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From: friesen@psivax.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Newsgroups: net.origins
Subject: Re: The Scientific Case for Creation: (Part 17)
Message-ID: <478@psivax.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 31-May-85 16:12:57 EDT
Article-I.D.: psivax.478
Posted: Fri May 31 16:12:57 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 2-Jun-85 20:39:38 EDT
References: <359@iham1.UUCP> <552@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP> <140@utastro.UUCP>
Reply-To: friesen@psivax.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Organization: Pacesetter Systems Inc., Sylmar, CA
Lines: 31

In article <140@utastro.UUCP> ethan@utastro.UUCP (Ethan Vishniac) writes:
>Actually, we've been through this before in this newsgroup.  The quoted
>evidence is that the biochemical affinities of snakes (and lizards), 
>alligators and birds showed that the birds were slightly more closely
>related to the alligators than the two groups of reptiles were to each
>other.  I'm sorry to say that I don't remember the exact experiments
>quoted.  The statement that this contradicts evolutionary predictions is one
>of those lovely flights of fancy that enliven this newsgroup.  The above is
>just what one would expect after perusing (for example) Colbert's
>"Evolution of the Vertebrates".  If one wants to be picky, take an early
>edition that predated any of the biochemical work.  It doesn't make much
>difference.  I don't know much about Patterson, but the way he's quoted in
>this newsgroup makes him sound like a complete bozo.
>
	Actually, in addition to being wrong about the predictions
made by systematicists about these relationships, there is another
fundamental error in the Creationists treatment of this. This is
the confusion between evolutionary theory, which is a theory about
*mechanisms*, with a particular phylogenetic hypothesis(or concept
of the origin of some group(s)). While the latter depends upon the
former, the first does *not* depend on the latter, particular
phylogenetic concepts can be(and often are) changed without any
harm to evolutionary theory. So an argument of this sort has *no*
bearing on the validity of evolution. A double flight of fantasy
therefor.
-- 

				Sarima (Stanley Friesen)

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