I know how the guy feels.
Posted on 07/04/2004 5:19:27 PM PDT by PatrickHenry
Professor Ernst Mayr, the scientist renowned as the father of modern biology, will celebrate his 100th birthday tomorrow by leading a scathing attack on creationism.
The evolutionary biologist, who is already acclaimed as one of the most prolific researchers of all time, has no intention of retiring and is shortly to publish new research that dismantles the fashionable creationist doctrine of “intelligent design”.
Although he has reluctantly cut his workload since a serious bout of pneumonia 18 months ago, Prof. Mayr has remained an active scientist at Harvard University throughout his 90s. He has written five books since his 90th birthday and is researching five academic papers. One of these, scheduled to appear later this year, will examine how “intelligent design” — the latest way in which creationists have sought to present a divine origin of the world — was thoroughly refuted by Charles Darwin a century and a half ago.
His work is motivated in part by a sense of exasperation at the re-emergence of creationism in the USA, which he compares unfavourably with the widespread acceptance of evolution that he encountered while growing up in early 20th-century Germany.
The states of Florida, Mississippi, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky and Oklahoma currently omit the word “evolution” from their curriculums. The Alabama state board of education has voted to include disclaimers in textbooks describing evolution as a theory. In Georgia, the word “evolution” was banned from the science curriculum after the state’s schools superintendent described it as a “controversial buzzword”.
Fierce protest, including criticism from Jimmy Carter, the former President, reversed this.
Prof. Mayr, who will celebrate his 100th birthday at his holiday home in New Hampshire with his two daughters, five grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren, was born on 5 July 1905 in Kempten, Germany. He took a PhD in zoology at the University of Berlin, before travelling to New Guinea in 1928 to study its diverse bird life. On his return in 1930 he emigrated to the USA. His most famous work, Systematics and the Origin of Species, was published in 1942 and is regarded still as a canonical work of biology.
It effectively founded the modern discipline by combining Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection with Gregor Mendel’s genetics, showing how the two were compatible. Prof. Mayr redefined what scientists mean by a species, using interbreeding as a guide. If two varieties of duck or vole do not interbreed, they cannot be the same species.
Prof. Mayr has won all three of the awards sometimes termed the “triple crown” of biology — the Balzan Prize, the Crafoord Prize and the International Prize for Biology. Although he formally retired in 1975, he has been active as an Emeritus Professor ever since and has recently written extensively on the philosophy of biology.
I don't either. Look at my tagline now and then.
Germany, huh! Figures!
i talked in private to js, not "spam"... unless you count two mails as "spam"
i simply pointed out to js that while having a problem with me, the problems were not directed at me. but hey, you guys wanna play little middle-school popularity games, go ahead. go ahead, ignore other rationals. you'll face God one day. all i can say is, i hope you had a good excuse for treating the least of His the way you just did.
get over yourselves. you're elitists, just like Kerry. you think you're something simply because you're too dense to figure "hey, maybe they have something too"
screw it, im tired of talking to you guys. you dont listen. you dont even try to think outside of your own little observations. its all to literal to you.
guess what happens when you take things literally to often? you decapitate free thinkers who think "hey, what if the world ISNT the center of the universe?"
you base your limited reasoning on limited observations, and when anyone else tries to point to another area, you simply refuse to acknowledge them. and then you cannonize it as "science", form a clique, and act like a bunch of 6th graders, refusing that MAYBE you have only some of it right, and someone else may have something to bring.
whoever said "Creationists are just looking for a seat" got it right. but it seems ANYONE who even talks to a full blown Creationist gets blwon out too. just like children. you're acting just like whining little brats that i had the occasion to "enjoy" in middle school to the point of being suicidal.
go on being your invalid little selves. im tired of dealing with cretins anyway.
and if this post gets pulled, so be it, im not putting up with backstabbing.
By the way, what grade are you in?
"get over yourselves. you're elitists, [snip]"-- a grumpy poster on this thread
Yeah, how dare you guys get a decent education, and post in rational, coherent, and grammatically proper sentences? You should be ashamed of yourselves!
