Re: ACLU may sue NM Board of Education (was Re: Creationists win...)

Bryant (mycol1@unm.edu)
4 Sep 1996 09:08:52 -0600

In article <bgrubb-0409960631520001@news.nmsu.edu>,
Bruce L Grubb <bgrubb@acca.nmsu.edu> wrote:
>
>Even if this was true why does it eliminate Creationism? Remember 19th century
>Creationists (called Catastrophes) used what we today would call
>Evolution: The Great Chain of Being. Even today Creationists use a form
>of Evolution: The Degenerative Model.

The Scala Natura posited fixed species, not historical phylogeny.
The model has been convincingly falsified by the fossil record.

>The factions we call evolutionists and creationists have been
>battling it out for a long time. The oldedest reference I can find to a
>split in the theories on the history of the earth is between the
>Plutonists and Neptunists around the 1750's.

This has nothing to do with the origin of biological species or the
debate surrounding that issue.

>It was not until Darwin's and Wallece's theories came out (1859) that
>these groups began to call themselves Evolutionists (Uniformitarian) and
>Creationists (Catastrophism).

Uniformitarianism is a prerequisite for evolution, not a synonym for it.

>Creationists seem to equate 'evolution' with Darwinian evolution.
>Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Darwin proposed a mechanism, natural selection, by which evolution could
proceed. That evolution occurs was already known by paleontologists for
obvious reasons. Since Darwin's "long argument," his hypothesis has been
elevated to the position of "theory," along with cell theory and the
like, because it has proven to be a powerfully predictive set of ideas.

Bryant