Quote Mining? No, Fact Stating. S J Gould Essay Disclosing the Debacle of Darwin’s Ev

[Ryal Kane]

"The argument that the literal story of Genesis can qualify as science collapses on three major grounds: the creationists' need to invoke miracles in order to compress the events of the earth's history into the biblical span of a few thousand years; their unwillingness to abandon claims clearly disproved, including the assertion that all fossils are products of Noah's flood; and their reliance upon distortion, misquote, half-quote, and citation out of context to characterize the ideas of their opponents."

- S.J. Gould "The Verdict on Creationism", The Skeptical Inquirer, Winter 87/88, pg. 186

Copied from Split Rock above.
Emphasis added.

 

[Edmond]

And Gould's conclusion is that evolution happened, but the main means of speciation is rapid speciation in isolated populations rather than gradualism. The mechanism of that evolution is still random mutation and natural selection. Punk Eek is only about speciation.



Which would include the antiquity of the earth and Darwinian evolution. Does that mean that you are now a TE?

I think you may want to re-read the essay Opus 200 again. Gould said Darwin's assumptions about evolution, which Gould did not agree with and had 'beguiled' so much of science, required the prerequisite of long ages of time. That is why Darwin liked Lyell's geological assumptions so much. ..

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[Edmond]

Edmond:

I noticed that you ignored part of my last post, as follows:

I would really like a response from you on this matter. If you use just the physical evidence, there is not enough room for all the advances and retreats of the Ice Ages recorded in the past. If you use just the bible, you have no information aout Ice Ages at all. How do you justify shoe-horning a single, short Ice Age event into your 6,000 year earth model? Is it because you can't fit anything more? Why wasn't such an important event recorded by the writers of Genesis? Could it be they just didn't know about it, like they knew nothing about the rest of earth's past?

Split Rock, I apologize about the delay with this response. I got sidetracked the last time I tried to answer and could not re-find your post again. I'm uncertain why you find the necessity to need to include several, you don't site how many, ice ages in your conclusions about the geology of the earth.

How do I shoe-horn an ice age in? Well, the term ice AGE in itself infers a long period of time. Long ages of time in geologic interpretation is a relatively 'new' idea, Charles Lyell,(1798-1875). The idea of an ice AGE fits nicely into that framework. The term ice AGE does not fit nicely into someone’s thinking when it is applied to a 6000 year period of time.

So, for the sake of this discussion, would like you to consider using the term ice EVENT or that equivalent thinking. From my perspective of history and geology I need only one ice Event to accommodate what I see present in geology and the results of what I see on the surface of the earth today. That ice Event would not require long ages of time.

Please follow. I believe you would agree that either an ice Age or an ice EVENT ( the accumulation of the massive amounts of ice we now see on the polar caps, would require a very large scale weather event and change to have happened in history. Is that correct? Assuming it is, I would also believe you would agree that such a pattern of weather change, with the accompanying evidence we find, would not have been gradual over long ages of time. Is that correct? If so, then we would agree that a weather change was needed to precipitate a change massive enough to create an ice event. And, that weather change would have had to, most likely have happened in a short period of time. I also believe you would be willing to agree that a significant pitch change in the angle of the earth’s rotational axis form zero to what it is today would cause significant enough changes in global weather to cause massive weather changes and patterns to occur especially at the polar extremes of the earth a it would pertain to the accumulation of ice. Is that correct?

From my perspective of historic grologic occurrences, all of the conditions we have so far covered could have conceivable taken place as the result of a global cataclysm of the exact scale and type described in the Genesis flood.


The reduced of that ice accumulation, most primarily nearer to the polar regions, would have occurred in gradual melting process, some of which we continue to witness today.


This model not only accommodates the issue of an ice Event, it also allows for a clear and rational explanation of the appearance of man first emerging on what is today known as the north American continent from a migration path that required a land mass connection to have once existed between the Asian continent ( now Russia) and that of our own via what is now the Barring Straits.


If the present ocean levels were lowered by 1000 feet, due to ice that had not yet melted, all of the major land masses, including Australia would be connect through natural land bridges. This would clearly account for the redistribution of mankind over the globe after the event of the flood. The subsequent and continued melting of the ice caps would then have raised those ocean levels and isolated the major land masses that we have today.


There is a theory that is part of science. It says that the conclusion that includes the simplest explanation and includes the largest scope of issues related to that conclusion is most probably correct.


