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 ...
And how do we distinguish Her view from all the other Gods? And, hey, that was my point!
Morality is not a product of deductive logic. Morality - as a consistent set of principles to use when evaluating the actions of others & yourself - is a tool we use to maximize human flourishing. As such, the optimal moral systems are discovered using a combination of observation, induction, hypothesis, deduction, and observation again.
For the most part, nobody comes up with successful moral laws through deduction alone. We have to discover them.
"There are some Truths that have become self-evident facts over time, in the sense that today it would be perverse to withhold assent: The right of free speech, the right of an individual to self-defense, the right of a massive group to self-defense against the government itself (i.e. secession), the right to contract, the prohibition against slavery (including slavery to enforce a contract), a representative form of government, etc."Hey great. You're sounding more conservative by the minute. So, I suppose you're against gay marriage and bigamy, right? And abortion?
Gay marriage, no: What harm is there in a gay marriage, either to the participants' individual rights or to the health of society at large?
Bigamy: Likewise, what harm is there in a bigamist marriage, either to the participants' individual rights or to the health of society at large?
Abortion: This is a special case of a more general question: "Do helpless people have rights?" If I say "no" in an easy case (like an unseen, undeveloped fetus), then there's no logical barrier to prevent it from applying to a newborn baby, an old person on life support, a colicky 1-year old, or even myself vs. any stronger person. Morality is nothing if not applied consistently. So abortion is wrong.
However I don't think an embryo deserves to be called a "living human being" until their brain starts functioning, for the same reason most people accept brain death as the ultimate determinant of whether someone has died or not. One's definition of "living human being" has to be internally consistent too!
Morality isn't really that difficult to develop. Imagine you're Abraham, wandering with your familly, your servants, and your flocks. You're looking for a place to settle down. Would you select a city where they confiscate and distribute all your property? Where they rape your women? Where murder goes unpunished? Hardly. You'd select a city where your people and property are protected. Such cities would grow and prosper. Others would become abandoned ghost towns, inhabited only by bandits. And so it is with nations. The USSR collapsed. The USA has prospered. Others muddle along. To some extent it's a trial-and-error process, but one that a little bit of thinking can pretty much design from scratch.
Winning is easy when you're living inside a Calvin & Hobbes comic strip.
Not only do I remember the discussion with Stultis about the 2001 Nobel Prize, but I even kept a copy and as everyone can see below your statement is absolutely false:
But in that respect consider the 2001 prize for Medicine . (Chosen pretty much at random, btw, as the first to come up on a google search.) It went to researchers who have elucidated the detailed molecular mechanisms of the cell cycle (the orchestrated process of cell reproduction, it's control and timing, cell death, etc).
This research showed that the basic mechanisms are highly conserved among all eukaryotes (organisms having cells with a separate nucleus). So let's assume these molecular mechanisms are the result of ID. This then would be perfectly consistent with the claim that all eukaryotes are one "created kind". This helps quite a bit with that overcrowded ark!
IOW it is in most cases empty, and logically wrong, to say that some result "supports ID" but doesn't support evolution. ID is, at least logically, potentially consistent with truly huge amounts of evolution having occured, right up at or near the Kingdom level. The specific examples of systems that (allegedly) must have been intelligently designed are most typically ones that are shared by a vast diversity of organisms, often whole Phyla or Kingdoms.
Here is where you are going way wrong. You are correct in saying that just because different organisms have similar structures, it does not prove or disprove either ID or evolution. It would be unreasonable to say that an intelligent designer would constantly 'reinvent the wheel'. Evolution of course requires traits and genetic material to be passed on so conservation of such traits is not a refutation of evolution either.
Let's look a bit at what the prize was for - a description of the process by which cells divide and the genes which facilitate this function:
The engine and the gear box of the cell cycle
The three Nobel Laureates have discovered molecular mechanisms that regulate the cell cycle. The amount of CDK-molecules is constant during the cell cycle, but their activities vary because of the regulatory function of the cyclins. CDK and cyclin together drive the cell from one cell cycle phase to the next. The CDK-molecules can be compared with an engine and the cyclins with a gear box controlling whether the engine will run in the idling state or drive the cell forward in the cell cycle.
