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Biology Prof: Evolution Isn’t Theory, it’s Fact
Human Events ^ | August 17 | Christopher Flickinger

Posted on 08/17/2005 7:44:13 AM PDT by PApatriot1

Did you hear the news? Evolution is no longer a theory. It’s a fact! I know, I can’t believe it either. Wait, you haven’t heard about this breakthrough discovery? Well, you might want to check with Professor Colin Purrington, an evolutionary biologist who teaches at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. Professor Purrington says, “Evolution is a ‘theory’ like gravity is a ‘theory.’”

(Excerpt) Read more at humaneventsonline.com ...


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Miscellaneous; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: anothercrevothread; college; enoughalready; evolution; god; makeitstop; notagain; professor; science
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To: tallhappy
Cold viruses are not retroviruses and cold viruses do not integrate genetic material in to their host's chromosomes.

So we'll strike "cold" virus from the original sentence and insert "retro virus". Like this:

God did not "design" retro virus DNA into human/primate DNA. Viruses do that on their own. Every time you get a [retro virus] is proof that they do.

Now it's your turn to show evidence that God "designed" broken retro virus DNA into primate and human DNA in a way that looks identical to a common ancestor, just to fool us.

Then you need to get your concept through Occam's razor as to why it's a better explanation that an unseen, unmeasureable, intellegence is messing with us via retrovirus DNA rather than it was just a simple infection in a common ancestor millions of years ago.

121 posted on 08/17/2005 1:36:23 PM PDT by narby (There are Bloggers, and then there are Freepers.)
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To: Scythian
Wow, I guess I'll have to stop believing in God, ya right, not ....

Well, you could accept that Genesis is a generic enough description of the creation that it allows for evolution. Pope John Paul II had no problem with evolution. Why do you?

122 posted on 08/17/2005 1:40:22 PM PDT by narby (There are Bloggers, and then there are Freepers.)
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To: narby
The point is you do not even know or understand the biology you claim to base your beliefs on.

Even your correction, whilst better, is not accurate and indicates a fundamental lack of understanding the most basic biological principles.

123 posted on 08/17/2005 1:40:27 PM PDT by tallhappy (Juntos Podemos!)
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To: Tequila25; wideawake
Correct, and scientists have demonstrated genetic change within a population (evolution) millions of times.

And yet, after thousands of generations of changing their diets, bombarding them with radiation, altering their atmospheres, and so on, fruitflies remain fruitflies.

As always, the evolutionist must confuse the distinction between micro-evolution (variations within a species, such as breeding dogs) with macro-evolution (breeding dogs until they become cats). The former is well-established--the latter is sheer speculation that is so unsupported by the fossil record that Stephen Jay Gould had to invent the theory of punctuated equilibrium to explain away the lack of transitional fossils.

When you have bred a dog into a cat, or a fruitfly into a hornet, let me know. Until then, claiming that (macro-)evolution is as established as gravity (which I just proved by dropping my pen and watching it fall to the floor--want to see me do it again?) is a statement of metaphysical faith, not one of science.

124 posted on 08/17/2005 1:44:18 PM PDT by Buggman (Baruch ata Adonai Elohanu, Mehlech ha Olam, asher nathan lanu et derech ha y’shua b’Mashiach Yeshua.)
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To: Tequila25
Jack Chick taught me that Jesus holds nuclei together, not the nuclear strong force, which is Satan's deception.

I figured you had to be joking, until I clicked on your link.

125 posted on 08/17/2005 1:47:46 PM PDT by malakhi (Gravity is a theory in crisis.)
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To: Diamond
The pattern of the ERVs fits the predicted evolutionary tree for primates. Too much of a coincidence I am afraid. .... TOE can accommodate this phenomenon, but it can also accommodate its absence, as it has in the past. Common ancestory does not predict it.

TOE predicts that there is evidence of common ancestry. DNA provided such evidence. It is not necessary for TOE to specifically predict a particular set of evidence.

