Posted on 08/31/2011 8:16:15 PM PDT by RonDog
LIBERALS' VIEW OF DARWIN UNABLE TO EVOLVE
August 31, 2011Amid the hoots at Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry for saying there were "gaps" in the theory of evolution, the strongest evidence for Darwinism presented by these soi-disant rationalists was a 9-year-old boy quoted in The New York Times.
After his mother had pushed him in front of Perry on the campaign trail and made him ask if Perry believed in evolution, the trained seal beamed at his Wicked Witch of the West mother, saying, "Evolution, I think, is correct!"
That's the most extended discussion of Darwin's theory to appear in the mainstream media in a quarter-century. More people know the precepts of kabala than know the basic elements of Darwinism.
There's a reason the Darwin cult prefers catcalls to argument, even with a 9-year-old at the helm of their debate team.
Darwin's theory was that a process of random mutation, sex and death, allowing the "fittest" to survive and reproduce, and the less fit to die without reproducing, would, over the course of billions of years, produce millions of species out of inert, primordial goo.
The vast majority of mutations are deleterious to the organism, so if the mutations were really random, then for every mutation that was desirable, there ought to be a staggering number that are undesirable.
Otherwise, the mutations aren't random, they are deliberate -- and then you get into all the hocus-pocus about "intelligent design" and will probably start speaking in tongues and going to NASCAR races.
We also ought to find a colossal number of transitional organisms in the fossil record -- for example, a squirrel on its way to becoming a bat, or a bear becoming a whale. (Those are actual Darwinian claims.)
But that's not what the fossil record shows. We don't have fossils for any intermediate creatures in the process of evolving into something better. This is why the late Stephen Jay Gould of Harvard referred to the absence of transitional fossils as the "trade secret" of paleontology. (Lots of real scientific theories have "secrets.") Read More
Is that an alien?
LOL
Stunning visuals, blah story.
That’s probably how it broke Titanic’s record. (the movie’s gross, I’m not naming the iceberg that sunk the real Titanic)
At the very least, you have to concede men have gone quite a ways to manipulating the environment they live in. As such, you have no way of knowing if we are not perfectly adapted to the environment we will build for ourselves from now on, and therefore can not credibly assert our far flung progeny will be any different than ourselves.
If you have overlooked such an obvious epistemological truism, what else might you have overlooked?
Then take a quick look at embryology. You'll see how human, lizard, and bird embryos all have gill slits. Why would humans have gill slits?
It’s your Aunt Ida.
Not bad. That's a thoroughly entertaining thought experiment, but it's hardly a 'truism.'
Have you given your hypothesis a name?
That’s one of your ancestors?
Did you get that from one of those trace your family tree websites?
I hear they’re a bit unreliable.
Embryonic recapitulation has long been discredited There are no gill slits on human embryos.
How about “evolutionary perfectionism” or “evolutionary terminalism”?
I don’t even know why it has to be an issue.
How does this debate affect daily american life, other than to engage people in a futile endless debate?
I don’t CARE if our president is an evolutionist or a creationist.
I want him to repeal Obamacare!
Ahh, such brilliant critique! But then, I didn’t expect much from the troglodytes.
You think that’s good?
Wait till someone stumbles into my “instincts” question. ;o)
I’ve never had an aunt Ida. Nice try though.
I saw something on the science channel about a bear-like creature evolving into a whale. How is that even possible?
Really? How do you explain humans being born with gill slits?
Ancestry.com is remarkably thorough.
For the most part it doesn't. It just makes us look bad.
You, like the other troglodytes, don’t read too well, do you. The emphasis in “punctuated equilibrium” is on the “equilibrium” part, not on the punctuation. The theory aims at an explanation for why there should be equilibrium at all, given that the prevailing view at the time was so-called gradualism, in which evolutionary changes slowly accumulate, one by one, over time, and in which no species ever rests at an equilibrium point where it is not accumulating changes that will eventually lead to another species. In other words, Eldredge and Gould took aim at, and shot down, the then-prevailing theory with a theory that was more consistent with the facts.
When I was young and my family told me I was like a fish, I don’t think they meant it literally. Yeah, I loved swimming, but I couldn’t respirate with my head below the surface of the water without at least a snorkel.
Uhmm, I don’t believe this is the Thursday Night at the Movies thread; you might want to go look elsewhere.
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.