Posted on 02/13/2006 4:31:16 PM PST by MRMEAN
Biologists are beginning to solve the riddles on which intelligent-design advocates have relied
To advocates of intelligent design, the human sperm's tiny tail bears potent evidence that Charles Darwin was wrong--it is, they say, a molecular machine so complex that only God could have produced it.
But biologists now are starting to piece together how such intricate bits of biochemistry evolved. Although the basic research was not meant as a response to intelligent design, it is unraveling the very riddles that proponents said could not be solved.
In contrast, intelligent design advocates admit they still lack any way of using hard evidence to test their theories, which many biologists find revealing.
The new insights on evolution at its smallest scale were a major yet little-noticed reason why a federal judge late last year struck down a plan in Dover, Pa., that would have put intelligent design in public school classrooms. The findings the judge cited will provide the ultimate test of ideas about the origins of life, more lasting than court rulings or the politics of the moment.
Most scientists have long rejected intelligent design, or ID, on the grounds that it is a religious proposal not grounded in observation. ID adherents say biochemistry actually supports their view. They argue that many tiny mechanisms--the tails of sperm and bacteria, the immune system, blood clotting--are so elaborate they must have been purposely designed.
Yet biologists have made major strides on each of those phenomena since the first ID books were published in the mid-1990s.
Working without the benefit of fossils, experts are using new genome data to study how fish evolved the crucial ability to clot blood. A wave of new research on the evolution of the immune system seemed to stump ID witnesses in the Dover case. And even ...
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
####Here's a strange rebuttal for you:####
That would only be a rebuttal if I had stated that God's existence is a certainty. I merely stated it as a possibility, to which you have added another possibility! :-)
Of course, I do have faith that God exists. To me, His existence is a certainty. But for purposes of discussion I always maintain God's existence as a possibility in recognition that not everyone shares my faith.
Thanks! I agree!
Historically "spontaneous generation" means something like, "the origin of life from non-life as a mundane process of nature".
Since evolutionary theory (starting with Darwin1) includes the idea of "common descent" -- that all living things on Earth are ultimately related by descent, that is by ordinary biological reproduction -- it requires the REJECTION of spontaneous generation. After all if living things are regularly coming into being by means other then biological reproduction then common descent cannot be true.
1Pre-darwinian versions of evolution, for example that of Lamark, did include spontaneous generation, but they were consequently not theories of common descent.
No it doesn't. Creation does not state that living things are produced by other than living things. Everything was created by a living being.
I don't see ID as a way to prove anything. It is a hypothesis. It exists to explain God's role in design (which may include evolving lifeforms).
I haven't investigated ID. ALL discussion of creation with God as the instigator is problematic to evolutionists. This isn't discussing the nature of that creation, the number of years over which such changes took place, or the nature of that God. It is a prohibition on any acknowledgement that God may even exist. That codifies atheism, another religion, as "official".
Isn't God awesome? I love the way He builds stuff like that....
I cannot see the contradiction between Creation and Evolution. I don't see the controversy--both explanations seem entirely true.
Not overtly, they don't. But quietly, privately...they do.
Yet, that's all irrelevant since in heated debate hot logic prevails.
My point: God and Science are not enemies.
example #2 is called "single-generation saltation" by biologists. It can happen in the species level, wherein new closely-related species are generated within the same genus through rather unusual processes. more common in plants than in animals, iirc.
Saltation, whether single-generation or rapid, on levels higher than intra-genus would falsify the current theory of speciation through mutation and selection colloquially known as the Theory of Evolution.
Oddly, it is exactly this form of saltation which creationists demand science must demonstrate in order to "prove" the ToE to them. witness the ubiquitous calls to demonstrate a cat giving birth to a dog, et omnia generis alia... Total strawman nonsense.
example #1, otoh, is a close summary of the principal tenets of molecular evolution.
now, this is a very simple question: when YOU use the term "macro-evolution", to which example do you refer?