Had primate and human DNA lacked this evidence, and further, that primate and human DNA showed no more similarity than say human and cotton plant DNA, then that would be evidence *against* a common ancestry.

However since DNA does show more similarities, and explicitly these retro viral inserts that demonstrate a specific individual being a common ancestor of primates and humans is one more in a long line of evidence in favor of evolution.

I think the retrovirus DNA is the smoking gun proof that we descended from a "monkey".

Sorry.

126 posted on 08/17/2005 1:48:17 PM PDT by narby (There are Bloggers, and then there are Freepers.)
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To: Right Wing Professor
Response sent to Human Events:

Bravo! Well said.

127 posted on 08/17/2005 1:49:50 PM PDT by malakhi (Gravity is a theory in crisis.)
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To: Buggman
When you have bred a dog into a cat, or a fruitfly into a hornet, let me know.

So what is the mechanism that limits your "micro" evolution from becoming "macro" evolution?

Creation "scientists" stopped doing research on their own after they gave up trying to prove Noah's flood and a young earth back in the 50's.

Here's a chance for them to resume research. Let them find and demonstrate whatever it is that limits evolution to a "kind".

My bet is they can't. And further, I don't think they will try, because they already know they will fail. Instead, they, and you, will offer excuses as to why such research is unnecessary.

128 posted on 08/17/2005 1:53:43 PM PDT by narby (There are Bloggers, and then there are Freepers.)
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Comment #129 Removed by Moderator

To: narby

Actually, foxes have been bred into something like a dog, using the same selection methods hypothesized to have bred wolves to dogs. I suppose all furry four-legged mammals are the same kind, if religion requires it.


130 posted on 08/17/2005 2:02:07 PM PDT by js1138 (Science has it all: the fun of being still, paying attention, writing down numbers...)
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To: narby
Get a grip. The smoking gun proof that humans share a common ancestor with primates is contained in your very own DNA

"Chimp DNA is 97% like ours, so see we come from a common ancestor". Here is an assertion that evolutionist like to whiz by Joe-6-pack on there way to calling us creationist ignorant pogues. It's just false. The human DNA has at least 3,000,000,000 nucleotides in sequence. Chimp DNA has not been anywhere near fully sequenced so that a proper comparison can be made (using a lot of computer time to do it—imagine comparing two sets of 1000 large books, sentence by sentence, for similarities and differences!). Where did the ‘97% similarity’ come from then? It was inferred from a fairly crude technique called DNA hybridization where small parts of human DNA are split into single strands and allowed to re–form double strands (duplex) with chimp DNA.

Did you also know that using this same hybridation technique we are 90% the same as Jellyfish and 95% similar to a domesticated dog. Also just do the math 3% of 3,000,000,000 is what 90 million difference. Pretty significant I'd say. Most militant evolutionist as not pro-evolution but anti-G*d. to follow the tone the article , "It's not even debatable". Prove evolution--> Means no designer\no creator --> No real moral absolutes --> Do what I want cause I want to and it makes me feel good.

131 posted on 08/17/2005 2:20:36 PM PDT by lwg8tr
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To: PApatriot1

I'd like a ride in Professor Purrington's time machine!


132 posted on 08/17/2005 2:21:45 PM PDT by Fitzcarraldo
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To: wideawake
How about breeding mustard into both broccoli and cauliflower? That ought to count for something!
133 posted on 08/17/2005 2:23:41 PM PDT by shuckmaster
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To: lwg8tr
"Chimp DNA is 97% like ours, so see we come from a common ancestor". Here is an assertion that evolutionist like to whiz by Joe-6-pack on there way to calling us creationist ignorant pogues.

I don't know one person who accepts evolution on these threads that would use that argument. How about the shared broken vitimin C gene in humans and chimps? Now that's an argument for common descent.

134 posted on 08/17/2005 2:29:12 PM PDT by bobdsmith
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To: lwg8tr
Did you also know that using this same hybridation technique we are 90% the same as Jellyfish and 95% similar to a domesticated dog.

