Re: ILLogical Evolution

mortongr@flash.net
Thu, 26 Aug 1999 20:10:51 +0000

At 08:46 AM 08/26/1999 -0700, Arthur V. 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).
>
> "In many ways, each animal phylum represents an experiment in the design
>of body structures to perform the tasks necessary for survival. Of course,
>there has never been any kind of plan to these experiments because evolution
>works without either plan or purpose. Nevertheless, the appearance of each
>phylum in the fossil record represents the random evolutionary development
>of a basic body plan that is different in some way from other body plans.
>The rest of the history of each phylum is the story of further evolutionary
>changes in that plan.

Reading the responses I think most people missed Art's point here. The
constant attachment of metaphysical statements like that above to the
teaching of evolution is what drives the citizens of Kansas to outlaw
evolution. The evolutionists bring this upon themselves by claiming to be
speaking only of science but then actually speaking of the metaphysical
nature of the world. No one knows from the data supporting evolution
whether it is random or purposeful. If there is a Great Puppetmaster in the
sky pulling the strings and causing the mutations then one certainly can't
then state categorically that evolution is purposeless. I see nothing in
evolution to support either a puppetmaster or a purposeless universe. Both
are metaphysical statements. It is high time for evolutionists to cease
attaching their personal religion to a scientific theory. THey should stick
to science and not to religion. THis is as shameless as what the YECs do.
THe only difference is that the evolutionists have the correct science.

And personally I take a different approach which their statements can't
rule out either. I believe that God designed the sequence spaces of the
biomolecules which then limits severly what mutations work and which ones
don't. THis has the effect of making our evolution much more likely than a
mere random assessment would estimate. In this view, God designed the
biological systems and then let them work naturally within the confines of
his limits. This is like the casino rigging the roulette wheel. A rigged
roulette wheel is a designed phenomenon which appears random. THat is what
I think life is like.

> 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]
>
>Note also the following fallacy of equivocation in Millerâs definition of
>Evolution: ãevolution: 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.ä [page 29]
>
>Art
>http://geology.swau.edu
>
>
>
>
glenn

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