I would say to you, those who abandon the flood account as being possible find the necessity to create a trail of assumption about history and events that get longer and longer. The more they have to explain one thing, the more they have to speculate and assume about five other associated things. And the list of speculations continues to build and build and build in an effort to accommodate all of the variables that must be addressed.


Yet will all of their own lists of assumption and speculations that cannot be answered they will, in the same breath say, the Genesis flood, that is sheer speculation. It can’t be proven. When in reality the hypotheses they have to come up with to accommodate all of the issues and events of history can equally not be proven…and, unlike the genesis account, are entirely disunified under dozens of disconnected theories.


That, in a nut shell, is how I believe an ice Event and much more occurred in the past 6000 years of earth history. ….

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[Karl - Liberal Backslider]

I think you may want to re-read the essay Opus 200 again. Gould said Darwin's assumptions about evolution, which Gould did not agree with and had 'beguiled' so much of science, required the prerequisite of long ages of time. That is why Darwin liked Lyell's geological assumptions so much. ..

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Before we go any further, Edmond, are you really trying to tell me that you think that Gould was opposed to evolution and didn't believe the earth was billions of years old?

Before I address such a position I have to be sure you really are saying something so incredibly asinine.

 

[Edmond]

Before we go any further, Edmond, are you really trying to tell me that you think that Gould was opposed to evolution and didn't believe the earth was billions of years old?

Before I address such a position I have to be sure you really are saying something so incredibly asinine.

There are two question you are asking with regard to Gould. The first is about evolution in general. The second is about billions of years

For the first, I have said several times on this thread that Gould's concept of Punctuated Equilibrium thoroughly refutes the debocle of Darwin's "original' assumptions about evolution. That is very clear in reading many aspects of Opus 200. But Gould would not dare state any abandonment of the basic assumption that evolution is possible at risk of being totally ostrasized from the ego of the entire evolutionary scienticific community. Even the voicigs of his conclusions about PE and Darwin's failed theory was bad enough....

"I showed our initial article to my father. He said, "This is terrific; it will really shake things up." I replied, "Nobody will read it, and no one will pay any attention." He was right. He usually was.

Punctuated equilibrium provoked a major brouhaha, still continuing, but now in much more productive directions."....(Opus 200)

No Gould did not reject evolution....but this is was he clearly states in his Opus 200 essay about the time needed for the theory of EP evolution to work.... This relates to your billions of years question...

“But now we come to the nub of punctuated equilibrium. Five to ten thousand years may be an eternity in human time, but such an interval represents an earthly instant in almost any geological situation—a single bedding plane (not a gradual sequence through meters of strata). Moreover, peripheral isolates are small in geographic extent and not located in the larger area where parents are living, dying, and contributing their skeletons to the fossil record.

What then is the expected geological expression of speciation in a peripherally isolated population? The answer is, and must be, punctuated equilibrium. The speciation event occurs in a geological instant and in a region of limited extent at some distance from the parental population. In other words, punctuated equilibrium—and not gradualism—is the expected geological translation for the standard account of speciation in evolutionary theory. Species arise in a geological moment—the punctuation (slow by our standards, abrupt by the planet's). They then persist as large and stable populations on substantial geological watches, usually changing little (if at all) and in an aimless fashion about an unaltered average—the equilibrium.” ……….

“Most of our paleontological colleagues missed this insight because they had not studied evolutionary theory and either did not know about allopatric speciation or had not considered its translation to geological time. Our evolutionary colleagues also failed to grasp the implication, primarily because they did not think at geological scales. But whatever the theoretical meaning of punctuated equilibrium, Niles and I were most pleased by its practical and heuristic value. We had reinterpreted the fossil record as an accurate reflection of evolution, rather than an embarrassment that made reality (read gradualism) invisible by its imperfections”. ………..



“I am confident that punctuated equilibrium does prevail as the primary molder of pattern in the fossil record. Others would disagree on the totality, but all would concur that punctuated equilibrium is a real and important phenomenon, and that many elegant studies of its operation have been published in the past two decades.” ………

“But my greatest pleasure has been the passage of punctuated equilibrium from a much debated theory to an ordinary instrument of active research. To cite just one example, a prominent criticism of punctuated equilibrium has held that the morphologically stable "entities" documented in the fossil record might not be true biological species by the proper definition of a population reproductively isolated from all others (breeding only among its members and not with others—a criterion of ultimate and permanent evolutionary independence). Perhaps, the critics say, many of these morphological "packages" hide several species of virtually identical body form, but differing in properties not preserved in the fossil record (color, behavior, and so on). Such so-called cryptic species are quite common in some groups. On the other hand, some packages might be only parts of highly variable species, with other geographically distant populations as portions of the same unit by proper reproductive criteria.” ……..


