Interesting article about the teaching of evolution in a United Methodist affiliated college, and Creationism in a Baptist one. From the Creationist:
"At the time of the Big Bang, evolutionists believe there was all this matter out there, where did that matter come from? At the time of the Big Bang, how did the Earth end up getting all of the water and the air and the life-forms? Everything from as simple as bacteria to as complicated as people -- no life-forms have ever been found anywhere else," Wilbanks said. "We hear that all life-forms are progressing from one life-form to another, but yet in the world we do not have any life-forms that are between forms. The fossil record has never shown anything to be in a transition state, going from this form to that form."
If up is down, and black is white, so be it. The question: how to constrain the contagion?
Comments
"We hear that all life-forms are progressing from one life-form to another, but yet in the world we do not have any life-forms that are between forms.
Have these people never seen a duck-billed platypus?
Posted by: Corkscrew | September 18, 2006 1:05 PM
Well, pages like this can be useful if one is engaging in dialogue with an anti-evolutionist who is actually interested in learning more about what they attack.
In short: education.
If a mind is open to considering ideas fairly, nothing is more contagious than the spark of realization within. The world is, after all, fascinating and awe-inspiring -- those who truly seek to understand it better can't help but be moved when they gain insights into the way things interrelate.
Love,
Cheeseburger Brown
Posted by: Cheeseburger Brown | September 18, 2006 1:16 PM
Platypus? Hell, have these people ever looked at the rest of their Fundy Congregations? Clearly they are NOT Homoe Sapiens Sapiens; might be Homo, but genus is Ignoramus.
I would suggest Neaderthals, but I don't want to insult the Neandertals....
Posted by: J-Dog | September 18, 2006 1:23 PM
I'm amazed at the number of evolutionists who -- at least according to many creationists -- double as cosmologists. I've personally never seen an evolutionary biologist attempt to relate evolution to the Big Bang or heard a physicist discuss the ramification of the Big Band on natural selection and so forth, but evidently the two disciplines are intimately related.
I also wasn't aware that humans had scoured most or all of the known universe in a search for life forms and found none. I figured we had only managed to look in a vanishingly small fraction of it. But again, I find myself lagging behind the cutting edge of science.
Posted by: kemibe | September 18, 2006 1:44 PM
Corkscrew - so, that would be a transitional form between what? a duck and a beaver? With venom and electroception thrown in for good measure? yeah, that makes complete sense.
z.
Posted by: s. zeilenga | September 18, 2006 2:20 PM
Posted by: somnilista, FCD | September 18, 2006 4:16 PM
The primary problem with the anti-evolutionsists is all of them think "evolution" has some sort of goal or ultimate purpose. That's stupid: it's more an accident of circumstance. Some things live longer and breed more than other things of the same species, over time this leads to species that are better suited for their environments. It's not like evolution is sitting out there all: "Damn, which fuzzy critter will be best adapted to this environment? I know! Platypus!"
They can't conceive of a world where anything happens by accident, and they have a world-view where everything is connected...so naturally the Big Bang must have something to do with planet formation, which must relate to abiogenesis, which must be connected to evolution, therefore Big Bang = Evolution! It's all "science" right? It makes me want to purposefully confuse different religions to make a point.
Posted by: Timothy | September 18, 2006 5:30 PM
Interesting point about evolutionary biologists being called on to defend cosmology because the two have become inextricably linked in the minds of creationists.
I've pointed two creationist friends to Origin of the Species. The examples that convinced Darwin himself serve well to convince others, or at least get them thinking. You need not look further than finches (or other adaptive radiation species) for "in-between" forms.
And they also provide a nice example of "knowing the future" in certain instances, too. You can tie beak length very neatly to diet, and to rainfall, which correlates nicely to abundance and relative hardness of food.
Posted by: Salil Maniktahla | September 19, 2006 8:52 PM
I took a taxi ride, and the license plate happened to be _exactly_ QRY8928. I mean, what are the odds of that?? Of all the license plate numbers imaginable, how was it _precisely_ QRY8928 on the taxi? It's improbable that this number just "happened to be", why didn't it happen to be EUI7610? The fact that it was _exactly_ QRY8928 is proof that there is a grand designer. It's too unlikely that it was simply a coincidence.
Posted by: sic semper tyrannis | September 30, 2006 2:49 PM
There was a grand designer...a computer, which picked the number out randomly. It sure didn't just appear out of thin air accidentally?
Posted by: Erica | November 9, 2007 12:50 AM