B8-Defense_of_Evolution.txt

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Modified 1/07/2004
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Can you give any rational reason why your choice is the one great TRUTH and
all of the supporters of other beliefs are DEAD WRONG. Were you wiser than
all of the others or just lucky enough to pick the one great TRUTH which all
of the others somehow missed or refused to recognize?

Just what make you think that atheists are secretly Christians or some other
cult? They just believe in one less god than the religious people. Just as
you dont believe in Horus, Set or Lord Krishna, atheists dont believe in
any god. I dont know of any American atheists which are trying to get
Christians put into prison for praying in their church, but I know of a lot of
Christians who tried to make laws threatening science teachers with PRISON
for teaching science or refusing to teach creationism. The history of
Christianity  is full of slaughters and intellectual repression and hatred
toward others who dont share their viewpoint. Please give me the name of any
atheist who ever told you that you were forbidden to speak about your religion.

Science can save you from the curse of ignorance and disease. I dont know
that any religion has saved anybody from anything. I know that religion has
changed behavior for the better or worse.
You did not give any evidence that any religion is any truer than any other
religion. If you go church shopping, how do you judge what you find. If you
like to pray to virgins and eat pieces of Jesus, you join the Catholics. If
you want to become a God someday, you join the Mormons. If you want to handle
snakes, you join the snake handlers. If you want to threaten 1 million
teachers with prison, then you join the Baptists. It is like choosing a
favorite food. It has nothing to do with logic or truth. It is a matter of
personal emotional needs.
If you want to hear about multicell Precambrian sea life then get an issue
of Scientific American sometime in 1962 about the Edicara formation in
Australia. They include armored worms, sea pens and a large number of
other species of soft bodied sea animals well preserved in the rock.
If your reading had extended beyond your church literature then you
would be aware of these fossils. Precambrian fossils are rare since
almost all are soft bodied and rarely leave fossils. One fairly common
Precambrian fossil is the stromatolites, which are large knobs of
bacteria in tidal areas. The present inability of describing all of the
steps between living and nonliving does not mean that these steps will
not be found in the future. Similar problems have been solved in the past
using the scientific method. If you believe that there was a Precambrian
Period then you must accept the idea that the earth is
billions of years old and the rest of the geological column as representing
different great periods in the earths history. That in itself is contrary to
the creationist model, which claims a young earth.The original vertebrates
come from a wider phylum called the chordates, some of which are VERY
primative. If you want a better understanding of how evolution works,
then read the technical literature. Apparently you have not done that. The
reptile to mammal sequence of changes is particularly well documented in
the mammal-like reptiles of the Karoo formation of Africa. The Journal of
Geological Education had an excellent article on the step by step series of
changes found in this sequence. The American Biology Teacher, about 1970(?)
had a three article series on these animals and the evolutionary sequence found
therein.

The details of the sea GRASS called Spartina townsendii is described in the
Encyclopedia Brit. under EVOLUTION. The grass is a new species derived from
a complex hybrid of a European and American grass. It is quite widespread now
but was never seen before 120 years ago. Study the facts before you criticize
them.

The ratio of C14 to C12 does not vary widely or rapidly. It is slowly changed
by changes in the planetary magnetic field, which changes the cosmic ray
fluxes. The samples of the atmosphere of the last 160,000 years are found in
yearly layers in the polar ice pack. The gradual spreading of the continents is
shown by the magnetic and ignious rigdes in the ocean bed. Hundreds of
reversals in the magnetic field are seen in this ocean floor spreading
system. When did all of this spreading and magnetic reversal take place?
The sediment is thin at the spreading center and thick where they dive into
the trenches at the edge of the continents. Just why does Africa fit South
America so exactly and when did they split?

Creationism is ALL NONSENSE because not a single part of it has stood up
to scientific investigation. Not a single scientific prediction has resulted
from the creationist viewpoint. Go down to your local oil company and see
whether they use the standard evolutionary viewpoint to understand the
earth and find oil or whether they use Genesis as a reference book.

You use the term Cambrian period. According to the creationist viewpoint,
there was NO Cambrian age, only recent events. The fossils show great periods
of time by their division into completely seperate groupings with NO
admixture except by reworking of old formations. It is obvious you have NO
significant personal knowledge of the earth and its fossils. There are many
transitional fossils known to the scientists and a trip to the library would
allow you to read about them in great detail. It is obvious that you did not
check this before you repeated it from your religious sources.

If you had read ANY standard science reference works then you would be aware
how the scientists correct for the original isotope composition in the rocks.
There are certain isotopes of lead which are not of radioactive origin. That
allows for correction for original lead 206. The other isotopes of argon allows
correction for contamination.The isochron method does not need the original
ratio of isotopes to determine age of a rock. The scientific community is
smarter than you think they are. The whole appearance of the earth and universe
is of very great age and the radioactive dating totally validates that
appearance and tells how old it is, within a few percent. The radioactive age
of the formations correlates with their order of deposition.

The five or so million years of seperate evolution since the split between man
and the other primates has resulted in about 1% genetic difference in the
DNA. There is a genetic mechanism which prevents crossing between beings too
far
different in DNA and chromosome number. Chimps and apes have a divverent
number of chromosomes than humans, by one or two. The dog and cow family has
less variation and the dog, wolf, coyote, jackle group are interfertile. The
cross between cow and buffalo is called beefalo and is fertile.

There has been no discovery in all of science which tends to invalidate the
overall system of evolution. The idea that the universe and earth are billions
of years old, animals and plants have changed greatly over the ages, and they
came from their ancestors by biology remain undisputed. The proposed mechanisms
change as more evidence becomes available. The fossils show the past animals
and plants. There varied from age to age. There is no trace of modern animals
and plants in the very ancient formations and vice versa. The creationists
have to say that the earth was made with the appearance of age and process when
God actually created things recently. Any appearance of an evolutionary history
is explained away by saying God can do anything He wants.
Faith can "prove" anything so it needs no facts.

