Evolution? How?

Thank you Mr Farmerman for your balanced view. I guesed that since I'm closer to the pole, I tend to get more polarised Very Happy

in my perceptions.

In a paradoxical way creationists are inspiring evolution scientists by searching out and attacking gaps in evolution science, thus encouraging scientists to conduct research in those areas, which in turn leads to the improvement of the scientific picture.

My above statement was aimed at the creationists who drive this discussion without actually partaking of the information rendered to them. I hope the kids on-line can separate rot from reason (is that an English expression?).

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Itll work jut fine till something better comes along.

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Not necessarily, Paasky, but let us say that you just coined a very useful expression in English.

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farmerman wrote:

While you are correct paasky, remember that there are a greater number of people on these threads who will listen to reason and whose minds are not sealed shut. I always think that theres a few kids on the line who are just curious about all this material.

Well said, farmerman; and exactly why I continue to post. For the kids in the audience and for my own basic education, would you please answer the childish question I asked here?

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farmerman wrote:

real life
Quote:
Actually some very "credible" evolutionists have suggested that new creatures DID just one day appear out of nowhere. This theory, dubbed the Hopeful Monster theory, has been proposed mostly out of frustration by evolutionists

Obviously you are totally without any smidgen of knowledge about your use of the Hopeful Monster term. It was NEVER proposed "out of Frustration" (You must be quoting Safarti, your obvious source of all your crap)
Hopeful Monsters were a colorful term posited based upon a specific larval feature of a Pacific glowworm. The "assumed preadapted" practice of cannibalization of ones own parent gave the author an idea and thus was extended the life of "Neo Darwinian" thought.

The fact that the author had the wrong species mixed together and was totally off with respect to the practice in the key species well, we dont wanna speak of that cause it makes such a great story.
When scientists actually go forth and DO SOMETHING, rather than sit around in fruitless labs in white coats that are worn for no apparent reason, well, even the real scientists make mistakes. Ill go no further because its obvious that you have no clue of the circumstances nor do you even understand the case being made. I assume you just plopped some of Safartis junk from AIG and thought that "HE must know what hes talking about" (always a dangerous proposition with people who are strongly agenda driven)

Quote:
Stephen J Gould wrote:
the extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. We fancy ourselves as the only true students of life's history, yet to preserve our favorite account of evolution by natural selection we view our data as so bad that we never see the very process we profess to study

I hate doing this cause it so robs the spontaneity of our posts. Only thing Id like to say, for the more open minded of those reading these missives is, Go to the source of Goulds statement "Evolutions Erratic Pace" He wrote it in the mid 80s and had already criiticized the "Hopeful Monster" concept. Although, by evolutions "tinkering" he did recognize that having a large number of species within a genus does favor the adaptive success in a rapidly changing environment.
Real lifes misunderstandings are based upon not having read any of the literature and just cuit and pasting from Genesis Jive and Dr Safartis interpretation. Thats why he, and others like him, usually make a point and then move on with no engagement.

My recent explanation that Macroevolution IS observable went unchallenged or discussed. The real lives and others immdeiately jumped to
"Well, that may be but a fish is always a fish" They dont even realize that, by so stipulating, theyve actually bought into one of Darwins own precepts of "evolution" (Spencers term not Darwins)
I will herein review them

1Species are non constant (They change through time)

2All species derive from common ancestrors

3Gradualism (in other words, a fish is usually a fish through steps of evolution)

4 The rise of species diversity (not complexity please)

5 Its all accomplished by natural selection

So simple yet so profound. Real life( or any of the past Creationistt spokespeople) have not been able to argue any of it away, in fact, as wolf said and I paraphrase;
"Why dont the Creationists do some of their own research to support their view"(and ), why is it that Creation Research is nothing more than trying to find some chink in evolutions armor?
Why?, simple, everything Creationism bases itself upon can be scientifically proven to be just flat wrong by experiment, evidence, or calculation.

I suppose you must be right, Farmerman. You certainly sound convinced.

