you really think the stories are mutually exclusive? i think one just goes into detail about the actual creation while the other focuses more on the story of Adam & Eve.
The maternal line descends through the mitochondrial DNA (mitochondria are simply bacteria that were engulfed by a eukaryote billions of years ago) and the male's line descends through the Y chromosome. Unfortunately there are screwy things that go on at the Y chromosome... so the male line isn't terribly useful for population genetics on a long time period. Also, just to be clear, she wasn't Eve... she was a member of a breeding population. Its simply a probablistic event that eventually these mtDNA matrilines die out (women have boys... or their daughters only have boys... or their daughters die) and the line of descent is lost. ie, If your grandma only had boys, her mtDNA line would be lost... it doesn't mean that she didn't exist or that we could infer that she didn't exist when her cousin that had a few girls pushed her own mtDNA further.
hey giddyup, aside from my rude remarks last week, I've always felt that we got along. Hell, I think I first took note of you a year or so ago when I tried to defend you in an argument w/ Refman. that b*stard Refman. j/k j/k
SmeggySmeg, the reference to the one and only Hawkman was long overdue. His album "A Brief History of Rhyme" is so, um, dope, or what-have-you.
I agree with you ACHEBE 100% After reading what you have said I honestly fill uneducated You are one highly educated person is all I can say. My view is simple if there was no GOD or religion in this world there would be chaos. There are to many people that are scared to think that there is no purpose in life. We are born and then we die PERIOD. No magic place in the clouds for the good and Horrible burning place for the bad. The only religion I have thought would be cool would be the one were you die and get 70 virgin's NOW that would be nice.
that statement is fine and dandy, as long as you realize it takes just as much faith to reach that conclusion as it does to say there is a Creator.
Achebe -- you're certainly extremely intelligent...but I'll go with John Glenn on this one! They take their faith into orbit By MARK O'KEEFE Copyright 2003 Newhouse News Service RICK HUSBAND When Rick Husband, commander of the shuttle Columbia, looked out the window of his spacecraft, he saw what he called God's awe-inspiring creation. Crew member Michael Anderson, who earned two physics degrees, believed that heaven, not space, was his final frontier. Their faith may come as a surprise to those who think science and religion are on irreconcilable paths. The spiritual lives of these astronauts and thousands of scientists reveal a journey in which religion enhances and supports scientific discovery. The space program has a long history of astronauts who have boldly taken their faith into orbit. And even as Americans grapple with the thorniest of issues dividing religion and science, including the question of creation and evolution, several national organizations have emerged for those seeking to combine careers in science with their faith in God. "I find my appreciation of science is greatly enriched by religion," said Francis Collins, an evangelical Christian who heads the National Human Genome Research Institute, in an interview with Beliefnet, a Web site devoted to spiritual topics. "When I discover something about the human genome, I experience a sense of awe at the mystery of life, and say to myself, `Wow, only God knew before.' It is a profoundly beautiful and moving sensation, which helps me appreciate God and makes science even more rewarding for me." In 1958, NASA's first seven astronauts were introduced at a news conference, where John Glenn said, "I got on this project because it'll probably be the nearest thing to heaven I'd ever get, and I wanted to make the most of it." In 1962, Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth. In 1998, at age 77, Glenn returned to space, on the shuttle Discovery, and said, "To look out at this kind of creation and not believe in God is to me impossible." The Apollo 8 crew celebrated the first flight around the moon by reading from Genesis, the first book of the Bible, which gives the creation account. The first meal on the moon was Holy Communion, taken by Buzz Aldrin. Religion was a presence on board Columbia in its final mission. Although he didn't observe Jewish dietary laws on Earth, Ilan Ramon, the first Israeli on a shuttle mission, ate kosher foods in space and carried a palm-size Torah scroll. On Jan. 28, at 11:39 a.m. EST, the Columbia crew bowed their heads in reverent silence to honor the exact moment the space shuttle Challenger had exploded in the skies 17 years earlier. Husband, an engineer whose first flight aboard a shuttle occurred in 1999, had told the Fresno (Calif.) Bee in November: "I am a strong believer and a Christian. I look out that window at what a beautiful creation God has made." Husband and his crewmate Anderson were both members, with their families, of Grace Community Church in the Clear Lake area. Anderson, who became interested in space exploration while watching the television series Star Trek and had been an Air Force pilot, put faith at the center of who he was, said his father, Bobbie Anderson. "Even now, with what happened, I can feel assured that by his being a