Now what the above describes is the process by which cells - once they start dividing - perform their division. This process is of course very important and the prize is highly deserved. However what these discoveries do not tell us is why the process of cell division was started at all:
One of these genes, designated CDC28 by Hartwell, controls the first step in the progression through the G1-phase of the cell cycle, and was therefore also called "start".
So the discovery determined what happens when the 'start' gene gets activated. However, what has not been found or determined yet is what starts or activates the start gene. This is the problem which evolutionists have and where the evolutionary explanation of organisms totally breaks down. Yes, genes are important. But what we keep finding is that genes are just the active agents of an organism, not the controlling agents of an organism. In other words, genes perform the work they are ordered to do, but they do not give the orders to perform the work. In addition to which, genes often perform more than one function, make more than one protein. This again occurs due to receipt of different orders from elsewhere in the organism.
So in my view, this discovery rather than support evolution, supports intelligent design. The cell cycle is controlled through genes, not by genes. In fact, we already know that one of the reasons for cancerous growth is that some of these genes are expressed (told to make proteins) in excessive amounts by some defect in the controlling DNA:
It is likely that such chromosome alterations are the result of defective cell cycle control. It has been shown that genes for CDK-molecules and cyclins can function as oncogenes. CDK-molecules and cyclins also collaborate with the products of tumour suppressor genes (e.g. p53 and Rb) during the cell cycle.
The findings in the cell cycle field are about to be applied to tumour diagnostics. Increased levels of CDK-molecules and cyclins are sometimes found in human tumours, such as breast cancer and brain tumours. The discoveries may in the long term also open new principles for cancer therapy. Already now clinical trials are in progress using inhibitors of CDK-molecules.
The above shows that the control of the genes is elsewhere in the DNA, in the DNA that controls the expression of these genes.
Unless IDers are willing to offer some specific suggestions about HOW and WHEN these "designs" are brought into actualization by the "designer" in real living organisms, ID doesn't really contradict the major part of textbook evolution.
The designs are brought about with the creation of each new "kind". I know that the term "kind" seems vacuous, but evolutionists have really mangled the term "species". What I mean by "kind" is a species which has new traits, genes, and is more complex than a previous one. The reason for the increased complexity being a necessary agent for this determination is the basic problem which evolutionists have had with their theory since day one and why it has always been rejected by thoughtful individuals:
All organisms consist of cells that multiply through cell division. An adult human being has approximately 100 000 billion cells, all originating from a single cell, the fertilized egg cell. In adults there is also an enormous number of continuously dividing cells replacing those dying. Before a cell can divide it has to grow in size, duplicate its chromosomes and separate the chromosomes for exact distribution between the two daughter cells. These different processes are coordinated in the cell cycle.
All items in green above are from the article cited by Stultis which is here.
The above is what I would call the miracle of life. The miracle of how from one cell, 100 trillion different cells are produced in exactly the correct order, in exactly the correct amount, in exactly the correct places. This is clearly a very involved program, not subject to random change, but a very exact process which has to be 'reinvented' each time a new "kind" is created.
Of course the reason for this is that ID is vacuous. This is also the reason it is scientifically useless, so far any way.
No, and in fact, all the above disproves your statement. ID predicts the total interrelatedness of organisms. Evolution predicts a stochastic organization of the life functions. The interrelatedness of the different functions of the organism shows that the main point of ID, which Behe calls 'irreducible complexity' or that you cannot have one function without other complementary functions is correct (note above that the cell cycle uses many genes to both move the engine as well as others to 'control' the engine - p53 and rb - in order to accomplish the task properly). In fact, perhaps all the biological research being done since the discovery of DNA is indeed about finding just what these complementary functions are.