The Gould quote is also referenced at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hopeful_Monster but they are probably just quoting from AIG, too. Right?

Just for fun though, why don't you pretend Gould really said that and respond to Gould's comment ?

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real life-- I NEVER SAID THAT GOULD DIDNT STATE THAT QUOTE< AND PLEASE DONT TRY TO RECAST MY STATEMENTS, THATS CHEAP DEBATING.
What I said, (and perhaps you were not able to catch on) was that GOULD WAS QUOTED OUT OF CONTEXT ,which is a normal MO for the AIG crowd. Wikipedia took the entire lift from AIG , because if you follow your original post, it is included in AIG verbatim. Im going to have to write to WIkipedia that they need to spend some time in QA.

What you really need to remember is that the Gould Quote didnt just drop from the sky, all by itself, out of context, in a convenient hermetically sealed package. To be fair to the art of referencing quotes that come from longer pieces, we usually like to place 3 dots on quotes that we lift to indicate that something comes before or after (or both). Im not gonna waste any more time with your silly out of context quotations because I know that theyre not yours and that youre incapable of distinguishing its meaning from Safartis attempts at spin Please go read the entire(ORIGINAL) Gould essay , "Evolutions Erratic Pace".After you read the article, see if you dont disagree with the conclusions that OUT OF CONTEXT quotes that Genesis Jive or Safarti are asking you to swallow.

BTW Gould and Eldredge had based their entire punctuated equilibrium based upon a single species of Brachiopod, with no intermediates that Darwin would have predicted. Intermediates of these species later, had, been found from correlated stratigraphy of the Formation units of same age, so Gould and Eldredge modified their "PE" hypothesis to be used "in limnae" and not as a general rule. The missing intermediates seem to be more of an artifact of imperfect sedimentation and erosion, than evolution.

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Neologist, I assume you were asking about the following?

Quote:

Can the cichlid from one side of the rift successfully mate with the cichlid from the other side of the rift?

. The concet of species states that a single species is a population of organisms that will freely reproduce within that population. Species may be composed of multiple populations but if they freely interbreed (like basenjis from Egypt will breed with basenjis from Brooklyn). They fit into a same species.
The cichlids from the various lakes and the Nile dont interbreed freely, they occupy different niches, have many morphological differences, and many are actually active at different times of the day. Considering that the cichlids have differentiated themselves to the genus level, they have gone and evolved at collective morphological levels that assign the newer species to even different genera.
Remember, in the Linnean system we have
KINGDOM
PHYLUM||
CLASS
ORDER
FAMILY
GENUS
SPECIES
Of all the above organizational groups, only species has a clear testable definition, all the higher categories are (usually) based upon morphological variations

SO, no , the Nile , Turkana,Malawy, Victoria, , Ziway etc cichlids are not free interbreeders . Having said that, Im sure that aquarists have force bred hybrids of different genera and produced something. Just like a Tigron is an artificially bred cross between a lion and tiger. Usually though, such animals are sterile.
So, my answer is that these fish dont interbreed, as separate species and genera, they are, by definition sexually isolated.

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Of course, I was really only kidding. I do NOT think that Wikipedia lifted the Gould quote from the Answers in Genesis website. Such would be so unlikely as to be beyond consideration.

It is obviously a genuine quote and I think both Wikipedia and AIG used the quote properly.

Gould's frustration with the "extreme rarity" of transitional forms in the fossil record is apparent from the tone as well as the wording of his statement, referring to data "so bad" that evolutionists "never see the process" that they "profess to study".

Besides the extreme rarity of credible transitional forms, circular reasoning is also difficult for the evolutionist to defend. Since the fossils are used to determine the "age" of the rock in which they are found; and the rocks are used to determine the "age" of the fossils contained therein, marking virtually ALL dates cited by evolutionary true believers as extremely suspect.

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The following is a comment by Paul Z Myers, associate professor of biology at University of Minninsota, Morris.
http://pharyngula.org/

Frist becomes the latest Republican to encourage the corruption of education.

