> On Jun 25, 1:35 pm, c...@afone.as.arizona.edu (Cary Kittrell) wrote:
>
>
>

>> In article m3g2000hsc.googlegroups.com> Jerry Kraus yahoo.com> writes:

>

>>> On Jun 25, 12:41=A0pm, tg earthlink.net> wrote:

>>>> On Jun 25, 1:31=A0pm, Jerry Kraus yahoo.com> wrote:

>

>>>>> I am not a Creationist. =A0I don't believe in a personal God, and I
>>>>> don't think there was "intelligent design" in the way the Universe was
>>>>> "created", if it was created. =A0To me, the Universe looks like one hel=

>>> l

>>>>> of a mess. =A0I'm rather fond of Stendahl's line "God's only excuse is
>>>>> that he doesn't exist". =A0 Nevertheless, I do believe that the
>>>>> criticisms given by creationists of the Theory of Evolution, and of
>>>>> Darwinism in general, =A0have their uses, and have some validity.

>

>>>>> Firstly, we CANNOT do an experiment which proves that men can evolve
>>>>> from apes. =A0Sorry, just can't be done. =A0Therefore, we DO NOT KNOW t=

>>> hat

>>>>> men are indeed descended from apes. =A0No matter how much circumstantia=

>>> l

>>>>> evidence consistent with this concept we may have, we do not KNOW it
>>>>> in the same sense that we know that Newton's Laws of Motion hold true
>>>>> under normal circumstances in daily life. =A0And the tendancy of
>>>>> scientists to claim that we do KNOW it in the same sense that we know
>>>>> Newton's Laws to be true, suggests to me some problems in the way
>>>>> modern scientists develop and criticize their theories, in general.
>>>>> It suggests some tendancy for modern scientists to substitute rhetoric
>>>>> for logic.

>

>>>>> Secondly, Darwinism in a social sense, "Social Darwinism", has had,
>>>>> historically and currently, disasterous consequences: European
>>>>> Imperialism, Nazism, and the modern neoliberal/neoconservative notions
>>>>> of an economic "food chain" where the rich are justified in exploiting
>>>>> the poor. =A0And scientists are largely responsible for these social
>>>>> evolutionary concepts, which they use rhetoric rather than logic to
>>>>> justify.

>

>>>>> In other words, Creationists are quite reasonably criticizing
>>>>> scientists for using rhetoric rather than logic to justify Evolution
>>>>> and Darwinism, and some of its implications. =A0Good for them!

>

>>>> First of all, there's no such thing as Darwinism, and there is nothing
>>>> in the theory of evolution that is related to 'Social Darwinism'.
>>>> That is purely creationist propaganda.

>

>>>> As to scientific reasoning. there is no requirement that we duplicate
>>>> a *particular* case to validate a scientific theory. We have observed
>>>> evolution in the present, and there is plenty of evidence of the
>>>> relationship of living creatures through DNA for example. So it is no
>>>> stretch at all to claim that the processes we observe today happened
>>>> in the past.

>

>>>> -tg- Hide quoted text -

>

>>>> - Show quoted text -

>

>>>> By your reasoning, we should also question whether 'Newton's Laws'
>>>> hold true on other planets, or whether they were correct in the past,
>>>> and so on. Science just doesn't work that way.

>

>>> We should question whether Newon's Laws hold true on other planets.
>>> We observe that they do, through astronomical observations and
>>> scientific probes to other planets.  As to the past, they appear to
>>> have held true then, as well.

>

>> -- cary

>

>> Your claim that "science doesn't

>

>>> work that way" is merely rhetoric.  Rather like the claims for
>>> catastrophic global warming scenarios, based on nothing but highly
>>> speculative mathematical projections.- Hide quoted text -

>

>> - Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -

>

>> - Show quoted text -

>>> There is no proof  that large animals can evolve.  No closely related
>>> experiments have ever been done.

>

>> We see evidence of erosion all around us, from rivulets
>> carved in the mud after a rain to the debris carried by catastrophic
>> floods to the fact that my house sits on a bed of rocks
>> which match the rocks which make up the hills two hundred
>> yards behind my house -- just as large valleys sit on
>> soils derived from the mountains which surround those
>> valleys.

>

>> I would deem it entirely fair to conclude that major
>> mountain ranges are similarly eroded down over many
>> hundreds of thousands or millions of years.  And
>> I would find it disengenous if anyone then demanded
>> that scientists show an example of a mountain
>> range beingreduced to hills in the space of a human
>> lifetime, or in the few centuries we have
>> been doing science -- or even to demand that
>> we show a mountain range being eroded to hills
>> over the entire written history of the human
>> species.  The theory is sound, but the theory
>> also says that you're not going to see it happen
>> on a human timescale.

>

>> I trust you see where I'm going with this?

>
> Well now, Cary, there aren't really any particularly complex
> mathematical or probabilistic issues  involved in  mountains
> eventually eroding over time are they?  Exactly how or when, yes, but
> not that they will, eventually?  Or that it can occur within a few
> million years, say?
>
> There are extremely complex mathematical and probabilistic issues
> involved in random molecular mutations leading to a specific, complex
> evolutionary development such as the human eye, in a specific period
> of time on the evolutionary time scale.  They have never been
> thoroughly analyzed or explicated.