Christian man, he's in a better place," Bobbie Anderson said outside his home in Spokane, Wash. Only a few scientists become astronauts. But many describe their work with the same awe-struck terms the astronauts use. "The actual study of science and nature is likely to lead a practitioner to a sense of wonder and human smallness in the presence of a very great mind indeed. Many would say, for instance, that there is hardly any more glorious example of God's genius in creation than the way evolution works," said science writer Kitty Ferguson, author of a new book on Johannes Kepler, the 17th-century German Lutheran who discovered the laws of planetary motion that now bear his name. Evolution -- a tenet of 20th-century science -- can be a great divide. Some scientists embrace an "intelligent design" theory or other scientific explanations allowing for a creator. Others reconcile faith and science by maintaining, in Collins' words, that "a creator God set the process" of evolution in motion. And while scientists are sometimes suspicious of men and women of faith in their midst -- "The standard assumption is that anyone with faith has gone soft in the head," Collins told Beliefnet -- people of faith are sometimes hostile to scientists. Don Monroe, executive director of the 2,400-member American Scientific Affiliation, recalled how, as a graduate student studying cellular physiology in the mid-1960s, his pastor told him he couldn't understand how a Christian could become a biologist. "It made me gasp," said Monroe, who lives in Ipswich, Mass., where his organization is located. "I went home and thought about that, and I've continued to think about that for more than 30 years." The ASA, a support group for evangelicals in science, is evidence that Monroe has company in his journeys down the paths of faith and science. The Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences, in Berkeley, Calif., also grapples with ontological questions. And since 1995, the American Association for the Advancement of Science has had a "Dialogue on Science, Ethics and Religion" that reaches out to religious communities. The group is the world's largest general scientific society and the publisher of Science magazine.
It took science to get John Glenn into the position in space where he could make that statement. And that's an irrefutable fact.
Thanks Duck, MadMax. You guys are too kind. MadMax, John Glenn is an amazing, amazing man. He reminds me of my grandfather... which is probably the largest compliment that I could ever give a man. I am in awe of someone with so much humility and so much inquisitiveness. He has to be the man of the twentieth century (next to my grandpa). He's certainly the greatest American hero.
Let me see if I can kill this thread... _____________________ Unexpected Evolution of a Fish Out of Water By CAROL KAESUK YOON, NYTimes It all began on that fateful day when one fish evolved legs. Suddenly transformed from a silver swimmer into a bold pioneer, this creature stood on the threshold of what would become an explosion of evolutionary diversification. But this flowering of forms would be played out, not in the muck of primordial seashores, but on automobiles. This is the story of two small, plastic, adhesive plaques and all that came forth and multiplied after them: the Jesus fish and the Darwin fish. Familiar to drivers everywhere, car fish and their spawn are the soldiers in an evolutionary arms race that has given rise to a host of strange new creatures and what some say is an entirely new form of self-expression. This menagerie is not only diverse, but highly prolific — and profitable. Taxonomists of car fish say that the Darwin fish alone reproduces at a rate of some 75,000 new fish a year, worth nearly half a million dollars, retail. The fish has long been a Christian symbol. Long before there were automobiles, legend has it, the fish was scratched in the sand by persecuted first-century Christians as a secret sign. Different explanations are offered for why the fish became such a widespread Christian symbol. One is that the first letters of the Greek words for "Jesus Christ, God's Son, Savior," form an acrostic that is the Greek word for fish. The mists of history may obscure exactly when and where car fish first appeared, but in the modern era it is clear that by the 1980's a fish drawn simply with two curved lines containing the word "Jesus" had colonized numerous cars as a symbol of Christian belief. By the late 1980's, however, a new generation had emerged in mutant form. At first glance, the new fish appeared the same, until one looked closer and saw that the fish said Darwin inside and had two feet sticking out from below, apparently trumpeting the car owner's belief in evolution. The response to the new fish was swift and sure. A Truth fish could soon be seen devouring a Darwin fish. Or sometimes a Darwin fish could be spotted upside down on a car, its little legs poking into the air, dead. Evolution, whether natural or otherwise, is notoriously difficult to stop. Eventually car fish radiation produced the Evolve fish, which is a tool-user (holding a wrench), the Gefilte fish, the Hindu fish (with an udder), the Pagan fish (ideal for the pagans who insist that the fish was stolen from them by the Christians, who are still fuming that the Darwin-enthusiasts stole it from them). There is even a