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.
Do you not believe that energy from the Sun gets to the Earth?
There does seem to be rampant ignorance (or malice) about thermodynamics among Creationists. By their logic, even simple reactions would not take place.
A PhD. had a flat tire. When he removed the flat he placed the lug nuts in the hub cap. While leveraging the spare into place he bumped the hub cap and spilled the 4 lug nuts down a storm drain. He could not reach the fallen lugs down the deep drain. As the PhD. was sitting with head in hands, trying to come up with contingencies for retrieving the lugs, a Christian happened by. Seeing the sadness of the Prof he questioned him about his dilemma.
Looking at the drain and seeing that there was no manhole cover nearby, the Christian quickly reasoned that the best course of action was to remove a single lug nut from the other three tires to use with the spare. Then drive to an auto-supply store to replace the four missing lugs.
1 Adam-->2 Seth-->3 Enos-->4 Cainan--->5 Mahalaleel--->6 Jared-->7 Enoch.
Adam is the first generation. Enoch is the seventh generation after Adam's.
Hope this helps.
Well, no wonder our species is so screwed up after all that inbreeding!
point. that was something i had forgotten to account. still though, you profess there is no such thing as a closed system. how?
My issues are well documented, and yes it may trace back to my ancestors who thankfully weren't apes. (Minimal hair on my back and all, thinning on top unlike your ancestors too).
Long time no chat, former Lord of Moria! Mithrandir, my Hero! :-)
Now Enoch, who lived seven generations after Adam, prophesied about these people. He said,
For example, I am the second generation after or from my grandfather. He doesn't count and it doesn't make sense as #1 because that would mean he is the first generation after himself?
The KJV uses from instead of after but it the same thing.
And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these
Anyhow your point is moot because Enoch's supposed prophecy here comes from his Book of Enoch which is not part of the Bible and all Christian denominations (besides the Ethiopian Orthodox) don't recognize it as divinely inspired
When I heard this story, the guy with the flat tire was a physicist and the guy who came up with the solution was a loony calling down instructions from the windows of an asylum (the punchline was "I may be crazy, but that doesn't mean I'm stupid"). I find it interesting you substituted a Christian for the loony.
hey, newsflash! as stated before, the geneology list is NOT exhaustive!
also, the same translation error can occur here as well as "days= period of time"
1000 or 10,000, the idea is "large number"
and a "saint" is one who is deemed holy, so where your discrepancy there is, im lost.
also, to balrog (the irreverant)
evolutionists state we all came from one cell that split. these means we are all related either way. deal with it.
So he forgot the sun. Picky, picky!
thermodynamics isnt even the issue, its the actions of atoms and how they react. thermodynamics is a step from that.
what would cause atoms to fuse until they "lived"?
why cant we replicate it? even if one day we do replicate it, when will we start forming matter from energy?
if all we are is chance, a controlled lab should be able to mimic it. of course, then there is still the pesky "where did energy itself come from?"
Big bang you say? or some equivelant? what was the origin of that?
all signs point to God.
are you going to state that there is no such thing as a close system as well? i thought the closed system was ideal for the Big Bang theory. or any theory professing a lack of an ultimate will.
these-this, blah. im tired of writing, of the 60 odd posts, ive also typed an 8 page essay for psychology. mind's going blah.
Since I didn't write the quote you reference, you might want to go back to the entry and reply to whoever did write it. Sorry
Truly a memorable thread. Placemarker.
False. It's a hypothesis. It will not become a theory until there are criteria for testing it.
For example, standard biology predicts that any pseudogene, transposon, etc, found in the genome of a single species of cat and also in a single species of dog will be found in all species of cat, all species of dog, and also all species of bear.
Until ID or creationism is capable of making detailed predictions like this, they remain mere armchair speculation, not science.
BTW if this prediction (or any one of thousands similar to it) were experimentally found to be false, major changes in either the phyoggenetic tree, or the ToE, or both, would be necessary. What observations would show that ID or creationism had to be seriously revised?
Um, no, not exactly. Try again after reading a book.
I think that if you had paid as much attention to your English teachers as your Biology teachers you would be a much better person. Punctuation is your friend - learn it, live it, exploit it!
What, precisely, is the problem? Have you or anyone else actually computed the entropy of a world with living things, and one without? How does this value compare with the increase in entropy csused by energy moving through the system?
i simply refuse to do so. you catch my drift most of the time, and if you don't? tough, not my problem on this site to break things down so you can enjoy it through a sippy cup.
and "uhm, yes, exactly"
if the hypothesis that we came from primordial ooze is correct, shouldnt this planet be producing new life forms all the time? why would primordial ooze become extinct? there must be life-spewing ooze now if there was any at all.
the fact that this planet is devoid of such ooze implies that if it was the origin, it was limited. also, the presence of the ooze was such a chaotic chance that i doubt after the first happening, that it happend twice on the same planet (or even solar system).
after that conclusion, it is hard to see how more than one cell could have also happend purely by chance in the same pool. this cell was imbued with a first ever thing (aside from life itself) the ability to replicate its self. no matter could do that. the problem was, the copy was imperfect, but many could be made.
given the sheer chances, id say its quite giving of me to just even assume primordial ooze formed. let alone originated life.
Some people can't help repeating the same joke over and over and over and over and over to the same audience.
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