Here Gould clearly shows that the process of time needed to produce evolution based on PE, which matches what they see in the fossil record, is reduced dramatically to 1000's of years....not the traditional escape clause billions of years of time that has been used by evolutionary assumption for the past 125 + years to accomodate Darwin's ideas of common ancestry and his defunked idea of lomg ages of time and gradualism. ....

This means that the assumers of evolution who still want to cling to Darwin's 'original' assumptions that evolution was possible will now need abandon that idea and they will need to go back to their invented billions of years time clock and rework the gears to fit shorter periods of time or play the game of keeping both ideas about evolution to give them more options to play with as they try to prove this 'beguiling' assumption of evolution at all. .....

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[Loudmouth]

There are two question you are asking with regard to Gould. The first is about evolution in general. The second is about billions of years

For the first, I have said several times on this thread that Gould's concept of Punctuated Equilibrium thoroughly refutes the debocle of Darwin's "original' assumptions about evolution.

Please show me what Darwin assumed without evidence. Then, show me what Darwin proposed, in his own words.

Here Gould clearly shows that the process of time needed to produce evolution based on PE, which matches what they see in the fossil record, is reduced dramatically to 1000's of years....not the traditional escape clause billions of years of time that has been used by evolutionary assumption for the past 125 + years to accomodate Darwin's ideas of common ancestry and his defunked idea of lomg ages of time and gradualism. ....

You forgot to mention that Gould also proposed longer time periods during which morphology was stabilised.

This means that the assumers of evolution who still want to cling to Darwin's 'original' assumptions that evolution was possible will now need abandon that idea and they will need to go back to their invented billions of years time clock and rework the gears to fit shorter periods of time or play the game of keeping both ideas about evolution to give them more options to play with as they try to prove this 'beguiling' assumption of evolution at all. .....

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No one used Darwin's work to propose that life has evolved over billions of years. Geology is the science that dates fossils, not Evolution. Secondly, Darwin proposed long, slow, and steady rates of evolution. Gould proposes long periods of stasis interspersed with periods of increased evolution. Can you please show me where either theory supports or refutes a 4.5 billion year old earth or the fact that life has been on this planet and changing for 3.5 billion of those years?

The theory of evolution explains why changes seen in the fossil record occurred. The theory of evolution does not say that life HAD to change over billions of years. This was already solid fact, that life had changed over billions of years. The theory of evolution, and more specifically Punctuated Equilibria, explains the mechanisms that caused these changes seen in the fossil record over a span of 3.5 billion years. Darwin proposed that it was a steady, unchanging, glacier like movement from one evolutionary step to the next. Gould proposed that it was more like skipping, a stop and start sort of mechanism. Both Darwin and Gould use descent with modification followed by natural selection. Gould had the benefit of known mechanisms of heredity, so he was able to model populations and discover the fact that smaller populations can evolve faster and then replace the parent species.

 

[Karl - Liberal Backslider]

Edmond. You have misunderstood Gould.

Gould suggests that speciation takes place in a short geological time. He never, absolutely never, suggested that the geologists' findings regarding the age of the earth, and specifically the age of given fossils.

You seem to be taking on board the "punctuated" part of punk-eek and forgetting the "equilibrium".

Finally, I should add that your use of "debunked" with regard to the "long ages" as you term them of established geological time scales is disingenuous, since they have not been debunked and are accepted by the overwhelming majority of scientists of all disciplines, including Gould.

Thing is, Gould did not replace Darwin's model. He refined it. Indeed, he possibly over-egged his pudding (which is where you may have been misled) as Kenneth Miller points out in Finding Darwin's God (essential reading for this debate); Darwin never tied himself to a constant rate of evolutionary change.

 

[Edmond]

[/color]

Please show me what Darwin assumed without evidence. Then, show me what Darwin proposed, in his own words.



You forgot to mention that Gould also proposed longer time periods during which morphology was stabilised.




