Welcome to chaos.
At 10:49 PM 8/30/97 -0700, paul.carline@virgin.net wrote:
> Have
>read many books challenging Darwinism: Michael Denton's book was a real
>eye-opener and both Phillip Johnson's and Michael Behe's books have been
>excellent confirmation of my longstanding conviction that Darwinism
>(other than as applied to minor adaptation) is a major fraud perpetrated
>on an unthinking public.
Why would you presuppose that those of us on this list, who do believe in
evolution, are "unthinking"?
>Darwinism remains as the last bastion of 19th
>century materialism, Freud and Marx having been soundly discredited -
>though, as with Darwin, there was always a core of truth in their
>positions. Evolution *is* a fact; there has been change and development
>and there is a lot more evolving to be done for humans, primarily of a
>spiritual nature. The success of Darwinism is clearly due primarily to
>the apparent - but spurious - scientific credibility it lends to an a
>priori materialist-atheist philosophical position.
>Anyone is of course free to choose whatever view of the world suits them.
>What is unacceptable is for a small but powerful elite to impose their
>views on the majority and to dictate the ground-rules for the pursuit of
>knowledge. This might not matter so much if the materialist agenda were
>confined to a few university philosophy departments as only one of a
>number of competing world-views. But Darwinism as meaning chance-driven,
>meaningless, purposeless, random change fuelled by a naked competition
>for survival has had a devastating effect on the modern psyche.
What was the devastating effect on the psyche of Ghengis Khan which caused
him to kill more than 35 million Chinese peasants? It certainly wasn't
evolutionary theory.
>More specifically in terms of the current debate (theistic creation vs
>naturalistic evolution) I see the following priorities:
>
>1. To continue to point up the inadequacies and inconsistencies of the
>neo-Darwinist position and to try to ensure that the case against is
>brought to the widest possible public attention, particularly in the
>education system
Instead of being negative, why don't you try to develop a theory which
accounts for the biological data rather than merely pointing out things you
don't understand about evolutionary theory.
>
>2. To continue to develop 'the middle ground' between materialism and the
>fundamentalist Christian position.
>
>I am particularly interested in the second of these two areas (by
>default, since I have no competence in palaeontology or biology). If the
>case for divine creation is not to remain purely a matter of faith (not
>that there's anything wrong with that), it will be necessary to attempt
>to show or at least plausibly suggest how a divinely-initiated and
>-guided evolution could have taken place which is also in accord with the
>known facts.
I fully agree. I would suggest that you take a look at the transitional
fossil essay on my web page.
>In particular, there must be an adequate theory of the origin,
>maintenance and transformation of form which can live with quantum
>mechanics. If there is actually 'nothing there', but only fields of
>energy, what is it that is creating and sustaining form? And how can one
>hypothesize the large-scale changes in form, structure and function which
>have led to the observable development of new species without either
>accepting a Darwinist gradualism or a multitude of special creations? Is
>it possible to imagine some way that formative forces could work which
>would allow for dramatic changes ( we have a living example, surely, in
>the transformation of a caterpillar into a butterfly - through an
>intermediate stage of complete chaos)?
Take a look at the nonlinear dynamics programs on my web page which mimic
punctuated equilibrium, the Cambrian explosion and natural selection.
Chaos does indeed allow for evolution to proceed.
glenn
Foundation, Fall and Flood
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm