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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (28279)	9/8/2006 5:27:08 PM
From: neolib	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541249

You should drop this quote: "evolution solely by means of random mutation and natural selection, as the only or overwhelming source for the diversity of species" That is fundamentally an ID quote used as a fig leaf. The ID uses this to get scientists to say they don't agree with evolution. BS. There are many known mechanisms, not just random mutation and natural selection. Instead, concentrate on the issue of common descent. Each genome sequenced simply piles on the evidence, and in terms of data, it vastly overwhelms the data for the holocaust, and the situation will only get worse. At some point in the next 100 years, we might well pass 1M genomes sequenced. Talk about data supporting a theory! The evidence existed after the camps were found and after Jews and other people talked about what they saw or experienced. I'll grant you millions after the fact. I'm sure the various memorials have had 10's of millions of visitors, and they show evidence, so millions have actually seen evidence. But every child in school also sees some of the evidence for evolution if you want to look at things that way. Yes it amounts to more than just that, but that's the core of it. Technically evolution just means change over time. I used "random mutation and natural selection" to more precisely and relevantly deal with a specific mechanism of change over time. Many believers in ID would accept the idea that change happens over time but they would say that God makes the change, or that some intelligent designer of some sort set initial conditions such that the change would happen later. OK, but you and the ID crowd are using this phrase differently. For scientists, there are more mechanisms, such as genetic drift and horizontal gene transfer. These are very different from random mutation and natural selection. They are all however, naturalistic mechanisms, as opposed to supernatural ones. The ID crowd uses the "soley by..." quote to so narrowly define evolution, that any awake biologist would have to say, No, I don't believe that, which then makes the IDist say, see, here is a biologist who does not believe evolution. LOL! ID fundamentally claims that there are detectable components of life which COULD not evolve, but require a designer. Unfortunately, they never actually stake out any defensible territory, but always retreat before the advances of science. Denying evolution of any sort is more extreme than denying that random mutation and natural selection are the sole or overwhelming cause of the evolution. The latter is called theistic evolution, and is not really denial of evolution at all. It simply is leaving an open door for religion. From a functional perspective in science, a theistic evolution has the same scientific mindset in his work as an atheistic evolutionist. 3) Offensive: Yes, in both cases it is an argument against teaching something. In one case something false (Holocaust denial) in the other something true (Evolution). So my point is, whether something is offensive or not is totally irrelevant.