Again poor philosophy from Joseph. This argument is a retreat to
discredited empiricism--if you can't see it, it must not exist. Indeed,
the history of science is replete with examples of theories being generally
accepted without understanding of their basis, or "seeing them". Examples
include the wave and particle models of light, gene theory, atomic theory,
gravitation, existence of vacuum, tumor viruses, reverse transcriptase.
The empiricists once rejected atomic theory because you could not see
atoms. They were wrong. Historically, science can be said to be
empirical, but not empiricist. Joseph uses an empiricist argument here.
[snip]
>If evolution works by chance
>and random processes,
It doesn't. Genetic mutation, the supposed source of variability in
evolution theory may be considered variable for the sake of this discussion
(although this is not absolute). However, according to evolution theory,
natural selection would then make this a nonrandom event. For example,
lets take the lottery. On tv, I often see a large tumbler randomly
spilling out balls with numbers. The balls come out randomly. However, if
someone stood there and only accepted the balls with numbers she wanted to
see, the resulting numbers do not reflect the randomness of the process.
Selection, by definition is not random. It is simply wrong to say that
evolution theory reflects a random model.
[snip]
> I consider myself a scientist,
That is scary.
Steve
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Steven S. Clark, Ph.D. Ph: 608-263-9137
Associate Professor FAX: 263-4226
Dept. of Human Oncology ssclark@facstaff.wisc.edu
University of Wisconsin
School of Medicine
600 Highland Ave
Madison, WI 53792
http://www1.bocklabs.wisc.edu/profiles/Clark,Steven.html