dallashistory

Some would hold that this note should be in the technology section, or the political, or even the family history. But the technology threads have generally been about something we could see or touch like an airplane rather than science and politics is involved only when those who disagree try to impose their will on others via public education, while the investigation of family history, just starting, depends on things learned nearly one hundred years after the original announcement.

Charles Darwin was born on 12 February 1809. Origin of Species was published on 24 November 1859. This year, 2009, is therefore an important anniversary of both events. Scientific American magazine devotes the January 2009 issue to Darwin’s achievement. Most of this note is taken from the magazine issue. The book was first mentioned in the Scientific American magazine that appeared on 11 August 1860 which reported “rejection” by a theologian and support by a scientist. Little has changed. To me it is very reasonable to put it under the heading that includes religion.
The magazine articles describe the great advances in the understanding of speciation by natural selection by adding the work of Mendel on inheritance and Watson and Crick on DNA. Examples are given of speciation in fishes since the last ice age and evolutionary changes in our species during the same period. Also, examples of apparent “evolution in progress” are cited. Interestingly perhaps, the latter is taking place in the Galapagos whence came Darwin’s observations.

The magazine also reports the activities of the gainsayers. Science had a setback in 2008 when Louisiana Governor Jindall signed a bill permitting a form of Creationism to be taught in the schools there. For some, Bobby Jindall is a rising star in the conservative sky. I have never been much taken with him myself, but now, like Huckabee and Palin, he is beyond consideration.

Altogether, this is an interesting issue of Scientific American that should interest several people on this message board.

Sure, this forum is an appropriate place for Darwin, although even the best known contemporary Darwinian, Richard Dawkins, claims to be only 99.9% an atheist (in his best-selling book, The God Delusion).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Dawkins

Quote:
Dawkins is an atheist,[4][5][6] secular humanist, sceptic, scientific rationalist,[7] and supporter of the Brights movement.[8] He has widely been referred to in the media as "Darwin's Rottweiler",[9][10] by analogy with English biologist T. H. Huxley, who was known as "Darwin's Bulldog" for his advocacy of natural selection. In his 2006 book The God Delusion, Dawkins contends that a supernatural creator almost certainly does not exist and that faith qualifies as a delusion − as a fixed false belief.[11] As of November 2007, the English language version had sold more than 1.5 million copies and had been translated into 31 other languages,[12] making it his most popular book to date.
End quote.

I'm not sure that a quick look around me at the mall would instill my confidence in Darwin's theories.

Even with the Award "winners"... "they" seem to be gaining on us!

Sure, this forum is an appropriate place for Darwin, although even the best known contemporary Darwinian, Richard Dawkins, claims to be only 99.9% an atheist (in his best-selling book, The God Delusion).

In his 2006 book The God Delusion, Dawkins contends that a supernatural creator almost certainly does not exist and that faith qualifies as a delusion − as a fixed false belief.[11]

Well, since I am one of the deluded ones (as is my husband):

"without God" is a translation from the Greek atheoi, literally atheists.
The theological concept means both without God and in opposition to God


The condition of being without hope (in this world and the next) goes hand in hand with being without God.

As I said though on another thread here sometime ago I can accept the science of the matter but a true scientific evolutionist cannot accept the God of Creation.
Que sera, sera.

Edited Quote:
"Dawkins contends that a supernatural creator almost certainly does not exist"
End quote.

I don't think there are many 100% atheists in foxholes or over the age of say 75. Notice that even Dawkins hedges his bet with the qualifier "almost certainly."

Dawkins also says that he has received several communications from people, each considering themselves a great wit and very original, suggesting that he will have a death bed conversion. In jest he says he may keep a tape recorder deployed so that no one can accuse him of a change of mind. He also quotes another person with a mindset like his as saying it would be, well more profitable, to loudly announce a conversion NOW, so as to be a candidate for the Templeton Prize (larger than the Nobel!) and then blame it on senility.