No one used Darwin's work to propose that life has evolved over billions of years. Geology is the science that dates fossils, not Evolution. Secondly, Darwin proposed long, slow, and steady rates of evolution. Gould proposes long periods of stasis interspersed with periods of increased evolution. Can you please show me where either theory supports or refutes a 4.5 billion year old earth or the fact that life has been on this planet and changing for 3.5 billion of those years?

The theory of evolution explains why changes seen in the fossil record occurred. The theory of evolution does not say that life HAD to change over billions of years. This was already solid fact, that life had changed over billions of years. The theory of evolution, and more specifically Punctuated Equilibria, explains the mechanisms that caused these changes seen in the fossil record over a span of 3.5 billion years. Darwin proposed that it was a steady, unchanging, glacier like movement from one evolutionary step to the next. Gould proposed that it was more like skipping, a stop and start sort of mechanism. Both Darwin and Gould use descent with modification followed by natural selection. Gould had the benefit of known mechanisms of heredity, so he was able to model populations and discover the fact that smaller populations can evolve faster and then replace the parent species.

You know Loudmouth, I might as well be direct. It seems that most of what you're saying here sounds a geart deal like double-talk. I'm sure you know the meaning of 'KISS'. It would be a good lesson for many of those who try their darndest to make somethings sound so complex...and as Gould has said.. of Darwin's assumptions about evolution...."beguiling".

The whole concept of modern evolution has been based on a sea of assmptions from its being. A few guys took those presuppositions with them to the science table and said...Now let's prove it to be be true. The whole scheme was based on presupposition from the get go. It NEVER had any true scientific foundational information from the day it was born. It still doesn't. It has been like an orphan without a father saying ...Prove that I exist...Prove that I am real. The whole thing is the imaginary alternate theory to traditional beliefs that Darwin, Lyell and a few more dreamed up. So stop trying to intellectually double talk it into some form of rationalistic deduction. It will never happen.

Modern evolution serves its purposes as a two-edged sword. It has served as the ego pedestal for such of the scientific community. Yet in reality it has actually become its Achilles heel. I doubt their ego will ever allow them to recognize or admit that until it is way too late.

The other edge of its sword has become the escape mechanism for those who wish to have an alternative belief in the origins of life and of man to that of traditional Biblical teaching. It will eventually also prove to be their Achilles heel. Those are the premises by which the idea of evolution is sustained.

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[Karl - Liberal Backslider]

It NEVER had any true scientific foundational information from the day it was born. It still doesn't.

ERVs

I'll let the others chime in with all the other evidence for it. You're blowing smoke.

 

[Physics_guy]

Did I just read that Edmond believes that Gould thought that the accepted 4.5 billion year age of the Earth is wrong? Edmond do you really think Gould was supporting YEC? Have you actually read what they guy said about creationists? He actually said quite a bit about them - none of it flattering.

This is arguably the most assinine thread on this board. I would say that it was bad taste to besmirch the name of a dead guy like this, accept that I don't think anyone with two brain cells to rub together would actually believe Edmond's incredible misinterpretations of Gould's work (hint Edmond: Gould was one of the most vocal anti-creationist scientists and was a major popularizer and explainer of the Theory of Evolution).

 

[Edmond]

Did I just read that Edmond believes that Gould thought that the accepted 4.5 billion year age of the Earth is wrong? Edmond do you really think Gould was supporting YEC? Have you actually read what they guy said about creationists? He actually said quite a bit about them - none of it flattering.

I read the words of the man. They're clear. They're direct about how much time is needed when compared to billions of years. The difference between thousands and billions is massive. If you want to turn what he says into an acronym or label that is the anti-thesis to what evolution proposes you may do so if you wish....

This is arguably the most assinine thread on this board. I would say that it was bad taste to besmirch the name of a dead guy like this, accept that I don't think anyone with two brain cells to rub together would actually believe Edmond's incredible misinterpretations of Gould's work (hint Edmond: Gould was one of the most vocal anti-creationist scientists and was a major popularizer and explainer of the Theory of Evolution).

Not actually.... This thread just presents information from someone in your own camp that as had the courage to call Darwin's assumption by what they have been all this time....fallacies that have turned into a hoax. That is the information you would hope to render as assinine.

