From: John W Burgeson (jwburgeson@juno.com)
Date: Thu Aug 28 2003 - 13:34:20 EDT
David wrote: "Ironically, I just received an e-mail from the Discovery
Institute looking for additional PhDs to sign on their petition
questioning evolution. The original is at
http://www.discovery.org/articleFiles/PDFs/100ScientistsAd.pdf
I do not know what proportion of their 100 are in the life sciences or
related fields, but it does point to one specific source of misleading
information about the general views among scientists (by not reporting
how many disagree with their statement)."
The problem here may turn on the phrase "questioning evolution." It seems
to me that questioning the "fact" of evolution is quite different than
questioning the fact of gravitation, or the (roughly) spherical earth, or
even the general concepts of relativity and quantum mechanics. All of
these are demonstratable empirically, by experiments and observations in
the present time. But the GTOE (Grand Theory of Everything) that the word
"evolution" often points to is not of this nature -- the evidence is much
more circumstantial. Even if "evolution" just means "common descent from
a single ancestor," I suggest that it can be questioned -- polygenic
ancestry has not been disproven.
The other problem is, of course, people citing the results of such a
petition with the assumption that anyone "questioning" must consider the
evolutionary theories as being of no use. This, of course, isn't so.
Burgy
www.burgy.50megs.com
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