Stephen Jones:
>Strictly speaking this should be "*An* Intelligent Designer" did it. The
>basic ID theory makes no claim that any particular Designer did it. Just that
>living things really are intelligently designed.
Of course, it could have been *many* designers. There's no way to prove or
disprove the *number* of designers any more than there's a way to
specifically identify any particular designer.
>A *Christian* theory of Intelligent Design can build on the basic ID theory,
>integrating its insights into the already existing Christian doctrine of
>General Revelation, as part of Christian apologetics.
Intelligent Design is formulated by Christians in order to defend Christian
mythology from reality. There's no other religion that I know of that
requires its mythology to be hard science.
>CC>How does complexity come about?
>>Complexity increases by variations, some of which themselves
>produce even more-complex variations.
Stephen:
>This is too vague. Complexity could apply only to oscillating variations of
>the beaks of finches on the Galapagos Islands. Is Chris claiming that *all*
>the complexity of life, over the last 3.8 billion years, came *only* by
>"variations, some of which themselves produce even more complex
>variations"? That's OK, but he should then acknowledge that it is
>controversial even among evolutionists:
what Chris talks about above has been observed to occur and isn't
controversial. However, this quote below brings me to the topic of the post.
>"Orthodox neo-Darwinians extrapolate these even and continuous changes
>to the most profound structural transitions in the history of life: by a long
>series of insensibly graded intermediate steps, birds are linked to reptiles,
>fish with jaws to their jawless ancestors. Macroevolution (major structural
>transition) is nothing more than microevolution (flies in bottles) extended.
>If black moths can displace white moths in a century, then reptiles can
>become birds in a few million years by the smooth and sequential
>summation of countless changes. The shift of gene frequencies in local
>populations is an adequate model for all evolutionary processes - or so the
>current orthodoxy states....The fossil record with its abrupt transitions
>offers no support for gradual change...Yet the unnecessary link that Darwin
>forged became a central tenet of the synthetic theory." (Gould S.J., "The
>Return of the Hopeful Monster", in "The Panda's Thumb", 1990, p156)
After I read the above quote I realized it had been quite a long time since
I read that particular essay, so I got it out and re-read it. I know the
chances are extremely slim that Stephen actually reads all the books he
quotes. He picks up quotes here and there on the web and there are
creationist books that are almost nothing but quotes. Creationists love to
quote evolutionists out of context in order to make it seem that even
evolutionists doubt evolution. That is, of course, not true. Deliberately
creating such a false impression is considered lying in scientific circles
and it's probably considered lying in most Christian circles. I was shocked
when I first found out about the lies. I assumed (why?) that the most
conservative Christians (the ones most likely to be creationists) would be
the ones most careful about scrupulous truthfulness. This has proved not to
be true.
In the Gould quote above there are two sets of elipses indicating that
material has been trimmed. The first set of elipses indicates a place where
Gould uses an illustration of his point and is perfectly acceptable. The
second set of elipses hides something very interesting though.
Stephen quotes:
"The fossil record with its abrupt transitions offers no support for gradual
change...Yet the unnecessary link that Darwin forged became a central tenet
of the synthetic theory."
The original version reads "The fossil record with its abrupt transitions
offers no support for gradual change, and the principle of natural selection
does not require it--selection can operate rapidly."
As you can see the portion left out was brief, but it refutes what Stephen
was saying. The missing verbage changes the meaning of the paragraph and
reveals that Gould does *not* agree that variation and selection are
controversial.
"These tales, in the "just-so story" tradition of evolutionary natural history,
>do not prove anything. But the weight of these, and many similar cases,
>wore down my faith in gradualism long ago. More inventive minds may yet
>save it, but concepts salvaged only by facile speculation do not appeal
>much to me." Gould S.J., "The Return of the Hopeful Monster", in "The
>Panda's Thumb", 1990, p158)
the above paragraph on p. 190 of *The Panda's Thumb* is a discussion of
*gradualism* not variation and natural selection and is a lead-in to the
material on p. 191.
"But all theories of discontinuous change are not anti-Darwinian, as Huxley
pointed out nearly 120 years ago. Suppose that a discontinuous change in
adult form arises from a small genetic alteration. Problems of discordance
with other members of the species do not arise, and the large, favorable
variant can spread through a pouplation in Darwinian fashion."
Gould then goes on to list evidence in support of his supposition.
If the evidence for ID is so vast and so well-founded in empirical science,
why lie? Why quote evolutionists in such a way that they seem to be saying
something they are *not* saying? What's the point?
I think the point is obvious. ID is propaganda, just as the quotes Stephen
picks up here and there (I *don't* believe he's read all those books) are
propaganda. Truth-value is secondary as long as doubt seems to be cast on
evolution and Christian mythology seems to be science.
Susan
--------
Peace is not the absence of conflict--it is the presence of justice.
--Martin Luther King, Jr.
Please visit my website:
http://www.telepath.com/susanb