The Crafty Attacks on Evolution

The New York Slimes ^ | 23 January 2005 | EDITORIAL

[gobucks]

Shades of mediocrity ... they all sound alike...

[Junior]

Shades of mediocrity ...

Thank you. Now I have Simon and Garfunkle going through my head.

[Dimensio]

Sorry to hear. I am pleased to report that all that I hear in my head is the Sound of Silence.

[narby]

The point is, an evolutionist has no rational or logical basis for morality.

You have it so stuck in your head that Evolution is some kind of satanic plot, and no one who believes in Evolution could possibly be a good Christian, that you're just way out to lunch.

If the conservative base gets itself wound up in this anti-evolutionism, then I hope you're happy when Bush is forced to nominate a squishy moderate or full blown lefty to the court, just because you have wasted our political capital on this useless issue.

And I doubt you will ever understand how much damage you will do to faithful people who will reject their religion because they will refuse to disbelieve the evidence of Evolution they know exists.

All this, because you're convinced that God is too impotent to have thought up and created Evolution.

[Modernman]

The point is, an evolutionist has no rational or logical basis for morality.

Well at least you got something right. The theory of evolution is, like any other scientific theory, completely amoral.

Tell me, what kind of moral teachings do you take away from the theory of gravity?

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[WildTurkey]

What a crock. There are plenty of scientists who have produced works supporting creationism. Here's one of my favorites:

Interesting. Your author supports evolution.

[WildTurkey]

There are far more non-scientists that are homosexual than scientists.

We could probably say the same about the Church based on recent happenings ...

[Dimensio]

Perhaps she wasn't speaking on the impossibility of one, but rather on the possibility of another.

[WildTurkey]

The last thread is almost stopped at 681 posts. The thread that was repeatedly referenced in that thread stopped at 685 posts. I think there is a plot by someone (name withheld to protect the guilty) to get to make the 666 post!

[AndrewC]

That was illogic trumping data.

That makes data a marshmallow to good logic.

[longshadow]

"Festival of Satanic Plots" placemarker

[AndrewC]

It is not false at all. A human skeleton found beside a dinosaur would be a serious problem for evolution

"Serious problem" does not look like falsify to me nor even you, as you have just argued that .... Just because a problem arises in genetics that we don't understand just means that... well, we don't understand it yet! It happens in every theory, not just evolution. and I said that the explanation would be .... The faithful would cry out, that it is just an anomaly. Look at all the other evidence. Just ignore the skeleton as something curious and unexplainable for the moment.. You still haven't shown how my statement can be twisted into the pretzel you have tried to invent. ---According to your logic, sicne the theory of flight didn't warn them about it before hand, planes can't fly?

Life goes on without 'vital' DNA

• 16:30 03 June 2004
• Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition
• Sylvia Pagán Westphal, Boston

It is not often that the audience at a scientific meeting gasps in amazement during a talk. But that is what happened recently when researchers revealed that they had deleted huge chunks of the genome of mice without it making any discernable difference to the animals.

The result is totally unexpected because the deleted sequences included so-called "conserved regions" thought to have important functions.

All DNA tends to acquire random mutations, but if these occur in a region that has an important function, individuals will not survive. Key sequences should thus remain virtually unchanged, even between species. So by comparing the genomes of different species and looking for regions that are conserved, geneticists hope to pick out those that have an important function.

It was assumed that most conserved sequences would consist of genes coding for proteins. But an unexpected finding when the human and mouse genomes were compared was that there are actually more conserved sequences within the deserts of junk DNA, which does not code for proteins.

[AndrewC]

I'm curious. Is there a nice curve published somewhere of preserved sequence lengths?

We've gone over this before. Look at Blast and use the numbers it gives you to your hearts content.

[bondserv]

I have been studying Genesis in the Hebrew for many years.

It does not mean what the creationists say it means.

For instance the word translated day, clearly is an indefinite period of time, as Gen 2:4 confirms. Since the Sun was not created until the fourth day, it is absurd to think the first 3 days were of a fixed 24 hr period.

I always wondered why good created all of the plants on the day before He placed the sun. It all makes sense now. It was to make so-called Hebrew Scholars look goofy for saying the Hebrew YOM means billions of indeterminate years.

Gen 1:11-13
11 God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, [and] the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed [is] in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.
12 And the earth brought forth grass, [and] herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed [was] in itself, after his kind: and God saw that [it was] good.
13 And the evening and the morning were the third day.

Sounds like a day of terraforming for the Lord to me. He is awesome eh?

P.S. God makes a one for one connection for the days of our week with the days in the creation week.

Exd 20:8-11
8 Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.
9 Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work:
10 But the seventh day [is] the sabbath of the LORD thy God: [in it] thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that [is] within thy gates:
11 For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them [is], and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.

[bondserv]

good=>God

[furball4paws]

... an evolutionist has no rational or logical basis for morality.
This may be one of the crazier objections to evolution. (But then, are there any sane ones?)"

I think you slipped over this one. I believe the implication is that evolutionists are atheists and therefore cannot be moral. Of course, most evolutionists are not atheists and an atheist can certainly be moral. So, more gibberish from the lunatic center of fundamentalist conservatism. Can't call them a fringe - there seems to be a lot of them. New ones on every crevo thread.

[DennisR]

"ID has no place in science class. Those of you that advocate its value are hurting science education and turning intelligent people away from Christ."

Huh?

"ID is a money making con by people who prey on the scientifically ignorant."

Huh?

[narby]

"ID has no place in science class. Those of you that advocate its value are hurting science education and turning intelligent people away from Christ."

Huh?

Because people who have been educated about how Evolution works, and have seen the proof, will be pressed by their religious leaders to acknowledge a non-scientific 6 day creation. I'm convinced that many of them will instead reject their faith, and that is a tragedy.

This is completly unnessary, as a reasonable interpretation of Genesis would allow for Evolution to fit. ID will damage the countries faith. I speak from experience, as I've been labeled by the hard core anti-evolutionists around here as an evil athiest and co-conspirator with Michael Newdow. I am virtually forced to argue as if I'm "against" the Bible, when that is not true in any way.

"ID is a money making con by people who prey on the scientifically ignorant."

Huh?

The Discovery Institute that invented the promotional gimik called Intellegent Design, was founded by some folks who are obviously more concerned with their own career than with truth. They have managed to convince a great number of the scientifically ignorant (which is the vast majority) that ID is "science" and Evolution is being rejected by scientific researchers. That is a complete falsehood. There's not even any real controversy about Evolution within the groups that actually do the science. The Discovery Institute has promoted this illegitimate "news", knowing that it is false.

The Discovery Institute is a con. It operates quite a bit like the lefty non profits, like PETA, where they find an emotional issue and make a profession out of stiring people up. The PETA people stir people up over fur, and the Discovery Institute stirs people up over Evolution. It's two sides of the same con job.