I am not yet asking you what you believe, I am asking you to indulge in the common courtesy of concretely defining your terms.
####I am not yet asking you what you believe, I am asking you to indulge in the common courtesy of concretely defining your terms.####
Did you suddenly forget that you concluded your original post with this sentence:
####-or-
do you mean something else entirely?####
When I said I meant micro-to-man evolution, that was obviously "something else entirely".
Well, you could start by looking in a mirror, but if you'd rather consider that an accident of random chance of nature, that is your decision. So why the mockery and derision that people see the handiwork of God in the complex things of this universe?
Agreed.
Well the idea that demons caused disease was never disproved. However, the Germ Theory of Disease became widely accepted. It is today's primary paradigm, and people do not rush to an exorcist when they have a sore thumb; they use antibiotics. This is progress in human thinking, and god-beliefs did not lead the way.
I am amused by Bible and Qu'ran anti-evolution faith believers who loudly proclaim, "I am not descended from an ape". Then they accept, proudly, that they were created out of dust or dirt. It seems a queer stance.
not really, as "micro-to-man" has no distinct denotative meaning.
again: concretely define your terms. what do you MEAN? I don't care what you don't mean, I want to know what you MEAN.
Isn't that a little overly dramatic? Maybe you weren't aware of it but textbooks and curricula are rewritten and replaced every now and again.
Like many (indeed it often seems all) evolution critics, you are implicitly confusing curricula, which merely reports about and reflects the state of scientific theory and knowledge, with science itself.
No ruling about curricula can effect science, any more than a sports writer misreporting the outcome of a baseball game can change what happened on the diamond.
The gavel never comes down on science. You can always change the content of science. All you need to do is come up with a better theory. But you can only (honestly) include in the curricula those ideas that have first and actually succeeded as science.
####not really, as "micro-to-man" has no distinct denotative meaning.####
Did it occur? Are we, ultimately, descended from micro-organisms?
I appreciate your response, stultis, and good points. You've always been a good person to discuss things with.
oh.
you believe the meaning of "macro-evolution" to mean "microBE-to-man evolution", and you don't believe in it.
that's a new aberration in the nonsensical term "macro-evolution" but, ok - that gives me a useful basis for questions.
the first being - do you have a similar problem with "microbe-to-chimp evolution" etc... or just with mankind's origin?
Quoting: "an accident of random chance of nature"
In fact, every individual is a product of quasi-random events. Who we meet and have children with. And from basic facts of sexual reproduction itself, every ovum has a slightly different DNA arising from meiosis, and likewise every sperm. Granted that some parts of the divided-in-two chromosomes carry genetic information from the parent, but it is random which ones happen to combine. There is increasing evidence for a degree of randomness as to the chemical environment in the womb, which appears to have influence on the degrees of femaleness and maleness in the offspring.
There are, thus, a large number of random events that are part of the heritage of every individual. (Unless, of course, one takes the view that each egg and sperm were individually directed by God. Nobody in biology would accept this, but as a matter of faith, it is unprovable.)
Over the long course of history, there has been quasi-randomness as to which individuals get wiped out by natural disasters, from impacting asteroids to which succumb to disease. Chance has always played a role in life and always will.
Can you, please, tell us what your objection to "random chance" really is?
Yes, I have a similar problem to microBE-to-chimp evolution. I've heard both micro-to-man and microbe-to-man used, by the way. No need to nitpick over it.
I suppose it would be correct to say I don't believe in it. Perhaps it would be better to say I doubt it, though I guess it's not all that different, so I won't nitpick, either.
Whatever we call it, I simply don't think it can be demonstrated that such a thing occurred. Speculated? Surely. Theorized? Of course. But demonstrated to the point that you might suggest? Not a chance. Ditto for excluding God from the equation.
What is this?!!
What I'm saying is please don't fall into the sloppy trap of ill-defined terms. They'll come back to haunt you.
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