evolution
stcynic | February 4, 2004I seem to have attracted the attention of one Mac Swift. Who is Mac Swift? Well, let's let him answer that:I think I can accurately pride myself on being the ONLY pro-Chick Publications and pro-KJV blog on the Internet.
Apparently he regards being pro-Chick Publications as something to be proud of. That speaks volumes right there. Jack Chick, for those of you who don't know, is an evangelist who produces comic books. You may have seen them laying around in public bathrooms or left in a hotel room. They are, to put it bluntly but accurately, rather moronic. It's the sort of thing that makes…
stcynic | February 3, 2004Rusty posted a brief response to my last entry on the testable creation model. I'll paste the comments here because it allows a bit more space to respond:
Ed, you really are tempting me to respond...
I really think a good, long conversation on this topic would clear a lot of things up. We would each still be sitting in our respective camps, but we'd probably have a better understanding of what the other was positing.
Let me explain in the next comment...
Case in point is the "order of appearance" argument you make (e.g., Wolf-like creature to whale). Both models support the fossil data. But…
stcynic | February 2, 2004Reed Cartwright of the University of Georgia has done a thorough analysis of the proposed Georgia science standards. It shows, in brief, that Kathy Cox is lying when she says that the new standards would teach the concept of evolution without using the word. Of course, I think everyone knew that already.
Thanks to Paul Myers for the heads up on this one.
stcynic | February 2, 2004Rusty Lopez of the New Covenant blog has stated that his latest response to me regarding the "testable creation model" that he advocates will be his last. I thank him for an engaging dialogue on these issues, and regret that he chooses not to continue the conversation. He says he does not have the time, and I take him at his word. These kinds of posts can indeed, as he says, become very complex and time consuming, as this one already has. In my case, I think it's worth the time and effort, both to stimulate one's own mind and perhaps educate others. So presuming that he chooses not to…
stcynic | January 31, 2004Georgia wants to ban the word "evolution" from science classes, replacing it instead with "biological changes over time". The superintendant of schools, Kathy Cox, claims that she wants to do this because the word "evolution" has become such a controversial buzzword that perhaps replacing the term while continuing to teach the substance of the theory will avoid controversy. And if you believe that, I've got a bridge to sell you. First, Kathy Cox is on record when she ran for her position as being in favor of teaching "competing theories" - which is itself a buzzword for the same kind of dual…
stcynic | January 30, 2004To continue the dialogue with Rusty Lopez from the New Covenant blog, let's examine his latest posting. I'm going to do this one a bit differently so as not to lose the threads of each specific point of dispute. I'm going to divide this post by those areas and label them as such, and I will put my original argument in plain type, then Rusty's response in italics, then my new response in plain type again. That way each issue can be followed as the argument has developed.
1. The definition of testability
I had written:
"It appears that both he and Ross use what I regard as a rather…
loom | January 30, 2004Charles Darwin had no great hope of witnessing natural selection at work in his own time. He assumed that it would operate as slowly and imperceptibly as the water that eroded cliffs and canyons. He would have been delighted to discover that he was actually wrong on this count. By the mid-1900s, scientists were running selection experiments in laboratories and beginning to document the effects of natural selection in the wild, such as the rise of insects that were resistant to pesticides. Still, the work has been slow and painstaking. Peter and Rosemary Grant of Princeton have done some of…
stcynic | January 28, 2004In this entry, I will deal only with the brief note that Rusty Lopez made in reference to a testable creation model. In the next few days, I'll post a longer and more detailed critique of the model presented by Hugh Ross that Rusty referenced in his note. I'll put his statements in italic and my own responses in plain type.
A Scientifically Testable Creation Model...How is this possible? Are we saying that science can prove creation?
No. Reasons to Believe is saying that we can test the predictions made by competing scientific models.
We can at least begin with an area of agreement. Testing a…
stcynic | January 28, 2004Rusty Lopez of the New Covenant blog has an entry in reply to a comment I left him. In a post a few days ago, he made a reference to a new Hugh Ross book that he said contained a "testable creation model approach to the issue of the origin of life". I left a comment on his blog saying that I could not conceive of even a hypothetical way to test a creation model. He replied:I'll address your inquiry in a new post. Keep in mind that the testing being described is not with regards to a particular law of physics but to a scientific model; i.e., we are not testing to see if water boils at 212 F…
loom | January 26, 2004Last week I wrote a post about some new research that suggests that global warming could trigger large-scale extinctions in the next few decades. In particular, I dissected some of the objections that were leveled at the study, pointing out how irrelevant they are to the actual science at hand. Some people who posted comments raised a question that I didn't talk much about: how did biodiversity respond to rapid climate change in the not-so-distant past?
