*Physical constants

From: jeff witters (WITTERSJ@ESUVM.EMPORIA.EDU)
Date: Wed Jan 12 2000 - 22:54:46 EST

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    On Wed, 12 Jan 2000 Massie wrote:

    >No I am not talking about Hal Lindsey and you know it and

    >Lets stay to the issue

    Yeesh! Sorry, I'll keep my jokes to myself. It's good to see
    you're not a fan of his either. Now that I'm sitting up good
    and straight...

    >What the e word does not do is predict the future in terms of
    >organism invention (not small modifications, but invention).
    >What I clearly referred to would be the predictive power of
    >evolutionary (meaning invention) theory to predict the next
    >big organism.

    I'm going to get my eyes checked next week, but still, for the
    record, all you said was predictive power. But now it's
    clarified, thank you.

    Suppose you tell me you have the now rare skills to build a
    car by hand. I say, "Wow! That's great, go ahead and build
    one. I'd like to see it." So you start chugging away and
    the next day I show up at your shop. "Well, where's your
    car?" "This sort of this takes a long time," you explain.
    To which I reply, "I'm not talking about pieces! I wanted
    an entire automobile, and you have a couple of pieces that
    anybody could put together," and I stomp off in a huff
    muttering about frauds.

    So you want the next big organism? OK, Thu. 24 Aug, 2000
    about 50 km due north of the confluence of the Rio Negro
    and the Amazon. (sorry, another ha ha)

    Back to the issue. Of course e predicts speciation, but
    given that what could be called serious biology has been
    around for less than tens of decades, do you know what
    you're asking for? I say not. You're slapping a straw
    man around with red herrings. On the time scale we are
    dealing with, we cannot predict and then CONFIRM a bona
    fide speciation in the future. Since when has turning
    to the past (fossil record, extant species assemblages)
    been off limits for predictions for such theories? Do
    you mean to tell me that predictions regarding crusty
    starlight from across the universe are bogus because it
    is from the past? Blowing off evolution is really fairly
    easy when we declare the past off limits -- the past is
    all we have to demonstrate what you want.

    Grace and peace be with you. Jeff



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