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YES, EVOLUTION STILL HAS UNANSWERED QUESTIONS; THAT'S HOW SCIENCE IS
WSJ ^ | June 3, 2005 | Sharon Begley

Posted on 08/21/2005 1:18:04 AM PDT by MRMEAN

Compared with fields like genetics and neuroscience and cosmology, botany comes up a bit short in the charisma department. But when scientists announced last week that they had figured out how plants grow, one had to take note, not only because of the cleverness required to crack a puzzle that dates to 1885, but because of what it says about controversy and certainty in science -- and about the evolution debate.

In 1885, scientists discovered a plant-growth hormone and called it auxin. Ever since, its mechanism of action had been a black box, with scientists divided into warring camps about precisely how the hormone works. Then last week, in a study in Nature, biologist Mark Estelle of Indiana University, Bloomington, and colleagues reported that auxin links up with a plant protein called TIR1, and together the pair binds to a third protein that silences growth-promoting genes. The auxin acts like a homing beacon for enzymes that munch on the silencer. Result: The enzymes devour the silencer, allowing growth genes to turn on.

Yet biology classes don't mention the Auxin Wars. Again and again, impressionable young people are told that auxin promotes plant growth, when the reality is more complex and there has been raging controversy over how it does so.

Which brings us to evolution. Advocates of teaching creationism (or its twin, intelligent design) have adopted the slogan, "Teach the controversy." That sounds eminently sensible. But it is disingenuous. For as the auxin saga shows, virtually no area of science is free of doubt or debate or gaps in understanding.

(Excerpt) Read more at american-buddha.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: anothercrevothread; china; creationism; crevolist; enoghalready; enoughalready; evolution; fossil; id; india; israel; makeitstop; notagain; science
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1 posted on 08/21/2005 1:18:04 AM PDT by MRMEAN
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To: MRMEAN

Yes, Creationism has unanswered questions, but that's how faith works...


2 posted on 08/21/2005 1:28:35 AM PDT by Birdsbane (If You Are Employed By A Liberal Democrat...Quit!)
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To: Birdsbane
Yes, Creationism has unanswered questions, but that's how faith works...

It is nice to see someone who clearly understands the difference between faith and science.

3 posted on 08/21/2005 1:32:12 AM PDT by Jeff Gordon (Recall Barbara Boxer)
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To: MRMEAN
Yes, no area of science is free of doubts but evolution is so full of hole it makes a swiss cheese look solid, AND most evos, the scientists that is, won't admit it, and stoop to lying and faking evidence because they can't find the real evidence to support there theory.

Transitional specie fosils have been faked many, many, times. The faking is stil going on too, witness the latest fakes from China concerning dino to bird artifacts.

Yes, creationism and ID have many holes also but I think evolution should be taught fully, by fully I mean all the fakes, all the evidence that doesn't exist, all the theories that are presented as fact should be taught the way they really exist.

If this is the best we have then say so but be honest about it, tell them the truth about Lucy for instance, she is a chimpanzee, we know that now for sure but die hard evos keep saying she is a link.

Teach the truth, how hard can that be? Don't want to teach ID, fine, but teach the truth about evolution. Science has always had gaps and false trails, and scientists have always covered them, the false trails,lying and trying to hold on to something that was wrong. Evolution has reached that point where the evidence in the fossil record shows it has many, many gaps in the theory and it needs to be taught that way.Darwin was wrong in many of his suppositions. Teach the truth, it can't hurt.

Don't you agree?

4 posted on 08/21/2005 1:33:48 AM PDT by calex59
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To: Jeff Gordon

Thank you, nice to meet another sensible person...hope we don't get flammed...


5 posted on 08/21/2005 1:34:34 AM PDT by Birdsbane (If You Are Employed By A Liberal Democrat...Quit!)
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To: MRMEAN
Quote: When it comes to the origin of life on this earth, there are only two possibilities: creation or spontaneous generation (evolution). There is no third way. Spontaneous generation was disproved 100 years ago, but that leads us only to one other conclusion: that of supernatural Creation. We cannot accept that on philosophical grounds (personal reasons); therefore, we choose to believe the impossible: that life arose spontaneously by chance.

