Posted on 08/09/2002 10:52:13 PM PDT by jennyp
There have been a lot of little news items having to do with creation vs. evolution lately, each one not necessarily worth a thread on its own. Here are the last 10 days' worth of headlines culled from Creation/Evolution: The Eternal Debate:
Posted on 2002/08/09
New Fossil Discovery Sinks Evolutionary Theories
Harun Yahya - 2002/08/01
When the Toumaï fossil was found recently, and was quickly dismissed by some as just a female gorilla, most creationists rejoiced at the foolishness of those deluded evolutionists. But prominent Muslim creationist Harun Yahya is more impressed. He hopes Toumaï will "sink our current ideas about human evolution".
Posted on 2002/08/09
Scientific American's 15 Errors
Harun Yahya - 2002/08/01
Not to be outdone by the Christian ministry Answers in Genesis, the Muslim creationist Harun Yahya provides his own critique of Scientific American's recent "15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense".
Posted on 2002/08/09
Revolution in science: a genetic discovery to change the world
The Independent - 2002/08/10
RNA interference (RNAi) is a new technique for turning off individual genes that could turn out to be revolutionary for curing genetic diseases, cancers, & viral infections of all kinds, not to mention for our understanding of which genes do what. (Set of 4 articles)
Posted on 2002/08/09
Researchers' Latest Results in Search for Ancient Martian Life
NASA-JPL - 2002/08/02
In the latest study of a 4.5 billion-year-old Martian meteorite (ALH84001), researchers have presented new evidence confirming that 25 percent of the magnetic material in the meteorite was produced by ancient bacteria on Mars. These latest results were published in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology.
Posted on 2002/08/09
History of Science Society Adds its Voice for Evolution
NCSE - 2002/08/09
NCSE is pleased to announce a further addition to New Voices for Evolution: a statement from the History of Science Society reading, in part, that "such concepts as evolution and geological change are well established and belong in science curricula along with other basic scientific ideas. ... In view of this historical perspective, the History of Science Society disapproves of recent efforts by state school boards effectively to remove evolution as a subject from the secondary school curriculum, either through textbook disclaimers or censorship."
Posted on 2002/08/09
Speed of light slowing down after all?
AiG - 2002/08/09
...in addition to being different from the prediction of Barry Setterfield's theory, this research by itself does not support c-decay theory of the magnitude that Setterfield proposed. The change is billions of times too small. In fact, the newspaper hype surrounding Davies’ theory, and the quotes attributed to him, hardly seem to be justified by the Nature article itself, which is rather speculative. ...
Posted on 2002/08/09
KC conference explores evolution debate
Kansas City Star - 2002/07/29
Until intelligent design is accepted by a majority of scientists, don't look for it in public school science classes, a panel of evolution supporters said on Saturday (7/27). The idea that life arose not through unguided natural processes but from the intent of an intelligent being is an interesting postulate at this point, but nothing else, the panel said at a debate closing a Kansas City gathering of ID advocates. Four evolution advocates debated four ID adherents at the third annual Darwin, Design and Democracy conference at Rockhurst HS.
Posted on 2002/08/08
Moderates Lose 2 to Conservatives in Kansas Board of Ed Primaries
KC Star - 2002/08/07
Voters on Tuesday ousted two incumbent moderates on the Kansas Board of Education, raising the possibility that the board could return to a 5-5 moderate-conservative split. The split on the board has been an issue since Aug. 1999, when a then-conservative majority approved science standards that omitted many references to evolution, the big-bang theory and the age of the Earth. After a moderate majority was elected two years ago, the board reversed the 1999 vote.
Posted on 2002/08/07
Selection for short introns in highly expressed genes
Nature Genetics - 2002/07/22
Transcription is a slow and expensive process. Thus, at least for highly expressed genes, transcription of long introns, which are particularly common in mammals, is costly. We show that introns in highly expressed genes are substantially shorter than those in genes that are expressed at low levels.
Posted on 2002/08/07
T.O. Creates New Kent Hovind FAQs Portal
Talk.Origins - 2002/08/08
Talk.Origins has come out with a page that gathers together their several Kent Hovind pages, as well as several off-site links, into a handy starting point.
Posted on 2002/08/07
Save Me from My Comrades: Dawkins Disses Bush
Here - 2002/08/07
Inside a longer article re: Iraq appealing to England to stop the invasion: "A Guardian survey yesterday of leading politicians, diplomats, military chiefs and scientists showed the depth of scepticism across British society about any involvement in an Iraq attack. ... Richard Dawkins, an Oxford science don, suggested Mr Bush was just as much of a danger to world peace as Saddam Hussein, adding: 'It would be a tragedy if Tony Blair were to be brought down through playing poodle to this unelected and deeply stupid little oil-spiv.'"
