I thought your quote sounded familiar and found it in the archives at talkorigins.org. You've dredged up the old out-of-context quote from Eldredge and Gould (1977), as written by that master of elision, Dr. Duane Gish, probably from his 1985 book Evolution: The Challenge of the Fossil Record. As often happens in Gish's writings, he somehow "mistakes" the meaning of the original authors and instead ascribes to them the exact opposite of their true positions. (Yes, I meant to put scare quotes around "mistakes" -- despite multiple corrections, Gish still misrepresents the positions of numerous biologists. Gish published an updated edition called Evolution: The fossils still say NO! in 1995, yet he has not set the record straight by retracting the incorrect quotes, to say nothing of adding an apology. That's pretty low IMNSHO.)
What's the misquoted part here? Nothing much, just twisting E. and G.'s statement that smooth intermediate fossil sequences are almost impossible to construct, into "Gould and Eldredge specifically exclude Archaeopteryx as a transitional form..." Neither Eldredge nor Gould hold the latter view and they've taken pains in later publications to make that clear.
In particular: (Gould 1983, p. 260) "... since we proposed punctuated equilibrium to explain trends, it is infuriating to be quoted again and again by creationists - whether through design or stupidity, I do not know - as admitting that the fossil record includes no transitional forms. Transitional forms are generally lacking at the species level but are abundant between larger groups." Moreover, Gould (1991, p. 144-145): "Archaeopteryx, the first bird, is as pretty an intermediate as paleontology could ever hope to find."
Uh, have you checked the reference page at that trueorigin.org site? It's brim full of ICR references, including books by Duane Gish and Henry Morris. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if it isn't an ICR site. Or, maybe not. Possibly the author was fed a bunch of ICR tracts and built the site without knowing just how unreliable ICR sources are.
The ICR (Institution for Creation Research) is a religous organization intended to turn "creation science" from an oxymoron into an agenda politically rammed into the USA education system. But, don't believe me, check out The Creation Research Society's Creed and Visits to the ICR Museum and decide for yourself.
I've read a couple of Gish's and Morris' books and lost count of the number of half-truths, misleading or out of context quotes, and outright lies in the first chapters. See Creationist Whoppers to see how they were revealed to be "liars for Jeezus" that they are.
Anyway, I glanced through trueorigin.org's Thermo rebuttals and found the same old bogus 2nd Law of Thermo crap, with the buzz-words changed so maybe their target audience won't notice. They're still using the outdated "disorder" metaphor for entropy, probably because it plays so well in the Bible Belt. By all means, read this site, but take everything they say with an entire shaker of salt. 8-)
Oh, come on! Try and come up with something that isn't out of an ICR tract, will you? But, I'm not going to let this pass unchallenged.... {Grumble!} I'll assume that by "special links" you mean transitional species. (Try and learn some biology in between your Morris or Gish, ICR "Lying for Jeezus" books.)
No "special links" eh? Then, what is an Archeopteryx? Is it a dinosaur with feathers, wishbone (for attachment of flight muscles) or a bird with teeth, and a reptilian skull, pelvis, claws, and tail? What about the recently discovered Chinese fossil Sinornis santensis? Is it a bird or a dinosaur? It has claws on its toes, bird-shaped shoulders, teeth, saurian ribs, and a reptilian pelvis.
I'm not going to go through the entire (long) list, which includes whales, dolphins, horses, rhinos, rabbits, pigs, giraffes, cows, etc, etc, etc. See the Transitional Vertebrate Fossils FAQ.
A law in science is a theory or that has an overwhelming amount of support, few or no opposing theories, and is accepted as fact.
Well, there are always opposing theories, even if you have to scrape the bottom of the crackpot barrel to find them. How about "a law has overwhelming support and very few, or none, contradicting bits of evidence, and is provisionally accepted as fact." (And when investigated, those bits turn out to be experimental error, which also is always with us.)