Dawkins, The God Delusion, paper back edition 2008, pages 123 - 124

Templeton Prize - wiki article

http://www.google.com/search?source=ig& ... eton+prize

Quote:
" it would be, well more profitable, to loudly announce a conversion NOW, so as to be a candidate for the Templeton Prize (larger than the Nobel!) and then blame it on senility."

LOL THAT would be newsworthy.

Dawkins totally discounts people like me who believe in God, but not necessarily in the accuracy of Biblical accounts written by mortal men about creation, miracles, or certain historical accounts.

I've read Richard Dawkins and I've watched him speak on TV and on videos and I think that he is most certainly not an atheist as he believes and worships both himself and his own words.

Good Point, Ronnie!

After all what does idol start with?

Ronnie wrote:

I've read Richard Dawkins and I've watched him speak on TV and on videos and I think that he is most certainly not an atheist as he believes and worships both himself and his own words.

~~~

I have to comment that if I were among the leading voices in my field I might be, as Ronnie says that Richard Dawkins is, most impressed with myself and my words. (Shoot, if I’d written The Davinci Code or “Wasting away in Margaritaville”, I’d probably be very taken with myself.) But I hope I would have the wisdom NOT to comment on fields other than my own and I’ll come back to that.

Steven J. Gould has been one of my heroes for more than thirty years. I subscribed to Natural History magazine a long time ago and may have read all the columns he originally published there over a period of twenty-five years. But Dawkins, in my mind, may be closer to the mark in his view of several points on evolution. (For the record, I freely admit I am not trained in a life science so my opinion is not worth anything. Certainly I have been interested for a very long time and have read a lot of the popular literature.)

I do not remember specifically any pertinent comment from Ronnie during the term of Bush 2, but I assume it would have been fair to count him among the bushwhackers because I always counted him as being on the liberal side of the house. Well, Dawkins is also. In The Ancestors Tale, published 2004, he criticizes the former President and derides him for pronouncing a scary word as “nucler.”

Ronnie, I am telling you this with the thought that it may make you feel a little better towards Dawkins, huh?

And I may be reaching a little here , trying to find some good in this, considering that I admire Dawkins’ writings and that I had my own problems with Bush 2, but for different reasons. BHO has been criticized of late for inappropriate gift giving when Tony Blair visited. But maybe it was deliberate. Maybe BHO is getting back at the Brits generally because Dawkins bashed Bush2. Do you suppose it could be?

I think the above post raises interesting questions about politics, religious belief, and science that I hadn't thought about in that way.

Unlike more conservative skeptics (atheists) such as Michael Shermer and (neo-con) Christopher Hitchens, more liberal Richard Dawkins and Stephen J. Gould both made significant scientific contributions before they turned to writing for popular consumption. Of the four, Gould (a secular Jew) was the most religious.

Quote:
Raised in a secular Jewish home, Stephen J. Gould did not formally practice religion and preferred to be called an agnostic.[2] Though he "had been brought up by a Marxist father," he has stated that his father's politics were "very different" from his own.[4] According to Gould, the most influential political book he read was C. Wright Mills' The Power Elite, as well as the political writings of Noam Chomsky.[5] Gould continued to be exposed to progressive viewpoints on the politicized campus of Antioch College in the early 1960s. In the 1970s, Gould joined a left-wing academic organization called "Science for the People." Throughout his career and writings he spoke out against cultural oppression in all its forms, especially what he saw as pseudoscience in the service of racism and sexism.[6]

I

do not remember specifically any pertinent comment from Ronnie during the term of Bush 2, but I assume it would have been fair to count him among the bushwhackers
Ronnie, I am telling you this with the thought that it may make you feel a little better towards Dawkins, huh?

Bill

I have said little about Bush 2 but I did bash his administration especially his VP.
And I don't dislike Dawkins. I was commenting on his ego which, like Christopher Hitchens, is a bit outsized.

Yes I'm on "the liberal side of the house" but so what. I'm slave to no one ideology or no one political party. Some folks have trouble getting their mind around that.
The only human I follow blindly is my wife 'cause if I don't she'll blind me.

Dawkins, Hawkins, Ballkins--when all is said and done--we are all dead. So whom do you choose?

Sharon wrote:

Dawkins, Hawkins, Ballkins--when all is said and done--we are all dead. So whom do you choose?

