Posted on 04/22/2004 8:46:34 AM PDT by Michael_Michaelangelo
Theorist: Darwin had it wrong S.C. professor says life forms arose without common origin
By Daniel Conover, the (Charleston) Post and Courier
CHARLESTON, S.C. - In the beginning, it was just the proteins.
The way biochemist Christian Schwabe saw it, Darwinian evolution should have given closely related animals similar sets of proteins.
It was a simple idea, just a way to prove the cellular legacy of millions of years of common ancestry. Only it didn’t work.
The mismatched proteins were just a stray thread in the grand tapestry of life, yet the flaw gnawed at the back of the professor’s mind – until one day at Harvard University in 1970, when a new idea struck him in the middle of a lecture.
"That’s not going to work that way," Dr. Schwabe said aloud, and his students watched in bewilderment as their instructor spent the rest of the class working out the first bits of his idea on the blackboard.
What Dr. Schwabe began that day would become, by 1984, something he called the "genomic potential hypothesis:" the idea that life on Earth arose not from a single, random-chance event, but from multiple, predictable, chemical processes.
As bold as that idea seemed, it was tame compared with the second part of his theory: that evolution by natural selection – a cornerstone of Darwinian thought – was a 19th-century illusion.
Rather than a world of diversely adapted species with one common origin, Dr. Schwabe saw each modern species as the ultimate expression of its own independent origin.
Evolution wasn’t about adaptation, Dr. Schwabe said, but the perfection of each species’ original "genomic potential."
He and a colleague published the first paper on the idea in 1984, and the German-born professor settled in to await the inevitable critical response. It never came.
More articles in small academic journals followed in 1985 and 1990, but they, too, failed to provoke debate.
Today, Dr. Schwabe is a professor of biochemistry at the Medical University of South Carolina, a federally funded investigator who has accounted for more than $4 million in research funding, much of it related to drugs that regulate blood flow.
He has published more than 100 scholarly works and received five patents for his discoveries.
Yet when it comes to his most provocative idea, Dr. Schwabe is practically an invisible man. His articles on genomic potential hypothesis – GPH – typically are returned without meaningful comment by editors, most recently by the prestigious journal Science, and sometimes it seems as if the only people paying attention to his work are Internet fringe-dwellers.
"I think one of the most brilliant and bravest thinkers in America lives in Charleston, S.C.," said Ron Landes, a scientific publisher from Texas, "and nobody knows about him."
All he wants, Dr. Schwabe says, is a hearing by his peers.
"If they don’t like it, they should tell me factually what is wrong," he said. "If they think it’s no good, they have the obligation to disprove it."
That’s the ideal of science we all learned in grade school. But as Dr. Schwabe continues to demonstrate, the practice of science is a bit more complex.
It takes an educated specialist to evaluate scientific claims; new discoveries are practically meaningless until they are published in major journals.
Publication signifies that the science behind an article is solid and that the idea, right or wrong, is worthy of study. This system of establishing credibility, called peer review, is essential to the scientific process, yet not every idea is worthy of serious, high-level peer review.
But the critical question in Dr. Schwabe’s case isn’t whether peer review works – rather, it’s, "Can unorthodox but potentially significant ideas get access to legitimate peer review?"
Though peer review remains essential to the scientific method, "It is not a requirement that anyone else pay attention to you," said Jerry Hilbish, professor of biological sciences at the University of South Carolina.
Yet the big journals also have a lot to lose by missing out on a big breakthrough, he said.
"It is normal in science for new ideas that contradict old ones to be resisted or ignored for a while," Dr. Bauer said. "Many people in that situation are stunned that they’re not being listened to, because science is supposed to be so open to new ideas. But the reality is that (science) is open to new things, but just not things that are too new."
Has ANYONE on this thread suggested this?
Maybe you can expand upon your knowledge of numbers in the bible. I'm very eager to learn.
If your point is that according to Genesis God made the world in six days and rested on the seventh, I have already acknowledged that I was technically in error when I said that He made the world in seven days.
If that is not your point, kindly explain what it is that you would like me to expand upon and I will try to accommodate you.
That isn't my point.
If that is not your point, kindly explain what it is that you would like me to expand upon and I will try to accommodate you.
I want you to expand upon your knowledge of the meaning of numbers in the bible. You seem to have a vast knowledge of the bible. I take it you have studied it in detail and are intimately familiar with it's concepts in order to comment upon it with such authority.
I don't believe that I have presented myself as an authority on the Bible. Nor do I think one needs to be an authority on the Bible to know that the Genesis version of creation holds that God created the world and everything in it in six days.
