Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site cadovax.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!prls!amdimage!amdcad!amd!pesnta!pertec!scgvaxd!trwrb!trwrba!cadovax!keithd From: keithd@cadovax.UUCP (Keith Doyle) Newsgroups: net.origins Subject: Re: Response to flames Message-ID: <604@cadovax.UUCP> Date: Thu, 9-May-85 21:51:43 EDT Article-I.D.: cadovax.604 Posted: Thu May 9 21:51:43 1985 Date-Received: Tue, 14-May-85 06:43:03 EDT References: <253@cmu-cs-edu1.ARPA> <303@scgvaxd.UUCP> <1518@hao.UUCP> <310@scgvaxd.UUCP>, <311@scgvaxd.UUCP> Organization: Contel Cado, Torrance, CA Lines: 216 [..........] > In other words, water, when acted upon by an external energy source, > (electricity), with a driving mechanism and a program for specific > work, (refrigeration), is transformed to a state of higher order. > But when left to its own devices reverts back to a lower order or > random state. What we're talking about here is crystalization, not refrigeration. >FLAME > "Design" is evidence of a "Designer"! > >Geez, to bad he wasn't all that good at it! Whale and anteater embryos >develop teeth that are absorbed before birth. Woops! Maybe the >embryos development traces the steps God went through while developing >the animal (ontogeny recapitulates creation! :-) Uh-oh, dodo and >penguin wings don't work, darn, and the mole and cave salamander's eyes >don't see. Oh, and let's give some humans resistance to malaria, >woops, at the cost of sickle-cell-anemia. BOY, he sure likes beetles, >musta spent a WHOLE day on beetles (250,000 known species). And WOW >90% of the species he created is now extinct! > >It would (be) a waste of time and space to give the numerous examples >of BAD design in our world. >DAN: >Just like an arrogant human being to think he knows and understands >everything about all of life and nature. If you would like to discuss >each of these in depth just say so. There is much more to it than >your oversimplification of things. Just like an arrogant human being to think he knows and understands everything about the existance of God, and that God is on his side. Just like an frightened ostrich to think that he dosen't have to think, he can just say 'because God said so, so there!', or 'God works in mysterious ways!'. >DAN: >What Facts? All I have heard so far is flames! Ok, now we resort to calling everything 'flames'. (why do I bother with this guy?) There have been PLENTY of facts in most of the evolutionist postings on this net. If you have to resort to calling them all 'flames' you're ducking the issues. (oh I forgot, 'God works in mysterious ways'). >FLAME: > Darwinism is on its way out! If you don't think so, you are not up > on current Evolution theory. Punctuationism is whats happening and this > is just as much magic as you say Creation is. What is the difference > between God creating Adam, and a reptile giving birth to a bird? > >Come on! No punctuated equilibriumist will tell you that a reptile ever >gave birth to a bird! Quit misrepresenting things which you obviously >know little about! > >DAN: >See "The Wonderful Egg", IPCAR, 1958. Specific recommendation from the >American Association For The Advancement of Science and the American >Council on Education. P.E. in 1958? (is he talking about Mayr?) How about something a little more up to date? Why don't we try one of these: N. Eldredge and S.J. Gould, in T.J.M. Schopf, ed., "Models in Paleontology" (San Francisco: Freeman, Cooper & Co., 1972); S. M. Stanley, "Macroevolution: Pattern and Process" (San Francisco: Freeman, 1979 ) S. M. Stanley, "The New Evolutionary Timetable" (New York: Basic Books, 1981) >DAN: > What FACT of Evolution? Well, I'll refer to a passage by Gould, as he says it very well. There's more, (plenty more) but this ought to give you the idea. However, an excellent book on the subject is "Science On Trial, The Case For Evolution" by Douglas J. Futuyma (New York: Pantheon Books 1983). Stephen Jay Gould, 'Hens Teeth and Horses Toes' pp. 254 - 259, excerpts: Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts do not go away while scientists debate rival theories for explaining them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's, but apples did not suspend themselves in mid-air pending the outcome. And human beings evolved from apelike ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other, yet to be discovered. Moreover, "fact" does not mean "absolute certaity". The final proofs of logic and mathematics flow deductively from stated premises and achieve certainty only because they are *not* about the empirical world. Evolutionists make no claim for perpetual truth, though creationists often do (and then attack us for a style of argument that they themselves favor). In science, "fact" can only mean "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withold provisional assent." I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms. Evolutionists have been clear about this distinction between fact and theory from the very beginning, if only because we have always acknowleged how far we are from completely understanding the mechanisms (theory) by which evolution (fact) occurred. Darwin continually emphasized the difference between his two great and seperate accomplishments: establishing the fact of evolution, and proposing a theory--natural selection--to explain the mechanism of evolution. ..... Our confidence that evolution occured centers upon three general arguments. First we have abundant, direct, observational evidence of evolution in action, from both field and laboratory. This evidence ranges from countless experiments on change in nearly everything about fruit flies subjected to artificial selection in the laboratory to the famous population of British moths that became black when industrial soot darkened the trees upon which the moths rest. (Moths gain protection from sharp-sighted bird predators by blending into the background.) Creationists do not deny these observations; how could they? Creationists have tightened their act. They now argue that God only created "basic kinds," and allowed for limited evolutionary meandering within them. Thus