"My Life After Darwin"

[mrs.wes straker]

I have two reasons for posting this link.
1. I'd like to be able to find this page again one day.
2. I think it's good for at least a little bit of discussion.

If you have half a brain, you might enjoy this doctor's opinion.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig/morgan5.html

Well, what I just said wasn't nice, but believe me: it was meant to be humorous.

[Godslayer Jillian]

Interesting article, but I don't like that he confused passion with truth.
What do I care if Dawkins and Gould are passionate about their theories?
What I care about is if they're right or not.

[PersephoneX]

Passion often clouds people's perceptions of truth...

You can't have that in science. You just can't.

[Godslayer Jillian]

Dawkins is passionate about his theories because of what they imply. He does not form his theories out of passion. There's a difference.
It's like believing you're the best athlete in the world so you go to the Olympics, rather than you go to the Olympics and find out you're the best athlete in the world.

[Drake Dun]

Before getting into the real topic, I would just like to say. BERKELEY, God fucking damn it. Two E's.

Ahem. That said, I did not find anything that great for discussion in there, such as a coherent argument engaging specific, relevant points.

I did, on the other hand, find clear instances of underlying misconceptions and material misrepresentations, in addition to the assorted sloppy English mistakes. Here are a few gems:

"Although Darwin himself operated within the context of the scientific method by giving examples of empirical observations that would refute his hypothesis, modern-day evolutionists entertain no such claims."

Wrong. Evolution is falsifiable.

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CA/CA211.html

"Their position is derived from a presupposed metaphysical belief that God cannot exist."

The theory of evolution does not require that supernatural beings not exist. To go further to say that it is derived from such a position is highly dishonest.

"Micheal Behe, a professor of biological sciences at Lehigh University..."

Nice try, but he is a professor of biochemistry. His undergrad degree is in chem and his post-grad education was in biochem. He studies molecules bumping around and interacting with each other - not evolution (although honestly, the evidence at that level alone should be enough). "Biological Sciences" is the department he works for. By the way, here is a statement from them.

http://www.lehigh.edu/~inbios/news/evolution.htm

"Dawkins was writing about 'selfish genes.' How could the substrate of evolution (DNA) be selfish and at the same time be without intention?"

Dawkins has never suggested that DNA has intentions, for crying out loud.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selfish...lfish.22_genes

This is horribly dishonest.

The whole thing does a lot more to reveal the pathological thinking patterns of Bible-thumpers than it does to cast doubt on the theory of evolution. It's basically a string of "he said, she said" testimonials (which never seem to lose their popularity with a certain segment of the Christian world, or marketers and PR people), interspersed with falsehoods that are either wreckless mistakes or calculated lies.

Throughout, there is an unhealthy preoccupation with the political views of the evil "evolutionists". He even has the gall to denounce Steven Jay Gould's work in science on the basis of his political views ("I also didn’t trust Gould. His primary concern seemed to be maintaining the leftist moral code of life rather than the scientific understanding of life.") while at the same time relying upon it to refute Darwinism ("The power of Darwinism rested in its claim to a plausible mechanism (which Gould destroyed)").

All of this culminates in the paranoid verdict that "[M]illions of students [are] being taught bad science for religious and political reasons."

Freud would have been proud.

Drake

[HumanePain]

(sigh) This is what happens when Christians deviate from using faith for guiding living to using faith as a unified field theory to explain dinosaurs. Missing the point, missing the point...

[Drake Dun]

Your new avatar totally owns.

Drake

[mrs.wes straker]

I'm sorry, but I have to agree that this opinion was poorly written. The physician who wrote it makes claims of what scientific opinions may have been on a few occasions, but provides no real, accessible references. How can I determine what is true and what isn't? Is hereciting Darwin or Gould directly from his own memory? If so, how can we know whether or not his memory has failed him?

I regret finding this summary to be of interest. It's not a very good summary at all. It shouldn't have been published. I wonder anyone had it published, after all.

[mrs.wes straker]

Originally Posted by Drake Dun

Wrong. Evolution is falsifiable.

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CA/CA211.html

"Their position is derived from a presupposed metaphysical belief that God cannot exist."

The theory of evolution does not require that supernatural beings not exist. To go further to say that it is derived from such a position is highly dishonest.

