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 ...
"And it raises questions about why monkeys, which are supposedly evolved from the same branch of the tree, stopped evolving..in fact, stopped evolving for millions of years."
They haven't stopped evolving.
Have you spoken with one lately?
This does not even make sense.
Do we have a trail of monkeys that goes all the way back to a fish?
The Transitional Vertebrate Fossils FAQ, which allows you to see what the data points and the gaps are for any transition among vertebrates actually presumed to have occurred. It won't work for A-pithecus to monkeys, of course.
Here's Ichneumon's ready-made fish-to-elephant version. Let me copy forward just the conclusion.
Also note that the changes between any two sequential transitionals are small enough that most creationists would write them off as only "microevolution" -- and yet those 50-or-so "microevolutionary" steps turn a fish into an elephant, which even the most stubborn creationist would have to concede is "macroevolution".I bet you can find chimp bones from a million years ago.
Ping me when you find one in the Precambrian.
"Have you spoken with one lately?"
No, have you?
What Calvin did (and by extension, what all who claim to talk for Him do) is to place himself (Calvin) in the position of God and to mete out punishments as he (Calvin) saw fit. This is the height of hubris; God does not need mere mortals to punish those with whom He might disagree. "Vengeance is mine, says the Lord."
"Philosophically foolish and absurd, and is considered official heresy because it explicitly contradicts the meaning of Scripture in many places, in terms of the verbal significance of the words and in terms of the accepted interpretation and understanding of the Church Fathers and the Doctors of Theology." - Judgement of Theological Advisory Committee on Copernicanism February 1616Celebrate the contentment
The reason I knew about them was that I received some in an Agape bag during my Walk to Emmaus (Walk 90, Table of Timothy. De Colores). When I saw the way Elsie had spelled "testament" I had to go and get a picture for him.
Yes.
Afghanistan under the Taliban
You also seem to have good taste in cats.
Actually, they haven't. They've been evolving all this time, too. You won't find many, if any, modern monkey species that go back several million years.
No need, I'll fly in on my broom.
What's so perilous about a nation guided by the Flying Spaghetti Monster, obedient to his Noodliness and and productive according to His appetites?
Not to mention a fair proportion of the Middle East their likewise judgment that preaching Trinitarianism was a state crime of the highest order,
When in Rome Riyadh...
Good.
"It suggests that since we all exist in the same plane of time, we are all equally evolved. We just evolved to different things, but the level of evolution is equal.
Why is that the logical outcome? Evolution is constantly happening, at varying speeds. There is no level of evolution. There is no direction to evolution. There is no purpose inherent in evolution. Evolution is simply the outcome of allele variation and various types of selection.
"It raises questions about Budhism... maybe we should not kill a bug because it is equal in evolution to us?
Again, why do you feel a bug is equal in evolution to anything else? Apart from any moral decision you might want to make about killing specific organisms, you need to understand the continuity of evolutionary change at quasi-random rates in a population of organisms. There is no method of quantifying the relative distances that organisms are along their respective evolutionary paths and assigning some qualitative value to that point.
"And it raises questions about why monkeys, which are supposedly evolved from the same branch of the tree, stopped evolving..in fact, stopped evolving for millions of years.
Where do you get your ideas? Monkeys have not stopped evolving. Each species evolves at a different rate than other species, even related species, depending on a large number of factors.
"Has anyone found the equivalent of an Australo-pithecus for the chimpanzee?
Oh dear, which church?
Stirring the pot, I see, PH, with an article which essentially says nothing.
Even if the founders did envision a religious USA, it would be another example of one of those times they erred. This is why we amend the Constitution.
800. What's my prize?
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