Posted on 2002/08/07
Inconstant Speed of Light May Debunk Einstein
Reuters - 2002/08/07
A team of Australian scientists has proposed that the speed of light may not be a constant, a revolutionary idea that could unseat one of the most cherished laws of modern physics -- Einstein's theory of relativity. The team, led by theoretical physicist Paul Davies of Sydney's Macquarie University, say it is possible that the speed of light has slowed over billions of years. If so, physicists will have to rethink many of their basic ideas about the laws of the universe. "That means giving up the theory of relativity and E=mc squared and all that sort of stuff," Davies told Reuters.
Posted on 2002/08/06
Evangelical colleges paid to teach evolution
AiG - 2002/08/06
Increasing numbers of evangelical colleges around the world are accepting large monetary awards from the John Templeton Foundation to run courses that promote evolutionary teaching and millions of years. One such course, run by an evangelical Bible college and taught by theistic evolutionists, never touched on the implications of evolution and millions of years for the Gospel of Jesus Christ or the implications for the authority of Scripture.
Posted on 2002/08/05
AiG Strikes a Nerve
AiG - 2002/08/03
Ken Ham revels in the fact that Scientific American's lawyers accused AiG of copyright infringement when it responded to SA's recent article "15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense". Obviously it's proof that "the secular world is closely watching AiG and is trying to suppress our Biblical message", which "is seen as a serious threat by the ‘world.’"
Posted on 2002/08/02
Sheer vs. Real Possibilities: A Response to Allen Orr
designinference.com - 2002/08/02
This is Dembski's response to Allen Orr's review of No Free Lunch, which we reported on a week ago. Dembski repeats his demand that biologists produce actual causal explanations for IC structures instead of merely showing why they're plausible. At the same time, Dembski ignores Orr's critique of Dembski's use of No Free Lunch theorems to prove that Darwinism can't create specified complexity.
Posted on 2002/08/02
Human-Specific Retroviruses Developed When Humans, Chimps Diverged
U. of Georgia - 2002/08/02
Scientists have known that remnants of ancient germ line infections called human endogenous retroviruses make up a substantial part of the human genome. Once thought to be merely "junk" DNA, many of these elements in fact perform functions in human cells. Now, a new study suggests for the first time that a burst of transpositional activity occurred at the same time humans and chimps are believed to have diverged from a common ancestor - 6 million years ago. These new results suggest retroviruses may have had some kind of role in that divergence.
Posted on 2002/08/02
The Battle for the Cosmic Center
ICR Impact - 2002/07/25
Biblical teaching places man at the center of God's attention. Recent astronomical evidence restores man to a central place in God's universe. Over the last few decades, astronomers have become convinced that the red shifts of light from distant galaxies occur in distinct, evenly spaced groups. The Hubble Law implies that galaxies are expanding in evenly spaced spherical shells around us, who are sitting at the center of the universe - just where the Bible says we are.
Posted on 2002/08/02
Commentary on Scott and Branch's "'Intelligent design' Not Accepted by Most Scientists"
designinference.com - 2002/07/02
This is a must-read, if only to see Dembski say "All the design could have emerged through a cosmic evolutionary process that started with the Big Bang." Later, he compares evolutionists to the Taliban!
Posted on 2002/08/02
Boiled Creationist with a Side of Hexaglycine: Sarfati on Imai et al. (1999)
No Answers in Genesis - 2002/07/31
In an AiG web article titled Hydrothermal origin of life? Jonathan Sarfati manages to write three pages about a single five page original peer reviewed paper on growing short peptides in a simulated hydrothermal vent system, published in Science by Imai et al. (1999), and to make over seventeen errors of fact, emphasis or interpretation. Not bad, even for a fanatical creationist.
Posted on 2002/08/01
Updates to Talk.Origins Fossil Hominids Pages
Talk.Origins - 2002/07/31
Jim Foley's comprehensive set of pages on hominid & australopithicene fossils at Talk.Origins has been updated. Includes new pages on the spectacular new skull from Dmanisi, Georgia, which causes problems for creationists who claim that habilis is an ape and erectus is a human, the new 6-7 million year old Toumaï skull from Chad, and Homo habilis: is it an invalid taxon?
Posted on 2002/07/31
Pufferfish DNA Yields Clues to Human Biology [Another 1,000 Human Genes?]
DOE Joint Genome Institute - 2002/07/25
An int'l research consortium led by the US DoE’s Joint Genome Institute reported today on the draft sequencing, assembly, and analysis of the genome of the Japanese pufferfish Fugu rubripes. Pufferfish have the smallest known genomes among vertebrates. While it has roughly the same number of genes as the much larger human genome, it's in a compact form streamlined by the relative scarcity of the “junk” DNA that fills much of the human sequence. Through comparison of the human and pufferfish genomes, the researchers were able to predict the existence of nearly 1,000 previously unidentified human genes.
