Re: ILLogical Evolution

Susan Brassfield (susan-brassfield@OU.EDU)
Thu, 26 Aug 1999 09:43:13 -0600

Art Chadwick wrote:
>These unbelievable paragraphs may help some of you understand why the
>Kansas School situation exists:
>
>Kenneth Miller's 1998 highschool textbook (p 658, Miller/Levine, Biology,
>Prentice/Hall) offers an explanation as to why intelligent people object to
>the way "evolution" is presented to their children.
>
>The following quotes come from the place in the text where the authors
>ought to have been talking about the origin of body plans in the Cambrian
>explosion (the Cambrian explosion is never mentioned in the entire textbook).

why is that important? Perhaps I'm being dense, but the Cambrian explosion
is neither here nor there as far as creationism is concerned. There have
been many such "explosions" in the long history of life and many "sudden"
die-offs. The Cambrian "explosion" took place over millions of years and
is only "instant" in geological terms. There is no particlar reason for
evilutionists to conceal it. Perhaps I'm missing something.

> We can learn a great deal about the nature of life by comparing body
>systems among invertebrate groups and by tracing the patterns of change as we
>move from one phylum to another. As we do so, it is important to keep this
>concept in mind: Evolution is random and undirected."
> ["Evolution is random and undirected" is in bold in the textbook and
>Evolution is with a capital E]

I can see why this offends you. He should have said "Evolution appears to
be random and undirected" which would be more accurate. In the 19th century
evolution appeared to have a natrual tendency toward "progress." The idea
of progress in the history of life has its direct roots in the medieval
idea of The Great Chain of Being and has since been discarded as a way to
view the data. However, when Miller said "evolution is random and
undirected" he probably had you and your ID buddies in mind. :-)

>Note also the following fallacy of equivocation in Miller’s definition of
>Evolution: “evolution: process by which modern organisms have descended
>from ancient
>organisms; any change in the relative frequencies of alleles in the gene pool
>of a population.” [page 29]

that is exactly the definition of evolution widely in use today. Perhaps
you should point out the equivocation. I certainly don't see it.

Susan

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