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 states 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 Darwins theory of evolution by natural selection with Gregor Mendels 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.
Jude is not Adam.
Leap year, you know... (/sarcasm off)
So he is a crazy, but smarter than the PhD., Christian. Loony right is better than dumb wrong. I've been saying that around here for years. :-)
The long polymers required by life have not been observed to form without life. Not even close.
I wrote - "Intelligence implies a designer."
You responded:
"Then you would not object to a teacher pointing out what a poor job of design it was."
Certainly not, if that teacher can show the correct DNA code of amino acid sequences to correct the proteins that caused this "poor" design. I doubt that many, if any, could do this.
I suppose photographic evidence that Adam and Eve had belly-buttons would be a start.....
;-o
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I want to know what the mass of a soul is.
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Ask me again when you've isolated a magnetic monopole, or determined what is actually "waving" in a matter wave.
Just because a thing can't be measure or detected at present does not mean it does not exist. Both examples above are theoretically possible.
Did you know that Jesus is God? Did you know that Jesus created the universe? Did you know that Enoch was raptured before he died? Did you know that Jesus knows Enoch? Did you know Jude was Jesus' half-brother? The spuriousness of the so-called Book of Enoch means nothing to this passage in the New Testament. Jesus could quote Enoch verbatim whether there was a Book of Enoch or not.
John 1:1-4
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
2 The same was in the beginning with God.
3 All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.
4 In him was life; and the life was the light of men.
John 8:58-59
58 Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am.
59 Then took they up stones to cast at him: but Jesus hid himself, and went out of the temple, going through the midst of them, and so passed by.
The Pharisees who took up stones in this passage knew He was claiming Himself as God. The "I am" of John 8:58 is the Greek version of the "I am" of the burning bush, if you were wondering.
Again, six generations after Adam would be the seventh generation. Adam being the first generation.
You keep repeating this as if you believe it will never happen.
I believe the Bible indicates that a curse has tainted, and continues to taint the Creation. We would need the original design to make your assessment. The presumptuous teacher commits the ASSUME mistake in your scenario.
There are no closed systems in our universe. It is a theoretical construct. Kind of like how we use universal Turing machines as the computational model for computer science but we can't build such a device in this universe. It is a theoretical convenience used to simplify models when possible.
One might be able to argue that the universe itself is a closed system, but we don't know enough to make such an assertion either way.
God sent His Son to die for your sins. Big difference. But you can choose whatever path (and eternal fate) you really prefer... just don't blame God for your choice.
N'Kay?
;-/
Notice how, for the hundredth time, the troll avoided the direct questions?
That doesn't follow. I'll make it simple though: define "intelligence" in strict rigorous terms.
You must be using a definition of "intelligence" I am unfamiliar with that makes the implication obvious.
This fits in tightly here.
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.
Strange isn't it? But somehow the observation remains the same. I also will state that I believe that heat will never spontaneously flow from cold to hot.
This so-called god you worship sounds like a complete sack of S^%$. I think Saddam has more mercy and is less needful of praise and adulation than this "god" of yours. Anyone who'd whine about their competition and send people to eternal torment for not giving him enough BJClinton-type-praise or believing in a particular, and quite obvious, 'theory' of nature must be a real looney.
Just out of curiosity, where was God during the 15,000 years of human civilization prior to the creation of Judaism? Apprentice to Marduk? Deity graduate school?
Hope you didn't talk to your Dad like that when you were a boy. YOUCH! Little trouble with authority there, eh?
He likes dungeons and dragons games.
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