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From: keithd@cadovax.UUCP (Keith Doyle)
Newsgroups: net.origins
Subject: Re: God Magic and Expectation
Message-ID: <642@cadovax.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 30-May-85 22:33:13 EDT
Article-I.D.: cadovax.642
Posted: Thu May 30 22:33:13 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 3-Jun-85 00:07:38 EDT
References: <1140@uwmacc.UUCP>
Organization: Contel Cado, Torrance, CA
Lines: 52

>>>            c)  Actually, the form of life that has just over 20 cells
>>>                is  a very simple PARASITE called the mesozoa. It must
>>>                have a complex animal as a host in order to provide it
>>>                with  such functions as digestion and respiration. The
>>>                mesozoa could not be the evolutionary predecessors  of
>>>                any  so  called  higher  animals  since  it requires a
>>>                higher animal as its  host.  Sponges,  the  next  most
>>>                complex  form  of multicellular life, are so different
>>>                from higher forms of life that even  evolutionists  do
>>>                not  consider  them  as  ancestral  to  anything. (For
>>>                example see Cockrum, above, p. 167.)
>
>> This is an excellent example of the twisted nature of creationist
>> propoganda.  Anyone remotely familiar with current evolutionary thought
>> would know that noone expects that this 20 celled organism has been
>> around unchanged since the days when all life was less than 20 or so cells.
>
>That's true.  Just ask any bacteria.  Or any algae.
>
>I wonder what you mean by "expect"?  Is ther a genuine "expectation"
>involved here, or simply observation?

Come on, is it that hard to understand the point I'm trying to make?  The
above comment on the parasite would indicate that because some primitive
life form has no ancestors that ALL primitive life forms have no ancestors
so a parasite that lives on a more advanced life form is in contradiction
to evolution.  The fallacy here is the assumtion that all primitive life
forms have no known ancestry like sponges, a basic fallacy that the whole rest
of the statement is based upon.  Where did this assumption come from?  It
is suspect since it did NOT come from evolutionary theory as it is purported
to have, and without it, the entire statement is meaningless.  If creationists
had hard evidence that this parasitic animal had no ancestors, corroborated
evidence, this could very well falsify evolution.  But, since no such hard
evidence exists, creationists INVENT evidence by trying to slip the 
absurd assumption that all primitive life forms have no ancestors.

>By the way, just to avoid confusion here, I see your main point, i.e.,
>that it is possible that parasites are degenerate forms of what were
>once non-parasitic organisms.  But the arguments you use to support
>that contention are not very convincing.

>Paul DuBois     {allegra,ihnp4,seismo}!uwvax!uwmacc!dubois        --+--

Neither are these creationist statements that appear to deliberately 
misrepresent evolution in attempts to falsify it.  I use the
term 'appear to' because when you've seen it enough times, and in fact
when it seems to develop a consistent pattern, it gets hard to excuse
it with 'ignorance'.

Keith Doyle
#  {ucbvax,ihnp4,decvax}!trwrb!cadovax!keithd