lpetrich

A site advertising a new creationist book is going under the name of <a href="http://www.theory-of-evolution.org" target="_blank">http://www.theory-of-evolution.org</a> -- positing "intelligent design" as an alternative to evolution, when evolution could be "designed", as in extraterrestrial visitors practicing genetic engineering, and when members of individual species could be spotaneously generated, as had been widely believed for many species.

"Mutations, genetic drift and natural selection explain the variation to the left. These processes do not explain the variation below."

On the left was pictures of a male lion, a leopard, and two tigers (an orange one and a white one).

Below was pictures of a starfish, a brightly-colored reef fish, two blue parrots, a brown bear, and a black-faced, orange-furred gibbon.

That is silly because the big cats pictured have several distinct features:

Male lions have manes and lions are social; other felines are maneless and mostly solitary.

Lions are solid-colored, leopards are spotted, and tigers are striped.

If such evolution can happen among big cats, then greater evolution can happen among the other examples featured.

I looked at some of the article's claims, and it had the usual sort of creationist misunderstandings and selective quotations.

One of the chapters claimed that gene duplication could not be the source of genes adapted for different functions, because adaptation supposedly imposes strong structural constraints -- a gene halfway between an old and a new protein function would supposedly code for a functionless protein.

Another chapter attempted to show that the early Earth's atmosphere was mostly oxygen by comparing the amount of oxygen in Banded Iron Formations with that released when producing crustal organic material. The BIF's had more oxygen, though by only a factor of 1.5, which is very close when one considers the difficulty of estimating the precise quantity of BIF or of photosynthesis-released oxygen.

Dr.GH

"The author of this site has a BS degree in biochemistry and a MS in electrical engineering."

Sheesh, another engineer.

cloudyphiz

sheesh, why is it that so freakin' many of these ID guys are engineers. it almost makes me embarassed that i am one (an engineer that is, not an ID guy).

as a side note, someone over at the <a href="http://www.carmforums.org/cgi-bin/dcforum/dcboard.cgi?az=list&forum=DCForumID12&archive=" target="_blank">carm boards</a> (HedonWasRight) has systematically dismantled many of the arguments at a similar site, <a href="http://www.evolution-facts.org" target="_blank">evolution-facts.org</a>, without so much as a peep from the peanuthead gallery.

are any of you guys Hedon? if so, nice job.

-gary

(edited to fix the ubb links)

[ May 14, 2002: Message edited by: cloudyphiz ]</p>

liquid

Ah-ha, I see another person sees fit to criticize us engineers. At least this time we aren't being called unscientific, which really makes my blood boil . Makes me wonder exactly what it is I do in the laboratory every week.

1) I don't think there are an inordinate amount of creationist engineers. There appears to be a blip in published works, but it's simply anecdotal and no proper scientific data is available to make broad claims.

2) Having said that, Creationists may well be likely to become engineers than pure scientists. Think about it - physics and biology are not tempting to fundamentalists, because they regard an education in those fields as an education in lies, at least partially. So creationists with a technical and scientific leaning are likely to go into fields such as engineering, chemistry and the others.

An atheist parallel is to imagine how many atheist philosophers criticize Xian theologian arguments. To them, studying evolution is as lunatic as attending a seminary would be to us.

3) I wholeheartedly reject the old wive's tail that engineers become creationists because we are 'so into design'. You should know that most people make up their mind on the debate due to the upbringing and secondary education they had, well before entry into higher education. Plus there is a bit of misunderstanding of the function of design in engineering.

4) Conclusion? There is no reflection upon engineering due to the proportion of creationists that may or may not be involved. The reflection is entirely on the personal preferences of the individual creationist.

theyeti

The problem with anti-evolutionist engineers is not that they're engineers, but that they think that they have some measure of authority on the subject because they're engineers. I can't tell you how many times I've seen someone lead off with, "Well I'm an engineer, so I know what I'm talking about..." and then the guy proceeds to make an ass out of himself because he knows absolutely nothing about biology. Engineers are smart folks and all, and they know more about science and certainly math than the average joe, but unless they've made a detailed study of biology specifically, then their opinion is no more qualified than anyone elses. In fact, most engineers in thier work use some amount of physics and/or chemistry, but almost never biology. A person with a PhD in English may well know more about evolution than an engineer. But it's always engineers that anti-evoution groups like the DI pack onto their petitions, because, aside from the dearth of actual biologists willing to sign, engineers are perceived as having some sort of authority. It's rather irritating.

theyeti