Posted on 02/03/2002 9:07:58 AM PST by Sabertooth
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Here's where I see the crux of the Creation vs. Evolution debate, and most appear to miss it: |
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Forget possible transitional forms, stratigraphy, and radiological clocks... at some level, both Creationists and Evolutionists wander back to singularities and have to cope with the issue of spontaneous cause. |
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Creationists say "God."
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Evolutionists say "random spontaneous mutagenic speciation."
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Oh, why not? Because incompletely speciated populations will re-merge? That doesn't convince me. Do you have something else on the plate?
No, because this is as good a retraction as I see them. As I stated, I haven't read the note. I'll reserve judgment because of that, and I'm quite surprised you wouldn't.
What's been pointed out to you is your unwillingness to address the issue. You feel no need to answer a legitimate scientific question. You don't hold one of your own precepts to the same rigor you hold competing ideas.
I've not claimed the question went unanswered... Several serious scientists on this thread have had no trouble answering. There's been interesting debate and discussion, but you've opted out.
That may be a game, but it isn't mine.
Well, having reread it, I will revise my precise of it.
So, you mean because the new wild worms were collected 15 miles from the original location, the hypotheses is rejected by the original author?
Well, yea, it ain't proof, but it ain't a potted plant either.
uh huh. Which is why they should say what they believe as if they actually wanted to communicate with others coherently. What are you, a Wittgenstein understudy? Or are you from a regular clown school?
below-empty(soul)---and you machine-computer needs rebooting!
Nice piece of work.
As an aquarist, I run into marine annelids more than the average joe. I found this statement rather improbable...
"Nereis acuminata is a marine polychaete annelid worm often used in studies of environmental pollution. The species has a wide distribution, including the coastlines of North America, Europe, Africa and the western Pacific."
Generally the Western Pacific is going to refer to all or parts of Japan, the Philippines, Australia, etc.
Frankly, I don't buy it. A marine annelid that exists on the coastlines of most of the continents, in at least the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans? Sounds like they're claiming a species distribution that spans the entire Northern Hemisphere, if not more.
Bull.
What they're lumping as Nereis acuminata will likely turn out to be dozens of species, if not more. Sounds like material for a graduate thesis.
They'll need to do a better job of identifying the parent species before I'll buy a claim by them of a new species.
Yes, it is. As you note, several people have grappled with your question. PH is not somehow morally obligated to participate in every phase of every argument, the obligation you seem to want to lay on hin is offensive on several grounds.
1) It suggests a very personal take on what it means to argue. Most of us would like to think that arguments stand without knowing who the arguer is. Since we'd all like to do other things with our time, occassionally, and since the search for objective truth ought, hopefully, to be a group enterprise when it comes to doing science, at least. I would often like to say "ditto", instead of laborously rehashing all that has gone before many times, and I do not want to be spat on for it.
2) It is an old fisherwife's trick to try to get control of the conversation by making snide little implicit suggestions that the deponent is morally deficient if he refuses to play in my chosen intellectual arena. And we have seen plenty of examples over the years of this in these creationist threads.
In fact, it constitutes, in my opinion, the bulk of creationist arguments: "Since you can't find bones between bats and beavers, you can't be a science"..."since you don't want to explain what First Cause is, you can't be a science"...et cetera, ad nauseum.
Of course, everyone wants to engage in intellectual combat where they like the footing. But someone else liking the footing where they're standing, doesn't constitute a moral crime or a rhetorical failure. Lighten up, PH should be able to choose whatever battles he wants to fight, without getting a raft of dung for it.
below-empty(soul)---and you machine-computer needs rebooting!
So, I infer, a regular clown school then? Perhaps you can take solice in the fact that you are less irritating than a mime, since I can't understand your insults either.
PH chose to engage and disengage, with implicit suggestions that I was less than intellectually honest from his first post. Sure, ignoring that was an option. It always is in those situations... sometimes you do, and sometimes you don't.
Well, frankly, I entertained such suspicions myself. Whenever someone engages in unusual rhetorical practices that seem a bit obtuse and stand-offish, I suspect foul play ahead.
"random spontaneous mutagenic speciation?"
And demanded to know why all us evolution jerks couldn't answer such a simple question.
The basic principle of allozyme electrophoresis is to run samples, using an electric current, through a medium (gel) that causes proteins to travel different distances through the gel, depending on size, shape and charge. These gels are then stained for a particular enzyme such that the location of the forms (alleles) of the enzyme are indicated by coloured bands in the gel.So, some protein samples they took from the worms looked too similar to "support the hypothesis". Big whoop! Tell that to the poor worms who tried, valiantly, to mate with the other group & couldn't produce live offspring.
Heh! In other discussions, I'M the evolution jerk.
I kept going back to the question when I felt that I was being pigeonholed as an anti-scientific creationist. I kept repeating my pro-evolution stipulations, because I'm not interested in debating, for example, transitional forms in the fossil record since I don't dispute them. I find the endless Creationist calls for ever more transitional forms to be tedious.
Not pointing fingers at you at all, but who was being obtuse when I asked one question, and I kept recieving non-responsive posts? I keep getting challenges to prove an alternative... How is that a defense of a lack of evidence or observation?
Seems to me that being unwilling to admit "we don't know" when if fact we don't know, is perhaps a little obtuse, no?
You've answered the question, no problem. And there's been what I find to be an interesting conversation following that. Has there been an indication that I'm a secret Creationist?
I don't think I am, unless it's my thinking that somehow, in ways we don't yet understand, the truth is that there is common ground a plenty between theology and science. Since I don't really expect to see that in my lifetime, I'm comfortable with a degree of cognitive dissonance in these areas.
(I just can't imagine that anyone would publish a study claiming that species should mate and produce viable offspring because proteins on a gel look so similar!)
We all tend to be highly sensitive to indications of our own innocence in such matters. Personally, when someone refuses to engage me in a particular conversation, 15 times or so, I drop the question, myself.
Fair point, and like I said, I could have dropped it earlier.
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