After all, in the past 2.5 million years (known as the Quaternary Period) Earth's climate has become particularly jumpy. It has swung in and…
loom | January 23, 2004If you'd like an example of the latest rhetorical tricks being used by antievolutionists, you can't do better than this press release issued today from the Discovery Institute. The Minnesota legistlature has to choose between two drafts of state science standards written by a committee. A minority of the committee wrote the second draft, which requires that "weaknesses" of evolution be taught. The Discovery Institute (a well-funded cryptocreationist outfit) is trying to mess with biology class, as it has in states across the country.
DI would like to convince us that science is like politics…
stcynic | January 23, 2004It seems I can't get away from this amusing little story. Thanks to one of my readers for reminding me that JoMo and Karl Priest's challenge was featured about a year ago in an article by Richard Dawkins about why he doesn't bother to debate with creationists. He even reprints the e-mail he was sent, which was of course identical to the one that all of the others have been sent. Though I'm not exactly a fan of Dawkins, I did find his article quite amusing. Since it was sent by Karl Priest "on behalf of Dr. Joseph Mastrapaolo, Dawkins muses,Who, I wondered, was "Dr. Joseph Mastropaolo"?…
loom | January 23, 2004Sometimes when you take a look at life on Earth, it seems like evolution might be able to produce anything you could ever imagine. Can a mammal become so adapted to swimming in the ocean that it never comes back on dry land? Check. Can a squid evolve eyes as big as dinner plates? Check. Can a mole evolve a nose that acts like a hand? Check. But what about the fact that no ape has ever grown antlers? Or that no bird has ever reached a fifty foot wingspan? Or that, so far as anyone can tell, no animal has acquired hydrogen-producing bacteria in its gut and floated off like an airborne balloon?…
stcynic | January 22, 2004The saga of Joseph Mastrapaolo's $10,000 challenge to evolutionary scientists continues. As I noted a few days ago, the True.Origins webpage removed the "debate dodgers" article that so childishly attacked evolutionary scholars who didn't respond to their already-defeated challenge to prove their case in a court of law (though I recently found another version of the article here). I sent an e-mail to Tim Wallace, who runs True.Origins, and asked why it was removed. He replied that it was removed due to "questions about the potential legitimacy of the debate challenge itself". He didn't spell…
loom | January 19, 2004If you've ever been to a Central American forest, you've probably heard the hoots and wails of a howler monkey. But these creatures deserve our attention for more than their howls. They turn out to tell us a lot about the evolution of our own senses. We and some of our close primate relatives are remarkable for having powerful color vision. What triggered the evolution of this adaptation some 25 million years ago? Some researchers have proposed that as the global climate cooled, our ancestors were forced to shift from a diet of fruit to leaves. An ability to detect red and green colors would…
stcynic | January 19, 2004In a posting last week, I discussed a challenge that has been made by Joseph Mastrapaolo to pretty much everyone he can find who defends evolution. After sending out this challenge and getting no response from scientists who have better things to do with their time than play JoMo's absurd little game, the True.Origins archive predictably posted an article crowing about the lack of response and claiming that those who were challenged were "debate dodgers" who knew they couldn't win. Here was the challenge:1 The evolutionist puts $10,000 in escrow with the judge.
2 The creationist puts $10,000…
stcynic | January 18, 2004It is appropriate that in the month of January, I have made so many entries about the Intelligent Design movement. January is named for Janus, the Roman god of gates, often depicted as having two faces. The more I study the ID movement, the more convinced I am that Janus is the perfect symbol for it. Indeed, the two-faced nature of the ID movement is, ironically, by design. This was the nature of the strategy that was devised by Phillip Johnson to get ID a seat at the table. One face is presented to scientists and legislators and the other is presented to the churches and to the folks who…
stcynic | January 17, 2004Intelligent Design Creationists are actively working in several states and at the federal level to get their ideas into public school science classrooms. In their famous Wedge Document, the Discovery Institute's strategic blueprint for overthrowing materialistic science, Phase 1 was supposed to be "Scientific Research, Writing and Publication." Indeed, they say that without this, everything that follows will be hollow:Phase I is the essential component of everything that comes afterward. Without solid scholarship, research and argument, the project would be just another attempt to…
loom | January 14, 2004The emotions that other species summon up in the human brain are perplexing. A lion inspires awe and respect. It is the king of the jungle, a great name for a football team, a noble guardian of the entrance to the New York Public Library. A tapeworm, on the other hand, summons disgust mixed with a little contempt. You will never find yourself cheering for the Kansas City Tapeworms. But are these species really so different? Both animals get their nutrition from the bodies of other animals, and tapeworms are arguably more sophisticated in the way they get their food than a lion. Tapeworms…
stcynic | January 13, 2004The True.Origins website - a ripoff of the Talk.Origins Archive that I'm involved with - has posted an article about "debate dodgers". This is something that is quite common in creationist circles - make a ridiculous "challenge" to their opponents and then crow about how cowardly those heathen infidel evilutionists are not to take them up on it. This is merely the latest round of this well-worn tactic and it comes, not surprisingly to anyone who has followed the issue for any period of time, from the mind of Joseph Mastropaolo. JoMo, as he is not-so-affectionately referred to, is a…