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Darwin on the Right: Why Christians and conservatives should accept evolution
Scientific American ^ | October 2006 issue | Michael Shermer

Posted on 09/18/2006 1:51:27 PM PDT by PatrickHenry

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To: Virginia-American

Consider the humble gerbil. Although not incredibly smart, it is curious, courageous, and gentle, rarely biting when handled. When a litter is born the father gerbils care for the babies as well, grooming them and collecting them when they wander. Unlike mice, gerbils rarely cannibalize their offspring. Their only failing is a tendency to brawl like drunken sailors on occasion. Would that all of us had half the moral character of the gerbil.

I currently mourn for the passing of one of my gerbils, stolen and critically wounded by my cat this weekend, but never uttering a squeak. Such was my respect for the gerbil that I took it to the vet for emergency euthansia. RIP, little gerbil.


1,441 posted on 09/25/2006 1:14:22 PM PDT by ahayes (My strength is as the strength of ten because my heart is pure.)
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To: js1138; betty boop; Alamo-Girl; cornelis; .30Carbine; Whosoever
[ Cute, but you ignore the point that someone who fabricates a quotation, refuses to acknowledge the error, gets supported by like minded individuals who see nothing wrong with fabricating quotations, wants to influence what is taught in schools. ]

WRONG... "Survival of the fittest" implys things.. many things..
Life comes from life is merely one of them..

About the "schools"... any conservative cares what is taught in "schools".. Are you a liberal?... Do you care what is taught in "schools"?.. Example; most High School Seniors in Mexifornia cannot find Mexico and Canada on a Map... But they do know they are primates that evolved from monkeys and the monkeys evolved from some other mammal.. THEY know this even though its not a proven fact.. Must be why they act like monkeys performing RAP music.. Which is a good imitation of a Chimp... with Chimp like behavior patterns..

Survival of the fittest has implications..

1,442 posted on 09/25/2006 1:15:48 PM PDT by hosepipe (CAUTION: This propaganda is laced with hyperbole.)
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To: King Prout
you err: testimony is NOT evidence.

To the contrary, Evidence

1,443 posted on 09/25/2006 1:18:11 PM PDT by Alamo-Girl
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To: PatrickHenry

I am a Christian. Some might even call me a "Bible Thumper" whatever that is.

I do not believe the earth is only thousands of years old. There exists hard, proven archeological evidence against that being possible.

But I will say that a year to us is nothing to God.


1,444 posted on 09/25/2006 1:18:16 PM PDT by BLS (Outside of a dog, a book is mans' best friend. Inside a dog it is too dark to read a book.)
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To: King Prout; cornelis
Hmmm ... cornelis as Simplicio? He's much more than that to me.
1,445 posted on 09/25/2006 1:19:59 PM PDT by Alamo-Girl
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To: cornelis
Omne vivum ex vivo is known as the law of biogenesis.

Well if it's a LAW, it can't be broken, can it? And if it's in latin, it must be true.

Alas, it's just and observation that maggots don't form from dead meat.

1,446 posted on 09/25/2006 1:20:01 PM PDT by js1138 (The absolute seriousness of someone who is terminally deluded.)
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To: hosepipe
WRONG... "Survival of the fittest" implys things.. many things.. Life comes from life is merely one of them..

LOL.

Darwin never used either phrase.

1,447 posted on 09/25/2006 1:21:38 PM PDT by js1138 (The absolute seriousness of someone who is terminally deluded.)
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To: js1138; cornelis; betty boop
But he never said or implied, "life can only come from life". This is a factual error that needs correcting.

To the contrary, please see the article linked at post 1430.

The theory of evolution is a continuum, the tree of life, common descent, life from life, omne vivum ex vivo. It doesn't allow for life to pop-up other than on the tree.

1,448 posted on 09/25/2006 1:24:35 PM PDT by Alamo-Girl
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To: js1138
[ LOL. Darwin never used either phrase. ]

Caution; Staining at a gnat you might swallow a camel..
Or at least make your orginal question seem trivial or a diversion..

1,449 posted on 09/25/2006 1:26:54 PM PDT by hosepipe (CAUTION: This propaganda is laced with hyperbole.)
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To: js1138
And if it's in latin, it must be true.

That would Latin, capital L.

1,450 posted on 09/25/2006 1:29:50 PM PDT by cornelis (La génération spontanée est une chimère. --Pasteur)
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To: Alamo-Girl
It doesn't allow for life to pop-up other than on the tree.

Sure it does, it's just doubtful that it has on earth, and highly unlikely that it will on earth now that organisms inhabit pretty much everywhere and are ready to gobble up any organic molecules as soon as they are formed.

