Posted on 08/15/2006 10:11:10 PM PDT by jla
Yes, I agree. But at the time, it solved a lot of problems.
Actually, it completely threw off research in human evolution. It created a lot of problems - I don't think it explained any.
Although, after reading some evols on these threads, I do wonder.
There's a difference though when you try to make creationism/ID part of school cirricula as part of your agenda. Certainly, they are entitled to their own opinion. But science isn't a democratic process - what is or what isn't accurate is decided by research, not by vote. And the research points towards evolution.
"I am always amazed at the fact that most Christians are conservatives when they are hell bent on moving on to a communist paradise. Sounds more like hell to me than paradise."
Do you personally know many Christians?
"I'm not bashing them I am giving you an honest look at your religion and its true political leanings. Its rational study of people who are still living in the 7th century. Oh were those muslims or christians?"
Just read this statement and it is clear that you are speaking from ignorance.
Really? An inability to breed with precedessors?
Do you mean to say that sperm from one population won't fertilize an egg from the other population and produce a viable offspring, or do you mean that they simply don't crossbreed?
If it's true, it's momentous. Show me, please...?
"I know what Christians believe no use harping about it to me. They also believe that god formed man out of a mud pie, that snakes can talk, and that language was developed because man built a building that was too high."
Since you have such infinite knowledge regarding Christianity, would you care to explain how the above equates to liberalism, and Communism?
Thanks for pinging me.
Lively discussion...eh!
Momentous? Hardly.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/speciation.html
However, the article contains quite a few assumptions that appear unproven and unprovable...which is only to be expected, as that's the nature of hypotheses.
Still, a well-controlled experiment this is not.
The reaction to the finds was mixed. On the whole the British paleontologists were enthusiastic; the French and American paleontologists tended to be skeptical, some objected quite vociferously. The objectors held that the jawbone and the skull were obviously from two different animals and that their discovery together was simply an accident of placement. In the period 1912-1917 there was a great deal of skepticism.
During the next two decades there were a number of finds of ancient hominids and near hominids, e.g. Dart's discovery of Australopithecus, the Peking man discoveries, and other Homo erectus and australopithecine finds. Piltdown man did not fit in with the new discoveries.
In the period 1930-1950 Piltdown man was increasingly marginalized and by 1950 was, by and large, simply ignored. It was carried in the books as a fossil hominid. From time to time it was puzzled over and then dismissed again. The American Museum of Natural History quietly classified it as a mixture of ape and man fossils. Over the years it had become an anomaly; some prominent authors did not even bother to list it. In Bones of Contention Roger Lewin quotes Sherwood Washburn as saying,
"I remember writing a paper on human evolution in 1944, and I simply left Piltdown out. You could make sense of human evolution if you didn't try to put Piltdown into it."
Finally, in 1953, the roof fell in. Piltdown man was not an ancestor; it was not a case of erroneous interpretation; it was a case of outright deliberate fraud.
Proof doesn't exist in science - what's your point? Also, what Google Search?
No, but experimental evidence does. I refer you to post 83.
Look, you keep pointing me to bodies of information where researchers have looked and said "This information seems to be highly compatible with a macro-evolution model." Well, sure it does.
But that doesn't mean that we know for certain that the model is correct.
Look, let's dispense for a moment (for the sake of discussion) with natural selection, and address the process of manipulated selection. Let's say you start in a laboratory with a population of organisms in a controlled environment...no other living things get in or out of the environment, no exposure to other populations can happen. (I'd suggest something with a short life cycle and sexual reproduction, to maximize the rate at which genes are exchanged.) Let us also say that it's your express desire, as a researcher, to see if you can divide up the homogeneous population into multiple groups and force macro-evolution to happen in the lab, not through natural selection, but through human selection. Human selection should be much faster, because you'd have intelligence guiding the process, and likely-looking mutants can be selected for and fostered. How many generations of, say, earthworms would have to go by before you could produce two groups of earthworms that were not cross-fertile?
Yes, you can change the morphology...yes, you can change the behavior. Yes, you can change any number of traits you want to select for. Dog breeding has shown us that, as the teacup Chihuahua and the Irish Wolfhound are the same species.
But breeding two different species from a single one...that's a high bar to get over.
Scientists are never absolutely certain. They may be highly certain however.
What of artificial selection? Speciation has been observed and the resultant species in many cases does not breed at all with the precursor species. Ergo, speciation, ergo, macroevolution.
I'm willing to be agnostic on the matter, but to say that macroevolution is settled science is disingenuous.
The only line is time. The Earth is billions of years old. What's your point? Possibly, Theobald's article might be instructive.
Could man make something akin to macroevolution happen in the lab?
That's the experiment I'd like to see.
But, it already has. Speciation anyone?
How fortunate for the rest of us that we have such an authority in our midst.
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