RufusAtticus

It appears that the SBC is gearing up to push creationism this August in its sunday school lessons.

At least one sunday school teacher is preparing to debunk it.

Read about it <a href="http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&selm=kman-D122C1.17512103062002%40news.supernews.com" target="_blank">here</a>.

tgamble

I wonder if this has been mentioned on the Baptist board...

Lizard

Isn't Kurt Wise the guy who studied with S. J. Gould and still managed to come out a creationist?

tgamble

Kurt Wise is to Gould as Anakin Skywalker is to Obi-wan kenobi.

"This seems to better explain why dust has
not all been swept out of our solar system and why the comets that regularly go about the sun have not disintegrated completely."

Someone tell me I'm wrong here. Wise is some quack like Hovind right? He's not the one who studied with Gould at Harvard!
<img src="graemlins/boohoo.gif" border="0" alt="[Boo Hoo]" /> <img src="graemlins/boohoo.gif" border="0" alt="[Boo Hoo]" /> <img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" />

tgamble

"This would better explain why so many present species can
interbreed successfully (such as the camel and llama, which in old-earth
dating have been separated for 40 million years)."

Wait a minute! If two species can interbreed successfully (successful means producing fertile offspring?) then wouldn't that make them the same species by definition?!

Dr.GH

I have no idea what paleo data might exist that would argue for the 40 Ma seperation in the camilids mentioned.

Did anybody give the googel person a reference on "catastrophic contenintal drift?"

Quetzal

Actually, the camels and llamas lived quite happily together in North America until around 11,000 ya. I don't know where this twit got his 40 my separation from, but he's waaay off.
[ June 04, 2002: Message edited by: Morpho ]</p>

Oolon Colluphid

In principle, yes, but that’s what makes it so difficult (if not impossible) to give a watertight definition of ‘species’ -- and why it’s so much fun to try to get a creationist to define ‘kinds’ . Interbreedability is behind the Biological Species Concept, but there’s a host of other definitions.

The problem is that gene pool separation is a sliding scale, from fully interbreeding and fertile, through the range of isolating mechanisms (each of which may vary in effectiveness), to complete isolation. Mallards and pintails don’t interbreed in the wild, and are easily distinguishable morphologically, but produce fertile offspring when put together in zoos. Certain grasshoppers are separated by differing mating calls, but play a recording of their own call to females that are in the presence of the other species, and they’ll happily interbreed. Then there’s rings species, such as Larus gulls and <a href="http://www.santarosa.edu/lifesciences/ensatina.htm" target="_blank">Ensatina salamanders</a>... one species or two?

A subtle change may cause complete isolation (northern and southern leopard frogs, in which embryo development is temperature-dependant); conversely, substantial change may not be much of a barrier: the llama/alpaca etc example is a favourite because they’re put in separate genera. And dogs, of course. According to Mayr in the article <a href="http://www.aaas.org/spp/dser/evolution/science/mayr.htm" target="_blank">What is a species, and what is not?</a>, there’s been genetic introgression among Quercus oaks, and among Betula birches, for millions of years without the parent species merging.

In other words, nature is messy, as we ‘evolutionists’ would expect

Oolon

[ June 05, 2002: Message edited by: Oolon Colluphid ]</p>

Valentine Pontifex

Who is Palpatine?

tgamble

Henry Morris I suppose. :=)

I suppose Dawkins is up for the role of Yoda.