Dawkins quotes Douglas Adams, 1942-2001. With an allusion to the famous photograph that made some Victorians believe in fairies, Adams said:

Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?

Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?

Of course it is enough. . But since when is enough ever enough? Since when should it be?

I'm slave to no one ideology or no one political party. Some folks have trouble getting their mind around that.

Well, I am a slave and even a bondservant to ONE Person and, frankly, I do give a damn if folks have trouble getting their mind around that.

Grace may be free but it was at Someone Else's expense.
The beauties of creation and life and the soaring inspirations of the mind and all the arts may be free but they all result from Someone Else's Love.

Well, I am a slave and even a bondservant to ONE Person and, frankly, I do give a damn if folks have trouble getting their mind around that.

Sharon
This comment:

I'm slave to no one ideology or no one political party. Some folks have trouble getting their mind around that.

Was a setup for this line

The only human I follow blindly is my wife 'cause if I don't she'll blind me.

And was intended to be humorous
I guess I should have used a few smileys but I tend to forget those little scutters.

Ronnie, I got the humor and thought it was very


Anyways, bro, I was not quoting you because I was taking issue with you I was quoting you because your words made a good entry for the way I feel.
You gave me a great playing field to opine and preach

Nothing personal about you or your opinion. Just answering in context with all that had been expressed earlier by everyone.

James wrote:

We have never in the history of humanity seen a new species arise from another; and it also seems to violate the law of entropy (that nature tends to wind down, rather than become more organized.) And when it is presented as part of a curriculum that teaches there is no God, strictly the forces of nature; al la Richard Dawkins; that is what I have a problem with.

This note is only about the phrase which is copied in larger bold font above. Some of you may already be aware of the following.

BBC Knowledge is a new magazine with science articles published for a popular audience. It might be compared to Discover. The February 2009 issue is apparently only the fourth one published since start-up and it has twenty-two pages of articles about Darwin and evolution.

http://www.bbcknowledgemagazine.com/this-issue.php

OR GOOGLE: BBC Knowledge Magazine

One of the articles is about the work in Richard Lenski’s lab at Michigan state Univerity where a new life form has apparently come into being in an experiment that has gone on for twenty years. It is not a long article and you could read at your news stand like we used to look at comic books if you don’t want to buy it. There is also an article by Richard Dawkins with a comment about Lenski’s work.

You can find some of the same the same information on line although the articles are longer than I want to post.

Briefly, several isolated bacteria populations have been observed. The organisms live on a standard culture medium. Samples of the cultures are frozen at intervals to create a record. One population mutated and started feeding on an inert component in the culture medium. I have said before and will repeat that I am NOT a life scientist, but IMO and that of some others this change is about like a race of omnivores arising from one of herbivores, i.e., a new species.

The second link below reports one Creationist reaction to Lenski’s work from the scientific view point.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._coli_long-term_evolution_experiment

OR GOOGLE: wikipedia long term e.coli evolution

http://rationalwiki.com/wiki/Lenski_affair

OR GOOGLE: lenski affair rational wiki

This isn't an active issue for me. I don't see how anyone educated in the past 100 years can be a skeptic about evolution.

I didn't study the article, but it isn't obvious to me how production of new varieties of bacteria in a lab differs significantly from common ordinary artificial selection as practiced for centuries in the domestication of livestock.

Darwin got some of his ideas about natural selection from observing artificial selection in pigeons and compared it with natural selection of finches on different isolated islands.

Anyone who wants to see selection of body forms and behavioral traits in nature can observe how all 200 dog varieties were artificially bred from wolves. Ask Sharon and Mike about the looks and behaviors of the Whippets or bloodhounds versus the looks and behavior of my Chihuahua. Skeptics will object that those examples of artificial selection just result in different varieties of an existing species. Chihuahuas can mate with almost any other dog, or even wolves or dingoes. They are one species. Modern humans are one species. They can't mate with great apes. Scientists understand how and why this is so. There's no great mystery here. This is an issue for the 19th century.

