Re: Further Evolution beyond the Human? (Sardonic Diatribe)

Theodore A. Holden (medved@access.digex.net)
Thu, 10 Oct 1996 01:21:38 GMT

myers@netaxs.com (Paul Myers) wrote:

>> One is that Newton discovered a real fact of the natural world and did a
>fairly
>> reasonable job of describing it for his day. Darwin did not. His
>thesis (that
>> the kinds of microevolutionary change which we observe in a schnauzer
>> being bred into a terrier or a finch with one sort of beak changing into a
>> finch with another kind of beak can explain the rise of all of our present
>> lifeforms from the most simple to the most complex) was known by breeders
>> to be fatally flawed when it was proposed and has been blown apart by several
>> excellent books which have been published in the last 10 years or so.

>No, Darwin and Newton are very comparable: evolution and natural selection ARE
>real observable phenomena in the world today,

Not macroevolution and you know it. In fact, nothing resembling macroevolution
has ever been observed in recorded history and all writers on the topic admit
that.

>> Michael Behe's "Darwin's Black Box" and Alexander Mebane's "Darwin's
>> Creation Myth" would do for starters.

>Scientists find holes in evolutionary theory all the time; they spend a lot of
>effort trying to understand those differences, and work to find rational
>explanations for real phenomena. Any one can find problems and difficulties
>in any complex scientific principle. One indicator that you are dealing with
>an incompetent jerk who has found a problem is that their answer is to throw
>out the complex scientific principle altogether, without providing any new
>integrating idea to fill in the resulting vacuum. Another indicator is when
>they can't even recognize the legitimate issues, and instead contrive
>logical absurdities that completely miss the mark. Mebane and Behe meet
>both criteria.

That's a hell of a characterization of two thoroughly competent and serious
scientists by somebody who obviously has not even thought about reading
any of their works, and should tell anybody new to these forums all they
need to know about Paul Myers.

Ted Holden
medved@digex.com