Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

To: js1138

You state, "Behe, under oath, said he accepts the fact that it has happened. I suspect you simply aren't aware of what ID is all about."

The issue is not whether macroevolution can ever happen. The issue is whether it is a viable description of the processes that led to the origin of the many species on this planet. It's like the old yarn about a thousand monkeys with typewriters eventually, given an eternity of effort, reproducing the exact text of Webster's Dictionary.

And yes, I fully understand ID and appear to be the only person to cite specific challenges raised by ID (irreducible complexity, parallel development of identical novel features down separate "evolutionary" lines, extra- and sub-chromosomal variations and remapping of gene-chromosome arrangement).

Your petty tactic of pretending to know what you're talking about and insinuating that others who disagree with you is as childish as it is ineffective.


127 posted on 11/06/2005 3:25:54 PM PST by kstone
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 108 | View Replies ]


To: kstone
I'm just describing what the scientific gurus of the ID movement mean by common descent. They may not agree with Darwin on the mechanism, but they agree on the history of life.

Michael Denton, author of "Evolution, a Theory in Crisis, has written a new book, "Nature's Destiny," on intelligent Design. In it he says this:

"it is important to emphasize at the outset that the argument presented here is entirely consistent with the basic naturalistic assumption of modern science - that the cosmos is a seamless unity which can be comprehended ultimately in its entirety by human reason and in which all phenomena, including life and evolution and the origin of man, are ultimately explicable in terms of natural processes.

This is an assumption which is entirely opposed to that of the so-called "special creationist school". According to special creationism, living organisms are not natural forms, whose origin and design were built into the laws of nature from the beginning, but rather contingent forms analogous in essence to human artifacts, the result of a series of supernatural acts, involving the suspension of natural law.

Contrary to the creationist position, the whole argument presented here is critically dependent on the presumption of the unbroken continuity of the organic world - that is, on the reality of organic evolution and on the presumption that all living organisms on earth are natural forms in the profoundest sense of the word, no less natural than salt crystals, atoms, waterfalls, or galaxies."

Behe, the chief defence witness at Dover, has this to say about evolution:

I didn't intend to "dismiss" the fossil record--how could I "dismiss" it? In fact I mention it mostly to say that it can't tell us whether or not biochemical systems evolved by a Darwinian mechanism. My book concentrates entirely on Darwin's mechanism, and simply takes for granted common descent.

129 posted on 11/06/2005 3:31:17 PM PST by js1138 (Great is the power of steady misrepresentation.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 127 | View Replies ]

To: kstone
I fully understand ID and appear to be the only person to cite specific challenges raised by ID (irreducible complexity, parallel development of identical novel features down separate "evolutionary" lines

Irreducible complexity is an opinion, not a fact. It is also a Negative Assertion, "a previous useful structure that didn't contain as many parts could not have mutated into a more complex one." Which is what was recently discovered about the infamous flagellum. It could have evolved from a stinger, which had many of the same parts but not all.

On "parallel development" see: convergent evolution. Which is why several different species have eyes, yet evolved in entirely different conditions and along entirely separate tracks. Reality demands it.

You should really get out more, you are way behind the times.

134 posted on 11/06/2005 4:00:19 PM PST by LogicWings
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 127 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson