Posted on 05/11/2009 7:19:52 PM PDT by GodGunsGuts
May 11, 2009 — Without stopping to think, the BBC News claimed that evolution is slowing snails down. “Natural selection is favouring snails with reduced metabolic rates, researchers in Chile have discovered.” Why would evolution do such a thing? Isn’t the proverbial slowest of beasts already at risk of predators? Not necessarily. Look on the positive side:
“Snails with lower metabolisms are at an advantage because they have more energy to spend on other activities such as growth or reproduction, the researchers say in the journal Evolution.” Don’t tell that to your spouse. The authors were not sure whether the decreased metabolism really made the snails crawl slower, but they figured that “nature is selecting for snails that are more energy efficient,” the article said. It didn’t say whether the snails are turning green.
All we need to do is repeat the prose from the 12/19/2007 commentary:The Story of Evolution Evolution explains more complexity, and more simplicity. It explains why flight arose in some birds, but was lost in others. With evolution, organs and genomes can become more complicated, or more streamlined. Eyes emerge through evolution, but eyes are also lost by evolution. Evolution makes the cheetah fast but the sloth slow. By evolution, dinosaurs grow to skyscraper size, and hummingbirds grow tiny. With evolution, peacocks grow more flashy and crows more black, giraffes tall and flatworms flat. Evolution explains predator and prey, loner and herder, light and dark, high and low, fast and slow, profligacy and stinginess, terrorism and altruism, religion and atheism, virtue and selfishness, psychosis and reason, extinction and fecundity, war and peace. Evolution explains everything.Now you understand why nothing in biology makes sense except in the “light” of evolution. By stating at the outset that “whatever happens, evolution did it,” evolution can’t be falsified. It’s a completely vacuous theory that is true by definition. It explains opposite things.
It can’t possibly be wrong, if you can mold enough skulls full of mush to accept the premise. The only hard part is making up the just-so story to explain the de jure fact. We think people should go for de facto facts.
Next headline on:...
“When any single source of funding dominates, science will almost certainly become the handmaiden of politics. There is no recognition in our leading journals that this is a problem. Science magazine, for example, keeps a vigilant watch on government science spending, unhesitatingly equating ‘more’ with better. Government funding has also promoted the idea that a theory can be regarded as true if it enjoys enough support.... Consensus discourages dissent, however. It is the enemy of science, just as it is the triumph of politics. A theory accepted by 99 percent of scientists may be wrong.”
—Tom Bethell, The Politically-Incorrect Guide to Science (Regnery, 2005), Introduction.
Ping!
I sure hope not. That would make escargot unpalatable.
I never heard of a snail outrunning a predator, whether the older faster snails, or the newer slower snails.
>> Now you understand why nothing in biology makes sense except in the “light” of evolution.
Warm-up for “understanding” the “science” of “climate change” — another piece of “settled science” with more questions than answers, but where research and debate are not politically correct.
This is kind of funny, actually. A mega-complicated “explanation” for something that is much more readily explained by the simple Truth: there was a Creator of it all.
Whatever happened to Occam’s Razor?
Ten years later, the same guy is watching television. The door bell rings. He goes to the door and no one's there. He looks down and sees a little snail. The snail says "What the H#LL was THAT all about?"
Thus proving it is better to understand the question than to argue about the answer.
It got dull?
BTW, that was hilarious!
: )
The confusion begins when we realize that no matter how much we read and how much we observe or how diligently we search; all that has come before us has served to fill our understanding with the certainty that the sum represents progress — that is, it all describes a path toward a better outcome or goal.
We almost never stop long enough to consider what is enough; only, “Are we satisfied?” is foremost as we go about our daily business.
We assume that evolution operates the same way, that there is a brighter light at the end of that tunnel of the future; not one single piece of evidence supports such a thought when it is framed through the lens of society apart from an individual species.
From mountains’ peak to oceans’ floor the mighty winds and currents roar but the mind of man remains confined within his spoor.
Thanks for the ping!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.