Posted on 2002/07/30
Race Is Seen as Real Guide to Track Roots of Disease
NY Times - 2002/07/30
Challenging the widely held view that race is a "biologically meaningless" concept, a leading population geneticist says that race is helpful for understanding ethnic differences in disease and response to drugs. Dr. Neil Risch of Stanford U says that genetic differences have arisen among people living on different continents and that race (i.e. geographically based ancestry) is a valid way of categorizing these differences.
Posted on 2002/07/30
Species and languages flock together
Nature Science Update - 2002/07/30
Areas with the most animal species also contain the greatest number of human languages, say researchers. The coincidence of biological and cultural diversity hints that preserving cultures may also preserve species, and vice versa. Development and conservation "probably need to go hand in hand", says Carsten Rahbek of the U. of Copenhagen. His findings call into question the wisdom of trying to save wildlife in remote uninhabited areas.
Posted on 2002/07/30
U.S. News and World Report joins in the evolution onslaught
AiG - 2002/07/30
U.S. News and World Report ran a major story pushing evolution on 29 July, 2002, giving it cover story exposure. The usual evolutionist hand-waving and bait-and-switch tactics were employed in a grand piece of propaganda. Here is our detailed response, interspersed between their actual item which is reproduced in full to avoid suggestions of misrepresentation:
Posted on 2002/07/29
Boeing tries to defy gravity
BBC News: Science/Nature - 2002/07/29
Researchers at the world's largest aircraft maker, Boeing, are using the work of a controversial Russian scientist to try to create a device that will defy gravity. The company is examining an experiment by Yevgeny Podkletnov, who claims to have developed a device which can shield objects from the Earth's pull. Dr Podkletnov is viewed with suspicion by many conventional scientists. They have not been able to reproduce his results.
Posted on 2002/07/29
Bacteria defies last-resort antibiotic
Nature Science Update - 2002/07/29
US doctors have reported the first case of a new strain of Staphylococcus aureus that is completely resistant to the antibiotic vancomycin, one of the last lines of defence against bacteria. Further outbreaks of infection are expected.
Posted on 2002/07/29
Jonathan Wells and Darwin's Finches
Talk.Origins - 2002/07/27
In Chapter 8 of Icons of Evolution, Jonathan Wells examines the case of "Darwin's Finches", and claims that textbooks exaggerate not only the importance of the finches to Darwin's thinking, but also the evidence that they are an excellent example of evolution in action. He also accuses biologists Rosemary and Peter Grant, who spent 30 years studying these birds, of exaggerating the evidence as well. As we shall see, Wells's case is weak. Darwin's Finches remain one of the best examples of adaptive radiation in the literature of evolutionary biology.
Posted on 2002/07/26
Book Review: No Free Lunch
Boston Review - 2002/07/25
Excellent, engaging article by Orr, as he cooly dismantles Dembski's latest book. Assuming his understanding of "NFL" was correct, his critique is devastating. And to think I found this at the ARN site! If they're highlighting this review, then it can only mean there's a fierce counterattack in the works. Read this article now to understand what all the fireworks will be about shortly.
Posted on 2002/07/25
Paranormal beliefs linked to brain chemistry
New Scientist - 2002/07/24
Whether or not you believe in the paranormal may depend entirely on your brain chemistry. People with high levels of dopamine are more likely to find significance in coincidences, and pick out meaning and patterns where there are none.
Posted on 2002/07/24
UCSD Researchers Identify Eye-Formation Strategy in Mice That Provides Clues to Development of Other Organs
UCSD Health Sciences - 2002/07/23
Researchers at the UC San Diego School of Medicine have discovered a linkage between proteins that is an essential part of the complex series of molecular events leading to normal eye development in mice. The investigators also suggest that the combination of specific proteins in eye formation may be similar to yet unidentified genes that act together to allow development of other organs.
(Excerpt) Read more at crevo.bestmessageboard.com ...
In fact, it was the growth of secularism into the openings left by sectarian infighting that forced the Church to concede capitalism (particularly to permit the lending of money at interest, which is an obvious prerequisite for any developed market economy), decency (in the form of toleration), and rule of law (as opposed to "benefit of clergy" special privlege).
Game, set, match.
Always, always, always. Always.
Didn't take you long to descend to the "Neener Neener Neener" level (or, more accurately, it didn't take you long to make it obvious that you have been arguing on that level).
By the way, I remember debating you on a different thread. You never quite got around to explaining your own moral system, did you?
