Posted on 05/23/2007 2:13:24 PM PDT by neverdem
Today we reach an anniversary of sorts, unremarked, but remarkable nonetheless. It was 260 years ago this week that a young Scottish naval surgeon by the name of James Lind did something truly revolutionary.
In those days of English naval supremacy Britannia ruled the waves, but the royal navy itself was ruled by scurvy. Only a few years earlier, Commodore George Anson had attempted the royal navy's first circumnavigation of the globe. He left the Portsmouth naval yards in command of seven ships and 2,000 men. He returned two years later in one ship with just 188 men remaining. Some of his ships and crew had been forced to turn back, but of those original 2,000 sailors and marines, 1,400 men died during the voyage. Four were killed by enemy action. Almost all of the rest died of scurvy.
Scurvy killed thousands of sailors every year for four centuries. Caused by a severe deficiency of vitamin C, scurvy occurs when the body becomes unable to produce collagen, the connective tissue that binds the body's muscles and other structures together. For every sailor killed, often three or four more were severely incapacitated. Scurvy was perhaps the greatest challenge England faced as the world's preeminent maritime power.
Truth be told, we human beings are very good at refusing to accept facts or scientific evidence we do not want to hear. There is a long history of our doing so.And so on May 20, 1747, James Lind did something quite extraordinary. He took 12 sailors under his care for scurvy, divided them into six groups, and gave each a different treatment. The first group was given a quart of cider a day; the second a dose of a royal navy patent medicine; the third were treated with vinegar, the fourth with nutmeg and...
(Excerpt) Read more at american.com ...
I thought libraries were built so mental patients who are homeless could have a place to hang out.
The United States ranks only above (I believe) Turkey in acceptance of evolution.
We’ve got some work to do here, people.
(Hint: you can believe in God and evolution at the same time. The two are not mutually exclusive).
It sure seems that way. I seldom go to ours if I can help it. If they ever allow smoking and drinking in the library things will really get bad.
Ah, a reader!
I have a relative who works in a library in a very nice neighborhood. It is one of many stops along the unbalanced railroad.
There are a number of problems with the theory of evolution. The first being the definition of evolution itself.
I still don’t believe in anthropormorphic global warming and the only ignorance in that field is from people who think that humanity is powerful enough to affect solar output.
“There are a number of problems with the theory of evolution. The first being the definition of evolution itself.”
Acknowledged. But, I hope you aren’t suggesting that Creationism offers a more realistic/plausible answer.
There is evidence which can be used to support Macroevolution.
There is also evidence which can be used to support Creationism.
Macroevolution is NOT a sure thing, while it does have supporting evidence, that evidence is far from overwhelming*, and it most definitely hasn't been proven beyond a doubt.
*Case in point, the author comment about dinosaurs co-existing with humans, and how to explain the fossils.
Easy, from a Creationist point of view, fossils are very difficult to form. This is in concurrence (agreement) with the Macroevolutionary point of view. However, in the Creationist model, the Flood would have provided conditions for the formations of fossils. The vast majority of the world's fossils were produced during or shortly following the Flood. The Macroevolutionist model has fossils being rarely created here and there over the course of millions of years when conditions were there for fossil formation. As for individual fossils taking millions of years to form--they would decay before fossilization if it took millions of years; for both the Creationist and Macroevolutionist models, fossilization would have to be fairly rapid (at least millennia for the Macroevolutionist one). Also, it should be pointed out, that there have been documented cases of the fossilization of organic materials in a very short time span (less than a decade)--so fossils that aren't even one century old, much less a million+.
As for co-existence, it could be pointed out that the human population on Earth has been relatively small until recently. Also, given that humans are the smartest organic creatures, they would have been more apt to go to higher levels during the Flood. Thus, when they drowned, their bodies would bloat up from microbes producing gas in their corpses while they fed on them, and the bodies would probably decay and be eaten by other animals. Meanwhile, animals closer to the oceans--particularly those on the bottom of the ocean--would be more probable to get buried; dinosaurs, not being especially intelligent (some with brains the size of a nut when they weighed several tons--brain to body ratio) would also be more probable to be buried during the Flood. Burial helps prevent decay and animals feeding on the corpses, along with helping keep out air. Thus, there would be plenty of fossils of animals (and plants, fungi, etc.) which lived on the bottom of the ocean, then in the ocean, then plants and stupid animals on land, and lastly humans. Which is generally what is seen today: lots of bottom-of-the-ocean dwellers and ambiguous records of human fossils.
Add to this that Macroevolution is largely supported by most people simply because that is what they were brought up with (type about ignorance) and who don't even question the [scanty] evidence which is heavily supportive of Macroevolution (as opposed to evidence which could support either Macroevolution or Creationism--as is the fossil record).
There are millions of people (or billions) who are harmed every day by the belief that socialism is better than capitalism — I wish the author had cited this example.
To me, it’s the most extreme example of ignorance that does tremendous harm.
“You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder.”
The definition is simple enough. Evolution is the doctrine that plant and animal populations evolve over time, as the gene frequencies change in the population and as new genes or new combinations of genes arise.
The changes accumulate because environmental changes (climate change, rise of new predators, etc. etc.) favor some heritable traits and not others. Those with the luck to have the now-favored trait are fruitful and multiply. Over time, the accumulation of changes, many small, some not so small, add up to the rise of new species. There is plenty of time for all this to happen, since the world, and life in the world, go back billions of years. The fact that we don’t see new species arising monthly is just a reflection of the fact that it takes many months to add up to 100 000 years, which is still the blink of an eye as time in evolution is reckoned.
I think the more salient point made is that ignorance is something you can choose and that there is no guarantee that making information available will make it acceptable to all or even a significant minority.
As to the good doctor's scientific examination of scurvy, didn't someone do the same thing, with similar results, with chicken soup and a number of more common ailments?
How do you account for fish and mollusk fossils found in present-day mountainous terrain, far removed from the nearest ocean?
Nobody is saying that humans are making the sun get hotter. All main-sequence stars gradually get hotter over their lifetime, but that is something that unfolds over hundreds of millions of years. Stars also have fluctuations in their output, and those can happen over a short time.
But the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration is up to pushing double its preindustrial level. That’s just a measured, verified fact. This rise has been thoroughly documented, and it’s pretty smooth and regular. There is an annual rise and fall, as life takes up CO2 in the northern-hemisphere summer and gives it back during the northern-hemisphere winter. But that annual zigzag reaches a new high every winter.
This isn’t the footprint of volcanoes or other natural processes. It’s our own coal-burning, oil-burning, natural-gas-burning civilization that’s driving the rise in CO2. And, guess what: CO2 is a greenhouse gas. Sure, there are others, including good old water vapor. But we are seeing a worldwide rise in temperature, and a worldwide rise in a greenhouse gas we produce. This is what lawyers call a prima facie case for human-caused global warming. Not conclusive, but enough of a case that further investigation, and maybe some precautions, are justified.
If you think, you believe in Evolution. Our brains are constructed for survival in a world of cause and effect within a sequence of directional time, so if you deny the evidence of DNA and old bones and stuff you would have to do so by being antithetical to the way we are built to think.
And unless someone can come up with a way for something to come into existence from absolute nothing then we must believe in God.
How could it be otherwise?
God is the author of Creation, right? So, who are you going to believe? TV preachers, or the evidence of reality?
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