Posted on 09/13/2005 4:15:07 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
So what would Charles Darwin have to say about the dust-up between today's evolutionists and intelligent designers?
Probably nothing.
[snip]
Even after he became one of the most famous and controversial men of his time, he was always content to let surrogates argue his case.
[snip]
From his university days Darwin would have been familiar with the case for intelligent design. In 1802, nearly 30 years before the Beagle set sail, William Paley, the reigning theologian of his time, published "Natural Theology" in which he laid out his "Argument from Design."
Paley contended that if a person discovered a pocket watch while taking a ramble across the heath, he would know instantly that this was a designed object, not something that had evolved by chance. Therefore, there must be a designer. Similarly, man -- a marvelously intricate piece of biological machinery -- also must have been designed by "Someone."
If this has a familiar ring to it, it's because this is pretty much the same argument that intelligent design advocates use today.
[snip]
The first great public debate took place on June 30, 1860, in a packed hall at Oxford University's new Zoological Museum.
Samuel Wilberforce, the learned bishop of Oxford, was champing at the bit to demolish Darwin's notion that man descended from apes. As always, Darwin stayed home. His case was argued by one of his admirers, biologist Thomas Huxley.
Wilberforce drew whoops of glee from the gallery when he sarcastically asked Huxley if he claimed descent from the apes on his grandmother's side or his grandfather's. Huxley retorted that he would rather be related to an ape than to a man of the church who used half-truths and nonsense to attack science.
The argument continues unabated ...
[snip]
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
I take back what I said earlier. That's an example of a belief that does deserve to be made fun of. It's just crying out to be made fun of.
You are aware that Muslims worship the God of Abraham, aren't you? And that most Muslims consider the Torah, the Psalms of David and the Gospels to be sacred? In that they have quite a bit in common with Christians and Jews.
Fundamentalist Muslims and Hindus also believe in creationism. More specifically, fundamentalist Muslims believe the same Creation story that fundamentalist Christians and Jews share.
And indeed beyond kin selection complex societies, such as those formed by intelligent apes practice group selection. A group which co-operates is more likely to have individuals in that group survive to child-rearing age than a group whose individuals constantly adopt the most selfish strategy. Dawkins (in his real-science rather than pop-science guise) has worked on the math of such propositions. The "repeated prisoners dilemma" models such situations in game-theory.
bluepistolero
Arg! In my face again! I'm going to shut up until I've read every single word. Or maybe it was just a refresher course...yeah, that's it...
Whoops, and now I've just noticed that b_sharp had already mentioned communal selection.
Now we got magnetic bracelets and aroma therapy.
Actually that's a good analogy. The properties of a brick wall -- for instance its structural soundness -- obviously depend (among other things) on the properties of the bricks used to build it. At the same time the method whereby the bricks were made has nothing to do with it, except so far as it influences the properties of the bricks.
For example suppose I make a pile of bricks by hand, mixing clay and binding materials, and carefully firing them in an oven. Now suppose I pray to God and He, miraculously and out of nothing, or by whatever divine means you might suppose, creates a second pile of bricks for me that have the same physical properties as the first pile.
Now I build two walls, one using the first pile of bricks and one using the other, and both according to the same design, using the same mortar, and etc. Obviously there is no difference in the structural soundness of the walls because, despite their vastly different origin, the relevant properties of the bricks in the two piles were the same.
The wall only "cares" about the properties of the bricks; not how the bricks came to have those properties.
By the same token evolution only "cares" about the properties of living organisms. Evolution occurs, and operates the way it does because living things reproduce, and exhibit properties of inheritance, and variation, and because they reproduce an excess of population, etc. It doesn't matter (to evolution) how it came to be that living things have those properties.
But I'm sure the triple posting of that Chick tract added to the intellectual atmosphere of this thread.
What would Darwin's theory predict the behavior of Family A to be?
If you want a purely Darwinian response to a question like this you would need to ask the question of a species that does not pass morality on via religion and culture, but purely through natural selection.
I have a specific case history in mind. I had a mother cat that developed an abscess in her mouth and was unable to eat for a couple of weeks. We had lots of cats at the time and didn't notice immediately.
Under these circumstances, what would you predict the mother's behavior toward her babies would be. Would you expect her to keep feeding them, even though she was starving?
Have you read the Koran?
I'm not sure I understand. Are you taking issue with quantum physics now?
Where did you get he ideas you put forward?
"Evolution claims that life began with and explosion, and explosion of absolutely nothing, that explosion of nothing created a dot, a dot that could be smaller than a period on this page, that dot than exploded and over the course of billions and billions of years, that explosion became earth and all the suns, moons, stars, planets, etc.
Evolution, as we speak of it, is also known as Neo-Darwinism and is strictly biological. The BB did not explode, btw. Quantum physics , as a part of Cosmology, is what postulates the start of the universe.
"Than on earth, some how it started raining and that raining on the rocky surface caused some kind of soup, that soup gave way to life and out of the depths of this soup came the life that later became all life on earth.
There is a separate, very young science called Abiogenics which is working on the development of a theory at this time.
"If you are going to support something, than you should atleast have some idea of what you support. Going to support evolution, call a rock great, great grandpaw, as for me, well I’ll just say Abba Father and look back at God as my creator and great, great grandpaw.
If you are going to attack something, you might learn a little bit about it. You might also refrain from attacking others until you do know of what you speak.
All the more reason to support "Intelligent Falling".
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