Re: [asa] True Scotsman fallacy - was Of m....

Dear flawed Iain, David, Gordon and Vernon (and others following this thread),
   
  Please excuse if I return to the comment posted earlier, which no one responded to, since it would presumably save some of the discussion about fallacies of fallicies by first discussing the language and meanings of evolution.
   
  Iain wrote: "And how do you define "true" evolution - at what point do you say an organism is more complex than another one?"
   
  Does this mean evolutoin to you is mainly about complexity? Of course, there are others for whom evolutoin is mainly about altruism, and others still for whom evolution is mainly about 'struggle for existence,' and for others still, it is about genetic drift, differentiation and adaptation, variation, mutations, etc. Natural scientists and social scientists apply this term 'evolution.'
   
  Is evolution an absolute or a relative term? Perhaps someone who attended (is attending) the ASA General Meeting would report on whether or not Uko Zylstra's paper this morning titled 'Evolution Wars: A Failure to Communicate' has helped in figuring this out.
   
  Personally, I would also argue there is no 'true evolution,' just as there is no 'true change.' What sort of nonsense is that?
   
  G. Arago
   
  p.s. Iain, just curious how far you would go to defend evolution, even the aspects of it that are used for those negative purposes that Vernon mentions, in order to protect the figure/scientist that appears on the 10 pound British note? Is Darwin more important for theology than Newton?
  

Iain Strachan <igd.strachan@gmail.com> wrote:
  I changed the title of this thread because I didn't like the "moral high ground" implications of the title. Besides which it begs the question "Who is the one with the mote in his eye and who is the one with the beam?"

                 
---------------------------------
Be smarter than spam. See how smart SpamGuard is at giving junk email the boot with the All-new Yahoo! Mail

To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
Received on Mon Jul 31 14:01:35 2006