Bubba

I'm also amazed that like 4,487,987 other previous creationists here Sciteach is also post and run, or at least he appears to be.

Sciteach, where are you?

Bubba

Oolon Colluphid

You'll notice that the thread was called 'Educate a Christian Week'. That was last week.

Mind you, I saw no sign of him being any more educated by his last posts...

Oolon

Motorcycle Mama

Very quickly. I never claimed that God made humans and if I gave the impression I apologize for being unclear. Humans, the physical specimen, are the result of natural events. Humans as a spiritual specimen, I will not comment on.
MM

Motorcycle Mama

Perhaps I was unclear. The reference to Hempel was not stimulated by sciteach's opinion but those of the evolutionists who presened evolution as a fact and ascribed powers to it that it has only because of the information upon which the inference of evolution is based.

As to your point about the issue not being the nature of evolutionary theory but honesty in debate and professional in teaching, OK, but if someone is to criticize sommeone like sciteach as being unprofessional or dishonest, then that criticism itself must be above reproach. It is my opinion that presenting the argument that evolution is a fact elevates it to a level it doesn't deserve. This does not mean that evolution is a central idea in biology it just means that it should be accurately represented.
MM

scigirl

When you say "evolution," Do you mean common descent (the fact that we evolved from common ancestors) or the mechanism for evolution - genentic mutations and selection?

If you mean the former, what types of evidence would need to be discovered to "elevate" common descent with modification to be a fact?

Also, do you have problems with other scientific theories being taught as "facts?" If not, why not? In other words, why are you picking on evolution, and not, say quantum physics? Is it really because of science, or is it because of something else?

scigirl

[ October 11, 2002: Message edited by: scigirl ]</p>

Motorcycle Mama

Ergaster

The reference to the Spandrels of San Marcos relies on the relationship between natural selection and adaptation. If one is to say some adaptationist arguments are spurious and others not, what is the criterion for making that decision?

And yes, I've read enough of Gould's work to realize he is a selectionist but I have also encountered some of his arguments where he implies that there is more to evolution than natural selection. I apologize for not remembering the specific example.

As for Brooks. If I said he denied any relevance to natural selection then I was mistaken, but I doubt that I said that. What I did say was the Brooks and Wiley argued that the driving force in evolution was the second law of thermodynamics. Would Brooks agree with that? Don't know. You can always ask him.

Is evolution ONLY a theory? To me this is a meaningless statement used by anti-evolutionists to provoke evolutionists.
MM

Motorcycle Mama

Didn't know I presented a "thesis". I believe I called it an opinion. Also I recall I said I didn't know if Jaki was correct or not but it was an interesting idea. And Jaki's argument does not preclude anyone at any time doing something solely for the sake of interest, but knowing the size of the earth might be of economic (trading) value). And isn't the pursuit of interesting ideas what much of this is about?
MM

Motorcycle Mama

See my response to Happy Wanderer.
MM

Motorcycle Mama

The reason for chosing the definition of science I did was that the method it uses is that of intellectual inquiry. For example, I was once told that the most important character in Crime and Punishment was Sonja. Given that statement, it's an hypothesis by the usual definition of a hypothesis [a hypothetical statement about something] then could use what is called the scientific method to analyse the story to see if that hypothesis is verified.
MM

Motorcycle Mama

Scigirl,

What do I mean by evolution? It is an answer to three biological questions, what is there, how did it come to be, why did it come to be? The answer to "what" is the basis for common ancestry, an inference derived from patterns of similarities and differences. The what is the fact, the inference of common ancestry is not a fact. By my definition a fact is something you perceive with your senses. Common ancestry is something that is the result of some sort of numerical analysis.

The answer to the question "how" involves the mechanism of evolution, mutation and natural selection in your words. But as I've said before I have serious reservations about natural selection and I'm not alone in the biological world. Is mutation an adequate mechanism to account for evolution? Stebbins once did some magic arithmetic and demonstrated it did.

The answer to the question "why" address the cause of evolution. So what's the cause? It can't be natural selection since that's a mechanism. If you want to invoke mutations as the cause then you are arguing for thermodynamic instability of DNA. Or one may wish to argue that evolution is another expression of the increasing entropy of the universe and the cause is a version of the 2nd law expanded to include information.


Why am I picking on evolution and not quantum physics? Most of what I've heard has been on evolution and that is what I know most about. How do acquaintances view my opinions on evolution? Granted I've not done a detailed study but so far there are two who reject my arguments out of hand, a YEC and an athiest.
MM