And I should probably go shoot myself for daring to question the wisdom of someone who thinks that 0.999... does, AND does not, equal "1," and who believes that sometimes mathematics is subjective.
As atonement for my sins, I will have to contact my alma mater, and ask them to rescind my Mathematics degree. Clearly, I am too "elitist" to deserve it. Time to put on a hair shirt and flagellate myself. "Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa......"
< /lunatic moment>
Oh, I don't think so. I referred to your emails a spam because there is nothing in them that couldn't and shouldn't be discussed in public. You complained because I ridiculed you regarding your ideas about gravity. Sorry, but fringe ideas about gravity are going to be the subject of ridicule wherever you go. If there's something to them, find an article in a science journal, even a popular science magazine, and give us a link or reference.
Science and math are not elitist. They are the most class blind of all human activities. They are not blind, however to sloppy thinking. You seem to have the idea that only liberals accept the common definitions employed in mathematics. I would advise you that this is a new age hippy dippy way of thinking. Same with the notion that some unnamed "doctor of quantum physics" is going to brew up some compound in a laboratory that alters the physics of gravity. If that isn't what you mean, then what is? Point us to a source for your ideas.
With the technology we have today, it would seem we would be more capable of re-creating such an event, at least to some small degree, such as what is claimed by many evolutionists. We could not create nuclear fusion 100 years ago, true. But we can now. Why? Because we know more, and understand more. Scientists are forever claiming to have more and better understanding of the evolutionary process, yet, we still can not provide solid scientific proof of it occurring by recreating the process or providing some solid process or processes that had to happen to make this event to start, or better yet, why we are not finding examples today of the evolutionary process continuing. This idea that evolution is happening so slow, we don't see it is absurd. We should be able to find examples of life in all kinds of stages of evolution but we don't. I just think with the technology and scientific minds we have today, we should be able, to some degree, be able to recreate this evolutionary process.
You and I could debate for months of all the things we once couldn't do, but can now do. I hope I am getting my point across here. For some reason I just feel like this statement is not getting across what I am trying to say.
I'm not sure what your point is. Are you saying anything we can't do right now isn't worth persuing? Or is it that anything we don't fully understand right now must have supernatural causes?
Scientists are forever claiming to have more and better understanding of the evolutionary process, yet, we still can not provide solid scientific proof of it occurring by recreating the process or providing some solid process or processes that had to happen to make this event to start, or better yet, why we are not finding examples today of the evolutionary process continuing.
Ever hear of ring species?
While I do agree we are here because God the Father placed us here, I do not think everything we cannot fully understand must be supernatural. There are many things that are worth pursuing. I just think evolution does not fall in to that category as being worth pursuing.
You have never asked, nor has anyone else who supports evolution, asked why I so staunchly support and defend the notion of creation rather than evolution. I will tell you if you really want to know.
Man, you gotta think outside the box.
I would be more interested in why you aren't curious about the way things here on earth, and in the observable world, work.
You would probably be offended if I called you a flat-earther, but do you have any idea how many centuries of observation and thought went into the notion that the earth is a sphere. Maybe the shape of the earth is in the Bible, but for thousands of years, readers of the Bible missed it. Maybe there are other things in the Bible that people have missed. Maybe God allows us to use our senses and our minds to work out the details of creation.
"Oh, I don't think so. I referred to your emails a spam because there is nothing in them that couldn't and shouldn't be discussed in public."
i approached you directly, where-as you attacked me on the sidelines with your buddies. you held your view as being above mine, thus "elitist" fits nicely.
but hey, whats my line of thinking to you? im just a moron, right? it shouldnt bother you in the least, unless you feel some sort of truth in my words.
the studies of math may be class-blind, but the studiers are very human, and thus, prone to ignorance. you view science as the only truth. i view science and philosophy blended properly as the way to truth. i embrace several thought processes. you embrace few. as liberal as that may sound, there is a reason liberals use that way of talking to sway others to them. its the truth!
funny jokes, satires, and lies all rely on one simple thing. a shred of truth. thats what you hold as your perfect logic. "a shred" of truth.