That's true, Gould was anti-creationist. That is part of what lends such credibility to the fact that he had the courage to also say that Darwin was wrong. His theory of PE is an effort to moderate Darwin's extreme into a concept that evolution could accept and still stay on its ego based evolutionary track. Read the entire essay if you truly wish to be informed by it. The thread of that realization is all over the place. What you actually have grown unaccustom to as an evolutionist is the true about the actual condition of its assumption for the past 100 years...

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[TeddyKGB]

I read the words of the man. They're clear. They're direct about how much time is needed when compared to billions of years. The difference between thousands and billions is massive. If you want to turn what he says into an acronym that is the anti-thesis to what evolution proposes you may do so if you wish....

This is like watching a train wreck. Except harder to believe and less fascinating.

 

[Loudmouth]

The whole concept of modern evolution has been based on a sea of assmptions from its being.

What are these assumptions that you keep speaking of? What are the preconceptions that are not supported by evidence?

I keep asking these questions and they are always ignored. Is this due to the fact that evolution is NOT based on assumptions devoid of evidence? I think so.

Modern evolution serves its purposes as a two-edged sword. It has served as the ego pedestal for such of the scientific community. Yet in reality it has actually become its Achilles heel. I doubt their ego will ever allow them to recognize or admit that until it is way too late.

Do you have anything other than assertions and and rhetoric?

 

[Loudmouth]

I read the words of the man. They're clear. They're direct about how much time is needed when compared to billions of years. The difference between thousands and billions is massive. If you want to turn what he says into an acronym that is the anti-thesis to what evolution proposes you may do so if you wish....

This is laughable. Again, you ignore the fact that Gould proposed millions of years of stasis in between thousands of years of change.

Not actually.... This thread just presents information from someone in your own camp that as had the courage to call Darwin's assumption by what they have been all this time....fallacies that have turned into a hoax. That is the information you would hope to render as assinine.

Not that it will stop you from lying again, but this is simply not true. Gould showed that punctuated equilibria was more common than phyletic gradualism.

That's true, Gould was anti-creationist. That is part of what lends such credibility to the fact that he had the courage to also say that Darwin was wrong. His theory of PE is an effort to moderate Darwin's extreme into a concept that evolution could accept and still stay on its ego based evolutionary track. Read the entire essay if you truly wish to be informed by it. The thread of that realization is all over the place. What you actually have grown unaccustom to as an evolutionist is the true about the actual condition of its assumption for the past 100 years...

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Everything you say here runs counter to what every scientist in the field understands PE to be. Eldredge and Gould formed their theory on positive evidence using the same mechanisms that Darwin proposed and the same evolutionary mechanisms that have been observed in living populations. There is simply no way to make PE say that the earth is less than 4.5 billion years old, no matter how much you twist the words. From NCSE:

It is the transition forms between species that are rare. These are the ones being referred to by Raup (1979, footnote 4), Gould (1977, footnotes 5, 6) and Stanley (1979, footnote 7) in the quotations given on p. 96 of Pandas. Although they may be rare, they are not completely nonexistent! Eldredge (1985, pp. 78 fol., 88) found two instances of transitional sequences between species of phacopid trilobites that he was studying. Williamson (1981) reported several cases of transitional forms between species in Cenozoic African fossil molluscan faunas. These instances corroborate the punctuated equilibrium model. Pandas' assertion (on p. 98) that punctuated equilibrium rests entirely on the absence of data is incorrect. The explanation for the "punctuated" changes is simply allopatric speciation by natural selection in small peripheral populations (Eldredge, 1985, pp. 85, 118). This is not a fanciful alternative to neo-Darwinism, but a mechanism discussed in detail by Mayr (1963) who considered it a part of modern neo-Darwinism (Mayr, 1967; Sonleitner, 1987). Dawkins (1986, pp. 250-251) considers punctuated equilibrium a minor modification of neo-Darwinism.

 

[Edmond]

[/color]

What are these assumptions that you keep speaking of? What are the preconceptions that are not supported by evidence?

Its very simple and straight forward Loudmouth, what Darwin assumed to be true about his concept of what the evidence of evoluiton was supposed to present was false. That is kniown as an an assumption.

I keep asking these questions and they are always ignored. Is this due to the fact that evolution is NOT based on assumptions devoid of evidence? I think so.[/color]

Do you have anything other than assertions and and rhetoric?

Answered above.... The problem you are having is that Gould has made some very derogatory remaks about the assumptions of one of the founder god's of the modern evolution revolution. That casts doubt on the credibility of a system of BELIEF that millions of people present as their basic philosophy for all of life. It accacks their belief system. That is the real problem you are having with this information...or any information that does so.

