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Challenged by Creationists, Museums Answer Back
The New York Times ^ | 9/20/2005 | CORNELIA DEAN

Posted on 09/20/2005 7:02:45 AM PDT by Right Wing Professor

ITHACA, N.Y. - Lenore Durkee, a retired biology professor, was volunteering as a docent at the Museum of the Earth here when she was confronted by a group of seven or eight people, creationists eager to challenge the museum exhibitions on evolution.

They peppered Dr. Durkee with questions about everything from techniques for dating fossils to the second law of thermodynamics, their queries coming so thick and fast that she found it hard to reply.

After about 45 minutes, "I told them I needed to take a break," she recalled. "My mouth was dry."

That encounter and others like it provided the impetus for a training session here in August. Dr. Durkee and scores of other volunteers and staff members from the museum and elsewhere crowded into a meeting room to hear advice from the museum director, Warren D. Allmon, on ways to deal with visitors who reject settled precepts of science on religious grounds.

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


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Extended News; US: Colorado; US: Nebraska; US: New York; US: North Carolina
KEYWORDS: creationuts; crevolist; crevorepublic; enoughalready; evobots; evonuts; museum
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To: donh
So? That wasn't the question.

I answered the exact question you asked me.

The question was "Does seeding a planet count as design?"

Now you're asking a new question. A design for what? A seeded planet? Sure. A design for the actual organisms that result? No.

1,201 posted on 09/26/2005 1:46:23 PM PDT by inquest (FTAA delenda est)
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To: inquest
I think we're coming to the crux of the issue. Most people have a different understanding of what Darwinian theory is than you do. His theory is based on natural selection. That phrase was coined specifically to distinguish it from the type of selection that gets used in, say, breeding dogs.

In one million years, will whatever is doing paleontology think that dogs are not the result of natural selection? Do you think aphids don't evolve by natural selection because they are kept as slaves by ants? I guess I don't much care how civilians divide up the world into natural and unnatural selection. By this classification scheme, I guess I'm supposed to conclude that when asian flu evolves a new strain in the pigs and chickens and peasants of China, that it wasn't natural selection because humans built the henhouses and pigstys.

Insofar as scientifically meaningful distinctions go, if something happens to a genome due to variation and selection, that pretty much makes it a case of Darwinian Evolutionary theory in action. that pretty much

1,202 posted on 09/26/2005 1:51:43 PM PDT by donh
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To: donh
By this classification scheme, I guess I'm supposed to conclude that when asian flu evolves a new strain in the pigs and chickens and peasants of China, that it wasn't natural selection because humans built the henhouses and pigstys.

You might want to focus a little more on the word "selection" here. Humans did not deliberately select a certain strain of flu and prevent the others from propagating. If they did, then that would be artificial, not natural selection. That's the difference.

1,203 posted on 09/26/2005 1:57:19 PM PDT by inquest (FTAA delenda est)
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To: donh
In one million years, will whatever is doing paleontology think that dogs are not the result of natural selection?

Actually there have been studies of isolated, feral dog populations. They tend to revert to yellow mutts, not too different in form from African wild dogs.

Natural selection and breeding are limited to naturally occurring variation, but the criteria for reproductive success is generally different. This is another way of saying that natural selection is not random.

1,204 posted on 09/26/2005 2:03:38 PM PDT by js1138 (Great is the power of steady misrepresentation.)
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To: inquest
Either way, the result is the same. Therefore, my "design" didn't really cause anything different to happen.

And so what? I didn't say the outcome had to be different, just that the distinction between the burned down forest being a design or not was determined, at least in part, by the intention or lack thereof.

Again, I don't think there is anything controversial in what I'm saying. Check any dictionary. Here's one.

Also, I was not specifically addressing ID vs. evolution, just your contention that the outcome of an evolutionary process must necessarily be undesigned. If I took your view, I'd have to say the the algorithms and electronic circuits produced by evolutionary programming techniques are not designed, but clearly they are designed even if the details of the programs or circuits are not.

1,205 posted on 09/26/2005 2:21:47 PM PDT by edsheppa
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To: inquest
You might want to focus a little more on the word "selection" here. Humans did not deliberately select a certain strain of flu and prevent the others from propagating. If they did, then that would be artificial, not natural selection. That's the difference.

So if human interaction deflects a genome in some direction or another that was unintentional that was natural selection, but if humans intended the exact same result, it wasn't natural selection? Let me point out that humans are a part of nature.

1,206 posted on 09/26/2005 2:22:27 PM PDT by donh
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To: edsheppa
I didn't say the outcome had to be different

If the outcome isn't any different from what would have happened anyway, then it's pretty meaningless to talk about it being a design.

If I took your view, I'd have to say the the algorithms and electronic circuits produced by evolutionary programming techniques are not designed, but clearly they are designed even if the details of the programs or circuits are not.

Except that you are determining the parameters for survival. Beyond that, you're not designing the algorithms and circuits, unless you're still engaging in artificial selection along the way, as is done when breeding domesticated animals.