flaming Satan fish. Some say they've spotted a shark that says Lawyer, a Rasta fish smoking a pipe and Lutefisk fish (a kind of cod soaked in lye — the haggis of Norway) as well as increasingly diverse and enigmatic car organisms like dolphins, dead fish, aliens and chili peppers. Aliens and hot peppers may not seem to have any direct connection to fish, but when it comes to plaques on cars evolution proceeds in leaps that are completely unpredictable, perhaps because of the kind of selective pressure at work. While natural selection drives biological change, the evolution of car fish seems to have been driven by ideological one-upsmanship at first, and then by market forces and irrepressible silliness. The newest species is the Sushi fish, a truly odd symbolic development in which the fish actually represents a fish. "We finally made one after thousands of people asked for it," said Gary Betchan, who is a co-owner of EvolveFISH, a Web site that sells an elaborate array of the creatures. "People are always coming up with a new twist. If we think we can sell them, we make it." Mr. Betchan, whose Web site also offers Nunzilla, a wind-up fire-breathing nun and a Wash Away Your Sins soap, says he is pursuing the car fish business for more than the money. "We are out to change the world," he said. "We want to make it a better place." So what exactly are people thinking when they stick these things on their cars? Dr. Tom Lessl may be the only one who knows. Dr. Lessl, who studies the use of symbols, is a professor in the speech communication department at the University of Georgia. He has undertaken a study of car fish, and wore out two pairs of shoes walking the nation's parking lots in search of them. Every time he found a Darwin fish, he left a survey form on the car. "There are two views," he said of the Darwin fish camp. "One group was openly hostile to traditional religious beliefs," he said, and the other seemed to believe in peaceful symbolic coexistence. Dr. Lessl said some Darwin fish owners had so much to say that some went well beyond the single page provided for answers to as many as three single-spaced typed pages. Some described the fish as a kind of defense, a way for persecuted atheists to fight back against the onslaught of religion, something like its first use by persecuted Christians. But, he said, he found many people who said they displayed the Darwin fish as a symbol of the harmonious coexistence of Darwinian ideas and religion. Dr. Lessl says such marriages of science and religion have been a familiar refrain since the days of the Enlightenment, one continuous intellectual movement that has led through the writings of Francis Bacon in the 17th century on up to plastic fish. Not surprisingly, the Darwin fish has stirred controversy around the question of the creator, specifically its creator. What agreement there is about who created the Darwin fish, a question that has been muddled by lawsuits, points to Chris Gilman, president of Global Effects Inc., which makes costumes and props for Hollywood. Mr. Gilman said he came up with the idea in the early 1980's when he was talking with some friends about how to promote evolution the way that religion promotes itself. "So I said you put feet on the Jesus fish," he said, "and people said, `Ha ha, that's funny.' People kept bugging me about making them for years." Eventually, Mr. Gilman had the fish manufactured and handed the whole enterprise off to a friend, Daphne Bianchi, president of Evolution Design Inc., which trademarked the Darwin fish. The rest is evolution.
All right then. I guess first I should say that I need to be more careful with my terms. As I said earlier, I have no problem with microevolution. As I understand it, it’s good science. Macroevolution otoh is a very loose theory at best, and simply a faith for many, IMO. It would more interesting, IMO, to talk about the grey zones in the theory, but we started this by talking about the faith of macroevolution and in given the rigidity of some of Achebe comments, we pretty well have to start there. Common sense and mundane, eh? Methinks he protests too much. Cohen’s post started me thinking. Do all macroevolutionists take it on faith as much as Achebe does? Probably not. There are probably some who are genuinely interested in the science of it, so let’s see if there are and what they have to say. Richard Dawkins of Oxford University is a noted evolutionist. Here’s what he says about the rock solid rock record. The Cambrian strata of rocks, vintage about 600 million years [evolutionists are now dating the beginning of the Cambrian at about 530 million years], are the oldest in which we find most of the major invertebrate groups. And we find many of them already in an advanced state of evolution, the very first time they appear. It is as though they were just planted there, without any evolutionary history. Needless to say, this appearance of sudden planting has delighted creationists (1986, p. 229, bracketed comment in orig.). Original source - Dawkins, Richard (1986), The Blind Watchmaker (New York: W.W. Norton). Colin Patterson is another noted evolutionist. Here’s what he adds: Fossils may tell us many things, but one thing they can never disclose is whether they were ancestors of anything else” (p. 109). Original source - Patterson, Colin (1999), Evolution (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press), second edition. The chief science writer for Nature, Henry Gee adds: We know that it is impossible when confronted with a fossil, to be certain whether it is your ancestor, or the ancestor of anything else, even another fossil. We also know that adaptive scenarios are simply justifications for particular arrangements of fossils made after the fact, and which rely for their justification on authority rather than on testable hypotheses (p. 127). Original source - Gee, Henry (1999), In Search of Deep Time (New York: Free Press). And yet for Achebe there is no dissent. There is no questioning the rock record, or anything else. A very strange position indeed for someone who claims to be all about empirical evidence. Maybe what Achebe really needs is a dictionary. Achebe was also being more than a little misleading when talking about timelines. As we’ve already seen, there was far from steady progressive “evolution.” Apart from the fact that the prominent evolutionists admit that species just seem to appear, the most dramatic changes occur over a much shorter time. Stephen Gould, another prominent evolutionist: Even the most cautious opinion holds that 500 million subsequent years of opportunity have not expanded the Cambrian range, achieved in just five million years. The Cambrian explosion was the most remarkable and puzzling event in the history of life Gould, Stephen J. (1994), “The Evolution of Life on Earth,” Scientific American, 271:85-91, October. 5 million years may still sound like a long time, but consider this. In the length of time that spans recorded history, no macroevolution has been recorded, yet in only 1000 times this time, there is said to have been HUGE changes involving millions and millions of complex cells and cell interactions evolving into a vast array of complex organisms. And the empirical evidence explaining this inconsistency is … non-existent. And finally, for now anyway, this comment was very telling I thought: Apart from the fact that we had an immediate response from a scientist on the board who believes in intelligent design, if you do a quick Google search on the name you will find a huge amount of material and many pro ID scientists. Are they really all liars and fools? Or is Achebe just trying to shout down all the opponents of his faith? And of course Achebe makes endless references to God. Why not throw in a little misdirection when you’re feeling a little shaky, eh? Achebe has claimed that macroevolution is above criticism and that it has been empirically proven to the point of being mundane. But as we have seen, even the top macroevolutionists themselves do not hold the blind faith in the theory that Achebe does. There are a number of other scientific works, Christian and non-Christian, that critique the theory further, but if Achebe won’t admit to even the objections that the top macroevolutionist admit to, I don’t think this discussion is going to go very far. For Achebe this is clearly more of a faith than an empirical science.
it took God to get John Glenn alive in the first place. I can always go back as far as "In the beginning...", Hertic!
Grizzled, you creationists are pretty good at taking quotes out of context. Hell, are you even reading Dawkins/Gould/etc. or is this from some fast-bs creationist website where you can get a ton of miscomprehension all in a second? I encourage you to send an email to Richard Dawkins and ask him what he thinks about evolution. Honestly, you're being silly. The man tries to be poetic in his work. Please email him your query, I'm sure that he'll respond. As far as Gould goes, unfortunately the guy passed last year. But honestly, read his damn work. The man believed in punctuated equilibrium... and he ridiculed adaptivism. He never for once doubted evolution. The man was an invertebrate paleontologist. And he constantly made comments re: the fact that the Cambrian explosion was a preservational phenomenon in the rock record (ie b/c of the evolution of chitin... if you have a carapace.... what can you do Grizzled? You can protect yourself from the next guy... but you will also be preserved a bit longer). Thanks for illustrating how it's all a big coverup on my behalf. Grizzled, all my best. But be sure, you're presenting the creationist rhetoric to a t. No science, quotes taken out of context to illustrate 'conflict in science'... awesome. I thought nova and discovery channel had driven you guys extinct.
Grizzled, I have to say that even when I read your last post I felt your examples were being used incorrectly. The guys you selected have written numerous works fully supporting evolution and fully rejecting creationism (not always in the same books, of course). I have not read huge amounts from these guys, but enough to know that those comments were taken out of context or, at least, without acknowledging their full weight (I am not saying you intentionally did this, mind you, just that wherever you got them did). It would be similar to taking a quote out of context from JS Mill to show conflict within the Utilitarian camp. Incidentally, achebe, I did a google search for a bit of the Dawkins quote and came up only with urls such as: darwinisdead.com intelligentdesign.com evolutionfairytale.com apologeticspress.org etc... I wonder if Dawkins knows that these guys are using him to promote creationism.