If you are willing to work hard to see evolution in action, I suggest you read Luis P. Villarreal's book, Viruses and the evolution of life.

In part, Adam wrote:
… but it isn't obvious to me how production of new varieties of bacteria in a lab differs significantly from common ordinary artificial selection as practiced for centuries in the domestication of livestock.

AND

Chihuahuas can mate with almost any other dog, or even wolves or dingoes. They are one species. Modern humans are one species. They can't mate with great apes. Scientists understand how and why this is so.
A difference between the lab bacteria and domesticated animals, whether any form of canus lupis or livestock is that mutations were necessary in order to feed on a new substance while the animals were bred to emphasize / maintain desired traits. The animal reproduction is based on forces (human choices) and sometimes requires human assistance such that even sexual selection is left out. IMO the feeding / metabolizing mutations are significant whether observed in the lab or nature.

No argument from me that dingos, dogs, and grey wolves at least are the same species and can reproduce more or less freely. As a practical matter, I have some doubt your Chihuahua mating with a larger breed but I think you alluded to that. I suspect that a wolf might regard any of several small domestic breeds as a snack rather than a mating partner.

So far as hybrids between humans and other great apes are concerned there were stories that an example was produced in China during the Cultural Revolution. I probably read that first in Time many years ago. The WIKI repeats the story and also states that the different number of chromosomes is not an absolute barrier. The hominidae include humans, chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans. Hybridization is truly a horrid idea to my way of thinking but may be attempted again with the idea of producing transplant organs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanzee


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hominidae

http://monkeydaynews.blogspot.com/2008/ ... ybrid.html

Adam;

It goes without saying that either natural or selective breeding would produce new features and characteristics. But, in the example you give; those are all still dogs; just some are bigger, some are smaller, etc. etc. They are all still in the Canidae family.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canidae

My point is that at one point, there were no dogs, or humans. According to evolution, they evolved from another family or species. In between the two; we would find transitional fossils, the "links" between the two.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transitional_fossil

As stated in Wikipedia article above, when Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species was first published in 1859, the fossil record was poorly known, and Darwin described the lack of transitional fossils as "the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory."

One of the ones sought for the most was "the missing link" between primates and humans. There have been several dead ends, and even some hoaxes (Piltdown Man); in the quest for this link; Neanderthal man was thought at one time to be part of that link, but at times, was rejected.

A "family tree" was depicted in many of the books I read, showing how the various species evolved over time. Now, the "tree" is thought to be a "shrub"; with many evolutionary dead ends; and only certain ones going on to produce additional branches

Notice how the diagram on the Wikipedia page above doesn't depict a "tree", but a graph of cranial capacity vs. time; which implies evolution to larger brain mass over time, but does not "connect the dots." This proves my second point - scientists never could prove that species "A" evolved from species "B"; they could only imply it by virtue of finding them in older strata, and comparing their features. Notice also, there are outliers and overlaps in the above graph; the "branches of the shrub?"

My point is that while we have accomplished all sorts of things through breeding, we have not seen a new family of species develop and reproduce either through natural or artificial breeding. We can mate donkey with a horse to get a mule, but the mule is sterile, it will not reproduce more of it's kind. Maybe a chimp or ape and a man can somehow mate, and produce a "Humanzee"; but I would be willing to bet it will be sterile as well; and incapable of producing more of it's kind. And, we cannot prove that one species evolved from other; merely imply it through DNA and common features v.s. the age of strata the fossils were found in.

And even though they developed a strain of E. Coli that feeds on silicon; they still consider it to be of species E. Coli. How that is different from a new breed; I don't get; it sounds like the microbes that were developed to eat oil spills.