OK, the easy stuff first: When evolution is proved,.... and eventually prove it, right? You must have been sleeping in class when they mentioned the Scientific Method. Save for pure Mathematics, you can't prove any hypothesis true. But, you can demonstrate that one is false. So, your first condition falls flat from day one. When science legitimately disproves creation, I'll be done with faith. Again you demonstrate an ignorance of scientific method. Creation by a diety, as it is usually expressed in the USA, is an unfalsifiable hyphothesis (it requires gods and other omnipotentient beings who can do anything and can never be pinned down). So, science will never "disprove" it. Your faith is safe.
I've got no problem believing in microevolution. There ain't no such thing as micro- or macro-evolution, save in the minds of Creationists. There is only varying degrees of evolution. Let's nail down the definition of evolution:
Evolution: A change in allele frequency in a population of creatures over time.
Allele: An instance of a gene. Say the green seeds vs. yellow seeds in G. Mendel's classic experiment. Green seeds are an allele for the seed color gene. Same for smooth vs. wrinkled seeds and the seed texture gene, or blossom colors, etc.
That's it. That's what you're rebelling against.
Anyone who has ever bred dogs or canaries or whatever has seen this happen, all the time, whether you want it to do so, or not. Every new strain of staph that is more resistant to antibiotics is evolving. Each and every strain of penicillin resistant bacteria evolved to become resistant. Same for the finches on the Galapagos Islands as the average beak size changes in response to long term weather patterns.
Given all of the evidence there is no doubt that biological evolution is effectively a fact, as much of a fact as gravity. It simply is how living things work. However, this is likely what led to the "microevolution" concept -- it was a way for Creationists to try to accept the basic facts of life, yet not accept their unavoidable conclusion. In other words, it was a way for them to admit that it was possible to walk down the street, yet deny that it is possible to walk from L.A. to New York City.
Other postings have dealt with the facts of evolution vs. the different theories of evolution. See What is Evolution? for a better description that I can write.
Just check the fossil record. Ancient hominids weren't exactly thick on the ground, but there were a few fossils left.
Why aren't they alive today? Because they'd be incredibly old. Thus, they were terminated by the US Social Security MiB before they could break the USA budget and become our owners.
Yes, likewise I bought the boxed Red Hat 5.2, Civ: CtP, VMWare. Heck I even bought the WordPerfect 8 CD -- I support those companies with the class to make free non-commercial downloads available.
I'm waiting for a chance to buy Quake 3, Railroad Tycoon, Myth 2, etc.
Evolution disproven? Wrong-o. The evidence for evolution is solid and continuing to accumulate. New advances in DNA analysis and microfossils just add to the pro-evo case. The "proofs" that Wire Tap puts forward have been soundly thrashed on sci.skeptic and talk.orgins many times. Check out http://www.talkorigins.org/ for good essays on these and similar topics.
Charles Darwin's views on the evolution of the eye have been taken out of context. They were part of a thought experiment on evolution. See An Old, Out of Context Quotation on that and for some intermediate steps in eye evolution.
Another very basic scientific law states that living tissue can not spawn from non living matter.
I believe that you're thinking of Lamarck and spontaneous generation. Spontaneous generation is part of abiogenesis, not evolution. Evolution comes into play when you have living organisms to evolve. See Abiogenesis FAQ for details.
If you think that "evolution is a nice idea, but pure fiction", how do you explain the results that the A-Life folks get when the implement genetic algorithms on computers? ( Artificial Life Online )
Would you be implying that Evolution is taking place? If so I strongly disagree.
On the contrary, evolution is still going on around us today. See Observed Instances of Speciation for some examples. But, you don't have to go so far afield to look for evolution. My father was nearly killed twice by a newly evolved strain of strep that was immune to dern near all antibiotics. Remember the days when a little shot of penicillin would cure just about everything? No more. Resistant strains have evolved. Now penicillin is mostly useless.
The problem is that you probably have a faulty idea of biological evolution. The shortest and clearest definition I know is, "A change in allele frequency in a population of creatures over time." (An allele is an instance of a gene, say green peas vs. yellow peas in Mendel's experiment.) Who can doubt that that happens all around us, all the time? It's simply a fact. (See What is Evolution? for a better description than I can write.)
