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To: js1138

Really? Well then I guess all study into evolution has ceased within the scientific community since they have it all figured out, and there are no holes or inconsistancies in their theory which require study. Readily observable and easily available for study? Well, then I wonder why millions of humans over the centuries never figured it out until Darwin. No wonder so many practically worship him as a god and will brook no dissenting ideas.


200 posted on 03/23/2006 9:59:29 AM PST by AnnoyedOne
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To: AnnoyedOne

What process involved in evolution cannot be observed?

Lots of things are readily observable without suggesting the regular phenomena responsible.

People observed apples falling from trees for as long as there have been people, but it took Newton, with his laws of thermodynamics, to describe the universal properties of the motion.

That was just before the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor.


204 posted on 03/23/2006 10:05:55 AM PST by js1138 (~()):~)>)
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To: AnnoyedOne
Well, then I wonder why millions of humans over the centuries never figured it out until Darwin.

You could make that claim about any scientific theory. Why did it take until the 16th century to verify a heliocentric solar system? The evidence was in plain view. Someone had to be first (and Darwin wasn't the first to figure out evolution, he was just the first to attribute it to a testable & subsequently verified cause).

212 posted on 03/23/2006 10:19:55 AM PST by Quark2005 (Confidence follows from consilience.)
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To: AnnoyedOne
Well, then I wonder why millions of humans over the centuries never figured it out until Darwin.

A lot of ideas are built upon an existing framework of other ideas. If the framework is not present then the odds of anyone THINKING of it is unlikely. In the case of evolution, the necessary precursor was the concept of geologic change over millions of years and discovery of fossilzed dinosaur remains. Darwin spent most of his time in the H.M.S. Beagle looking at rock formations. The specimen gathering that he did was secondary to his interest in geology. It was only later, while thinking about the possibilities of small changes in the earth's surface over millions of years that could produce an entire mountain range that it occured to him that similar long processes could govern the development on biological systems.

Incidently, he only published his book when he became aware that another biologist had INDEPENDENTLY come up with the same idea. He then wrote a paper outlining both his ideas and his colleagues and had BOTH papers published in the same issue of a scientific journal(or presented to some society... I forget which.). Darwin is who we remember because he had also spent years gathering more evidence than the other guy and wrote that up in the "Origin of Species" that REALLY made him famous. The point is, evolution was an idea whose TIME HAD COME. If not Darwin, someone else surely would have come up with it. This is true of a LOT of scientific discoveries and theories, which are often discovered by more than one scientist who were obviously working independently. It happens all the time.
253 posted on 03/23/2006 11:41:07 AM PST by gomaaa (We love Green Functions!!!!)
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