I know I am swimming against the stream; so be it. But I am really not stupid; I do know enough about evolution to know it is not the exact science they claim it to be; any more than global climate change is. Evolution has itself "evolved"; and may evolve more as time goes on; into what, who knows. I am not stupid, just very skeptical; especially since as I first stated; this is one of the weapons in tools of educators used to promote secular humanism, and the "triumph" of science over religion.

Quote:
I am not stupid, just very skeptical; especially since as I first stated; this is one of the weapons in tools of educators used to promote secular humanism, and the "triumph" of science over religion.
End quote.

James,
This should go without saying, but just for the record I know you are not stupid.

On 13 January Adam wrote:

“I don't think there are many 100% atheists in foxholes or over the age of say 75. Notice that even Dawkins hedges his bet with the qualifier ‘almost certainly.’ ” I have often heard the foxhole remark but cannot comment. I was never on active duty in any branch of the military, and therefore never on the line*.

NB: Before I continue I will repeat that I feel a great debt to all of those who have served, or will. I have several times so stated on this and other message boards. Sometimes I have offered thanks to the veterans on the boards. I cannot say how my life would be different if I had what some have called the infantry memories. Certainly I do not know anyone with the experience who was unchanged.

I have previously and recently summarized my beliefs. I ‘ll do that again and tell a little about my religious background using the words prevalent when I was a child – and which still may be.

I was raised in a Christian home, and joined a church as a youngster. My immediate ancestory was Southern Baptist and M.B. (Mennonite Bretheren). For those who are not familiar, the M.B. are one of the smaller groups of conservative Anabaptists. My parents were Baptist after their marriage. Using terms that were frequently heard, I think my conversion, my confession of faith, my Christian experience, my salvation was valid. By that time my ideas about the Creation, including the notion that God had set things in motion and let it run, including evolution, were well developed. At that time one was more free to find God in his own way, within the framework of the denomination I joined, or at least my specific church, or so I thought. Thirty years later, after a great struggle, the conservative faction of the association to which the church belonged took over and the doctrine now specifically includes inerrancy. I think my original church then changed to another association (I had been gone for a long time) but I don’t see much difference in stated doctrine.

Eventually I came to the point where I no longer felt that the Gospel had any promise for me. For the sake of the good people I have known who believed and especially those I love who believe there is part of me that hopes it is true. And one thing, if you grew up in a Baptist Sunday School, or maybe any Evangelical Sunday School in the forties and fifties, you were exposed to a lot of Scripture. I remember still the passages which were my bench marks. I am sure that there was a historical Jesus who was a great teacher. I still think that the Baptist churches I attended as a child were good examples of what early Christians might have organized.

I am now on the far side of seventy. I am not a seer. I don't know where I will be in five years. But the term "fire insurance Christian" was a pejorative heard with some frequency in the church I attended as a child and I hope I don't go that way.

In fact, and to me this is a lighter note, I should not visit any church. I had a vasectomy some years ago and a strict reading of Deuteronomy 23:1 makes me ineligible to attend the assembly.

Quote:
I had a vasectomy some years ago and a strict reading of Deuteronomy 23:1 makes me ineligible to attend the assembly.
End quote.

This necessitated a trip to Google for me.

http://bible.cc/deuteronomy/23-1.htm

Quote:
GOD'S WORD® Translation (©1995)
A man whose testicles are crushed or whose penis is cut off may never join the assembly of the LORD.

Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!

In fact, and to me this is a lighter note, I should not visit any church. I had a vasectomy some years ago and a strict reading of Deuteronomy 23:1 makes me ineligible to attend the assembly.

IIRC; the idea behind that was that no-one with a defect in their body could attend the assembly. This law disappeared along with the one about Jews only back in the early church. Good thing; or my Down's son and many others may not attend church, either.

You may have your reasons for doing so; I leave that matter between you and God. But a vasectomy is not a reason for not attending church.

Quote:
GOD'S WORD® Translation (©1995)
A man whose testicles are crushed or whose penis is cut off may never join the assembly of the LORD.

Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!

What Adam said.