Posted on 11/16/2005 9:57:35 AM PST by Junior
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Charles Darwin's theory of evolution is nearly 150 years old and under fresh attack, but thanks to him scientists today understand the danger bird flu poses to humans, curators of a new Darwin exhibit say.
"Without his insights, we would fail to appreciate the dangerous potentials of rapid evolution in the avian flu virus," Michael Novacek, curator of paleontology at the museum, told a news conference on Tuesday.
The show chronicling the life of Darwin and his work opens on November 19 at the American Museum of Natural History in New York with original manuscripts, live Galapagos tortoises, orchids, personal effects and fossil specimens Darwin collected during his five-year voyage aboard the HMS Beagle.
The deadly H5N1 avian influenza first infected birds, has mutated, and is known to have killed 64 people in Asia. Health experts say it is crucial to control the virus' spread in birds to prevent more people from becoming infected.
Darwin's theory, published in "The Origin of the Species" in 1859, says that all life evolves according to natural selection and is constantly changing.
"As we seek new cures for disease and means to avert bioterrorism, Darwin's work remains vitally important," said Ellen Futter, the museum's president.
Intelligent design has been proposed as an alternative to evolution. The theory holds that some aspects of nature are so complex they must be the work of an unnamed creator.
Earlier this month, Pennsylvania voters ousted a local school board that required a statement on intelligent design to be read in biology classes prior to the teaching of evolution. A new slate promising to remove the concept from science classes was elected.
The Darwin exhibit, which runs through May 29, 2006, was planned more than three years ago, before the national debate over intelligent design and evolution heated up.
In a nod to the debate, sections of the exhibit address the controversy Darwin's book stirred when it was published and a timeline detailing protests through 2005.
The exhibit will travel to museums in Toronto, Chicago, London and Boston.
At best, ID provides comic relief...
Permit me to say that that's a matter of opinion. I was a physics major before I switched, and I have always taken an interest in science. I found the General Theory incredible when I studied it in school and college, and I find it far more improbable after considering the statistical problems that are raised on a micro level.
As a Catholic, I have no religious problems with evolution, which the Church has said to be compatible with religion IF it is true.
Some degree of evolution is certainly true. And I believe the evidence is overwhelming that the universe is billions of years old. BUT I find the probability that the higher species we see evolved from the original hydrogen cells to be statistically improbable. Astronomically improbable.
One of the problems with Darwinism, of course, is that it is a circular theory that is basically unfalsifiable. You make the conjecture but you can't disprove it, because all Darwin says is that the fittest survive, and his definition of fittest is that which survives. But we don't see any real evidence of one species evolving out of another in the fossil evidence. Conjecture, certainly. A veritable tree of species from lower to higher, certainly. But the assertion that the higher evolved from the lower out of mere chance is simply not proven, and defies statistical analysis and common sense.
If its just a theory, why is it always presented as fact?
Actually this is a silly comment The virus is not evolving in to a new higher order species but making adaptive lateral mutation
Whatever someone think of Darwinism, simple adaptive change is not it's core (or debated) concept and the flu virus in this case is not evolution "up" in to "not a flu virus"
|
I didn't say I was a creationist. But I give you credit for being more forthright than the average bigot.
That's what I thought. Really, what difference does it make if we believe Darwin's TOE or not? Shouldn't the emphasis be on the future and not the past? If you don't buy TOE, can't you still be a scientist or medical researcher?
Thanks. ;)
(I think.)
It's perfectly possible to make an ad hoc explanation for any single piece of evidence in any science. What cannot be understood without evolution is the totality of evidence accumulated over the last 150 years.
This is why ID advocates like Behe and Denton do not try to deny the historical fact of evolution and the historical fact of common descent.
If the leading critics of Darwinism cannot find a scientifically defensible refutation of evolution, then it ain't available.
Oh WOW! I so want to see this darn it. ENJOY!
I thought that Newton's theory was proven - at least that's what I learned in school. If all species evolve, then why haven't sharks or cockroaches?
I'm waiting for the news story:
Creationist protesters today released the Galapagos tortoises from their pens in the Museum of Natural History. However, their plans to create chaos in the facility went awry when the turtles lumbered haltingly for the open door, defecated, fell asleep, then took two more steps before defecating again.
Let me post my own example of gravity:
A little history here:
Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation
“Every object in the universe attracts every other object with a force directed along the line of centers for the two objects that is proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the separation between the two objects.”
