Re: RE: The YECs continue

On Fri, 12 Nov 2004 17:46:44 -0500 "ed babinski" <ed.babinski@furman.edu>
writes:
> I am amazed that the creationists keep trying to divert attention
> away
> from the plain evidence for evolutionary changes by crying out
> against the
> power of mutations. Heck, if they want, then become theistic
> evolutionists and believe that God guided each mutation, who cares?
> Not
> very much work for God really, since all mammalian genomes contain
> so many
> similar genes, even mice and humans. The creationists keep bringing
> up
> "mutations" to divert attention away from the actual evidence for
> changes
> over time of land animals into sea going critters, regardless of the
> exact
> means by which it was accomplished. And that's the basic definition
> of
> evolution, changes over time, diverging species. Darwinism is the
> only
> means that we can actually study, like studying mutation rates and
> seeing
> what little changes in the genome would have had to have taken
> place, and
> comparing frequencies of reproduction in modern species. But
> agreeing
> that Darwinism explains everything is not necessary in order to be
> an
> evolutionist. Just ask Michael Denton, who panned "common descent"
> but
> now accepts it, though his first book was titled, Evolution: A
> Theory in
> Crisis.
>
>

I found an interesting comment in a review of Ernst Mayr's recent /What
Makes Biology Unique?/ in /Science/, 22 October, p. 614. He notes that
there are "five independent theories" espoused by Darwin: transformation
in time, common descent, gradualism, multiplication of species and
natural selection. I find some ambiguity in the rejection of evolution by
flood geologists among these five. For example, some claim that only one
pair of a genus or family were taken aboard the Ark, so that all the
species now extant differentiated from that pair in a thousand years or
so. For example, horse, /Equus caballus/, and ass, /E. asinus or
hemionus/, were known to Abraham. This is evolution somewhat beyond flank
speed, to borrow a naval term.

I am reminded of a philosophy prof who loved to misquote Emerson:
"'Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,' and they don't want to
be small."
Dave
Received on Sat Nov 13 14:43:36 2004