S2Focus

Although the article at <a href="http://www.uniontrib.com/news/uniontrib/mon/business/news_mz1b10incomp.html" target="_blank">http://www.uniontrib.com/news/uniontrib/mon/business/news_mz1b10incomp.html</a> has nothing to do with creationism per se, it does provide an interesting perspective on the workings of the creationist mind...

[ December 11, 2001: Message edited by: S2Focus ]</p>

theyeti

Philip Johnson doesn't give a damn about science or the scientific method. His his interest, like that of most creationists, is in Christian appologetics. More specifically, the kind of appologetics that's supposed to legitimize ultra-conservative political ideology. Don't ask me exactly how one goes from A to B, but that's the idea here.

If you want a good example of how the ID people opperate, and what they're really interested in, see the <a href="http://www.crsc.org/faq/index.html" target="_blank">CRSC FAQ</a>. CRSC, by the way, stands for Center for Renewal of Science and Culture. The FAQ will answer such burning questions such as "How has materialism infected our welfare system?" Apparently, Darwin is now responsible for welfare. Don't ask me how.

For another example of what they're trying to do, and if you enjoy having your blood to boil, see Phil Johnson's <a href="http://www.public.asu.edu/~jmlynch/idt/wedge.html" target="_blank">Wedge document</a>. You get to learn more about how "materialism" and Charles Darwin are somehow responsible for absolutely everything wrong with society.

See also the thread <a href="http://ii-f.ws/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=3&t=001486" target="_blank">Philip Johnson: HIV --&gt; AIDS denier</a>. That'll also give you a good idea of Johnson's approach to "science". Happy reading.


theyeti

Quetzal

I just KNEW all you evilutionists were the cause of all of the worlds ills. Who needs all those vaccines, medicines, electronics, food, clothing, shelter... that technology, based on science, has provided?

Douglas J. Bender

Optics Guy,


You said:
No, the science which gave us the transistor did not give us "evolution". Evolution is a THEORY, and is based on certain observations which may or may not indicate "evolution" - to contest the claims of evolution is not the same as "attacking the whole scientific enterprise".

Obviously, I don't claim to be an expert on biology or genetics, but I believe that it is possible to discern if and when faulty logic creeps in, even if one is not an expert in some field. There are technical issues which I couldn't judge (scigirl posted one example in her most recent post on the Formal Debate - one about "mutation in the ntrR gene"), but there is a great deal which is not on that "technical" of a level which I can. For example, "junk DNA" - just because the function of much of the DNA is not known does not mean that it has no function...logic alone can reveal that, yet many evolutionists cannot seem to recognize this.

In Christ,

Douglas

Quetzal

Douglas

I'm not sure you're paying attention. In my last (well, next to last) post I have pretty much torpedoed the definition of "kind" that you continue to argue on the formal debate.

You have stated (occasionally multiple times) that:

1. Kind is "A population of creatures capable of producing offspring, whether 'viable' or not, 'between' themselves".
2. God chose only two of each cat kind ("large cat kind" and "small cat kind") for the ark.
3. There is no speciation, as there are no new kinds.
4. "Lions and tigers are different kinds", as they could not have a common ancestor, since God created all kinds separately.

You have been shown that,

1. According to your definition, lions are tigers are the same kind, as they can produce a hybrid (liger and tigon). Although perfectly in accordance with 1 above, this is inconsistence with your statement 4.
2. My example of the three neotropical cats refutes your statements 1,2, and 3, or at least proves they are inconsistent. Margay, jaguar and mountain lion are all definitely cats (morphologically, genetically, behaviorally, etc). They are practically tripping over each other in Cerro Kilambe (habitat-wise), so there are no environmental barriers (like between lions and tigers in the wild). They do not interbreed, therefore for whatever reason they cannot. By your statement 1, they are different kinds. By your statement 2, they are the same kind, as they are all large cats. By your statement 3 and statement 4 they cannot be the same kind, because speciation cannot occur, therefore God must have created them separately.

Very simply, your "kind" is a completely vacuous (empty) concept because it is internally inconsistent and has absolutely no explanatory or definition capability whatsoever.

Your argument that macroevolution does not occur because God created separate kinds thus fails because there is fundamentally no such thing as a "kind" - your Bible notwithstanding.

I should note here that this "paradox" doesn't pose a problem for biology. The fact that these cats can't interbreed is both wholly consistent with and actually predicted by the theory of evolution. Biology even has several plausible mechanisms to explain it. Your mythological Creationism does not. Which is understandable since myths aren't required to be internally consistent.

RufusAtticus

Douglas,

You admit that you are not an expert by far. How than is your analysis more likely to be correct than the analysis of scientists, who are way more familiar than you with the subject matter and have been dealing with it much longer? Why sould anyone believe you, an obvious layman, over the concensus of the scientific community?