as for "brewing up" a compond that "alters" gravity. i never said that, nor did i intend to say so.
the idea of "gravitons" has been spoken of for some time now. (it is now at the same stage "photons" were at before they got discovered)
if something emits gravitons, it has gravity. we cant observe gravity on the quantum level, but we assume it applies, despite interference from electrical energy.
i simply suggest that MAYBE quanta matter ISNT affected by gravity, as our research cannot conflict yet. IF that was the case, at what mass does gravity apply?
enter the idea of "clusters"
this is a controversial idea that a certain number of molecules behave in an unknown manner. this number (in idea) is very small for the quantum level. something like 162 (no more, no less) atoms of X element. (x being whatever element that number applies to)
my idea was a simple jump into "well, if we dont know the properties of 'clusters' who knows what it may do? what if they somehow magnified polarity, or even the pulses of gravitons?"
then followed by "a given object large enough to make (noticeable?) gravity is bound to produce a 'cluster'"
i know it sounds stupid, even made-up to you, but im in school right now, and my teacher, Dr. M. Hair of Kennesaw State Univ. brought up "clusters" in chemistry class, making sure we knew that they were strictly an idea at this point. after looking up gravity from some sources, ranging from a book "Dictionary of Theories" to my old physics books, i figured (unless you know something i dont) that gravity is so not understood, that i dont know where we would even begin to look at it.
so, i offered an idea, that one day, may be testable. if im wrong, oh well, all people who study science are wrong at several times in their lives. if im right, what would that mean for furthering understandings of how existance is even possible?
What a weird question. Belief and proof are two quite different phenomena, hence one need not prove -- much less prove 'scientifically' -- an afterlife to be credulous of it.
Granted, quantum theory is pretty weird, but it was developed over several decades by a host of physicists, and several independently developed mathematical formulations gave the same answers.
So how long did it take the stodgy, skeptical world of science to give serious consideration to general relativity? Five minutes? Ten? Anyone want to hazard a guess as to why relativity was accepted quickly, and fringe science is rejected?
I never asked to be approached directly. Anything I have to say can be said in public.
I'm going to ask again; is there anything at all you can bring to the table in the way of a reference or a link? If this is your original idea, perhaps you would share a taste of the mathematics underpiinning your idea.
On the contrary my friend, I am very curious. While in College, I took a semester of Chemistry class, and a 3 semesters of Physics class. I took these classes, because I am curious. I concede that having taken these classes does not make me an expert by any means. But having taken these classes, I have had my eyes opened.
Our world functions on a very orderly, and structured fashion. A fact that becomes blatantly clear to anyone studying these two subjects. Physics especially demonstrates this fact. I just can not accept life came in to being by any other way than God forming life in His hands. Look at our solar system for example. Do you honestly believe all of the planets are arranged and orbitting in the manner they are brought about by a so called Big Bang? Look at atoms, and cells and all of the laws governing these two. Do you honestly believe that cells and atoms came in to existance through evolution, especially considering the intricate detail in their designs as well as functions?
In my humble opinion, based on what I have studied myself, science does more to prove creation, rather than disprove it. God created all we know and see, including all of the laws governing all of the phenomenon we see on a daily basis. I guess the saddest thing about scientists, at least the ones who refuse to accept the truth in front of thier eyes, is that the answer has been there the entire time.
...and i never asked to be ridiculed by people like you. it happens. deal with it.
its kind of hard to share the mathematics of something that hasnt been discovered yet, let alone two things blended and how they would interact.
something i can assume you would recognize that might help me explain it is this: all masses large enough to produce noticeable gravity have a north and south pole (this i will admit i may be ignorant of, but i cant think of an example that contradicts this). polar bonds are present in iron and water, along with a host of others. what if the reason they all have poles and have gravity is because the gravitons are originating from these polar bonds?
I take it "Dr. M. Hair" is "Hair, Dr. C. Maxwell, Temporary Assistant Professor of Chemistry".
Has he published anything on this subject, or did you take enough notes to lead us to an article on the topic?
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