The main thing wrong with evolution is that it doesnt suite your emotional
needs. The fossils which are there PROVE that there is a sequence of
developement of life on earth throughout geological time. They prove that new
species develope and die out. They PROVE that great differences exist between
animals and plants of different geological periods.They PROVE that they did not
exist simultaneously.That is the reason why the scientists believe in
evolution. The genetic sequence in living things shows genetic derivation.
I suggest you read the 1978 issue(October I think) which is all about
evolution. Give it a try and write about what you found there.

The Precambrian rocks belong to a time older than 580 million years ago and
thus comprises most of the earths history. The most complex fossils are worms
and sea pens, all soft bodied. The igneous rocks all test to be older than
600 million years old. Much is highly metamorphosed and intruded by later
igneous rocks. There is a layer of sandstone of this age in Venezuela 3000 feet
thick eroded into isolated mountains. The National Geographic had a major
article on it a few months ago. Yes, Virginia, there is a Precambrian Era.

It would indeed be worthwhile mentioning creationism in the geology, geology or
astronomy class as historical background. If the teacher started telling
the logical and technical defects of creationism and the reasons it was
rejected by the scientific community, then you would get angry parents storming
into the classroom, principals office and school board demanding the teachers
scalp for casting doubt upon the family religion.

If such problems were solved, then why does George Gaylord Simpson,
heralded as the WORLDS formost evolutionary paleontologist, in his book
_Tempo_and_Mode_in_Evolution_ under the section titled Major Systematic
Discontinuities of Record, he states that nowhere in the world is there
any trace of a fossil that would close the considerable
gap between Hyrocotheruim, which most evolutionists assume was the first
horse, and its supposed ancestrial order Condylarthra. And he goes on
to say: This is true of ALL the thirty-two orders of mammals...the
earliest and most primitive known members of every order already have the
basic ordinal characters, and in no case is an approximately continuous
sequence from one order to another known. In most cases the break is so
sharp and the gap so large that the origin is speculative and much disputed.
And later on he says: This regular absence of transitional forms is not
confined to mammals, but is an almost universal phenomenon, as has long been
noted by paleontologists. It is true of almost all orders of all classes of
animals, both vertebrate and invertebrate. A fortiori, it is also true of the
classes, and of the major animal phyla, and it is apparently also true of
analogous categories of plants. These statements, among others in my
possession, clearly state that SOMETHING is wrong with evolution as it now
stands!! The transitional forms that evolution predicts ought to be there
ARE NOT THERE!!
And that there is also a HUGE gap between phyla! Cmon, are you going to keep
insinuating that I dont read outside of church? My church doesnt even have
literature on this debate! Look, Graham, there is something wrong with
evolution; enough specalists have said so. The fossil record just does not
support evolution.

After all of the centuries of praying, has the church developed a series of
efficient prayers for all occasions? Do they keep inventing new, more efficient
prayers to replace obsolete and inefficient prayers. The Jews prayers
supposedly are ignored by God as He prepares to burn them in hell for not
being Christians. Maybe the different churches can have a prayer contest to
measure the relative value of different prayers. If God loves us, why do we
have to keep asking Him for health, food and safety. Why do so many of these
prayers fail as Christians sicken, starve and die? If you consider God to be a
bumbling fool who had to experiment around for a few billion years before He
got things right in biology, then there might be some value to your message.
The vast number of inefficient and dead end creatures throughout geological
time doesnt point to a divine intelligence but rather to blind mechanisms
respondingto short term opportunities and almost always resulting in
extinction.
I guess that God could create everything as a series of billions of magical
creations in a pattern resembling an evolutionary sequence but that would be
totally unnecessary and has no predictive power. You could just as easily say
God pushes the planets around and it just appears to be caused by Newtonian
gravity. There are still technical problems with what EXACTLY happened when,
where, and how evolution occurred. These points are being filled in on a weekly
schedule as new fossils and new genetic mechanisms are discovered. If you read
Simpsons book (which I have some doubt) then you would find that
EVOLUTION DID OCCUR. Tell me truthfully, did you actually read his book or just
this selection from some creationist literature? It is appropriate to teach
about the various stages of understanding leading to the present system of
scientific beliefs. In the lower classes, the main problem is to get the
students to learn ANYTHING AT ALL about the present understanding. If you are
going to teach a history of science course, then all of the earlier models can
be taught in a timely fashion.
A mutation is caused by any number of things, like radiation
or chemicals. It do     esnt know that it  has helped or hurt anybody. If that
mutation is in a cell which is part of the next generation, then there is a
CHANCE that the individual will be superior in some respect. This superior
thing will be more likely to survive and pass on the mutation to the next
generation and so on. The weak and unfit die, or leave fewer offspring. An
individual is continually  challenged by the environment and it only has
to fail once. How else would you discover the validity or lack thereof of a
group, like the Christians, except to talk to them and read their literature?
How else would you correct their mistaken opinions except to reason with them?
I have given many scientific references in my messages and the library is
filled with vastly more. Have you read this scientific literature? I doubt it.
Why dont you give proof that your opinion is right and all of the scientists
are wrong? Give me a list of proofs that your theology is valid and all of the
supporters of other beliefs are DEAD WRONG. Were you wiser than all of the
others or just lucky enough to pick the one great TRUTH which all of the
others somehow missed or refused to recognize? Atheists just believe in one
less god than the religious people. Just as you dont believe in Horus, Set
or Lord Krishna, atheists dont believe in any gods.
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END OF B9-Defense
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