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From: padraig@utastro.UUCP (Padraig Houlahan)
Newsgroups: net.origins
Subject: Re: Don't get mad, now...
Message-ID: <64@utastro.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 8-May-85 15:15:27 EDT
Article-I.D.: utastro.64
Posted: Wed May  8 15:15:27 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 10-May-85 22:01:38 EDT
References: <1042@uwmacc.UUCP>
Distribution: net
Organization: U. Texas, Astronomy, Austin, TX
Lines: 46

I find your posting thought provoking and feel that there is some
justification for your satire. Basically I think that you have allowed
yourself not to see the wood for the trees. You are saying to yourself
here's a dead branch, and yet another, and another etc. therefore there
is no forest. This is in effect what you are doing when you push
evolution to limits that are not completely figured out yet and find that
the answers are not as convincing as hoped for, while at the same time
rejecting the results of many different areas of science that support
the existence of the "forest". The forest is there, based on observation
of the fossil record. Whether or not Darwinism, punctualism, or gradualism
satisfactorily explain how the forest grew is beside the point in this
case.


> 
>[satire]
> 
> Well...I suppose I've angered some of you by my satiric tone.  I offer
> my apologies.  But the above, stripped of its derisory manner, is
> certainly a better definition of what current evolutionary theory is
> about than anything most of YOU have come up with...

That there are unsettled questions concerning evolutionary theory
goes without saying. This is typical of all scientific research. It in
no way negates the basic "fact" of evolution, i.e. the "forest".

> I have been criticized for failing to defend anything.  This seems to
> me a wiser course than defending something when I don't even know what
> it is.  Which is what some of you are doing.  Not all of you,
> certainly, but enough to make me write the above.
> 

The criticism is still valid if you claim that "creation science"
is a science. No proper scientist makes claims based upon evidence that
he refuses to allow other scientists examine, when his claims are challanged.

Padraig Houlahan.
> 
> -- 
>                                                                     |
> Paul DuBois     {allegra,ihnp4,seismo}!uwvax!uwmacc!dubois        --+--
>                                                                     |
> "The presence of weeds in the garden is not explained by            |
>   saying that the gardener has not pulled them yet."

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