Skeptics love to shoot spitballs and smugly congratulate themselves at having "debunked" whatever their target was. It is, however much more difficult to build and defend your own ethical system. Care to try?
Oh, you have tossed up such a wiffle ball that I really should refrain, but this time I simply cannot resist:
And the multitudes of those who believed were of one heart and soul; and none of them claimed that anything belonging to them was their own, but all things were common property to them.
--Acts 4:32
Well, then, it's intellectual dishonesty rather than mere incompetence to bring up the same points I shot down before.
Agreed.
However, the statement "religion overlayed on a society always ends in might-makes-right," is equally valid.
In fact, these are subsets of "government overlayed ..." etc.
Might-makes-right is such a large component of human nature, that no other outcome is possible.
Am I advocating no government? Nope.
I'm simply observing what everyone learned in kindergarten -- the big kids make the rules...
Let me get this straight. You say something puerile like "game, set, match" and then you accuse me of, what do you call it, "neener, neener, neener"?
On your second post from scripture; there's all kinds of contradictory statements in scripture. That's why the Catholic Church has the Magisterium. But back to you.
Now I remember you. When I was debating with "Physicist" you dropped in to fart out some kind of non-argument and then bailed. Right after I asked you to establish and defend your own moral standards for the governance of a society. Apparently you couldn't hang with that--especially when big words like "determinism" got thrown around.
If you want to argue with me--you state YOUR case. You know mine. Otherwise we're done, chief.
The "No True Scotsman..." Fallacy, used by yet another. That's two days in a row.
The standard is liberty. Its want is responsible for more human caused misery than all other causes combined.
For the record, law preceded Christianity, as did charity, and rudimentary science and mathematics.
Before you go off on some BS rant about license as liberty, I'll state the liberty is synonymous with responsibility.
What ever does this have to do with the fact that I have posted a counterexample, and others have posted other counterexamples, to your claim that communism is necessarily atheistic? (There is also the other problem that, even if your claim were true, "all A are B" does not imply "all B are A".)
Care to 'fess up that you goofed on this point?
That's just a start. Columbus' Legacy of Genocide .
The 1492 "voyage of discovery" is, however, hardly all that is at issue. In 1493 Columbus returned with an invasion force of seventeen ships, appointed at his own request by the Spanish Crown to install himself as "viceroy and governor of [the Caribbean islands] and the mainland" of America, a position he held until 1500. Setting up shop on the large island he called Espa?ola (today Haiti and the Dominican Republic), he promptly instituted policies of slavery (encomiendo) and systematic extermination against the native Taino population. Columbus's programs reduced Taino numbers from as many as eight million at the outset of his regime to about three million in 1496. Perhaps 100,000 were left by the time of the governor's departure. His policies, however, remained, with the result that by 1514 the Spanish census of the island showed barely 22,000 Indians remaining alive. In 1542, only two hundred were recorded. Thereafter, they were considered extinct, as were Indians throughout the Caribbean Basin, an aggregate population which totaled more than fifteen million at the point of first contact with the Admiral of the Ocean Sea, as Columbus was known.By the way, the Spanish weren't athiests.Worst of all, these data apply only to the Caribbean Basin; the process of genocide in the Americas was only just beginning at the point such statistics become operant, not ending, as they did upon the fall of the Third Reich. All told, it is probable that more than one hundred million native people were "eliminated" in the course of Europe's ongoing "civilization" of the Western Hemisphere.
What? You mean the fact that all Swedes are blondes doesn't mean that all blondes are Swedish? Get outta here...
:^)
Here is an example of the fallacy of compilation.
A good illustration of this fallacy is provided by a Mark Russell bit from the mid-80s when a bunch of LaRouchies managed to get themselves on the Democratic state ticket in Illinois (IIRC): "They say, 'We are for a strong defense'. OK, nothing wrong with that. But then... they segue into the Twilight Zone... 'We are for a strong defense, the construction of a national tinfoil shield, and the mandatory testing of goldfish for herpes.'"
By your reasoning, anyone who rejects the notion of stretching tinfoil over the continental United States is an opponent of strong national defense.
It is difficult for me to attribute the entirety of the barbarity of communism with atheism. Little of their motivation was associated with it. Atheism was a device, not a goal, nor even a requirement.
You belittle your valid points when throw the Christian Nazis in with the Communists/atheists. They were neither. To imply otherwise is to invite skepticism with regard to other statements. Stick with facts, they work better.
True, of course, but watch out for the oldest political scam in the book -- the lumping together of genuine responsibility (e.g. keeping one's given word, supporting yourself and family honestly) and the personal preferences of the people in power (e.g. swearing fealty to the ruler's beliefs, supporting the ruler in the style to which he hopes to remain accustomed).
As I have already noted, Msg#69 uses the compilation fallacy in this manner.
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