> chardin wrote:
>
> > Well, guys I hate to break it to you but it is still the THEORY of
> > evolution. You're putting too much faith in a few of your
> > priests.
> >
> > While we are at it, did any one see the Nova special a few years
> > ago about Johanson's finding of "Lucy?" My husband and I were
> > watching that show and learned some interesting things:
> >
> > 1) Lucy was not found all of a piece. She was found scattered
> > throughout the tundra--something like over a mile or more. She
> > was found in a ravine where other bones had washed down.
> >
> > 2) When Johanson tried to put the bones together they did not
> > fit. Why did they not fit? Brainstorm: must have been crushed
> > under tons of rocks for years and years--took both leg bones to
> > his shop and "sawed" them to make them fit. Did this right on
> > public TV. Must be a form of self-deception--didn't try to hide it
> > at all. Gave "saw bones" a new meaning.
> >
> > You've got n ape-woman alright. Ape bones and human bones all put
> > together in some sort of weird conglomeration--and you call this
> > science! It takes a lot of faith to believe this junk. There
> > was a time when I thought "Lucy" was found in proximity, all
> > together--maybe not as neatly as the petrified folks at Pompeii,
> > but I thought at least there was this creature whose bones, while
> > maybe not exactly together, were at least in a logical proximity
> > to one another--huh! But it is amazing when one wants to find
> > something so badly either for love of his work or for career
> > motiviations all things are possible, but could we apply some
> > reason here?
> >
> >
>
> You are wrong Chardin, Evolution is a fact, some particulars are a
> theory. We have witnessed evolution over and over again. In our
> sentient time here it has happened and is happening. We see it in
> everything from the smallest biological units, to human beings.
> You've got to get over the evolution thing, it is real.
>
> As for Lucy, she is now only one of many, and she is far pre-human -
> 4 million years or so. her existence alone, even pasted and chopped
> together is a lot closer to reality than thousands of years of
> hearsay and divine inspiration. The body of evidence is immense,
> even without Lucy. Polar bears alone have only existed since the
> last ice age when they evolved from Grizleys. Moths in the northern
> US have changed color to match pollution trends. Disease has evolved
> to defeat anti-biotics in weeks. In fact, small organisms constantly
> pick up DNA along the way of they lives, and add it to their own.
> Sometimes this is deadly, sometimes it causes a great leap in
> survival capabilities.
>
> I'm sorry if you don't like evolution, but it has been shown to be
> accurate in millions of independent investigations. you might as
> well argue that the Sun does not exist and is just in our
> imagination.
>
> No offense, but you need to put prejiduce aside to see it. Even the
> Pope believe in evolution. Also, many religious people can find
> space for evolution when taking the bible as a tool for
> understanding humanity, not reality.
>
> I truly do not wish to anger you
>
> Sodom
>
Sodom, you are not making me angry. We have been through too many
discussions for me to doubt your sincerity or motives at this point.
I bring up Lucy because to me, this is the type of contrivance that
is going on in "science" which causes the trouble. I have no beef
with one's attempts to discover the world of nature and its
processes. I think you can do this as an atheist, Hindu or
Christian. As I am sure you are aware, some of the earliest Natural
Philosophers, i.e., scientists were, in fact, Christians. The study of nature
is a legitimate enterprise.
I do not doubt that bugs will change colors to fit their
environments--and if this is all you mean by evolution, I have no
problem with it. However, when you say that a one-celled ogranism
changes into something as comlex as a human being, or an ape to a
human, then we have different creduality thresholds. Lucy is one
of the evolutionists' darlings--you're darling example ought to be
exemplary, wouldn't you think? So, there are millions and millions
of others you say--if you think biblical scholars can argue in
circles you ought to see scientists. Those millions and millions may
be kiting checks on an empty bank account. Do you know how many
people cited the works of Cyril Burke for 50 years, devising IQ
tests, shuttling children in Great Britain into inferior education
classes because Burke's work "proved" the hereditary influence of
intelligence? There were no doubt thousands of papers written on
this subject, all of them relying heavily on this man and his work.
Yet it took one good scientists 10 minutes to realize the papers
written by this man were false--50 years after the fact.
I stand by my other posting. At one time I was genuinely puzzled by
Lucy--the 2 million-year-old prehuman (when he first discovered her this was how hold
he said she was if memory serves me correctly--I even went to one of
his talks which he gave on our college campus when I was a young
woman--funny, but I don't recall his telling us then about sawing
Lucy's legs to make them fit). Be careful that you aren't sold a
bill of goods--you know people believed in Piltdown man for a long
time before it was revealed as a hoax, and I suspect that in the
not-too-distant future something you'd bank on as solid science will
be shown to have been built on the reputations of scientists rather
than solid fact. People will say, but how did we fall for it for so
long? How could all those scientists believe in such an idea?
I'm not saying this because of my biblical beliefs. For a long time,
I was like the pope--I thought you could carry your eggs in different
baskets and work them all together to make them fit. I think I read
somewhere that the Pope has no problem with evolution because he doesn't
take the 7 days of creation literally. Well, that is a logical and
neat handling of the problem, and I do not fault the Pope for that.
My problem is, I don't see enough evidence to make me even attempt to
a construct. The Pope believes in an authoritarian regimen or else
he would never have made Pope. I do not believe it. It must be
proven to me. Lucy, the evolutionary darling doesn't prove it.
There may be good proof elsewhere--but the shape of my nose is hardly
sufficient proof that we were once in the ocean. We might have all
been turkeys, apt to drown in the rainwater--thus, nature would have
saved us from our own stupidity.
I am just saying: be logical, be consistent, be rational--don't buy a
bunch of sawed up bones and stake your theories of reality on it.
Oh, as far as the the disease-resistance argument. You no doubt know
yourself that in the past it has taken about 40 years for
micro-organisms to become resistant to anti-biotics. This was
something predicted by those guys who came up with pencillin. In
fact, they suggested that anyone getting the drug should take it in
hospital and only for serious reasons in order to prevent that. Now, in the age
of the immunocompromised hosts, such organisms are finding a
hot-house environment in which to thrive and the process has sped up
tremendously. Almost none of the anti-biotic resistant strains are
found outside of the immunocompromised host, however, i.e., normal
healthy people have not yet shown a propensity to infection by these
organisms. That the organisms "evolve" proves that a form of "evolution" takes place in viruses and
microbes. Again, if this is all you mean by evolution, I do not
wish to dispute that, and no one who has a gripe with the
evolutionary theory has this sort of "evolution" in mind at all.
But it is my understanding that when DNA replicates, sometimes the
patterns aren't followed completely and one gets an anomaly, and the
theory of evolution stretches this to the point of claiming that it
is repeated time and again, becomes something
purposeful, new and more complex, i.e. primate to human. I can see a virus taking over a
cell and its DNA functions for its own survival purposes but not to
create a new, unique creature. So again, I would asked you to read
that article by Stout given above.
As always, I enjoy our encounters. Chardin