If you had any real knowledge about genetics, you'd know that "Junk-DNA" does exist and has been shown (not infered) to be selfish and have no altuistic function. It really doesn't matter what you, in your uneducated opinion, think because you have not read the literature and do not know the research. This is an important thing to realize. You should really read get an Evolutionary Biology text book and plow through it. I'll be happy to answer any honest questions. Maybe by the end of that long excercise you'll be more prepared when you enter into these kind of discussions.

For starters:
The fact of evolution is that populations of organisms change over time. This has been observed and recorded. The theory of evolution explains this observed fact. It is based upon observations not guesswork. It makes testable predictions which have been verified over and over. There is no scientific controversy over evolution. The controversy is generated via political and religious motivations.

Please, Douglas, enlighten us on your level and field of education so that we can help educate you in the science of evolution. You don't have to believe it, but at least you can debate from a more educated position.

-RvFvS

wdog

Douglas,

with all due respect,

you make my point exactly, your comment about theories exposes your lack of background. First of all, a well accepted scientific theory is as close to fact as you will ever get. In some respects a theory is just a very concise way of writing down all the 'facts' or observations. It gives them a structure and opens up a new level of understanding. The transistor was designed by utilizing two well established scientific theories (creationists should be careful not to denigrate that word, as creationism is a theory itself), quantum mechanics and statistical mechanics. People who invent things like the transistor do not simply look at a series of past observations and then draw a conclusion that a transistor can be made. What one does is to gain a deep understanding of the theory and background, investigate the theory itself by testing it's predictions and conclusions, and then finally make the jump by using the theory (usually involving some level of mathematical sophistication) to develope totally new ideas and/or devices. When you look around, every piece of technology you see has a supporting theoretical background, or it could not have been desinged. I am currently using a newly developed 'theory' of photonic crystals to develope new photonic devices, as well as lucent, corning, ect. We are all proceding from theory.

science is a method for investigating the world around us and expressing our observations, building and testing new theories is a powerful part of that. yes, many will be wrong and some old ones will be overturned or modified, but it is only through painstaking experimentation and analysis in which that occurs properly and, trust me on this, if you are wrong people will eventually smoke you out.

this same metodology has been used in biology to give us the theory of evolution, it really is the same type of enterprise as that which produced the transistor. so an approach like yours is a rejection of the whole scientific method.

you said it yourself, a theory should be based in obsevation. and i would add that a scientific consenus should develope through repeated experimentation and development of the theory. creationism is neither, it has been rejected over and over again by the scientific community (in the sense of a consensus), but some people refuse to accept that conclusion. These people then engage in armchair speculation as a way to 'prove' their theory, as I mentioned above that is not how science is done. Otherwise anyone could claim anything, and there would be a chaotic equivalence of ideas. The fact that your computer does work should tell you that there is something more to science than someones neat little theory. The bible has not been useful in the development of any theory or device I can think of (the bible says that pi is 3.0), why should one rely on it as a source of scientific knowledge?

evolution can and should be tested properly, that is what scientists spend a lot of time doing. if you are going to challenge a well accepted theory like evolution, there are ways of doing it, but your method is not appropriate for development of new knowledge. good luck

wdog

oh, theyeti, thanks for the info, I will read it.

faded_Glory

Douglas,

In response to scigirl's graph of the number of species over time, you responded:

Ah, the great Douglas has now overturned the science of Paleontology and fair chunks of Geology, Geochemistry, Geophysics, Chemistry, Physics and Astronomy - just like that.

An error! Of course, how silly of us not to realise that a simple error could be the reason why we find the systematic ordering of the fossil record!

What an eyeopener to understand that some error leads us to believe that the corespondence between radiometric dating and stratigraphic dating means anything at all!

Gosh, to think that all exploration for oil and gas is ultimately based on some error, can you believe it? I wonder how much hydrocarbons we would find if we would explore without making that error!

You know what, I have an idea too: it looks to me almost as if the Sun rotates around the Earth instead of the other way round - in fact, close enough to suggest that some error has crept into Astronomy to explain the difference!

notto

Beneficial Mutation - Tuskless Elephants

I've been following this story since it started to develop and from what I can understand, the following is what is happening.

1) There have always been a small percentage of tuskless elephants in a population do to a mutation.

2) The "tuskless" attribute is passed as a recessive trait.

3) For the most part, being a tuskless elephant is a disadvantage because tusks are used for defense and finding food - until someone is shooting at you to get your tusks.

4) As poaching removes tusked elephants from the population, there are fewer to breed and since "tuskless" elephants are selected for survival, their numbers grow as the trait is passed on.

5) If the trend continues, the genes that create tusks could be completely removed from the population.

Being tuskless, while it has its disadvantages, is better than being dead.

<a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/africa/newsid_180000/180301.stm" target="_blank">http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/africa/newsid_180000/180301.stm</a>

<a href="http://www.pawsweb.org/site/news/newsdocs/ht_tuskless.htm" target="_blank">http://www.pawsweb.org/site/news/newsdocs/ht_tuskless.htm</a>