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To: NDGG
(historians even recoginze that Darwin was first committed to the philosophy of naturalism and worked to create a theory that furthered his world view).

Uh, no they don't. Not any historian familiar with the record, in any case. Although Darwin was exposed to some "free thought" type influences in his youth, he remained religiously orthodox into his early adulthood. He didn't begin to become dubious about Christianity until years after he had begun his work on species, and he only finally abandoned Christianity in the wake of his daughter Annie's death in 1851, nearly a decade after his views on evolution were fully formed and elaborated (although not yet published).

Even Darwin's experiments did not point to an evolutionary cause and effect but back to a transcendent Creator.

Uh, come again? What the heck are you even trying to say with this?! Darwin's experiments, although extensive, were almost always focused on highly specific questions i.e. of morphological variation within and among species, variation in wild versus domestic animals (pigeons, barnacles); distribution, migration and colonization of species (survival of seeds in saltwater); matters of physiology (feeding in insectivorous plants, growth in climbing plants, reproduction in orchids). Darwin actually used to joke with friends about his propensity to perform "fools experiments". That is ones that were so obvious and trivial that most would assume the result and not bother.

None of his experiments focused on anything remotely "transcendent".

131 posted on 02/05/2005 2:13:19 PM PST by Stultis
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To: Stultis

Uh, come again? What the heck are you even trying to say with this?! Darwin's experiments, although extensive, were almost always focused on highly specific questions i.e. of morphological variation within and among species, variation in wild versus domestic animals (pigeons
Pigeons!!! You're going to use Darwin's work with pigeons to combat my argument?
Yes, Darwin was able to create pigeons with spectacular variations (huge fantails, bulging beaks- variations with feathers and tails). But despite all of these spectacular variations, the pigeons remained pigeons. They represent a cyclical change in gene frequencies but no new genetic information.
Another historic example is plant breeders trying to increase the sugar content of sugar beets. They did so from 6 to 17 percent over 75 years. But they could go no further (over the next 50yrs.). Why, because once all the genes for a particular trait have been selected, breeding can go no further. Breeding shuffles and selects among existing genes in the gene pool but breeding does not create new genes any more than shuffling creates more cards. A bird cannot grow fur and a mouse cannot grow wings.


156 posted on 02/05/2005 2:30:51 PM PST by NDGG
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