," and -- personally -- I believe that, like most "recantations" in the past (such as the one by Galileo) it was made under duress. An important, influential thinker, with dozens of position statements, doesn't just publish one essay and say "I recant."
So, I purposely omitted that Dialectica statement in my consideration of Popper because it really does not fit in with his life's work, not to mention his earlier statements. His recantation, which references an essay he wrote called "On Clocks and Clouds" is confused, and makes rather confusing reading.
Also, for the record, even if Popper did really change his position on this, it doesn't mean, of course, that he believed the conclusions of Darwinism (and Popper was an admitted atheist). A theory can be WRONG and still be classified as "scientific." The issue here was simply the status of Darwinism as a theory. "Phlogiston" theory of heat was a wrong theory, but a perfectly good scientific one.
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