I have no idea why you think that the meaning of numbers in the Bible has any bearing whatsoever on my original comment in this thread.
But to answer your question -- I have not studied the Bible in detail and don't know anything about the meaning of numbers in the Bible.
What I do know is that a strict interpretation of the Genesis account is not, and never will be, scientifically valid. That does not mean that it is wrong. But it is not science.
My point was that if it should be shown through the scientific method that Darwin's theory of natural selection is fatally flawed, that will not serve as scientific validation that the world was created through the process portrayed in Genesis.
Do you disagree with that statement? If so, why? And whatever does "the meaning of numbers in the Bible" have to do with the point that I have just made?
Hmmm, you seem to be someone who can freely criticize it and refute it, all that without knowing anything fundamental about it.
Nor do I think one needs to be an authority on the Bible to know that the Genesis version of creation holds that God created the world and everything in it in six days.
What you "think" seems to be incorrect.
Odd that the creator of the universe and all things would base a time system on a "day" of 24 earth hours, a time that relates to it's relationship to one star.
I have no idea why you think that the meaning of numbers in the Bible has any bearing whatsoever on my original comment in this thread.
I only refer to the post I replied too. A numbers are what YOU brought up.
But to answer your question -- I have not studied the Bible in detail and don't know anything about the meaning of numbers in the Bible.
That was painfully apparent from your post.
What I do know is that a strict interpretation of the Genesis account is not, and never will be, scientifically valid.
Hmm, for a person who has just confessed to his ignorance of the bible, it seems mysterious that you claim to know what a "strict" interpretation is. And also seem to assume that whatever that fantasy definition is, is the ONLY interpretation.
that will not serve as scientific validation that the world was created through the process portrayed in Genesis.
Science huh? Well, change one variable, in this case the definition of a day, and see if the hypothesis is now workable.
Odd that the creator of the universe and all things would base a time system on a "day" of 24 earth hours, a time that relates to it's relationship to one star.
Well, yes, I have heard this point made before. Henry Drummond (Spencer Tracy) used it to nail Matthew Harrison Brady (Ed Begley) on the witness stand in the movie "Inherit the Wind." When he got Brady to admit that the first day could have been more than 24 hours (since the Sun was not created on the first day), his next line was: "Then you INTERPRET!" Drummond went on to suggest that without the sun, the first day could have been 10 million years. Of course, even if one grants this interpretation, it hardly addresses some of the other problems with Genesis -- from a scientific standpoint.
Odd that the creator of the universe and all things would base a time system on a "day" of 24 earth hours, a time that relates to it's relationship to one star.
I completely agree. That's one problem with the Genesis account. I didn't write it. But I have read it. And it does speak of each event of the creation taking a day."
Genesis 1:1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
2 The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
3 Then God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light.
4 And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness.
5 God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. So the evening and the morning were the first day.
We read the first 5 verses of Genesis discussing the first day of creation. The remainder of creation follows:
Day 2 verses 6-8, God created the firmament (or expanse).
Day 3 God created the dry land and separated from the seas, and the plants. 9-13
Day 4 God created light, stars, moon and sun. 14-19
Day 5 God created life in the waters, birds 20-23
Day 6 God created animals on the land and the beasts of the field 24-25
Also on day 6, God created the crown of His creation. Man was created in the image of God.
Day 7 God rested to give man a day of rest.
Now I have a question for you. How is it that God created the sun BEFORE he created the seas? I see that you are very good at snide and disparaging remarks, but perhaps with your great knowledge of the scientific accuracy of the Bible, perhaps you could enlighten me as to the scientific evidence to support the notion that the sea -- and also the plants -- was created before the sun.
Sorry, that should read: "How is it that God created the seas BEFORE he created the sun?"
Maybe instead it's time to discuss why you you have dodged the fair and legitimate question I asked you in my last post, and why you prefer to offer hostile and snide remarks rather than substantive statements in support of your position (if, in fact, you have one – since you have neglected to state one on any topic other than my fitness to engage in debate).
But if you would prefer to discuss literary devices instead, see if you can identify what type this one is: "Your contribution to a rational discussion is as empty as a beer can on a hot day."
What difference does it make being they were created only one day apart?
Do you mean a literal 24-hour day?
No matter. The difference it makes is that there is no scienfically valid theory of creation that accommodates the idea that the seas (or even the earth, for that matter) could have existed in the absence of a sun.
Therefore, the Genesis account is not scientifically defensible. Again, that doesn't mean Genesis is wrong. But it does mean that it is not science, and the attempt by some to make it so is utterly preposterous.
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