Posted on 08/13/2005 3:49:15 PM PDT by PatrickHenry
The cover story of the August 15, 2005, issue of Time magazine is Claudia Wallis's "The evolution wars" -- the first cover story on the creationism/evolution controversy in a major national newsweekly in recent memory.
With "When Bush joined the fray last week, the question grew hotter: Is 'intelligent design' a real science? And should it be taught in schools?" as its subhead, the article, in the space of over 3000 words, reviews the current situation in detail. Highlights of the article include:
While Wallis's article is inevitably not as scientifically detailed as, for example, H. Allen Orr's recent article in The New Yorker, or as politically astute as, for example, Chris Mooney's recent article in The American Prospect, overall it accomplishes the important goal of informing the general reader that antievolutionism -- whether it takes the form of creation science, "intelligent design," or calls to "teach the controversy" -- is scientifically unwarranted, pedagogically irresponsible, and constitutionally problematic.
Quarks and leptons are members of the family of particles called fermions, come in pairs and are each divided into three generations. Force carriers are the intermediate vector bosons which transmit the three fundamental forces through which matter interacts. The gluon handles the strong atomic force. The photon handles the electromagnetic force. And the W and Z bosons handle the weak force.
The Standard Model works beautifully as long as the physicists add the Higgs field/boson particle to the quarks and leptons. The bottom line is that nobody has been able to make a Higgs or see one and thus the Standard Model might fail for absence of evidence.
The indirect effects of the Higgs (or whatever it might be) include the connection of the mass of the W boson to those of the quarks. The top quark, with a large mass, has a detectable impact on the W whose magnitude of impact depends on the (yet unobserved) Higgs. Without it, the W’s mass would be significantly lower.
But even if we find the Higgs, all the mysteries are not solved. Whereas the Standard Model would be self-consistent, it would make the Higgs mass very large whereas the indirect evidence is that it is not large. The Standard Model itself would still have no particles to explain dark matter or dark energy – it would only address ordinary matter, the 5% of the critical density of the universe.
The answer may lie in the supersymmetry theory of which the Standard Model would be one part. In this model each particle has a corresponding superparticle with a greater mass. As the theory goes, the superparticles which remained after the big bang form the remaining critical density of the universe.
Strangely, because of the capabilities of the accelerators we currently have – it may well be that we are able to prove the superparticles before the Higgs boson (because superparticles have a greater mass).
Even now physicists often refer the standard model in past tense – preferring to concentrate on supersymmetry or higher dimensionality as Physicist remarked on The mysteries of mass, post 17
It is possible that the particles we see are all actually massless, their apparent masses corresponding to extra-dimensional momentum components we can't as yet detect.”
It was rhetorical question.
The reason people find materialistic answers is because the experiments are set up to find materialistic answers. That is the phenomenon Whitehead coined "scientific materialism". But it does not - in fact, cannot - tell us anything substantive about "all that there is" simply because it does not look at "all that there is".
Another way to view the problem is a metaphor of the ancient mariners. The old maps said "here there be dragons!" on the boundaries discouraging exploration and leading to false conclusions about the earth. Only the bold (like Einstein and other physicists and mathematicians) ignore the warnings of dragons.
I suggest you go back and read the post again. You responded to part of the first sentence and not at all to the substance of the post.
Genesis 1:16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: [he made] the stars also.
.. That would be Day (literal) Four. The greater light = the sun. The lesser light = the moon. And he made the stars also.
As I said, creating light is a preliminary act required before one can create something to dispense light. When it doesn't first exist, one must create it. Once it is created, it becomes a later integral part of creating the sun moon and stars. To say God created it is a necessary first step in saying he created something to make use of it or to dispense it. And the evening and the morning were the fourth day. The language is specific, non-poetic in form and literal in meaning a single 24 hour day. You might bother to check scholarship from the people who know the language and are experts in it.
And who is to say primordial plant life was wholly dependent on insects as you would suppose? Or that Insects where wholly dependent upon plant life?
Oh, so now to defend evolution, you want to make plants behave in a manner you and I have never witnessed or rather "observed".. You are now outside of science. But, then, evolution is full of these "what if" fairy tales. This is why we beg occum and why you would beg that you seek only naturalistic answers that employ modern observable devices.. right. Not fairytales.. unless of course, science disproves evolution, then you invoke millions of years and the unobserveable. It's a religion.
And btw, I didn't say anything about insects relying on the plants, I said the plants rely on the insects for pollination. And the insects came later. The plants would die before your "millions" of years would bring them insects for pollination. Actually, I should say, as the bible does, that they fade, wither etc because plants aren't referred to as living by the Bible if memory serves.
I also know there is evidence of aquatic and subterranean plants that exist without photsynthesis or contact with insects.
Do they now. Or is the light they rely on undetectable by the human eye. Let's be careful now because there are wavelengths of light in the lower ocean that can't be seen by the human eye but that can be seen via nightvision cameras. And that's to say nothing of the surviveability of such plants if the sun weren't there to provide heat to keep them alive.
