Posted on 09/11/2008 9:55:10 AM PDT by GodGunsGuts
Sept 10, 2008 Astrobiologist David Deamer believes that life can spontaneously emerge without design, but he thinks lay people are too uneducated to understand how this is possible, so he gives them the watered-down version of Darwins natural selection instead, which he knows is inadequate to explain the complexity of life. Thats what he seemed to be telling reporter Susan Mazur in an interview for the Scoop (New Zealand). Is the lay public really too dense for the deeper knowledge of how evolution works?...
(Excerpt) Read more at creationsafaris.com ...
No, Lewontin of:
* 1961: Fulbright Fellowship
* 1961: National Science Foundation Senior Postdoctoral Fellow
* 1970s: Membership of the National Academy of Sciences (later resigned)
* 1994: Sewall Wright Award from the American Society of Naturalists
Fallacy of Ad Hominem noted.
‘Science’ gets to make up any after-the-fact story it wants as long as the evidence is interpreted through the filter of the philosophy of naturalism. No other filters are allowed because naturalists actually believe that equating technological success and origins philosophy is appropriate.
It never occurs to them that their equivocation begs the very question they are being challenged on.
“Get over it.”
“The use of unnecessary rudeness has been approved.” (adapted from The Blues Brothers)
It’s like an official from the Democratic German Republic of East Germany lecturing someone on democracy.
“Creationism gives conservatism a bad name.”
- tpanther, 9/11/08
Mark it down, save it for posterity.
(Just thought you creationists would like to see how it feels to be quote-mined inappropriately like you guys do all day and night to scientists. Fun, huh? And for the record, the creationist wing of AMERICA gives AMERICA the a bad name, if I can take it one step further.)
For someone who prides themselves in being logical, your comments often make no sense. Being sued into abandoning their beliefs?
Forcing their belief system into preeminence in the schools is not suing someone into abandoning their beliefs, whatever that means.
The fact is that the atheist/evo/liberal crowd is suing any who disagree with them into silence. They are forcing their belief system on others, plain and simple. They won't allow for any competing anything to be presented to counter their viewpoint.
The judicial branch is to determine whether a law has been broken not to establish law or policy. That is the job of the legislative branch of the government.
The judicial branch is being asked to determine just what is and is not science, something it is not qualified to do. That is outside its area of expertise.
Using the judicial branch for those purposes is an abuse of the judiciary.
A theory is judged by its explanatory and predictive powers. The theory of evolution through natural selection of genetic variation has an answer at the ready for why a bacteria under stress would increase its mutation rate.
What answer do you have?
What? Still no answer?
Why would a bacteria under stress intentionally increase its mutation rate?
As far as I know they have, but then there's that tendency for scientists/evos to declare that anything that could possibly be used to disprove the ToE is "not science" before hand and therefore is not admissible as evidence.
I've seen too many evos on this forum challenge creationists to that very thing, find evidence to disprove evo, and then laugh and say *if that's possible*.
The mindset is that if it supports evo, it's science, and it it doesn't, it's not really science so it doesn't count.
Automatically writing off anything that would make it look bad is intellectually dishonest. It merely reinforces the observation made by non-evos of .... No dissent allowed.
You seem to be out of place...this is a conservative site.
And ummmm....no. You can’t.
Next you’ll try telling us the 10 Commandments have no place in law. And anyone that thinks otherwise gives conservatism a bad name, indeed is baaaaad for America’s standing in the world.
If you want to get into a ore recent argument, why is it that only humans have evolved to such a high level. Evolutionist argue there was a need involved for humans to reach the point we are at today, but that raises more questions as no other evolutionary line in primate history as done what we have.
So you're saying that the bacteria itself can manage its own mutation rate, and that mutations do not happen at random?
Whatever happened to mutations are random but selected through outside pressure?
It's the baseless assumption that scientists work on that everything has only a natural explanation.
You just demonstrated his point.
Thank you.
