Robert;: Thank you for the kind note, and again, sorry to wind you up this time.
You're really not getting me angry at all, don't overestimate the emotional impact of this "debate". You occasionally make me feel sort of sad that someone with a reasonably bright mind would deliberately hide himself from exposure to one of the most intricate and subtly beautiful phenomena in the world, but that's another issue and is my problem, not yours.
: Well if "speciation takes hundreds of thousands of generations" to occur, let's do some quick computations for the human "ancestors":
Hundreds of thousands was a rhetorical device. In some genera, such as Drosophila, speciation can be relatively rapid. This is because the generational turn-over is rapid (a few days per generation) and also because fly DNA is relatively simple. This is under lab conditions, however. In the wild, interbreeding between lineages will tend to swamp speciation, as any successful variant will rapidly spread through the population. This is why geographic isolation tends to be emphasized, although temporal isolation can have the same effect. (e.g.Flies that mate in june are reproductively isolated from ones that mate in may, even if there is no apparent genetic difference.) Through time, single genetic variant changes in each isolated population will tend to add up. Now, even with the very simple DNA of flies, (and of course the same applies to other plants and animals,) the odds are that single gene "point" mutations in the two lineages will be different, either in location on the chromosome, or in the "direction" of mutation (i.e. what is replaced with what) or more likely, both. The odds of two isolated lineages changing in the same direction are so small as to be statistically near-impossible. Therefore, the two isolated lines will almost certainly change in different directions and eventually some of these changes will be apparent in morphology. That is fundamentally what evolution is all about. You probably look a lot more like your parents than you look like anyone else's parents, right? and your children, if any, will look more like you and your partner than like anyone else, but they will look slightly less like your parents than you do, since they will also look a little bit like your partner's parents. This is due to recombination, and is, metaphorically, the tiny "building blocks" out of which evolution is made.
: Floyd, dear friend. I'm not trying to characterise you, and I'll never call you a name
Actually, over the past year, you've accused me of racism, facism, censorship, lying to the public, supressing evidence, and faking data. To a scientist, these are incredible insults, on a par with calling a devout person a "heathen," "a pagan," or "an atheist." How we each interpret words is beside the point, however.
:(even though you've called me an idiot before).
Actually, I didn't call you an idiot. I said if you were really arguing the point that you seemed to be arguing, then you would appear to be an idiot, since the argument you had proposed was illogical and silly. The argument you appeared to be making was that no brand-new and entirely distinct species has arisin, ab nihil, in the past few centuries. This is analogous to saying no new big branches have appeared on a tree in recent years, only little twigs. Since evolution proceeds by tiny, almost unnoticable changes, your argument was not against Darwinian evolution at all, but against "saltation". I was trying to point that out to you in a humorous manner. Sorry the joke fell flat.
:I'm just attempting to warn you off as to where your evolutionary thought may lead you.
And, as several of us have pointed out to you already, Darwinian theory does not lead inevitably to fascism any more than the New Testament leads inevitably to Waco, TX or Jonestown. In fact, an understanding of evolution, as it applies to humans, leads to the best argument AGAINST racism and notions of ethnic supremacy, since it clearly demonstrates how closely related we all are.
: Darwin, as you may recall, saw this exact same flaw himself during his later years. In fact, one of the main reasons that he renounced evolutionism is that of Haekel's interpretations of his theory when applied to the human species. It had "racial weeding" overtones and Darwin was horrified.
Darwin was rightly horrified by this. However, these doctrines sprang from the work of Herbert Spencer (recall that this is the point I made when our discussion first started, nearly a year ago) and not from Darwin at all. So-called "social Darwinism" has nothing to do with Darwinian theory at all. Darwin hated Spencer's concepts and was dreadfully saddened by the misappropriation of his name.
: Thankfully, Charles Darwin on his death bed in Kent accepted Christ as his Creator, as we know from the testimony of his maid.
Actually, this is false. As a young man, Darwin was a seminary student and intended to go into the ministry. He remained a Christian throughout his life, albeit not a biblical literalist, and the "deathbed conversion" myth is based on claims made, after Darwin's death, by Lady Hope, who was never one to let the truth interfere with a good annecdote.
Besides, what if the story WAS true? It still would say nothing about the validity of evolutionary theory. If the first mathematician realized that his work would eventually make atomic weapons possible, and "repudiated the insidious theory of arithmatic on his death bed," would that make 2 + 2 not equal 4? No, of course not. The personal opinion of anyone is irrelevant to the validity of a theory, even if that person invented the theory. If one person's belief doesn't make it "true," then another person's disbelief doesn't make it "false" either.
However, that's beside the point because the myth of deathbed conversion is false.
:Darwin read the Bible so fervently then that he even named the Book of Hebrews the "Royal Book". Praise God!
Yeah, swell. I think it's a pretty good book too. That has nothing to do with the validity of evolution. It's a completely unrelated topic.
: Floyd, from here on, the Peace of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, be with you.
Alright, and may the Dark Lady, Eris, look the other way when you're trying to concentrate on important things.
: P.S. Apparently you are a professor? Excellent. Here is a site to see what professors think about the subject.
Yes I am. That's an interesting site, but you might take a hint, from the title ("Christian Apologetics") that they do not represent a completely unbiased and objective source of data.
While we're on the topic of websites, a few posts back, you linked to Behe's "black box" thing in response to Farinata. I didn't respond to it at the time, since I was frightfully busy. Behe doesn't deny that evolution happens on a multi-celular level, he only argues that the cell is "irreducably complex" and must therefore have been deliberately created. I disagree, mainly on the grounds of exaptation (sensu Gould and Lewontin 1979). The fact that Behe "can't imagine" cells arising from some simpler material has no bearing on whether or not it could happen. (For instance, I can't imagine a rationale for bombing people, but that doesn't make the bombing stop, now does it?) If you want, I'll gladly tell you why Behe's argument is not a relevant critique, but that's another post that I'll reserve for when I have more time.
On the subject of presenting arguments, what I've done above is offer several lines of evidence in favor of evolution. I have not offered "negative" evidence against competing hypotheses. Would you be willing to do the same? Would you offer some evidence that supports the creationist view? I'd be happy to hear it. If we can each present our best arguments in our favor (rather than our best arguments against each other) maybe we can actually evaluate the arguments on their relative merits. What do you say?
-Floyd
None.