1,207 posted on 09/26/2005 2:32:45 PM PDT by inquest (FTAA delenda est)
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To: inquest
Now you're asking a new question. A design for what? A seeded planet? Sure. A design for the actual organisms that result? No.

So? God or little green men deliberately building an organism that is supposed to evolve is clearly design, and ID, as most ID's luminaries represent it, most particularly the folks who are fond of micro-macro argument, includes just such a scenario. Not that I'm fond of defending the parameters of ID theory, but your take on this question is out of kilter with the common perception of ID theory.

1,208 posted on 09/26/2005 2:33:04 PM PDT by donh
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To: donh
So if human interaction deflects a genome in some direction or another that was unintentional that was natural selection, but if humans intended the exact same result, it wasn't natural selection?

You're still not coming to the right understanding of the word "selection". Natural selection is what preserves a genetic change that has occurred; it's not what causes it.

Let me point out that humans are a part of nature.

That true only to the extent that automobiles are part of the natural environment.

1,209 posted on 09/26/2005 2:37:18 PM PDT by inquest (FTAA delenda est)
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To: js1138
Actually there have been studies of isolated, feral dog populations. They tend to revert to yellow mutts, not too different in form from African wild dogs.

I am, of course, totally unsurprised to hear that when you return a creature to the environment it occupied long ago, some fraction of that creature's population reverts to something approximating the form it occupied in that environment, and the less adapted forms die off. Do you think this demonstrates that if you leave ostriches and hummingbirds alone that their ancestors will eventually be able to mate?

1,210 posted on 09/26/2005 2:38:18 PM PDT by donh
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To: donh
God or little green men deliberately building an organism that is supposed to evolve is clearly design

It is a design of that organism. It is not necessarily a design of whatever it evolves into.

1,211 posted on 09/26/2005 2:39:51 PM PDT by inquest (FTAA delenda est)
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To: inquest
You're still not coming to the right understanding of the word "selection". Natural selection is what preserves a genetic change that has occurred; it's not what causes it.

OK. I'm removing my hands from the counter and slowly walking away, slowly shaking my head and repeating "natural selection doesn't cause genetic change." I'm afraid you are going to have to continue this argument with someone else.

1,212 posted on 09/26/2005 2:48:26 PM PDT by donh
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To: donh
Do you think this demonstrates that if you leave ostriches and hummingbirds alone that their ancestors will eventually be able to mate?

No, but their descendents might.

1,213 posted on 09/26/2005 2:49:08 PM PDT by js1138 (Great is the power of steady misrepresentation.)
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To: js1138

Joking aside, I would not expect this.


1,214 posted on 09/26/2005 2:50:08 PM PDT by js1138 (Great is the power of steady misrepresentation.)
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To: js1138
No, but their descendents might.

Sorry about that. So you think that Hummingbirds and Ostriches, that can't mate now, will gradually change form until they are very similar in shape, and then they will be able to crossbreed? Do you also think that marsupial wolves, and mammalian wolves would have been able to mate, if they had been on the same continent? May I assume you also suspect that the various bird families that occupy similar nitches, and are similarly sized can mostly interbreed?

1,215 posted on 09/26/2005 2:59:25 PM PDT by donh
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To: donh
I'm removing my hands from the counter and slowly walking away, slowly shaking my head and repeating "natural selection doesn't cause genetic change."

Well, it's true. Genetic changes are caused by cosmic rays, or toxins, or whatever else. Natural selection decides whether those changes stay or go. (usually go, at least 99.9% of the time)

1,216 posted on 09/26/2005 3:00:00 PM PDT by inquest (FTAA delenda est)
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To: js1138
Joking aside, I would not expect this.

Oh, poop, just as I was getting a head of steam up. Spoilsport.

1,217 posted on 09/26/2005 3:00:59 PM PDT by donh
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To: inquest
Well, it's true. Genetic changes are caused by cosmic rays,

Darwinian natural selection, which I was under the impression we were discussing, proposes a paradigm that consists of two important behaviors--variation, and selection. If you keep over-applying occam's razor to every standard definition of the theories we are discussing, you are going to cut yourself into epistemological shreds.

1,218 posted on 09/26/2005 3:05:16 PM PDT by donh
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To: donh
Darwinian natural selection, which I was under the impression we were discussing, proposes a paradigm that consists of two important behaviors--variation, and selection.

Darwinian theory proposes a paradigm which consists of (natural) variation and (natural) selection.

1,219 posted on 09/26/2005 3:16:27 PM PDT by inquest (FTAA delenda est)
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To: inquest
If the outcome isn't any different from what would have happened anyway, then it's pretty meaningless to talk about it being a design.

Again, so what? I addressed that point - the agent must act to bring about the result, this is one of the three factors I listed. Didn't you read my post?

The question is, is something that *has* happened a design or not. And again, the intent of the agent is a crucial determining factor. How can you doubt this?

Tell you what, why don't you look at the dictionary entry I linked and tell me which of them is what the Design in Intelligent Design means to you. Then at least we'll be discussing the same meaning.

1,220 posted on 09/26/2005 3:22:49 PM PDT by edsheppa
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