Golly, gone for a couple of days and this blows up into a thread "between" Grizzled and Achebe dueling over evolution versus creation. I was celebrating my 25th wedding anniversery (ain't love grand?? ), trying not to be a fossil, and on my return the question of academic freedom is pretty much buried here. I don't buy your argument, Refman. They may be state universities, but they are still UNIVERSITIES. They are not elementary, middle and high schools where the students have NO CHOICE, in the main, about what sort of education they get and who is the educator. It's up to their parents (and I have a daughter in first grade and a son in his first year of middle school) to make choices and do what they can to insure their kids get the education the parents want. At a university, as I'm sure you must remember, the student chooses the major(s) and classes they want to take (if they can get into them). They also have the choice to drop a class if they desire. They have choices and are expected to make them without a great deal of babysitting by the university. Professors have choices as well (not as many as they would like!). They are allowed choices when it comes to things like writing letters of recommendation for students who have taken their classes. The fool you seem "hellbent" on defending is raising this ruckus after taking TWO classes. I repeat, why didn't he just drop the class? He's done nothing to give the prof reason to write him a letter when he hasn't even completed the course. With all due respect, I'm disturbed over your seeming lack of regard for academic freedom. Go shout your message on the campus of UT. The response would be interesting.
rimbaud, I've heard a few people (Jared Diamond and one of my professors) talk about their words being taken out of context by fringe groups and they usually acknowledge that's just the way the game is played when the writer expects a relationship with a reader. The writer can't hold each reader's hand. Grizzled, I fear that our conversation is going nowhere b/c of the constraints that Ottamaton mentioned earlier. We're just playing a different game than one another. I am trying to represent to you what science has to say concerning this subject. You misrepresent evolutionary theorists opinions on the matter and then write my arguments off as to some belief system. You don't have a clue as to how the game is played. Scientists annihilate one another's work. We try to discern the truth. Creationists presuppose their world view and then try to put the data in that framework (a different type of modelling exercise indeed). There are actually plenty of arguments against the theories of Dawkins and Gould. Even though these arguments are 'in the tent', I say you should aggrandize those disagreements as to illustrate the conflict you're so anxious to see. That'd be cute.
Of course I’m taking these quotes from other places. You didn’t expect me to read all these last night do you? I took them from sites that are taking a wholly scientific perspective, and I provide you with original sources, so if you say these are taken out of context I would invite you to prove it. Don’t try to side-step the point. I introduced him as a macroevolutionist. I have no doubt that he feels that the preponderance of the evidence supports macroevolution. Whether it does or not is a separate question, however, because this is not your position. He, like most serious scientists who believe in macroevolution, acknowledges at least some of the holes, some of the inconsistencies. When you tried to pass it off as “gospel,” a slam dunk, mundane, you took what is quite obviously an unscientific, silly, easily refutable, position, and revealed your real approach to the question. “Everything about macroevolution theory is 100% correct. I will no acknowledge any flaws. Any objections must have been made by quacks, or taken out of context. The bib… er, theory is 100% flawless.” That isn’t a valid scientific position Achebe, no matter what theory or principle we’re taking about. It’s religion. Another side-step. Gould wasn’t the only one to question it, and are you really telling me that this preservation phenomenon just suddenly appeared? That this is a 100% explained situation? I have no doubt that I could dig up more macroevolutionists to refute that. I know nothing about the theory you speak of, but just from you claim that it’s “a fact” and not even a “current best theory” I can say with high certainty that far overstating the case. Side-step. Comment irrelevant to the discussion. I did not once call it a “big coverup.” Really Achebe, that’s a lame smear tactic if ever there was one. Once again, my position is that macroevolution is not the infallible theory that Achebe would have you believe it is. The obvious is that any claim that almost any theory is infallible is not a scientific position. Such a claim runs and hides from empirical evidence and rests only on faith. You will note that I have used no creationist rhetoric at all, yet in the end Achebe somewhat desperately tries to smear my position by characterising it this way. Is this a demonstration of scientific thinking? Of a position that’s all about empiricism? Obviously not. And that’s my point. Rimbaud: From my very first post in this thread I made it clear that I was not making an argument for creation, and I don’t feel I have done so. If you feel I have slipped up somewhere, please point it out to me. What I am discussing is the belief in macroevolution held by many that is essentially a faith position, and not science at all. I did not present evolutionists to argue for creation, and I really can’t see how you came to that conclusion. I presented them to show that even prominent macroevolutionists do not try to pass their theory as “gospel.” For Achebe every non-supportive quote is taken out of context and every objection is made by a quack or someone who is being disingenuous. You don’t need to know anything about macroevolution or even much about science to know that that position is a lot less about science and a lot more about faith.