1,451 posted on 09/25/2006 1:30:02 PM PDT by ahayes (My strength is as the strength of ten because my heart is pure.)
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To: Alamo-Girl
The theory of evolution is a continuum, the tree of life, common descent, life from life, omne vivum ex vivo. It doesn't allow for life to pop-up other than on the tree.

Sure it does. We just have lots of evidence that it hasn't happened in the last few hundred million years. We also have reason to believe that any chemistry that might move toward life would be consumed as food by existing things.

I am just amazed at the lengths you will go to avoid admitting that the quotation was fabricated out of thin air. I don't have time right now to detail how silly this quote sounds when attributed to Darwin, but here's a down payment:

The modern science of abiogenesis addresses a fundamentally different question: the ultimate origin of life itself. Pasteur had proved that abiogenesis was impossible for complex organisms. Charles Darwin's theory of evolution put forward a mechanism whereby such organisms might evolve over millennia from simple forms, but it did not address the original spark, from which even simple organisms might have arisen. Darwin was aware of the problem. In a letter to Joseph Dalton Hooker of February 1 1871, he made the suggestion that life may have begun in a "warm little pond, with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts, lights, heat, electricity, etc. present, [so] that a protein compound was chemically formed ready to undergo still more complex changes". He went on to explain that "at the present day such matter would be instantly devoured or absorbed, which would not have been the case before living creatures were formed." In other words the presence of life itself prevents the spontaneous generation of simple organic compounds from occurring on Earth today - a circumstance which makes the search for the first life dependent on the laboratory.
Source
1,452 posted on 09/25/2006 1:39:43 PM PDT by js1138 (The absolute seriousness of someone who is terminally deluded.)
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To: ahayes

Oooooooh. Great minds and so forth.

Trying not to make it personal.


1,453 posted on 09/25/2006 1:40:38 PM PDT by js1138 (The absolute seriousness of someone who is terminally deluded.)
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To: js1138

I quite impersonally admire your intellect as well, oh brother in pondscum!


1,454 posted on 09/25/2006 1:44:44 PM PDT by ahayes (My strength is as the strength of ten because my heart is pure.)
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To: js1138
I am just amazed at the lengths you will go to avoid admitting that the quotation was fabricated

Making a poster bow down is tiresome and distracting. But you are welcome to retract your claim that Pasteur said "absolutely nothing about biogenesis." You could be the model poster.

1,455 posted on 09/25/2006 1:45:14 PM PDT by cornelis (La génération spontanée est une chimère. --Pasteur)
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To: hosepipe
[ LOL. Darwin never used either phrase. ] Caution; Staining at a gnat you might swallow a camel.. Or at least make your orginal question seem trivial or a diversion..

In other words, there is no circumstance in which you would admit that an error has occurred, or having occurred, you would not seek to excuse the offender.

Both of these quotions appear frequently on these threads. They seldom originate from evolution advocates. The fact that they are persistently misapplied is not a happy fact.

1,456 posted on 09/25/2006 1:46:54 PM PDT by js1138 (The absolute seriousness of someone who is terminally deluded.)
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To: BLS

Thank you, and welcome to FR.


1,457 posted on 09/25/2006 1:49:22 PM PDT by Liberal Classic (No better friend, no worse enemy. Semper Fi.)
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To: cornelis

Since structural organic chemistry was practically nonexistant at that time, Pasteur can hardly be cited as an authority as to what chemical reactions are and are not possible. All Pasteur demonstrated was that organisms identical to already existing organisms cannot spring into existence fully formed in a matter of months. This demonstration has no resemblance to the origin of life on earth.


1,458 posted on 09/25/2006 1:52:36 PM PDT by ahayes (My strength is as the strength of ten because my heart is pure.)
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To: cornelis
Making a poster bow down is tiresome and distracting. But you are welcome to retract your claim that Pasteur said "absolutely nothing about biogenesis." You could be the model poster.

Fine. Pasteur addressed the biogenesis theory of his time. But not biogenesis as it has been understood for the last hundred years. Not even as it was understood by Darwin -- which is the frame of reference for the current discussion.

Darwin's warm little pond seems rather quaint today, but his discussion of biogenesis lead to Miller, and Miller has lead to more sophisticated experiments.

1,459 posted on 09/25/2006 1:53:05 PM PDT by js1138 (The absolute seriousness of someone who is terminally deluded.)
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To: BLS
I am a Christian. Some might even call me a "Bible Thumper" whatever that is. I do not believe the earth is only thousands of years old. There exists hard, proven archeological evidence against that being possible. But I will say that a year to us is nothing to God.

Feel free to thump to your heart's content. None of the evolution advocates around here will quarrel with you for that. You are wise to accept the findings of science, and not to let it interfere with your faith.

1,460 posted on 09/25/2006 1:53:33 PM PDT by PatrickHenry (Science-denial is not conservative. It's reality-denial and that's what liberals do.)
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