On 28/12/2007, at 2:52 AM, Nick Arnett wrote: >> >> "Where the difference is, we provide both sides of the story," Mr. >> Morris said. > > > That's the thinking that really stinks, in my opinion. Polarizing > issues is > a great way to get attention, gain power and make money. It's no > way to get > to pursue science or truth.
It's also the new tactic post-Dover. "Teach the controversy". As if there is one. Yes, there are some pretty esoteric discussions at the leading edge about how various forms of selection interact and the relative strengths of these in various real-life studies, and certainly there are ever-changing understandings of how DNA and development tread the path from genotype to phenotype, but the basic questions are so settled as to be accorded the status of scientific fact. Those are: 1) There is variability in every breeding population (even populations of clones). 2) There are differential survival rates and breeding rates. 3) Over generations, gene frequencies change as a result of those differential survival rates. 4) Over enough generations, different selection pressures applied to different parts of a population (or even just drift, if the geographic range is significantly larger than the geographic range of family groups), causes enough accumulated change to prevent those populations from breeding if they cross paths, at which time they are said to have speciated. This is simply not in question any more, as this can be proven in the lab with flies, nematodes, even mice. The big difference between this modern synthesis of biological evolution and Darwin's theories is that Darwin had to speculate on a mechanism of heredity. In fact, that the mechanism of heredity was not known was both the biggest weakness, and the biggest test (a falsification test, if you will). First the mechanics of heredity based on Mendel's experiments, which were incorporated into the neo-Darwinian synthesis of Mayr, Huxley, Haldane, Fisher et al, and then of a mechanism of heredity in the 1920s - 1950s (culminating in the confirmation of the Watson-Crick model for the structure of DNA, but the chain of discovery goes back to the late '20s) which laid the groundwork for modern genetics and evo-devo. The other side of this is how this applies to the history of life on earth, and here again the simple original objections to Darwin's theory have been answered over and over, mostly the age of the Earth - Darwin himself admitted it would take a very long time for his ideas to produce the sorts of variety that we see around us. Most of the scientific calculations of the age of Earth in the late 1800s came out between 20 and a couple of hundred million years, which was a major objection to the theory - not really long enough. It wasn't until the invention of radiometric dating that this age was pushed out far enough, and our currently accepted figure of 4.5 x 10^9 years was published in 1956. The great era of fossil discovery in the late 1800s, and more recent discoveries like the Ediacaran fauna and the Burgess Shales have given us snapshots in time that allow us glimpses at long-dead creatures, and piece together relationships between major groups. Molecular genetics has confirmed most of those (and thrown up a few surprises too). The main point is, on one side we have an established science, which has an incredible amount of experimental and observational support. If there was any major controversy over whether evolution happens, it was in the 1800s, and evolutionary theory has emerged from intense scientific scrutiny for 150 years as the best explanation for the variety of life on earth and the mechanisms for how those changes occur. That doesn't mean that it's fixed. But there is nothing else that comes close. There is no other side to the story. Morris, and the likes of Behe and Demski etc, the Discovery Institute, they all want the public to believe that they have an alternative. They simply don't. "Irreducible complexity" was the closest they've come to a theory, and that has proved, under scrutiny, to be no problem for evolutionary theory. Morris says that on one side there's all this evidence, but on the other side the earth could be 6000 years old and we should tell people that. Well, that question is settled - it was settled when Huxley and Wilberforce debated, it was settled at every discovery of the 20th century, it was settled in Dover. Nick, you're absolutely right. It's about power. It's about controlling what people know and think. It's about ignoring the truth and writing their own reality. And that way lies fascism. Hopefully the corrective power of the people through elections will steer the States away from that path, but the combination of business interests, lobbyism, and the religious right has the capacity to make America a very scary place, and the Democrats simply don't seem to have the stomach to stand up and do what's right (for example, impeaching Bush...). This crap from Morris and his ICR, it's a terrible sign that anyone still gives these morons "the oxygen of publicity". Charlie _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