Drake, seeing as you seem to have posted more than just an opinion here, can you explain what your position is here? I clicked on the talk origins link and am not quite sure where you're coming from, seeing as you state "evolution is falsifiable" but the articles you linked us to seem so to state or suggest the opposite.

Also, I'm interested in the second statement you make here; could you go further with that, please, or provide another link?

[Mir]

Originally Posted by HumanePain

(sigh) This is what happens when Christians deviate from using faith for guiding living to using faith as a unified field theory to explain dinosaurs. Missing the point, missing the point...

I thought many fundamentalists didn't believe in Dinosaurs.

[Drake Dun]

Originally Posted by mrs.wes straker

I... am not quite sure where you're coming from, seeing as you state "evolution is falsifiable" but the articles you linked us to seem so to state or suggest the opposite.

The talkorigins.org link supports the position that evolution is falsifiable, so I think what we are looking at here is a failure of communication, possibly due to the format of the page. This page comes from a section of their site called "Index to Creationist Claims", which lists and rebuts arguments made against the theory of evolution. The complete index is here:

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html

So where it says at the top "Any fact can be fit into the theory of evolution. Therefore, evolution is not falsifiable...", it is actually presenting not the stance of the writer, but an argument the writer intends to rebut. The rebuttal is below, at "Response".

Alternatively, perhaps you are confusing falsifiability with falseness. There is an exhaustive explanation of falsifiability on Wikipedia, here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability

The short version: To say that a proposition is "falsifiable" does not mean that it is false. It means that it is subject, in principle, to logical counterexample. The proposition "all masses attract each other" is very, very unlikely to be proven false, but it is falsifiable... theoretically we could go out into space one day and find two masses that were not attracting each other. "Either it is raining, or it is not" is not falsifiable, because it cannot possibly be untrue. For a theory to be considered scientific, it must be falsifiable.

Also, I'm interested in the second statement you make here; could you go further with that, please, or provide another link?

Here's what talkorigins has to say about it:

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CA/CA602.html

If you are specifically interested in my views, only look at Response 1. I would have to roll the other ones around before deciding whether or not to endorse them, and I already have bad vibes about Response 3.

The main point is, there is absolutely no reason why evolution is incompatible with the existence of a supernatural being or beings, including for example a single capital-G God who created the whole universe (as in Christianity). The problem here is a "package deal fallacy".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Package_deal_fallacy

Your average traditional Christian has been taught that God made humans in one go, so when you tell him humans evolved gradually, he perceives it as an attack on God. He may overlook the alternatives, such as the possibility that God does exist but made humans in a more indirect fashion (perhaps by guiding evolution).

On the other hand, evolution is incompatible with a hyper-literal interpretation of the Bible. If we interpret the Bible literally, it's pretty hard to squeeze evolution into the Genesis account of the creation of life on Earth. Happily for me, this state of affairs plays into my own secret evil agenda of felling the Goliath of traditional Christianity, along with his evil siblings Judaism and Islam, to clear the ground for less rapacious spiritual philosophies.

Anyway, I feel kind of bad about my tone in the previous post, after your response. I justified it to myself on the basis that I was attacking Morgan, rather than you... but I did basically ridicule something you found interesting. In retrospect, the least we can say about the article is that it serves as an index to some of the key issues, and reveals some of the attitudes that inform the debate. I apologize for getting nasty. I think I am in an ornery mood because I just got done with a debate that started to get a tad ugly.

Drake

[mrs.wes straker]

Well, thanks for that response. I am at work right now so it will take me a while before I can look properly at the links you've provided.

Don't worry about being offensive in your first response. I wasn't agreeing that the opinion was poorly stated only out of shame for having found it interesting. It was indeed a bad representation. Still, I posted it because I wanted to see what educated responses I might get from posting it.

I understand that you may have an agenda, and that you may be biased. I am in the same category, although not necessarily on the same side. This doesn't mean that I completely disagree with all of your statements. In fact, there are some that I appreciate. To go slightly further, I've recently been made aware that the Apocrypha may have some information in it that would be suggestive of human evolution theories not being too far off. Ultimately, in order to be truly educated about a subject, one most objectively consider all facts and opinions. My intention is to do just that. I'm sure it will be a long process. I am only just starting.

[Godslayer Jillian]

Originally Posted by Mir

I thought many fundamentalists didn't believe in Dinosaurs.

They do believe in dinosaurs. They just call them Jesus' horses.