241 posted on 7/21/02 10:19 PM Pacific by gore3000
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The problem with the above, while it sounds eminently reasonable, is genetics. Now we know that children get half the genes from the father and half from the mother. So a totally new trait would, regardless of how useful it is have only half a chance of being passed on. This is a tremendous problem for evolution.
Now you can say, but wait if the new trait is extremely useful, then the individual will reproduce much more than the rest and be able to overcome this problem and pass it on to the rest of the species. Problem with that is the theory of evolution itself, that all changes are slow and gradual. Such gradual changes cannot overcome the 50% bias against its being passed on to future generations.
However, you might say, but wait, what if evolution does not work that way, maybe it works the way Gould said and we have sudden changes? We have problems then too. Let's say that a lizard suddenly sprouted wings and learned to fly. Now this is an incredibly favorable change which would surely be spread through the species. Or would it? Would a female lizard want to mate with such a monstrosity? I doubt it. Even more important, due to the extreme genetic changes required in such a transformation, would it even be possible for the female to mate and produce winged lizards? Definitely not. So no, anyway you slice it, these new traits will not be passed on.
And yes, I should have used "may". Thanks for that.
Ok, so let's deal with your "argument".
"It is no more vexing to libertarian ethics (with the obvious correction of "can't destroy it" to "may not destroy it") -- it's not mine; therefore I may not destroy it."
Hey, fantastic. I wish all abortion doctors thought like you. The unborn child isn't theirs, so they *may not* destroy it. In fact this is pretty compelling. It fits neatly within the old libertarian property rights framework. Nice and clean.
But see, here's the problem. You, an atheist, believe that people are nothing more than material, i.e. glands, chemical reactions, muscle, bone and such and such. So, you may not be able to hurt anyone else; as you say, their life isn't "yours" so you may not destroy or damage the lives of others.
Unfortunately for your children, this doesn't mean them. You see, if you're an atheist, your children are "yours". You created them. Under my versions of Judeo-Christian theism, children are something created by the union of a man and a woman and God. So, if I or my wife begin abusing our children, society can rightly claim that it may remove my children from my custody; they have worth beyond simply what I have biologically given them. Your atheistic construction demands nothing of the sort. You created your children, they're "yours" and thus you can have your way with them.
Kind of like the Roman doctrine of Patriae Potestas; a father could kill any of his children with just cause. Not a pleasant idea, I think.
It's amusing to hear secularists talk about Christianity taking us back to the "Dark Ages". You guys seem to love the real Golden Oldies: the depravities of the Roman Empire.
You know Steve, that wasn't bad for a first go at it. You almost had something going there. But what the heck. Go ahead and try again. I'm game.
P.S. You stated earlier that I don't understand libertarianism. Well, considering that I've read every Ayn Rand book at least once, most twice or three times; read Mises' Human Action, Rothbard's Man State and Economy; Nozick; Spooner; Carl Menger; Bastiat; Hayek and more or less every other major tract put out by important libertarians I think I have a good idea. I also subscribe to Liberty Unbound, the monthly libertarian rag. But, you know what--why don't you educate me. Why don't you lay out what you call the "inflexible" rules of libertarianism.
Actually, that's fantastic. The more pro-life people the better. My argument is different, but I'll take this.
Gay marriage I'm against, obviously.
Bigamy I'm against, obviously.
Let me ask you a question, Jenny. It's an economics question.
Is any one individual or small group of individuals smarter than the market? In other words, can a small group of highly intelligent people outperform the market over long periods of time?
Unbelievable! How can anyone say that Communism (and it is spelled with a capital 'C' - and this is not knitpicking, it is important) is not atheistic and materialistic! And you dare to insult someone for saying that it is? Guess Stalin and Mao gave prayers to the Holy Spirit? Guess they built churches? Or did they destroy them and killed anyone who dared to express any sort of religious beliefs?
Aaah, we see the game, deliberate semantic confusionism. We were speaking of Communism with a capital 'C' not communism with a small 'c'. Since such talk did not serve your purposes and showed the degeneracy of your evolutionist theory, you are sneakily trying to change the subject - and in a pretty shameless way too!