F=Gm1m2/r2
Where:
F equals the gravitational force between two objects
m1 equals the mass of the first object
m2 equals the mass of the second object
R equals the distance between the objects
G equals the universal constant of gravitation = (6.6726 )* 10-11 N*m2/kg2 (which is still being refined and tested today)
(BTW this is a simple form of the equation and is only applied to point sources. Usually it is expressed as a vector equation)
Even though it works well for most practical purposes, this formulation has problems.
A few of the problems are:
It shows the change is gravitational force is transmitted instantaneously (Violates C), assumes an absolute space and time (this contradicts Special Relativity), etc.
Enter Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity
In 1915 Einstein developed a new theory of gravity called General Relativity.
A number of experiments showed this theory explained some of the problems with the classical Newtonian model. However, this theory like all others is still being explored and tested.
From an NSF abstract:
“As with all scientific knowledge, a theory can be refined or even replaced by an alternative theory in light of new and compelling evidence. The geocentric theory that the sun revolves around the earth was replaced by the heliocentric theory of the earth's rotation on its axis and revolution around the sun. However, ideas are not referred to as "theories" in science unless they are supported by bodies of evidence that make their subsequent abandonment very unlikely. When a theory is supported by as much evidence as evolution, it is held with a very high degree of confidence.
In science, the word "hypothesis" conveys the tentativeness inherent in the common use of the word "theory.' A hypothesis is a testable statement about the natural world. Through experiment and observation, hypotheses can be supported or rejected. At the earliest level of understanding, hypotheses can be used to construct more complex inferences and explanations. Like "theory," the word "fact" has a different meaning in science than it does in common usage. A scientific fact is an observation that has been confirmed over and over. However, observations are gathered by our senses, which can never be trusted entirely. Observations also can change with better technologies or with better ways of looking at data. For example, it was held as a scientific fact for many years that human cells have 24 pairs of chromosomes, until improved techniques of microscopy revealed that they actually have 23. Ironically, facts in science often are more susceptible to change than theories, which is one reason why the word "fact" is not much used in science.
Finally, "laws" in science are typically descriptions of how the physical world behaves under certain circumstances. For example, the laws of motion describe how objects move when subjected to certain forces. These laws can be very useful in supporting hypotheses and theories, but like all elements of science they can be altered with new information and observations.
Those who oppose the teaching of evolution often say that evolution should be taught as a "theory, not as a fact." This statement confuses the common use of these words with the scientific use. In science, theories do not turn into facts through the accumulation of evidence. Rather, theories are the end points of science. They are understandings that develop from extensive observation, experimentation, and creative reflection. They incorporate a large body of scientific facts, laws, tested hypotheses, and logical inferences. In this sense, evolution is one of the strongest and most useful scientific theories we have.
Here is another nice page of what a theory is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory
"In common usage a theory is often viewed as little more than a guess or a hypothesis. But in science and generally in academic usage, a theory is much more than that. A theory is an established paradigm that explains all or many of the data we have and offers valid predictions that can be tested. In science, a theory can never be proven true, because we can never assume we know all there is to know. Instead, theories remain standing until they are disproven, at which point they are thrown out altogether or modified slightly.
Theories start out with empirical observations such as “sometimes water turns into ice.” At some point, there is a need or curiosity to find out why this is, which leads to a theoretical/scientific phase. In scientific theories, this then leads to research, in combination with auxiliary and other hypotheses (see scientific method), which may then eventually lead to a theory. Some scientific theories (such as the theory of gravity) are so widely accepted that they are often seen as laws. This, however, rests on a mistaken assumption of what theories and laws are. Theories and laws are not rungs in a ladder of truth, but different sets of data. A law is a general statement based on observations."
For Laws:
"A well-known example is that of Newton's law of gravity: while it describes the world accurately for most pertinent observations, such as of the movements of astronomical objects in the solar system, it was found to be inaccurate when applied to extremely large masses or velocities. Einstein's theory of general relativity, however, accurately handles gravitational interactions at those extreme conditions, in addition to the range covered by Newton's law. Newton's formula for gravity is still used in most circumstances, as an easier-to-calculate approximation of gravitational law. A similar relationship exists between Maxwell's equations and the theory of quantum electrodynamics; there are several such cases. This suggests the (unanswered) question of whether there are any ultimately true physical laws, or whether they are all just cases where our sensory and rational apparatus have generated mathematically simple approximations, valid within the range of normal human experience, to unobtainable true formulas."
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.