Richard Levins + Richard Lewontin
Harvard University Press 1985
A book review by Danny Yee © 1993 http://dannyreviews.com/ The Dialectical Biologist is a collection of essays on various aspects of biology. Richard Lewontin is a population geneticist and Richard Levins is an ecologist, and they are both world-famous within their fields. Here they are writing as Marxists (and dialectical materialists), and it is this that gives this book its unique perspective. It was by reading this book that I first came to an understanding of the dialectical method and attained some grasp of Marx and Engel's broader philosophy. Perhaps this is because my understanding of biology is better than my understanding of economics and political theory, or perhaps it is simply because Marx's writings are difficult to come to grips with and the commentary on them is so contentious.
Another way the RATE of mutation is changed is by downregulation of DNA repair genes. These genes make proteins that patrol DNA for mismatches and repair them by assuming the old methylated strand is the good copy and the new unmethylated (until DNA methylases get to it) strand is the one that is messed up. By downregulating the DNA that codes for these repair proteins, the mutation rate goes up.
Once again, the mutations can and do happen at any position at a predictable random fashion, because DNA polymerase as a molecular machine is only 99.99% accurate, and error prone DNA polymerase is purposefully less accurate.
So why would a bacteria intentionally increase its mutation rate in response to pressure?
You mean creationists like Sarah Palin?
Your Lewontin writing in a socialist rag:
Stephen Jay GouldWhat Does it Mean to Be a Radical?
by Richard C. Lewontin and Richard Levins
Early this year, Stephen Gould developed lung cancer, which spread so quickly that there was no hope of survival. He died on May 20, 2002, at the age of sixty. Twenty years ago, he had escaped death from mesothelioma, induced, we all supposed, by some exposure to asbestos. Although his cure was complete, he never lost the consciousness of his mortality and gave the impression, at least to his friends, of an almost cheerful acceptance of the inevitable. Having survived one cancer that was probably the consequence of an environmental poison, he succumbed to another.
The public intellectual and political life of Steve Gould was extraordinary, if not unique. First, he was an evolutionary biologist and historian of science whose intellectual work had a major impact on our views of the process of evolution. Second, he was, by far, the most widely known and influential expositor of science who has ever written for a lay public. Third, he was a consistent political activist in support of socialism and in opposition to all forms of colonialism and oppression. The figure he most closely resembled in these respects was the British biologist of the 1930s, J. B. S. Haldane, a founder of the modern genetical theory of evolution, a wonderful essayist on science for the general public, and an idiosyncratic Marxist and columnist for the Daily Worker
Nor why it hasn't happened in other species either.
This is the fatal flaw of your argument. It is your baseless assumption that scientists think things only have a natural explanation. They KNOW that Science only can test, measure, accept or reject things that are the result of natural and predictable forces. Most Scientists in the US are, like myself, people of faith. It is a straw-man argument that Scientists are somehow blinded to the possibility of the miraculous and divine, we are NOT, most of us are believers. We simply know that what ‘is’ can be measured and what ‘IS’ cannot.
Heb11:1 Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
Heb11:6 And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.
A review of Thinking About Evolution: Historical, Philosophical and Political Perspectives edited by Rama S. Singh, Kostas Krimbas, Diane B. Paul, and John Beatty
Cambridge University Press 2001
....This is the second volume of a festschrift for Lewontin, the leading evolutionary geneticist, Marxist, and critic of genetic explanations of human behavioral characteristics. This volume contains twenty-eight articles, including the work of some ten leading philosophers of biology, several of whom worked in Lewontins laboratory while on leave or exchange (Sober, Lloyd), took courses with (Brandon), was a colleague of (Wimsatt), co-authored with (Sober, Godfrey Smith) or were influenced heavily by Lewontin.
There also are works of a general nature by several of Lewontins Marxist or radical biologist colleagues or comrades, including edited and abridged chapters from books by Steve Gould and Steve Rose, an article on identity politics by Ruth Hubbard, and a critique of chaos theory by Richard Levins. I shall concentrate on those articles that I think most clearly develop two theoretical themes originally adumbrated by Lewontin, the critique of genic selectionism and the defense of the claim that organisms construct their environments. For brief, clear abstracts of all twenty-eight articles see the review by Michael Bradie (2002) in this journal. An adequate essay-review of the score of topics covered in various articles would be at least as long as the book itself.
A scientist who’s a Marxist.
And your point is?
Our understanding of colonial insects is far from complete.
Remember the Dolphins, they fled and left the note “Good bye, and Thanks for all the fish”.
I question the intent of all Marxists and all those that hearld the Marxists.
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