Olenellus gilberti
Smilodon fatalis
Bos primigenius
Posted on 01/27/2007 4:40:50 PM PST by balch3
1) mass extinctions of species (more species have lived and perished than currently exist)
Extremely doubtufl, and at least unproveable.
So all those dinosaurs I saw in the Los Angeles Museum of Natural History are fakes? NO, they still exist today!? Great -- I want to buy a dinosaur for my grandson, he wants to play Ally Oop.
More telling is the simple argument that if NEW species do not appear (either by miraculous manifestation OR slow evolution), then ALL currently living life forms must have always existed. Can you possibly deny this?
Thus all life forms at one time existed together on the planet, with only extinction (rare and unprovable according to you) possibly occurring. Why do we find no caves with paintings of dinosaurs on the walls, similar to the cave paintings of Altamira? And here is a further refinement, based on my own judgment of human nature. Humans are extremely intelligent and incapable of surviving with just their bare hands. We need to use our brains! This presupposes some level of civilization. But civilization, if you respect the evidence available, is only some 10,000 years old, while life on the planet is hundreds of millions of years old. How in the world (no pun intended!) did humans survive for 100's of millions of years without inventing civilization (you know... cities, social organization, domestication of animals, crops, writing and all that good stuff). How did we do it? And if successful at surviving for millions of years WITHOUT civilization, why did we invent it? What necessitated it? We were doing just fine living as veritable hippies in a paradise of unknown origin for such a long time? No overcrowding, no modern warfare, no social conflict with other cultures. And besides, there is NO FOSSIL EVIDENCE that humans have been around for more than a scant few million years. So I think it is quite unreasonable to believe that modern humans (homo sapiens) did NOT have a beginning. The central questions are how and why we began.
the origin of life is central to the whole quesion of evolution.
No, is isn't. It is important to philosophers and any thinking person, including scientists who wish to think beyond the very narrow limits of scientific investigation. But to establish true statements about how species evolved does not require anyone to prove or even guess at how life per se began. That question can, and does, remain unanswered within the realm of actual science, although if one reads Jay Gould and other hard-liners, one might be led to think otherwise. These evolutionary hard-liners freely mix science with speculation and pure science fiction. They don't know where one stops and the other begins.
May I quote myself regarding 'origins'? "I am merely pointing out that evolutionary theory isn't like cosmology, simply because it does not address ultimate causes..." By 'Origin of the Species' Darwin meant 'how one species changes into another', not 'how the various species got put here'. Are you ok with that, Hank? Darwin, right or wrong, had a rather narrow scope to his thesis. He observed, quite uncontroversially, that species exist, and proceeded to postulate that modern species are derived from pre-existing, extinct species. That's all. He probably had opinions about ultimate origins, but that is not the subject of his book or the issue on which the entire controversy about evolution hangs. You probably know that in addition to advocating survival of the fittest in terms of species survival, Darwin was also quite a social Darwinist. He believed inferior human specimens should be allowed to die out. But this is not, and never has been part of biological science.
Finally, you have stated that evolution is not science because it it not falsifiable:
The criteria of science are, repeatability, predictability, non-contradiction, and falsifiability. Evolution cannot meet any of these criteria.
But here it sounds as if you are saying that the theory of evolution actually has been at least partially falsified, and you imply the possibility that more evidence just might blow it completely out of the water.
The evidence against evolution, to my mind, is much more convincing than the evidence for it.
In science, as it is actually carried out and understood by working scientists, one hypothesis is falsified by being supplanted by another theory that explains the available facts more completely and/or more neatly (ie, with less unverifiable assumptions). Thus, a more robust, verifiable theory would 'falsify' the currently accepted theory of evolution. Nicht war? Ok, have fun with this post.
I didn't say he exploded Newtonian Mechanics, I said he exploded its axiomatic basis. You have to understand that Newton's system was taken quite seriously as the absolute logical foundation of physics, and it lost this status after Einstein.
There was in fact a notion in the 1960's that relativity should be taught 'a priori', without reference to Newtonian mechanics. Well, this went nowhere, but this only illustrates the heuristic priority of Newton, not his logical priority. Once you have attained an understanding of Einstein's relativity, Newton's axioms are easily understood as a limiting case. Relativity is by no means understood as any kind of a correction or adjustment to Newtonian Mechanics
... and say, you haven't by any chance ever perused any portion of the Principia Mathematica, have you? I would hate to think that I am being ungenerous in presuming that you have not.
Rock singer?
We are talking of Pat Boone here?
Olenellus gilberti
Smilodon fatalis
Bos primigenius
I really, really hate being associated politically with ignorant people like Boone. Really.
Parvancorina minchami
--Pat Boone hits it out of the ballpark.--
But PB is terribly misinformed. As in the exerpt below, he points to ID and refers to Creatin after earlier saying that apes are apes and always will be apes. Apparently he missed the part where ID does NOT refer to creation, where ID says that man and ape evolved over hundreds of millions of years from simple organisms and where ID says that we have seen NO evidence of ID in the last few hundred million years of mans evolution and therefore the great Designer is most probably dead.
Here is an unfunny joke of Darwin's from The Voyage of the Beagle:
While staying at this estate, I was very nearly being an eye-witness to one of those atrocious acts which can only take place in a slave country. Owing to a quarrel and a lawsuit, the owner was on the point of taking all the women and children from the male slaves, and selling them separately at the public auction at Rio. Interest, and not any feeling of compassion, prevented this act. Indeed, I do not believe the inhumanity of separating thirty families, who had lived together for many years, even occurred to the owner. Yet I will pledge myself, that in humanity and good feeling he was superior to the common run of men. It may be said there exists no limit to the blindness of interest and selfish habit.
Cambrian rabbit? (or any mammal from the period)
Pond Hippopotamus
Saber-Tooth Duck
Cheers!
I am as well a fan of Steve Martin, and that he is a member of the Skeptics Society is well known, http://www.skeptic.com/about_us/donate.html It seems that Pat Boone has no clue about that either ;-)
"Gun grabbing, Darwinism, porn, it's all part of the same thing, meant to weaken our Constitutional society."
Yep, nekkid girls. Gotta ban 'em.
As a warning against evolutionary backsliding?.....:)
I have no problem with Intelligent Design being taught in a class on religion. I also have no problem with religion being taught in high school. I do have a problem with Intelligent Design being taught in a science class because it is not science.
And who was it that said we (humans) evolved from apes?
Huh?
It wasn't Darwin.
It wasn't a scientist, I'll wager.
It was a two-bit newspaperman, trying to save headline space.
Evolution has always said that humans and apes evolved from a common ancestor, not that humans evolved from apes.
Evolution (cap E) has become a system of beliefs. It is as provable as any of Mead's fake theories. However, do species evolve over time in response to their environments?Probably safe to postulate, but not "provable" in the accepted scientific way. It is not mutually exclusive to say there is a creator and that He makes room for some adjustments. For the most part, God seems to work through the natural laws He sets up and through the hearts of men.
I bought the video. I saaw it on late night cable.
I'm descended from Europeans. Why are they still here?
There. Fixed it.
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