Evolution and Creation as layed out in scripture cannot be reconciled. Everything Evolution says about how life came about is in direct contention with the creation account in Genesis, Exodus and elsewhere in the Bible. The original Hebrew language is written in an entirely different form when it is used as "poetic" and that is the form used in Psalms - not in Genesis. Furthermore, Hebrews also has words for long expanses of time. It isn't as though they don't exist, they just aren't used in Genesis.. where after the word day is defined for us and terms that only work with in a day (evening and morning) in non-poetic sense, we also have seasons and the like defined therein. Your attempt is to subbordinate God's word to what man thinks and to what evolution theory and "science" think. Science once taught bloodletting as a means to cure disease and that cells were unsophisticated goo. Science once taught a good many untrue things which have since been proven untrue. Given that trackrecord, we're to imagine that man's opinion is superior to God's word that it should be heeded instead of God. Sounds like Eden all over again.. 'ye shall not surely die' and 'did God really say that?'
Really, let's get back to science and stop playing unsupportable word games in a language you don't know and yet want to teach the meaning of inspite of what the experts of the language and the original religion state plainly. A day, in Genesis, is a day - a 24 hour period. It always has been and always will be. And the only time it was ever questioned is when Evolutionists decided it was necessary to invoke millions of years to undermine the Bible and God. Their case was non-existant then and is non-existant now.
And biology is not multi-tasking? What about Anatomy, Biochemistry, Biophysics, Cytology, Ecology, Embryology, Evolutionary Biology, Genetics, Immunology, Medicine, Microbiology, Paleontology, Physiology, Sociology, Systematics, and Zoology?
Every one of these sub-fields is independent, and yet all contribute material relevant to evolution.
Grow? I was talking about propogation, not growth. And whether only part of the plant world requires insect help in propogation or not is immaterial, it still requires that they be present to aid that end in nature. You beg off as though this is a minor or trivial thing that can just be dismissed. It is no minor thing. And as seasons are defined in the Bible, I think God was aware that his seasonal models would be required to keep the plants flourishing among other things, that's why he created all these things and with an order.. in six days. He thought that point important enough that it made it onto the shortlist of things he wrote with his own finger and handed to Moses later on. Guess it was important for Him to be taken at his word.
It always astounds me how some can compromise Biblical doctrine with that which is completely unBibilical and rooted in atheism.
Why even bother.
Well as you well know being the scholar you are that god created plant and land animal and all that creeps on the sixth day. And to your previous post, God still made the Sun prior to anything living on this land, which takes away your argument that plants were made before the sun and somehow, which I dont know where you got it, you assumed that I said as much.
And honestly I do not know why in the hell you are arguing with me, a ID proponent when I sarcastically said what I said. But hey I can argue all day long if you wish.
If you are arguing creation orthodoxy, then you must argue with churchs who have said as much as I have, that evolution does not contradict the bible. This includes Pope John Paul 2.
I am only propogating what has been accepted by many church's, whether you choose to accept the fact that evolution fits inside creationism or not is up to you.
you: Oh, please. How many revisions of the Standard Model have there been in the past 100 years? How many times have we heard that a "particle" is fundamental, only to hear later about evidence of parts. How many revisions of the Periodic Table have there been? And yet chemistry still works, much of it with the same dreary equations that presuppose electrons and protons. With all the babble about contradictory evidence in biology, there is exactly zero evidence contradicting common descent.
Evidence which contradicts the theory of evolution (interpreted as random mutations - natural selection > species) include the absence of new body plans after the Cambrian explosion, absence of evidence in the continuum of the geologic record, master control genes being resistant to mutation, rise of functional complexity, semiosis, autonomy, intelligence and successful communication (information) in biological life.
If biology were a discipline like physics, all of these would be cause to revisit the theory of evolution to see if it needed to be enhanced or restructured. As illustrated in the above post at 621, the absence of evidence concerning the Higgs field/boson has physicists revisiting the Standard Model.
It always astounds me how some can compromise Biblical doctrine with that which is completely unBibilical and rooted in atheism.>>>
Why even bother.Take it up with the Catholic Church too and Episcopalian and others then. Because your myopic view is limited to your own interpertation does not remove it from the greater acceptance.
There are a lot of constants where evolution would have variables?
Some people think of the Scripture as Muslims think of the Koran: document The Bible as the Word of God rather than Jesus.
http://www.catholic.net/rcc/Periodicals/Issues/Darwin.html
Read this about Catholicism and evolution.
IOW, geometric physics, quantum mechanics, quantum field theory, Newtonian or classical physics, relativity, astrophysics, physical cosmology are separate, describe the whole of the physical realm and yet network their theories. There is so far no Grand Unification Theory.
In biology, by contrast, the theory of evolution is a paradigm.
The sidebar begins way back at 573 and deals with the observation that physics puts the theory first whereas biology puts the evidence first. The difference is summarized in an excerpt from H.H. Pattee at post 581.
Thank you. I'll take a look tomorrow.
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