Posted on 11/24/2008 7:00:15 PM PST by GodGunsGuts
The Natural History Museum in London recently opened a new exhibit that features mockingbirds that Charles Darwin collected during his travels around the Galapagos Islands in 1835. He observed they were unlike the mockingbirds in other South American regions. Jo Cooper, one of the museums curators, told the Associated Press, "It struck him immediately that [th]is was a very different bird: it's bigger, it has this dark chest, the bill is quite long and that really made him start thinking."1
However, what might have struck Darwin as a very different bird looks to others like slight variations within the same bird kind. In any case, all the birds presented in the display are, in fact, undeniably mockingbirds. Darwin had legitimate scientific grounds, by virtue of the different features he noted, to challenge a rigid creation model of origins, one that assumes that all living creatures have descended unchanged from their first created parents. The variations that Darwin observed, however, pose no threat to standard, current biblical creation models, which recognize that living creatures can adapt to environmental or other changing factors (a process known as microevolution, or horizontal change).
Like the paleontologists of his time, as well as todays observers, Darwin did not actually see any differences that represented transitional links between basic reproducing kinds, including Darwins finches on the Galapagos Islands. If the theory of descent with modification is truethat all organisms today evolved gradually from one single living thing over eonsthen there ought to be evidence for it. Most fossils should show transitional states, but instead they show distinct kinds fully formed, even in the lowest (earliest) sedimentary rock layers.
Scientific observation and experimentation should reveal at least some hint of lower-to-higher biological development, but they dont.2 It seems that though the scientific evidence does not favor rigid creation, it also does not support its polar opposite: Darwins view of total genetic plasticity, or morphing between kinds. Both scientific observation and the biblical record document that life produces life, and like produces like.
But if Darwin did not develop his descent with modification idea from the evidence, then where did he get it? History shows that his grandfather Erasmus, a medical doctor and prolific poet and writer, introduced Darwin to these concepts at an early age. One line from Erasmus 1794 book Zoonomia reads:
In the great length of time, since the earth began to exist, perhaps millions of ages before the commencement of the history of mankind, would it be too bold to imagine, that all warm-blooded animals have arisen from one living filament.3
Unfortunately, those who visit Londons Museum of Natural History will only be given Erasmus Darwins imaginative interpretation, as filtered through his grandson, of mockingbird originsthat they arose from non-birds. Science has not documented these changes between kinds. All evidence points to the exact situation described in the Bible: that each creature reproduces after its own kind. Therefore, though its unpopular, favoring observational science over fanciful Darwinian doctrines is the better choice.
References
Photo credit: Peter Gene
* Mr. Thomas is Science Writer.
ping :o)
TToE has evolved over time also.
To hold Darwin’s exact theories accountable to findings today is like holding Newton responsible for not getting Einstein’s theory out of the gate.
TToE is a stochastic process — which definitions has been refined over these last several hundred years.
Evolution is nothing but smoke and mirrors!
I don’t think people question adaption, or variations to climate (as in races of people, but we are all still the same species even with different features adapted for different areas of the world).
It’s the species jump that confuses most, including me.
What does TToE stand for, and what is its precise definition?
TToE=The Theory Of Evolution. Why do you ask this, when I know you know?
Such as?
And what is your precise definition of the TToE. Feel free to barrow from another if you must.
You don't have room for 100 volumes here.
Why are you asking me to define the term that is used in the headline of your post? If you don't know what it is, why are you posting about it?
How many species of fungus gnats do you suppose there are? Does it confuse you that a fungus gnat could evolve from a fungus gnat? ( The fungus gnats are a family, and in Peterson's Field Guide to the Insects, each family rates a single entry. )
You can’t even define TToE?!?! No wonder you guys always lose against Creation Scientists in debate. LOL
A poster declaring victory is not "winning."
And as I said, why are you posting about a subject you have no knowledge of? It is your post -- which part of TToE do you need help with understanding?
More nonsense from creation "science."
Don't you realize that groups like the Institute for Creation Research (ICR), which sponsored this article, are committed to upholding the bible at all costs, no matter what?
Don't you realize that what they do is not science, it is religious apologetics? If there is a conflict between the bible and science they have to follow the bible.
That's not science, that's religious dogma. It is the exact opposite of science.
Here are their beliefs, required of all members. See any chance for science in there?
Tenets of Scientific Creationism
Nope, no science there. Just the opposite--its all belief in scripture and dogma, with no evidence required or even wanted. And no critical thinking tolerated; "We'll tell you what to believe."
I guess if they had any actual scientific evidence they would have produced it long ago, eh?
And please tell me what Accredited University grants PhDs in “Creation Science” and in what Scientific publications said “Scientists” have been published.
I was thinking of posting a thread on Quantum Physics and then challenging anyone who comes onto the thread to define, PRECISELY, what Quantum Physics is.
The fact I have little or knowledge of Quantum Physics but lots of opinions about it means I get to post and talk about it, right?
==A poster declaring victory is not “winning.”
Actually, I had in mind the vast majority of Evo scientists who have their respective hats handed to them when they debate Creation scientists.
Sorry, Wiley...as I have said many times, Darwin’s fanciful creation myth is now so full of holes that even your fellow evos are starting to abandon ship.
You may reread my post as many times as you wish.
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