Famed Harvard Biologist Gould Dies

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&ncid=716&e=2&u=/ap/20020520/ap_on_re_us/obit_gould ^ | 5/20/02 | yahoo

[rpage3]

See source for details....

[mafree]

I'm sorry to hear this- didn't know he was ill. Gould did a lot to popularize biology and had a good way of expressing scientific concepts. May he rest in peace.

[Scully]

Now what makes you think being an evolutionist automatically means you're an atheist? The two are not synonymous in the least.

Absolutely!

[My2Cents]

What did I say which implied that I think Gould was an atheist? Didn't I post "May he find mercy and peace"? The guy was an unrepentant apologist for evolution, but what one believes about evolution doesn't keep anyone out of heaven.

[dead]

If you absolutely forced me to bet on the existence of a conventional anthropomorphic deity, of course I'd bet no. But, basically, Huxley was right when he said that agnosticism is the only honorable position because we really cannot know. And that's right. I'd be real surprised if there turned out to be a conventional God.

I remember a story about Clarence Darrow, who was quite atheistic. Somebody asked him: "Suppose you die and your soul goes up there and it turns out the conventional story is true afterall?" Darrow's answer was beautiful, and I love the way he pictured it with the 12 apostles in the jury box and with his reputation for giving long speeches (he spoke two straight days to save Leopold and Loeb). He said that for once in his life he wasn't going to make a long speech. He was just going to walk up to them, bow low to the judge's bench, and say, "Gentlemen, I was wrong."

- Stephen Jay Gould

[Clemenza]

Those who take Darwin word for word and say that humans evolved from creatures EXACTLY like the simians of today. While I beleive that we are descended from an ape-like creature (with tails, of course!), are ancestors were not identical to Cheetah from Tarzan.

[PatrickHenry]

Ping to my whole list.

[RadioAstronomer]

Sad ping!

[jpl]

With all due respect, don't you think we should let the body cool off a little bit first before damning the man?

[jlogajan]

He was just going to walk up to them, bow low to the judge's bench, and say, "Gentlemen, I was wrong."

That's really going to p*ss off Athena!

[Havisham]

Steve Gould dead at 60. No doubt this will send shivers through his baby boom fans. I saw Steve Gould on a panel broadcast by C-Span last year. It wasn't until one particularly shrill panelist hissed her hatred of religion in general and Christianity in particular that I had any idea what the focus of the gathering was. Steve Gould smilingly punctured her wildly incompetent presentation, though he did not seem to disagree with the general premise that if God exists it's us. He seemed to be slightly embarassed to be found among such a menagery of frustrated mortals. It might be that Steve Gould wanted to be perceived as a raging middle-of-the-roader. He certainly cultivated that cuddly persona.

[VOA]

I am a Christian and although I don't accept the Orthodox Darwinean evolution
(which has been turned into a religion by its proponents) I nevertheless
believe in the general theory.

Generally my feeling on the topic.
Too bad that Gould is gone; he at least tried to have some mutual understanding and
peaceful co-existence between the orthodox scientific and the orthodox religional parties
on ultimate origins and descent.

[crystalk]

I would so like to say he is with Jesus now, but he is now with the dinosaurs he so loved, just as extinct as they.

Spent his whole life running from a God that would have loved to save him, show him the truth.

[crystalk]

Epitaph: His equilibrium will never again be punctuated.

[Junior]

Those who take Darwin word for word and say that humans evolved from creatures EXACTLY like the simians of today. While I beleive that we are descended from an ape-like creature (with tails, of course!), are ancestors were not identical to Cheetah from Tarzan.

I don't think you're getting your evolution from a reputable source (cut-rate evolution will be the death of you, man!). Evolutionists all agree that man and chimps split from a common ancestor about 5 million years ago. Not one of them says that that ancestor was EXACTLY like the chimps of today.

[BibChr]

Pity. By all accounts, he was a man who could not afford to die.

Dan
How Can I Know God?

[PatrickHenry]

Might as well toss this in (Gould would probably approve):

A very few links from the famous "list-o-links" (so the creationists don't get to start each new thread from ground zero).

01: Site that debunks virtually all of creationism's fallacies. Excellent resource.
02: Creation "Science" Debunked.
03: Creationi sm and Pseudo Science. Familiar cartoon then lots of links.
04: The SKEPTIC annotated bibliography. Amazingly great meta-site!
05: The Evidence for Human Evolution. For the "no evidence" crowd.
06: Massive mega-site with thousands of links on evolution, creationism, young earth, etc..
07: Another amazing site full of links debunking creationism.
08: Creationism and Pseudo Science. Great cartoon!
09: Glenn R. Morton's site about creationism's fallacies. Another jennyp contribution.
11: Is Evolution Science?. Successful PREDICTIONS of evolution (Moonman62).
12: Five Major Misconceptions about Evolution. On point and well-written.
13: Frequently Asked But Never Answered Questions. A creationist nightmare!
14: DARWIN, FULL TEXT OF HIS WRITINGS. The original ee-voe-lou-shunist.

The foregoing was just a tiny sample. So that everyone will have access to the accumulated "Creationism vs. Evolution" threads which have previously appeared on FreeRepublic, plus links to hundreds of sites with a vast amount of information on this topic, here's Junior's massive work, available for all to review:
The Ultimate Creation vs. Evolution Resource [ver 17].

[My2Cents]

I didn't suggest Gould was an atheist, but I did get this from a friend of mine who is a geneticist:

I heard Gould speak once or twice. He was an outstanding lecturer and was extremely good at turning the tables on any Christian who dared question him. For example, a person in the audience might ask, "How could evolution result in something so complex as an eye." Gould would conclude the questioner was a Christian and would start asking questions back about eye anatomy, biochemistry, function, etc. and totally bamboozle the student, attacking him and making him look like a fool even though Gould's response was totally skirting the original question.

Gould also loved to quote Scripture, misusing God's words to poke fun at religious people and add color to his writings on evolution. Of all the people I've ever met or heard in person, Stephen Jay Gould struck me most as someone who committed the unpardonable sin. May God have mercy on his soul.

[Varda]

His theory is wholly inconsistent with the basic premises of evolution.

Actually it's perfectly consistant. The only thing being argued between gradualists and punctualists was the rate of change, not that change occured.