The one major differences between a belief in creation and a belief in evolution is this. ALL that the belief in evolution has to stand on is found in its assumption that are attempted to be estabilish in scientific 'credibility'. When the allusion of such credibility is refuted or attacked in any way, the whole house of cards is in danger of falling and in most cases defensive panic ensues.

A belief in creation, unlike that of evolution, does not rely on the citidels of science to justify its presence or its survival. It was around long before the god of evolutionary science was ever invented. It is based on a faith that lives within. It is not a blind faith. It is a faith whose documentation matches ALL of what we see in the real world. It doen't need to fabricate a science to affirm its authenticity. The authenticity of every subject on which it speaks is affrimed all around us .... always.

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[Loudmouth]

[/color]Its very simple and straight forward Loudmouth, what Darwin assumed to be true about his concept of what the evidence of evoluiton was supposed to present was false. That is kniown as an an assumption.

I will say it very slowly. What . . . are . . . those . . . assumptions?



Answered above.... The problem you are having is that Gould has made some very derogatory remaks about the assumptions of one of the founder god's of the modern evolution revolution.[/quote]

As soon as you show me what Darwin assumed, then we can figure out if Gould made derogator remarks.

I beg of you, please list the assumptions that Darwin, Gould, and other scientists are making.

 

[Edmond]

[/color]
I will say it very slowly. What . . . are . . . those . . . assumptions?

I will answer ....very....slowly using the exact words of one from your own camp to define the conclusions of Darwin that were assumption.

From essay...Opus 200

"Beguiled by this vision, [referring to Origin of Species and Darwin's assumptions of slow and graduale continuous changes over long periods of time and the fact that...' Darwin staked his whole argument on this proposition:' ,also qouting Gould in context from Opus 200. [added for reference and clearification].) most paleontologists envisioned new species as arising by the insensibly slow and steady change of entire populations over long stretches of time, even by geological standards—a notion known as gradualism. Under this model, "the species problem in paleontology"—I put the phrase in quotes because it then resounded through our literature as a catechism—centered upon the difficulty of stating where ancestral species A ended and descendant species B began in such a continuously graded transition (the problem, so formulated, has no objective answer, only an arbitrary one).
And yet, while thus stating the issue in general writings, all paleontologists knew that the practical world of fossil collecting rarely imposed such a dilemma. The oldest truth of paleontology proclaimed that the vast majority of species appear fully formed in the fossil record and do not change substantially during the long period of their later existence (average durations for marine invertebrate species may be as high as 5 to 10 million years). In other words, geologically abrupt appearance followed by subsequent stability."

That defines Darwin's 'notion', his assmption. In fact, more clearly, it was his false assumption, as identfied by the findings of ALL PALEONTOLOGISTS...again according to Gould's own words.

Answered above.... The problem you are having is that Gould has made some very derogatory remaks about the assumptions of one of the founder god's of the modern evolution revolution.

As soon as you show me what Darwin assumed, then we can figure out if Gould made derogator remarks.

I beg of you, please list the assumptions that Darwin, Gould, and other scientists are making.

I believe this assumption should prove quite subsantial enough to begin with. Please ... begin to figure.

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[rjw]

[/color]

Its very simple and straight forward Loudmouth, what Darwin assumed to be true about his concept of what the evidence of evoluiton was supposed to present was false. That is kniown as an an assumption.



Answered above.... The problem you are having is that Gould has made some very derogatory remaks about the assumptions of one of the founder god's of the modern evolution revolution. That casts doubt on the credibility of a system of BELIEF that millions of people present as their basic philosophy for all of life. It accacks their belief system. That is the real problem you are having with this information...or any information that does so.

The one major differences between a belief in creation and a belief in evolution is this. ALL that the belief in evolution has to stand on is found in its assumption that are attempted to be estabilish in scientific 'credibility'. When the allusion of such credibility is refuted or attacked in any way, the whole house of cards is in danger of falling and in most cases defensive panic ensues.

A belief in creation, unlike that of evolution, does not rely on the citidels of science to justify its presence or its survival. It was around long before the god of evolutionary science was ever invented. It is based on a faith that lives within. It is not a blind faith. It is a faith whose documentation matches ALL of what we see in the real world. It doen't need to fabricate a science to affirm its authenticity. The authenticity of every subject on which it speaks is affrimed all around us .... always.

