I've just arrived from my vacation from Brazil yesterday, so please forgive me if I'm replying to this only now.
Now, since this thread below is obviously off-topic I'm hereby calling on folks that would be interested in reading my rebuttals to Bill, or participating a while longer in it, to manifest his or her desire to be cc'd of such replies a.s.a.p. In the meantime I'll be catching up with the over 170 messages I now have in my angelfire's mailbox... :-S Happy New Year everybody, in the meantime. Marcus On Sat, 21 Dec 2002 13:45:21 Bill Potts wrote: >Joe Reid wrote: >>>The paleontologic evidence is overwhelming that evolution occurred. > >Indeed. Staggeringly and mind-bogglingly so. > >Marcus Berger replied >>I vehemently disagree! This is unfortunately what the >>evolutionists establishment want people to believe. But there is >>still a lot of controversy surrounding this issue. > >There is no "evolutionist establishment." That's one of the myths propagated >by the oxymoronically-named Creation Research Institute (whose staff members >have to sign a commitment to discard any evidence that is contradictory to >their faith). > >In the real scientific community, there is no controversy whatsoever about >the fact of evolution. Any disagreements tend to be over specific mechanisms >in certain cases. There is a pseudo-scientific community (within which a >significant number of members are "graduates" of the Creation Research >Institute [CRI]). (Owing to a quirk in California law, the accreditation of >CRI to grant degrees was upheld a few years ago.) There are also many >fraudulent "quotes," represented as being from the work of legitimate >scientists -- either made up from whole cloth or deliberately taken out of >context. Duane Gish and Henry Morris, of CRI, are well-known for their >penchant for fabrication. Given that they have done it so much, one has to >wonder whether they're in it for their faith or for the money. It's quite >evident, though, that most of those who buy Gish's books, never bother to >check the references in them (taking them, instead, "on faith"). > >There are also people in the pseudo-scientific community who hold degrees >(often advanced ones) in fields (law, engineering, etc.) other than the >natural sciences. Phillip Johnson (who is a lawyer, not a scientist, and the >key proponent of the "Intelligent Design" dogma) springs to mind. I believe >Duane Gish is an engineer. > >>In any case, since the "Theory of Origins" belongs mostly in the >>History science umbrella, there will never EVER be conclusive >>proof one way or the other (*past* **events** cannot EVER be >>tested in laboratory, you know...). > >Science involves the study and interpretation of observations. Not all >observations are the result of laboratory tests. In fact, most are not. The >Sun cannot be tested in the laboratory, but we can measure its temperature, >energy output, mass, etc. We can also draw very reasonable inferences about >its history. We cannot view the climate and atmospheric conditions of 10 000 >years ago, but we can learn about them from ice core samples from the polar >regions and from strata in the ground (which also tell us much about >conditions, including climate, millions of years ago). > >In the purest sense of the word, scientists avoid the word fact. However, it >is used in those circumstances where evidence is so overwhelming and >probability so high that it would be unreasonable to draw a different >conclusion. (Scientists never view anything as conclusive in an absolute >sense. Science is not a dogma.) What is viewed as fact is subject to >revision or refinement, based on new evidence. All the >progressively-accumulated evidence in the study of variation and natural >selection (commonly referred to as evolution) has led to refinement, not >refutation. Some highly-specific theories within the field of evolution have >been refuted. However, the existence of the process of evolution has not. > >Given the extent to which this is off-topic for this list, I'll stop now. > >Bill Potts, CMS >Roseville, CA >http://metric1.org [SI Navigator] > > ____________________________________________________________ Get 25MB of email storage with Lycos Mail Plus! Sign up today -- http://www.mail.lycos.com/brandPage.shtml?pageId=plus