toy poodles and Great Danes come from the dog kind and moths can change color, but nature cannot convert from the dog to a cat or a monkey to a man. The second and third arguments for evolution--the case for major changes- do not involve direct observation of evolution in action. They rest upon inference, but are no less secure for that reason. Major evolutionary change requires too much time for direct observation on the scale of recorded human history. All historical sciences rest upon inference, and evolution is no different from geology, cosmology, or human history in this respect. In principle, we cannot observe processes that operated in the past. We must infer them from results that still surround us: living and fossil organisms for evolution, documents and artifacts for human history, strata and topography for geology. The second argument--that the imperfection of nature reveals evolution-- strikes many people as ironic, for they feel that evolution should be most elegantly displayed in the nearly perfect adaptation expressed by some organisms--the camber of a gull's wing, or butterflies that cannot be seen in ground litter because they mimic leaves so precisely. But perfection could be imposed by a wise creator or evolved by natural selection. Perfection covers the tracks of past history. And past history--the evidence of descent--is the mark of evolution. Evolution lies exposed in the *imperfections* that record a history of descent. Why should a rat run, a bat fly, a porpoise swim, and I type this essay with structures built of the same bones unless we all inherited them from a common ancestor? An engineer, starting from scratch, could design better limbs in each case. Why should all the large native mammals of Austrailia be marsupials, unless they descended from a common ancestor isolated on this island continent? Marsupials are not "better," or ideally suited for Austrailia; many have been wiped out by placental mammals imported by man from other continents. This principle of imperfection extends to all historical sciences. When we recognize the etymology of September, October, November, and December (seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth), we know that the year once started in March, or that two additional months must have been added to an original calendar of ten months. The third argument is more direct: transitions are often found in the fossil record. Preserved transitions are not common--and should not be, according to our understanding of evolution [reference to later section on punctuated equilibrium] but they are not entirely wanting, as creationists often claim. The lower jaw of reptiles contains several bones, that of mammals only one. The non-mammilian jawbones are reduced, step by step, in mammilian ancestors until they become tiny nubbins located at the back of the jaw. The "hammer" and "anvil" bones of the mammilian ear are descendents of these nubbins. How could such a transition be accomplished? the creationists ask. Surely a bone is either entirely in the jaw or in the ear. Yet palentologists have discovered two transitional lineages of theraspids(the so-called mammal-like reptiles) with a double jaw joint--one composed of the old quadrate and articular bones(soon to become the hammer and anvil), the other of the squamosal and dentary bones(as in modern mammals). For that matter, what better transitional form could we expect to find than the oldest human, Australopithecus afarensis, with its apelike palate, its human upright stance, and a cranial capacity larger than any ape's of the same body size but a full 1,000 cubic centimeters below ours? If God made each of the half-dozen human species discovered in ancient rocks, why did he create an unbroken temporal sequence of progressively more modern features--increasing crainial capacity, reduced face and teeth, larger body size? Did he create to mimic evolution and test our faith thereby? > Design can be described as that which has irreducible properties of > organization. > For example, what does it take to make an airplane fly? Creative > design and organization. Take off the wings and see if they will > fly! Take out the engine and see if it will fly. In other words, > an airplane is a collection of non-flying parts! But what makes it > fly? Creative design and organization. > Second, among all the molecules that translate DNA into protein, there'e > not one molecule that is alive. Not a single molecule in your body is > alive. A living cell is a collection of non-living molecules. What does > it take to make a living cell alive? Design and CREATION! > > Here is where design and order intersect. In "Scientific American", > one issue was made into a book; "Evolution" in 1978. Dickerson, after > describing the problems in producing the right kinds of molecules for > living systems, says that those droplets that by "sheer chance" contained > the right molecules survived longer. He continues, "This is not life, > but it is getting close to it. The missing ingredient is AN ORDERLY > MECHANISM!" In other words, life is a property of organization that was > produced by an orderly mechanism or a "deliberate purposive plan" or > a design! > > OK. Go ahead! Nail me to the wall. Make my day! I'll not argue with the statement "Design is evidence of a Designer", but I do not agree that life is evidence of design. Order can be observed to arise from the action of natural laws and physical processes, and is not evidence of design. Have you ever seen the 'Life' algorithm run on a computer? Sure, someone designed the program, (God maybe?) but once you input the initial pattern, you're done with the design. Do you claim that the symmetry and order of the 100th generation of the 'pi' starting pattern, taken out of context, is evidence of a designer? (or one that planned it to come out that way?) Conway didn't know what he was going to get, he just implemented a mechanism of evolution, and then discovered things about it. That's what we're doing, discovering things about evolution. (Others of us apparently believe in Santa Claus). Keith Doyle # {ucbvax,ihnp4,decvax}!trwrb!cadovax!keithd