(George Wald, winner of the 1967 Nobel Prize in Science)

6 posted on 08/21/2005 1:41:27 AM PDT by fish hawk (I am only one, but I am not the only one.)
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To: calex59
witness the latest fakes from China concerning dino to bird artifacts

What makes you think they're fakes?

7 posted on 08/21/2005 1:56:38 AM PDT by liberallarry
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To: fish hawk
Wrong. George Wald did not win the 1967 Nobel Prize in Science. There is no "Nobel Prize in Science". He won it along side Ragnar Granit and Haldan Keffer Hartline in the Physiology or Medicine category "for their discoveries concerning the primary physiological and chemical visual processes in the eye." Sure, this is nitpicking, but when you say Nobel Prize in Science, you could have as easily have meant physics or chemistry.

I would not be so quick to quote Wald on evolution if I were you. Even in his Nobel Prize lecture he mentions evolution citing "The chemical pattern of visual systems maintains close relationships with the evolution, development and way of life of these and other animals." He cites his own papers and books on evolution: G. Wald, (a) The distribution and evolution of visual systems, in M. Florkin and H.S. Mason (Eds.), Comparative Biochemistry, Vol. 1, Academic Press, New York, p. 311; (b) Science, 128 (1958) 148; Circulation, 21 (1960) 916. If he has written sections of books on evolution and scientific papers on evolution, I would not be so quick to assume that he discounts the theory.

8 posted on 08/21/2005 2:03:49 AM PDT by burzum
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To: burzum
If there is no Prize in Science, how did Marie Curie win it? If I am wrong than Google is wrong. And his quote I took from a book I read, with footnotes. I'm not saying you are wrong, just saying where I got my material.
9 posted on 08/21/2005 2:20:02 AM PDT by fish hawk (I am only one, but I am not the only one.)
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To: liberallarry
I don't think they are fakes I know they are. They were faked by chinese archeologist and admitted to being fake. The best one was made from 19 bones of several species of bird and Dinos. Please read everything and all about new finds before jumping on them with both feet as many people seem to want to do.

There is more going on with speicies and their origins then we know, evolution doesn't cover it and neither does creationism, I quit being a Christian long ago, I use my brain and I study evidence and I do not hold to old dogma if it doesn't fit the theory. Theory must be proven by evidence, and there is none for evolution. Down through the years there has been fake after fake because the transitional species were not there and they are still not there.

Darwin himself was puzzled about the lack of transitional species fossils but said time would solve that problem when we had dug more, but we have been digging for hundreds of years and they are not there, we need to teach that fact, but at the present time we hide it and try to pretend that we have transitional species, when in reality we do not.

Teach the truth that is all I ask.

10 posted on 08/21/2005 2:20:48 AM PDT by calex59
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To: fish hawk
Marie Curie won the Nobel Prize on two separate occasions. Once with her husband Pierre Curie and Henri Becquerel in Physics (1903) and once by herself in Chemistry (1911). She was a truly remarkable woman (her daughter also won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1935). The categories for the Nobel prize are: Physics, Chemistry, Medicine or Physiology, Literature, Peace, and Economics (set up by the Bank of Sweden, not Alfred Nobel). You can read more about the Nobel Prize and laureates at nobelprize.org.
11 posted on 08/21/2005 2:26:04 AM PDT by burzum
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To: calex59; liberallarry
They were faked by chinese archeologist and admitted to being fake.

Credible source, please?

And for your edification, you are referring to a paleontologist. Paleontology is the study of the forms of life that existed in prehistoric or geologic times, as represented by the fossils of plants, animals, and other organisms.

Archeologists study people and their cultures.

12 posted on 08/21/2005 2:28:40 AM PDT by Prime Choice (E=mc^3. Don't drink and derive.)
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To: MRMEAN

It is not merely that the theory of evolution has unanswered questions, it has a LOT of unanswered questions. Plus a plethora of unasked questions.

Which shall become apparent only upon the resolution of some of the questions already on the table.

I have always been troubled by chromosone counts, and how different species could have arisen by fractionation or fusion of various gene chains within chromosones. Cloning is a possibility, but WHAT DRIVES THE CLONING? This is surely not a random occurrence.


