Posted on 11/06/2005 7:32:30 AM PST by echoBoomer
ANYONE who supposes that evolution doesn't happen, or doesn't matter, should spare a thought for H5N1, the virus causing avian flu. If we're unlucky, this virus will give us a nasty demonstration of evolution in action...At the moment, the virus cannot pass easily from one person to another. But there are a couple of ways it could evolve to do so.
The virus might infect someone already sick with a strain of human flu, and the two viruses could have sex, thus creating a new virus that contains some genes from each. Such viral hanky-panky is thought to have led to the flu pandemics of 1957 and 1968. Or the virus could mutate - acquire accidental changes to its genetic material - in such a way that it becomes able to travel between people. Mutations to an avian flu virus are thought to lie behind the 1918 pandemic...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I think you have this just backward:
It is the CS/ID folks who pretend to have all the answers, and its always the same answer (Goddidit).
It is the scientists who are constantly seeking new data, generating and modifying theories, and even discarding old theories when necessary.
"Virus" describes a whole order of beings. This Virus did evolve into another species within that order, as fundamental a change as an eohippus becoming a zebra.
LOL, my aren't we touchy when our religion is outed for what it is.
If evolution is only a theory and eveolutionists point that out all the time, why is it that the faithful go into cardiac arrest when the theory of Creation is supported to be taught right along side it?
Pulease, get a grip.
"Neither of us has all the answers."
Well, of course, nobody does!
"You on the other hand are convinced evolution presents all the answers and those of other religions don't."
No. But evolution is the best fit for all the evidence that God has spread around in this world for us to find.
If God created Man, He also created Intelligent Man - he gave us brains to be used - and science is the end result of using our brains.
Evolution is not a religion, and does not argue against any religion, although some religions argue against it. A great many faithful people, the Catholic Church for instance, have no problem with evolution being a tool used by God.
If you want your theory taught in schools, I can live with it. I want the alternative theory to be taught there as well.
An interesting experiment was recently completed where a group of college students were first given an Intelligent Design text to read, then given a text debunking the ID text and explaining its failures and how evolution actually works. The result was a majority that believed in evolution, rejecting ID/creationism. A control group was merely given a text on evolution, and surprisingly fewer of them believed in evolution afterward than the group that had been "taught the controversy".
So, Ok. Bring it on. We'll teach the controversy, and I'm confident that more students in the end will believe in evolution, because they will know the weaknesses of ID/creationism.
The real losers will be students who have been taught in church that their faith depends on a literal Genesis. The predictable result will be that these students will reject their faith in God when they accept the massive evidence of evolution.
Catholics are taught that evolution does not conflict with the Bible. They'll have no problems.
Actually, no.
They just tire of the religious bigotry of those who adhere to one religion/faith discounted theirs as "relion" and not "science."
At least the creationists are philosophically consistent.
You should understand that it's very frustrating to lead someone to water, yet they refuse to drink.
I'm not trained in philosophy, so I wouldn't know. But I do know that factually creationists are completely wrong.
I don't deny that evolution exists. That's not the point.
The point is that the theory of Man's ascent from single cell to present day is nothing more than a pipe dream.
If you wish to admit that, I've got no problem with concept of evolution per se.
Biblical literalism is supposed to be based on faith, not evidence.
It is a sign of weak faith to complain when science doesn't cooperatively support that faith.
It is something far worse to misrepresent science in order to apparently bolster faith.
Very good points in #51
It's just variation 'within kind', there is no macroevolution taking place here, the bird flu, is another strain of the regular flu if it can 'have sex' with 'normal' human flu!~
ROTFLOL!
So you are claiming that there have not been any new species evolved?
Too many people make the debate between science and religion when in reality, the issue is between medieval science and modern science. Just as we wouldn't teach the caloric theory of heat or the luminferous ether hypothesis in physics classes alongside theories like gravitation and electromagnetism, Aristotle's fixed forms have no place in modern biology.
How much do you take?
TIA
Beginning with Piltdown Man, evolutionists have pulled too many fast ones. Australopithecines, for example, are not considered transitional forms anymore, but a branch of the primate evolutionary tree. True transitional forms are still missing.
The most famous discoverer of a "missing link," Dr. Donald Johanson, may have represented the evidence, throwing together scraps of bones found a mile and a half apart and calling it Lucy, coincidentally just before his grant was about to run out . . .
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