To get back on topic, if learning is formed by growing connections between neurons, then there should be an upper limit to it that can be roughly expressed in bits. I have no idea if 13 TB is close.
Yes, and it's not quite fair to call Cassini "nuclear" powered. It's RTGs run by the heat from radioactive decay of the Pu-238 dioxide ceramic, not a nuclear reactor as the lunatic fringe would have you believe. (Expect to hear the loonies yowling about Cassini's fly-by later this year.)
Pendants might note that some of the Mars probes (like the crashed Russian one) used RTHs (Radioisotope Thermal Heaters), which keep the landers warm through the cold Mars night, but generate no electricity.
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Mistakes aside, it still doesn't change the fact that Archaeopteryx is a mosaic of bird and reptile features.
What's the misquoted part here? Nothing much, just twisting E. and G.'s statement that smooth intermediate fossil sequences are almost impossible to construct, into "Gould and Eldredge specifically exclude Archaeopteryx as a transitional form ..." Neither Eldredge nor Gould hold the latter view and they've taken pains in later publications to make that clear.
In particular: (Gould 1983, p. 260) "... since we proposed punctuated equilibrium to explain trends, it is infuriating to be quoted again and again by creationists - whether through design or stupidity, I do not know - as admitting that the fossil record includes no transitional forms. Transitional forms are generally lacking at the species level but are abundant between larger groups." Moreover, Gould (1991, p. 144-145): "Archaeopteryx, the first bird, is as pretty an intermediate as paleontology could ever hope to find."
See Archaeopteryx: Answering the Challenge of the Fossil Record for the whole sorry story. Eldredge, N. & Gould, S. J. 1977. "Punctuated equilibrium: the tempo and mode of evolution reconsidered." Paleobiology, 3: 115-151
Gish, D. T. 1985. "Evolution: Challenge of the Fossil Record." Creation-Life, San Diego. 278 pp.
Gish, D. T. 1995. "Evolution: the fossils still say NO!" Institute for Creation Research, El Cajon, California. 391 pp.
Gould, S. J. 1983. "Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes." Norton & Co, New York. 413 pp.
Gould, S. J. 1991. "Bully for Brontosaurus." Penguin, London. 540 pp.
The ICR (Institution for Creation Research) is a religous organization intended to turn "creation science" from an oxymoron into an agenda politically rammed into the USA education system. But, don't believe me, check out The Creation Research Society's Creed and Visits to the ICR Museum and decide for yourself.
I've read a couple of Gish's and Morris' books and lost count of the number of half-truths, misleading or out of context quotes, and outright lies in the first chapters. See Creationist Whoppers to see how they were revealed to be "liars for Jeezus" that they are.
Anyway, I glanced through trueorigin.org's Thermo rebuttals and found the same old bogus 2nd Law of Thermo crap, with the buzz-words changed so maybe their target audience won't notice. They're still using the outdated "disorder" metaphor for entropy, probably because it plays so well in the Bible Belt. By all means, read this site, but take everything they say with an entire shaker of salt. 8-)
No "special links" eh? Then, what is an Archeopteryx? Is it a dinosaur with feathers, wishbone (for attachment of flight muscles) or a bird with teeth, and a reptilian skull, pelvis, claws, and tail?
What about the recently discovered Chinese fossil Sinornis santensis? Is it a bird or a dinosaur? It has claws on its toes, bird-shaped shoulders, teeth, saurian ribs, and a reptilian pelvis.
I'm not going to go through the entire (long) list, which includes whales, dolphins, horses, rhinos, rabbits, pigs, giraffes, cows, etc, etc, etc. See the Transitional Vertebrate Fossils FAQ.
Well, there are always opposing theories, even if you have to scrape the bottom of the crackpot barrel to find them. How about "a law has overwhelming support and very few, or none, contradicting bits of evidence, and is provisionally accepted as fact." (And when investigated, those bits turn out to be experimental error, which also is always with us.)