13 posted on 08/21/2005 2:39:59 AM PDT by alloysteel ("Master of the painfully obvious.....")
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To: MRMEAN
ID won't take its adherents within a thousand miles of the metaphysical concepts they're shooting for. It's based on an old analogy: the world is like a design, therefore it had a designer. Some (very serious) problems:

1 It gives no grounds for the existence of one, as opposed to numerous designers. The more complex a design, the more designers it tends to have (to say nothing of the craftsmen who put it together). Is ID being arbitrary--and a tad simplistic--in inferring only one?

3 You judge a designer by what he designs. Take a good look at this slaughterhouse! The natural world contains good, bad, and ugly. The best we can conclude is that the designer is indifferent--or very moody.

3 We are not justified in attributing to the cause more than what was required to produce the effect. Just because the designer could fashion this world does not mean he's all-powerful and capable of our wildest fantasies (a perfect after-life, for instance). The design argument can be used just as well, if not much better, by Hindus and pagans (many gods) and Zoroastrians (two gods: one nice, one bad). The contention that it suggests the existence of a Western-style deity is as hilarious as it is disingenuous.

Arguments based on analogies are notoriously weak. They have this basic structure: X shares certain features of Y, therfore X shares these additional features of Y. In the case of the design argument: the universe has parts that work together (like a clock, for instance); therefore, like a clock, it also had a designer.

Big problem: Such arguments are no better than the analogy they are based on (is the universe _really_ like a clock, or any design we know of?) The following seem equally tenable:

The universe is like a living creature; therefore another such creature gave birth to it.

The universe is like a plant; therefore it grew from some celestial garden.

Which of the above is more absurd? Is the universe more like a clock, vegetable, or animal? They're all preposterous because the universe is unique. We can't honestly say that it's _like_ anything. Consequently, all arguments based on analogies fail.

14 posted on 08/21/2005 2:40:30 AM PDT by Petronius (Hunter S. Thompson: Shine On You Crazy Diamond!)
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To: PatrickHenry

Ping.


15 posted on 08/21/2005 2:43:21 AM PDT by ml1954
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To: MRMEAN
Great article. The best explaination of how badly evolution is singled out unduely. The fact is that in highschool level lots of complicated topics are simplified for obvious reasons. Simplifying them often means they are not 100% correct, but they are correct enough. Of course anti-evolutionists will jump all over anything inside biology textbooks that is even 99% correct in true conspiracy theory style.

The responses are classic too. We have this suggestion for what to teach students:

tell them the truth about Lucy for instance, she is a chimpanzee

Problem is that isn't the truth. I don't think there is any excuse to teach students lies. Not when the truth in this case is so easy to find on google if you search. Yes I admit that lies are quite controversial, but I had no idea it is what anti-evolutionists imply when they chant "teach the controversy"

16 posted on 08/21/2005 2:53:56 AM PDT by bobdsmith
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To: burzum
thanx for the directions.
17 posted on 08/21/2005 3:10:09 AM PDT by fish hawk (I am only one, but I am not the only one.)
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To: MRMEAN
Evolution is as believable as Bill Clinton on a golf course.
18 posted on 08/21/2005 3:19:59 AM PDT by HisKingdomWillAbolishSinDeath (Pray for America like its future depended on it, because it does!)
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To: liberallarry; calex59
What makes you think they're fakes?

Because they are fakes.. Made for the market, and not some "conspiracy" to validate evolution..
The Chinese makes fake everything.. Ming vases, fossils, you name it..
Their existence means nothing to the ID / Evo debate..
It's just "business"..

That's not to say Calex59 is right..
My point about the fakes makes his argument just as invalid..

Calex59, if you had taken the time to read the article you would have understood that your position is exactly what the article's author is talking about..
You make his point for him..

You present the wrong argument in an incorrect context, and come up with an invalid conclusion..
The fact that there are unanswered questions, that all the blanks have been filled in, does not invalidate evolution..
It simply means there is much yet to be learned..

19 posted on 08/21/2005 3:28:15 AM PDT by Drammach (Freedom; not just a job, it's an adventure..)
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To: Drammach
correction:
"That all the blanks have not been filled in"
20 posted on 08/21/2005 3:34:06 AM PDT by Drammach (Freedom; not just a job, it's an adventure..)
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