On Tue, 02 Apr 1996 16:14:30 -0800 you wrote to Terry Gray:
TG>Your use of Goodwin in support of
>PC is like YEC using Gould and Eldredge and punctuated equilibrium in
>support of their view. Johnson plays the same games. He uses internal
>debates among people who are convinced of evolution to show that evolution
>is not true when neither side believes that their comments lead to that
>conclusion.
AC>And just exactly what is wrong with showing evolutionists the
>fallacies of their logic? Unpleasant to Gould et. al., yes...but
>wrong? Hardly. Since when are internal debates less worthy sources
>than deliberate public presentations? In fact exactly the opposite
>is true. While polished public presentations are carefully developed
>to demonstrate the unassailable logic of evolution, it is the behind
>the scenes rumbling that reveals the true colors, as you are well
>aware.
Thanks and agreed. But it is no longer "behind the scenes". It is
coming out into the open more and more that leading evolutionists like
Dawkins on one hand and Gould and Goodwin on the other, are in sharp
disagreement with each other over the very mechanism of
macro-evolution. For example, Goodwin:
"Here we face another curious consequence of Darwin's way of looking
at life: despite the power of molecular genetics to reveal the
hereditary essences of organisms, the large-scale aspects of evolution
remain unexplained, including the origin of species. There is 'no
clear evidence ... for the gradual emergence of any evolutionary
novelty' says Ernst Mayr, one of the most eminent of contemporary
evolutionary biologists. New types of organism simply appear upon the
evolutionary scene, persist for various periods of time, and then
become extinct. So Darwin's assumption that the tree of life is a
consequence of the gradual accumulation of small hereditary
differences appears to be without significant support. Some other
process is responsible for the emergent properties of life, those
distinctive features that separate one group of organisms from
another, such as fishes and amphibians, worms and insects, horsetails
and grasses. Clearly something is missing from biology. It appears
that DARWIN'S THEORY WORKS FOR THE SMALL- SCALE ASPECTS
OF EVOLUTION: it can explain the variations and the adaptations
within species that produce fine-tuning of varieties to different
habitats. The LARGE-SCALE DIFFERENCES OF FORM BETWEEN TYPES
OF ORGANISM THAT ARE THE FOUNDATION OF BIOLOGICAL
CLASSIFICATION SYSTEMS SEEM TO REQUIRE A PRINCIPLE OTHER
THAN NATURAL SELECTION OPERATING ON SMALL VARIATIONS, some
process that gives rise to distinctly different forms of organism.
This is the problem of emergent order in evolution, the origins of
novel structures in organisms that has always been a primary interest
in biology." (Goodwin B., "How The Leopard Changed Its Spots: The
Evolution of Complexity", Phoenix: London, 1994, p.x. Emphasis mine)
Of course the Progressive Creationist would say that that "principle
other than natural selection operating on small variations" is the
supernatural creative intervention of God!
Happy Easter.
Steve
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