OK, the easy stuff first: When evolution is proved, .... and eventually prove it, right? You must have been sleeping in class when they mentioned the Scientific Method. Save for pure Mathematics, you can't prove any hypothesis true. But, you can demonstrate that one is false. So, your first condition falls flat from day one. When science legitimately disproves creation, I'll be done with faith. Again you demonstrate an ignorance of scientific method. Creation by a diety, as it is usually expressed in the USA, is an unfalsifiable hyphothesis (it requires gods and other omnipotentient beings who can do anything and can never be pinned down). So, science will never "disprove" it. Your faith is safe.
I've got no problem believing in microevolution. There ain't no such thing as micro- or macro-evolution, save in the minds of Creationists. There is only varying degrees of evolution. Let's nail down the definition of evolution:
That's it. That's what you're rebelling against.Anyone who has ever bred dogs or canaries or whatever has seen this happen, all the time, whether you want it to do so, or not. Every new strain of staph that is more resistant to antibiotics is evolving. Each and every strain of penicillin resistant bacteria evolved to become resistant. Same for the finches on the Galapagos Islands as the average beak size changes in response to long term weather patterns.
Given all of the evidence there is no doubt that biological evolution is effectively a fact, as much of a fact as gravity. It simply is how living things work. However, this is likely what led to the "microevolution" concept -- it was a way for Creationists to try to accept the basic facts of life, yet not accept their unavoidable conclusion. In other words, it was a way for them to admit that it was possible to walk down the street, yet deny that it is possible to walk from L.A. to New York City.
Other postings have dealt with the facts of evolution vs. the different theories of evolution. See What is Evolution? for a better description that I can write.
Just check the fossil record. Ancient hominids weren't exactly thick on the ground, but there were a few fossils left.
Why aren't they alive today? Because they'd be incredibly old. Thus, they were terminated by the US Social Security MiB before they could break the USA budget and become our owners.
QED. 8-)
PS: For a real discussion, try the Fossil Hominids FAQ .
I'm waiting for a chance to buy Quake 3, Railroad Tycoon, Myth 2, etc.
Can you explain how you managed this?
(Botched kernel modules? Accidently writing to /dev/kmem as root? . . . . )
In particular, check The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, Evolution, and Probability to see why the 2nd law applies to closed systems, not planets warmed by suns.
Charles Darwin's views on the evolution of the eye have been taken out of context. They were part of a thought experiment on evolution. See An Old, Out of Context Quotation on that and for some intermediate steps in eye evolution.
Another very basic scientific law states that living tissue can not spawn from non living matter.
I believe that you're thinking of Lamarck and spontaneous generation. Spontaneous generation is part of abiogenesis, not evolution. Evolution comes into play when you have living organisms to evolve. See Abiogenesis FAQ for details.
If you think that "evolution is a nice idea, but pure fiction", how do you explain the results that the A-Life folks get when the implement genetic algorithms on computers? ( Artificial Life Online )
Would you be implying that Evolution is taking place? If so I strongly disagree.
On the contrary, evolution is still going on around us today. See Observed Instances of Speciation for some examples. But, you don't have to go so far afield to look for evolution. My father was nearly killed twice by a newly evolved strain of strep that was immune to dern near all antibiotics. Remember the days when a little shot of penicillin would cure just about everything? No more. Resistant strains have evolved. Now penicillin is mostly useless.
The problem is that you probably have a faulty idea of biological evolution. The shortest and clearest definition I know is, "A change in allele frequency in a population of creatures over time." (An allele is an instance of a gene, say green peas vs. yellow peas in Mendel's experiment.) Who can doubt that that happens all around us, all the time? It's simply a fact. (See What is Evolution? for a better description than I can write.)
To get back on topic, if learning is formed by growing connections between neurons, then there should be an upper limit to it that can be roughly expressed in bits. I have no idea if 13 TB is close.
Pendants might note that some of the Mars probes (like the crashed Russian one) used RTHs (Radioisotope Thermal Heaters), which keep the landers warm through the cold Mars night, but generate no electricity.