Frist, a Republican from Tennessee, spoke to a Rotary Club meeting Friday and told reporters afterward that students need to be exposed to different ideas, including intelligent design."I think today a pluralistic society should have access to a broad range of fact, of science, including faith," Frist said.

Frist, a doctor who graduated from Harvard Medical School, said exposing children to both evolution and intelligent design "doesn't force any particular theory on anyone. I think in a pluralistic society that is the fairest way to go about education and training people for the future."

What did we do to deserve these fools?

I don't even understand what he's babbling about in that first sentence?-he's muddling together fact, science, and faith, and implying that faith is a subset of the first two. What does it mean to have a "wide range" of those things? Do facts have reasonable ranges, such that we can simultaneously argue that humans evolved, and humans were created? That science, the study of the observable, should encompass religion, the invention of the invisible?

The rest of his remarks are further inanities. Of course good teaching has to come down on the side of the best explanations. We can't expect a teacher to stand up before a class and abdicate his or her responsibility to think and evaluate, presenting a random assortment of ideas, some sensible, some lunatic, without criticismand simultaneously expect the students to learn to use their minds. Teaching is not about being fair to ideas. Treating the best ideas, the best evidence, the best approximation to the truth as on a par with the insubstantial vapor coming from religiously motivated creationists is not the way to educate and train the next generation.

Damn these Republican incompetents. They are throwing away our future for their superstitions.

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real life

Quote:

Of course, I was really only kidding. I do NOT think that Wikipedia lifted the Gould quote from the Answers in Genesis website. Such would be so unlikely as to be beyond consideration.

You still dont get it. That particular quote is frequently used out of context because it seems to support a cReationist myth that there are NO intermediate fossils found. Gould was giving examples from the fossil record where intermediates are rare and what the AIG guys did was merely cut out all the meat and all that boring science so it looks like Gould agreed with them, whe n just the opposite is conveyed.
Gould has , because of his writing style peppered with aphorisms(some of them actually correct), been called "the Accidental Creationist"
He is often quoted totally out of context (as you have) and theOOC statements are used as mere sound bytes without any meaning being conveyed. The most famous is his;
"...Darwinian theory--the so called modern synthesis that crystallized by the mid (20th) century---is effectively dead, despite its persistence as textbook orthodoxy..." What he was saying was that his named pet theory of punctuated equilibrium was supplanting the gradualness of natural selection.(A statement that he retracted before his death)
This bite is the basis of Michael Dentons "Evolution;A Theory in Crisis" and also it is the formative verse for Phillip Johnsons equally crappy work"Darwin on Trial". Gould has dwelt on his punctuated equilibrium so muchthat he failed to recognize actual data that showed gradual natral selection on a"day by day" basis (even as data began to filter in that his own field sites were showing some evidence that it may not be as reasonable a hypothesis as he and his colleagues first thought)(Besides Gould didnt even develop the theory first Ernst Mayr did and for that reason Mayr shut Gould out of his later writing as someone who was an opportunist)

. The Creationists love to take out of context that statement and the one that you(probably unknowingly) lifted out of context , to mean that since evolution works fitfully, it doesnt work at all (an easy jump in logic for the uninformed). AS Bob Wright said of Gould's effects, "...The Creationists love the conspiratorial aura of Gould's description of these gaps as "the trade secret of Paleontlology"..."
It isnt Goulds fault that Creationist quoted him dishonestly. It is, however a sad state of affairs if we let it continue and keep it up via mere ignorance.

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What this also shows is the dishonesty of the Creationists and conservative Christians.

Any lie to preserve the dogma is encouraged.

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xingu said

Quote:

What did we do to deserve these fools?

We swept em in office by some presold moral mandate. Im beginning to see that the center of the GOP is, once again beginning to assert itself and is dissociating itself from the moral high grounders.
Even Frist will, I believe , begin to return to the center as Georgie begins quacking louder.
Theres a posted saying up at Harvard that was stated by Jay Gould. It says
"Teaching Biology without an evolutionary base is like teaching English without grammar"

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I don't know about Frist, FM (and, of course, don't give a rat's ass if he lives or dies). He is quoted elsewhere in these fora, in a post yesterday, as saying that "alternative" explanations be taught in schools--and the putz is trained as a physician. I suspect that, lacking the accumlated political clout (in large measure from knowing where the bodies are buried) of Trent Lott, he clings to Shrub as the true source of his political power.

