Posted on 04/09/2002 11:31:41 AM PDT by JediGirl
Very dishonest of you. I gave links to the articles where the absurdity of the ankle bones is to be found. You can also find plenty of articles by just looking up Eosimias saying the same thing - that a pair of miniscule ankle bones is proof of evolution. Fact of the matter is that paleontologists, science writers, newspapers, magazines and tv regularly prostitute themselves for the sake of evolution.
Many creationists are old-universe while being young-earth, though. I recommend a class in geology and/or taking a high-level biology course (above the 100s)...
High school science education or just general entry-level biology college classes will NOT give a convincing evolution, and that is the kind of education the vast majority of the population has.
It's like... you go to the webpages that say man hasn't landed on the moon. Those websites are very convincing... unless your education tells you better. Same thing with creationism. They come up with a lot of statements and such that appear make logical sense, but they work on very little actual scientific base.
I can tell you that I was a very unyielding creationist until I went to college & found out that all the "proof" the creationists offer in all their books were honest distortions or misrepresentations and work from very little scientific basis. (One example is that they -all- confuse hypothesis with theory, which tells me they don't have much of a higher science education in first place...)
Good luck in all your endeavors, and despite what many will tell you, I do not think there is a conflict with taking Genesis as an allegory. Genesis means so much more than you'd think, especially when taking its historical context, but that's a subject for another day. :-)
Amend that to "general entry-level biology college classes will NOT give a convincing case for evolution"
It's not the age of the universe, or even the Earth, that I'm questioning.
What I am doubting is the belief that all life evolved from a common one-cell ancestor. This has never been proved. Some insist it has been. This emotional instance more than anything that has made me skeptical of it.
Actually, evolution has arguably been disproved if Gore3K's information is correct concerning the rate of observed mutations. If the time -- even assuming old Earth, old universe -- is not available to mathematically account for the development of life as we now see it, it seems it would be better science to doubt evolution.
Quick question: is time an absolute or relative method of measurement.
I agree that neither Genesis nor the Bible should be used as a science book.
There's a difference between absolute time and relative time. Geologists work mostly by relative time. They can determine very accurately that one rock layer is so-and-so millions of years older than the sill or dyke within it.
In some cases they defend evoltutionary theory because it's also their religion. Sometimes for both reasons.
This is a load of crap. You can believe whatever you want to believe and so can the rest of us. Darwin was a naturalist. Where did you get all that other stuff?
But that's what this discussion is about. The evolution isn't demonstrated. We can't show that a polychaete became a velvet worm. We can't even show that a salamander became a gekko.
I'm not saying that it is unfair to speculate that these things have occurred. It is unfair to declare that these things have occurred.
The success of "genetic programming" in which a stochastic search of a designedly limited range of possibilities with a pre-designed standard of fitness suggests by analogy that a stochastic search of a law-constrained system of possibilities could well be the right form for a theory. Of course, that won't do to bainsh the law-maker as some would like. It would, however, be very good science.
Everyone knows that the most intelligent people eat Chicago-style hot dogs.
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