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Gidday Edmond,

I accept that evolution explains both what occurred and what does occur. In what sense then, does this mean that evolution is a “BELIEF that … … present as [my] basic philosophy for all of life”?

A belief in creation, unlike that of evolution, does not rely on the citidels of science to justify its presence or its survival. It was around long before the god of evolutionary science was ever invented. It is based on a faith that lives within. It is not a blind faith.

Every scientific theory relies “the citidels (sic) of science to justify its presence or its survival.” – name one theory that does not.

Any belief that “God did it” or that “the gods did it” was around long before any scientific description of the same phenomenon.

If any person believes that God did it or that a god or gods did it, regardless of any evidence, then of course it is “based on a faith that lives within”. Given that some people still accept that the earth is flat and to believe otherwise is ungodly, then you also accept that the earth is flat and not spherical? After all, the notion that the earth is spherical relies on scientific evidence, not just faith.

It is a faith whose documentation matches ALL of what we see in the real world. It doen't need to fabricate a science to affirm its authenticity. The authenticity of every subject on which it speaks is affrimed all around us .... always.

Does your claim apply to every faith which declares that it is not “blind”? Or does your claim only apply to your faith?

In what sense did ToE fabricate a science? That Gould disagreed with Darwin on one important aspect of evolution (its rate of change), hardly means that a science was fabricated, does it? So can you explain what you mean here?


Regards, Roland

 

[Loudmouth]

[/color]
I will answer ....very....slowly using the exact words of one from your own camp to define the conclusions of Darwin that were assumption.

From essay...Opus 200

"Beguiled by this vision, [referring to Origin of Species and Darwin's assumptions of slow and graduale continuous changes over long periods of time and the fact that...' Darwin staked his whole argument on this proposition:' ,also qouting Gould in context from Opus 200. [added for reference and clearification].) most paleontologists envisioned new species as arising by the insensibly slow and steady change of entire populations over long stretches of time, even by geological standards—a notion known as gradualism.

This is a proposition, not an assumption. I ask again, where are the assumptions?

That defines Darwin's 'notion', his assmption. In fact, more clearly, it was his false assumption, as identfied by the findings of ALL PALEONTOLOGISTS...again according to Gould's own words.

I believe this assumption should prove quite subsantial enough to begin with. Please ... begin to figure.

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It was not an assumption, it was a proposition that Darwin put forth that was tested. Gould and others, through testing of the proposition, have shown that it is not a good proposition.

Let's go to the dictionary and see how it defines assumption and proposition (www.m-w.com as a source):

assumption: a fact or statement (as a proposition, axiom, postulate, or notion) taken for granted.

proposition: 1a (1) : something offered for consideration or acceptance
2a: an expression in language or signs of something that can be believed, doubted, or denied or is either true or false.

So we have "assumed" which is to be understood as true in a metaphysical sense, and "proposed" which is a theory offered for consideration and is not considered to be either true or false. These seem like contradictory terms, yet you use them as if they mean the same thing.

Suffice it to say, you have no shown me a single assumption that Darwin used that Gould disagreed with. Gould did disagree with Darwin's propositions, but strangely enough you have not shown me these assumptions that you speak of.

 

[Edmond]

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This is a proposition, not an assumption. I ask again, where are the assumptions?





It was not an assumption, it was a proposition that Darwin put forth that was tested. Gould and others, through testing of the proposition, have shown that it is not a good proposition.

Let's go to the dictionary and see how it defines assumption and proposition (www.m-w.com as a source):
assumption: a fact or statement (as a proposition, axiom, postulate, or notion) taken for granted.

proposition: 1a (1) : something offered for consideration or acceptance
2a: an expression in language or signs of something that can be believed, doubted, or denied or is either true or false.
So we have "assumed" which is to be understood as true in a metaphysical sense, and "proposed" which is a theory offered for consideration and is not considered to be either true or false. These seem like contradictory terms, yet you use them as if they mean the same thing.

Suffice it to say, you have no shown me a single assumption that Darwin used that Gould disagreed with. Gould did disagree with Darwin's propositions, but strangely enough you have not shown me these assumptions that you speak of.

You're now resorting to playing with word games Loudmouth. Darwin presented a proposition based on an assumption. His belief of what would be found was a fasle assumption. ....

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