Misdirection, misdirection and misdirection. You’re a good company man Achebe You’ll cling to your faith to the end and use any misdirection you can to support it. There’s really no where to go with that. I’m content to rest my case. Well, well! Achebe trying to sneak in the back door! Trying to introduce a hint of objectivity! Too late. We’ve already seen all too clearly what your real position is. I don’t have any more time to spend on this. I rest my case.
Grizzled, do you normally argue a point on a topic that you know nothing about? It's almost surreal for me to read your posts. I am in utter awe. We know that this is a preservational phenomena b/c fossils predate the phenomena. Luckily, landslides occur in submarine canyons. Those fossils that predate the PreCambrian/Cambrian divide are essentially little gooey critters. After that... everybody has a carapace. Are there alternative explanations other than the notion that chitin evolved? Sure! Let's test them!... in a scientific manner! BTW, why the shifting sand for you? We have observed plants, etc. speciate. You seem to equate questions in the rock record as to be questions with speciation. Do alternative arguments come out of the rock record? Sure! Does evolution not occur? Well, it has been observed. You have no case. I realize that it is imperative for your side of the coin to equate science with religion... to somehow legitimize religion... and thus set the stage for a flurry of literalist biblical translations. But, the little literalist biblical/argument from authority game has no place in science, Grizzled. Are there scientists that have a vested interest in their theories? Sure! Luckily, the way the game is played, the literature is structured as to decimate any and all theories that have no merit. Creationism isn't falsifiable. Every component of evolution is. Science is made up of people that try to improve upon the science through competition amongst one another. Aside from that little philosophy of science blurb, I appreciate the way you stepped back from your quotes out of context so quickly. The whole thing reminds me of a disagreement with my wife at the grocery store.... and then some fool walking up behind us and concluding that we don't care about one another. What utter nonsense. Do paleobiologists complain about some of their interpretations! Of course, and they should! Here's Patterson's reply to the quote that you've taken out of context: Dear Mr Theunissen, Sorry to have taken so long to answer your letter of July 9th. I was away for a while, and then infernally busy. I seem fated continually to make a fool of myself with creationists. The specific quote you mention, from a letter to Sunderland dated 10th April 1979, is accurate as far as it goes. The passage quoted continues "... a watertight argument. The reason is that statements about ancestry and descent are not applicable in the fossil record. Is Archaeopteryx the ancestor of all birds? Perhaps yes, perhaps no: there is no way of answering the question. It is easy enough to make up stories of how one form gave rise to another, and to find reasons why the stages should be favoured by natural selection. But such stories are not part of science, for there is no way to put them to the test." I think the continuation of the passage shows clearly that your interpretation (at the end of your letter) is correct, and the creationists' is false. That brush with Sunderland (I had never heard of him before) was my first experience of creationists. The famous "keynote address" at the American Museum of Natural History in 1981 was nothing of the sort. It was a talk to the "Systematics Discussion Group" in the Museum, an (extremely) informal group. I had been asked to talk to them on "Evolutionism and creationism"; fired up by a paper by Ernst Mayr published in Science just the week before. I gave a fairly rumbustious talk, arguing that the theory of evolution had done more harm than good to biological systematics (classification). Unknown to me, there was a creationist in the audience with a hidden tape recorder. So much the worse for me. But my talk was addressed to professional systematists, and concerned systematics, nothing else. I hope that by now I have learned to be more circumspect in dealing with creationists, cryptic or overt. But I still maintain that scepticism is the scientist's duty, however much the stance may expose us to ridicule. Yours Sincerely, [signed] Colin Patterson I didn't know of Patterson, and that's why I pursued this link in particular (ps, can you get some out of context quotes from real journals? these popular science writers (Gould/Dawkins) have a propensity to write flavorfully/poetically so as to make their material more digestable for the masses). Either way, Dawkins is supposed to be truly approachable, you should query him on your confusion as to that quote. A professor of mine, who is a friend of Dawkins... relayed to a number of us that "all Dawkins tried to do in those books was convey his awe of selection... and he ends up reading too casually...". That being said, argument from authority doesn't really go anywhere does it? It's not enough, nor should it be, to say "my crazy uncle down the street that has a PhD doesn't believe in evolution". Who cares what your uncle down the street says (those sorts of arguments only work between you literalists when you guys discuss your horses talking to people).
God, you honestly have no clue. Am I so incoherent? Anyone? How about a less than perfect analogy: Guys, if you and your wife are arguing in the store and someone comes up behind you and concludes that you guys don't love one another, what do you think of such a conclusion? The arguments between evolutionists aren't arguments about whether or not evolution occurs, but *mechanisms*. Sheez, you're weird.