You folk really mindlessly type any absurdity don't you? Let's remember that Marx turned Hegel upside down, and whatever spirituality there was in Hegelianism got turned into materialism by Marx.
I love it -- painful facts from an atheist POV. Post on, HumanaeVitae.
Cheers, HV
Another brilliant Patrick Henry half truth which is a total lie. The Indians in the Americas died due to illness by the millions, not due to mistreatment, not due to killing but you call it all murder. How utterly dishonest of you.
When FDR suggested to Stalin at Potsdam that the Pope should be consulted in the partitioning of postwar Europe, Stalin quipped, "How many divisions does the Pope have?". If that's not an atheistic materialist statement, I don't know what is.
One more:
"Power flows from the barrel of a gun"--Mao Zedong (using the pinyin translation of his name, otherwise Mao Tse Tung).
And so was Darwin. He was just a charlatan, more like Clinton than like Einstein:
Darwin collected evidence which supported his theory and ignored evidence which disproved it. That is why he ignored the platypus and did not talk about the most remarkable characteristic of the bat, the sonar. There was no answer for either so he swept that under the rug. He also had a fantastic ability for charlatanism, of seeming to prove something which in fact disproved his theory.
he cannot prove it, but please believe him.
All these causes taken conjointly, must have tended to make the geological record extremely imperfect, and will to a large extent explain why we do not find interminable varieties, connecting together all the extinct and existing forms of life by the finest graduated steps.
He cannot prove it but it's true:
We should not be able to recognise a species as the parent of any one or more species if we were to examine them ever so closely, unless we likewise possessed many of the intermediate links between their past or parent and present states; and these many links we could hardly ever expect to discover, owing to the imperfection of the geological record.
There is no proof but I believe I am correct:
it deserves especial notice that the more important objections relate to questions on which we are confessedly ignorant; nor do we know how ignorant we are. We do not know all the possible transitional gradations between the simplest and the most perfect organs; it cannot be pretended that we know all the varied means of Distribution during the long lapse of years, or that we know how imperfect the Geological Record is. Grave as these several difficulties are, in my judgment
In the future I will be proven right (like Miss Cleo?):
Species and groups of species, which are called aberrant, and which may fancifully be called living fossils, will aid us in forming a picture of the ancient forms of life. Embryology will reveal to us the structure, in some degree obscured, of the prototypes of each great class.
Contradicting what he said before of living fossils:
Judging from the past, we may safely infer that not one living species will transmit its unaltered likeness to a distant futurity.
Both sides prove me right:
it follows, that the amount of organic change in the fossils of consecutive formations probably serves as a fair measure of the lapse of actual time. A number of species, however, keeping in a body might remain for a long period unchanged, whilst within this same period, several of these species, by migrating into new countries and coming into competition with foreign associates, might become modified; so that we must not overrate the accuracy of organic change as a measure of time.
The future again:
In the distant future I see open fields for far more important researches.
If you have read through a few hundred pages of the above drivel, you will buy the garbage I am going to ask you to swallow now:
He who will go thus far, if he find on finishing this treatise that large bodies of facts, otherwise inexplicable, can be explained by the theory of descent, ought not to hesitate to go further, and to admit that a structure even as perfect as the eye of an eagle might be formed by natural selection, although in this case he does not know any of the transitional grades. His reason ought to conquer his imagination; though I have felt the difficulty far too keenly to be surprised at any degree of hesitation in extending the principle of natural selection to such startling lengths. from: Origin of the Species, Chapter 6
Typical - I suppose I should count myself lucky that you can spell "Hegel", although you did have my post to crib from.
HV wants to concentrate on the materialistic end of it - I choose to pay attention to the dialectics of it. By HV's logic, atheism is materialistic, and Marxism is materialistic, therefore atheism is Marxist. I have merely expropriated his logic for myself - Christianity is a result of dialectical processes, Marxism is a result of dialectical processes, ergo Christianity is Marxist. QED.
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