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To: Gumlegs
O.K., you stated:

2. The theory of evolution does not address origins of life (our Creator). So it specifically has nothing to do with human rights under the Constitution or how or why they are "endowed."

And I say to that, "That is pure hogwash."

Darwin most certainly DID comment on the "Origins of Life". In fact, in the first edition of "The Origin of Species" he stated quite clearly the following:

Chapter XIV,

...Authors of the highest eminence seem to be fully satisfied with the view that each species has been independently created. To my mind it accords better with what we know of the laws impressed on matter by the Creator, that the production and extinction of the past and present inhabitants of the world should have been due to secondary causes, like those determining the birth and death of the individual. When I view all beings not as special creations, but as the lineal descendants of some few beings which lived long before the

CHAP. XIV. CONCLUSION.489

first bed of the Silurian system was deposited, they seem to me to become ennobled.

...It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the external con-

490 CONCLUSION. CHAP. XIV.

ditions of life, and from use and disuse; a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms.

...There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

How dare Darwin, the author of the theory of evolution itself, suggest the involvement of one greater than science itself as the causation of the existence of life on this planet!
109 posted on 08/22/2005 11:01:18 AM PDT by BedRock ("A country that doesn't enforce it's laws will live in chaos, & will cease to exist.")
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To: BedRock
The book is not titled “The Origin of Life.” As you point out, Darwin credits the origin of life to a Creator, which ought to make you feel better about the whole thing. But creation is outside the theory, no matter how devoutly you wish it were part of it.

The phrase about “their Creator” is in the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration does not have the force of law; our government is based on the Constitution, so unless you’re worried that the theory of evolution will repeal the Declaration of Independence and make us part of England again, what’s your problem?

115 posted on 08/22/2005 11:17:16 AM PDT by Gumlegs
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To: BedRock
Darwin most certainly DID comment on the "Origins of Life".

Yes, he did comment on the origin of life.

And 150 years later, the origin of life is still unexplained.

What Darwin did not do is invoke the Creator to explain the process of evolution. He did not invoke the Creator to make fine tuning adjustments after the fact of creation.

275 posted on 08/23/2005 7:31:39 AM PDT by js1138 (Science has it all: the fun of being still, paying attention, writing down numbers...)
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