Unfortunately, the Republicans have two things that will go along way to securing our future misery. A strong grip on the electorate and a long way to go to purge themselves of the lunatic fringe.

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But there is progress being made.

Creationist Christians now accept the fact that the earth is a sphere; it is not the center of the Universe and the sun does not move around the earth.

"To assert that the earth revolves around the sun is as erroneous as to claim that Jesus was not born of a virgin." [Cardinal Bellarmino 1615, during the trial of Galileo]

"A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything."
-Nietzsche

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Quote:

Unfortunately, the Republicans have two things that will go along way to securing our future misery. A strong grip on the electorate and a long way to go to purge themselves of the lunatic fringe.

A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider godfearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side.
Aristotle, Politics

I guess some things never change.

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xingu wrote:

But there is progress being made.

Creationist Christians now accept the fact that the earth is a sphere; it is not the center of the Universe and the sun does not move around the earth.

"To assert that the earth revolves around the sun is as erroneous as to claim that Jesus was not born of a virgin." [Cardinal Bellarmino 1615, during the trial of Galileo]

"A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything."
-Nietzsche

Galileo was a Christian who, believed, as I do, that the bible was correct and the church misrepresented it.

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Quote:

Galileo was a Christian who, believed, as I do, that the bible was correct and the church misrepresented it.

Anyone may interpret the Bible in any manner they choose and be correct. That's why any God, with a grain of sense, would never write such a book.

Look how concise our Constitution is and we're still trying to interpret it. One can only imagine how stupid a God would have to be to write a series of books as complex as the Bible and expect humans to agree on one interpretation.

As a man can drink water from any side of a full tank, so the skilled theologian can wrest from any scripture that which will serve his purpose.
― Bhagavad Gita

To affirm that the Sunis at the centre of the universe and only rotates on its axis without going from east to west, is a very dangerous attitude and one calculated not only to arouse all Scholastic philosophers and theologians but also to injure our holy faith by contradicting the Scriptures.
― Cardinal Bellarmino, 17th Century Church Master Collegio Romano, who imprisoned Galileo for his astronomical works

I wonder what Scriptures he was speaking of?

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xingu wrote:

Anyone may interpret the Bible in any manner they choose

Right so far.

xingu wrote:

and be correct.

Wrong.

xingu wrote:

That's why any God, with a grain of sense, would never write such a book.

Wrong. The bible was written by men under God's direction.

BTW; Thank you, farmerman for your clear answer to my question.

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Just when you thought it wouldn't get funnier, this from The Onion....

Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity with "Intelligent Falling" Theory

Quote:

KANSAS CITY, KS?-As the debate over the teaching of evolution in public schools continues, a new controversy over the science curriculum arose Monday in this embattled Midwestern state. Scientists from the Evangelical Center For Faith-Based Reasoning are now asserting that the long-held "theory of gravity" is flawed, and they have responded to it with a new theory of Intelligent Falling.

"Things fall not because they are acted upon by some gravitational force, but because a higher intelligence, 'God' if you will, is pushing them down," said Gabriel Burdett, who holds degrees in education, applied Scripture, and physics from Oral Roberts University.

Burdett added: "Gravity?-which is taught to our children as a law?-is founded on great gaps in understanding. The laws predict the mutual force between all bodies of mass, but they cannot explain that force. Isaac Newton himself said, 'I suspect that my theories may all depend upon a force for which philosophers have searched all of nature in vain.' Of course, he is alluding to a higher power."

Founded in 1987, the ECFR is the world's leading institution of evangelical physics, a branch of physics based on literal interpretation of the Bible. ...

The Entire Story

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farmerman, Don't give Frist too much credit just yet; he also agrees with Bush that ID should be taught along with evolution.

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