I won't ask you for a citation, because I know there isn't one. So let's cut to the chase; you just posted a very stupid and untruthful claim. Doesn't that bother you?

135 posted on 08/17/2005 2:31:18 PM PDT by Right Wing Professor (ID: the 'scientific hypothesis' that somebody did something to something or other sometime somehow.)
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To: Diamond
Diamond said: "For example, the enzymes in viruses that do repeatable reactions, under the same conditions. If the DNA in mammals is very similar, then if they are all infected by the same virus, why wouldn't the virus be expected do the same thing in the different species?"

That is an excellent question.

If one assumes that the process works as you say, then one would expect to find that particular infection events would occur in the target species with a random frequency unrelated to the presumed common ancestry of various species. Humans, for example, just by chance, might be missing an infection marker which exists in other higher primates.

But that is evidently not what is found. The infection markers demonstrate a non-random frequency which suggests the same common ancestry as other evolutionary evidence.

136 posted on 08/17/2005 2:57:15 PM PDT by William Tell
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To: shuckmaster
According to another evolution advocate on this thread, broccoli was bred from cabbage, not mustard.

Whom am I to believe?

137 posted on 08/17/2005 3:15:21 PM PDT by wideawake (God bless our brave troops and their Commander in Chief)
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To: highimpact
highimpact said: "The probability that single-celled organisms evolved to possess all of the higher functions of mankind are equally remote."

Perhaps the probability is not as remote as once thought.

I have read arguments that the rate of "natural" genetic mutation is insufficient to explain the presumed rate of evolutionary change.

Dinosaurs are thought to have been dramatically impacted by a comet some seventy million years ago. Perhaps epidemics of retrovirus infection have occured on earth every ten thousand years or so, providing an environment in which the genomes of virtually every species are given a shock. Perhaps the rate of beneficial mutations, as well as the more frequent negative mutations, can increase by many orders of magnitude for many generations.

138 posted on 08/17/2005 3:22:52 PM PDT by William Tell
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To: narby
So what is the mechanism that limits your "micro" evolution from becoming "macro" evolution?

I don't have to come up with a mechanism to explain an unproven process. Tell me, why are those fruit flies still fruit flies if there's nothing to keep them from genetically drifting into being something else altogether?

Creation "scientists" stopped doing research on their own after they gave up trying to prove Noah's flood and a young earth back in the 50's.

Untrue, but whatever.

Here's a chance for them to resume research.

Yeah . . . when the atheistic scientists of the world no longer pitch a fit and apply political pressure on the Smithsonian Institute for daring to publish an article on Intellegent Design as a theory (as happened a few months ago), we'll pretend that the scientific playing field is level enough for full Creationists to even bother. Until then, your "offer" is right up there with a housefull of cats offering to let a mouse come speak to them on the benefits of a vegetarian diet.

Let them find and demonstrate whatever it is that limits evolution to a "kind".

Let evolutionists evolve a nice, short-lived species into one that is structurally different first. Until then, you cannot claim macro-evolution is a "fact."

Instead, they, and you, will offer excuses as to why such research is unnecessary.

Like you're offering excuses as to why evolutionists shouldn't have to produce an example of macro-evolution in the lab?

Hey, if you succeed, wonderful. It doesn't threaten my theology in the least. But if you're going to run around claiming that macro-evolution is a fact, you still have to produce results in the lab, not just conjectures based on a fossil record that is so incomplete that you guys had to come up with punk-eek to explain away the lack of evidence.

Unfalsifiable theories that explain away a lack of evidence are not, by their very nature, scientific. Yet that's where evolution is today.

139 posted on 08/17/2005 3:29:46 PM PDT by Buggman (Baruch ata Adonai Elohanu, Mehlech ha Olam, asher nathan lanu et derech ha y’shua b’Mashiach Yeshua.)
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To: conserv13; Brilliant

Facts are known or unknown not believed.


140 posted on 08/17/2005 3:36:10 PM PDT by I see my hands (Until this civil war heats up.. have a nice day.)
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