Nexus Magazine Article on Darwinism

by Robdar 5 Replies latest jw friends

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  Robdar

  I was surfing and came across this article on the Nexus Home page. I would be interested in reading your opinion.

  http://www.nexusmagazine.com/Darwinism.1.html

  Edited by - robdar on 29 December 2002 6:53:19
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  ExpandedMind

  Hi!

  I have read a little about this theory and it is kind of interesting. Actually I think this theory was played out in a recent movie called Mission to Mars.

  Lately I have been curious if there is any other scientific theory on the origin of life that is different from either evolution or creation. The teaching of evolution permeates everything... if a new theory was advanced (not meaning creationism) that shed some doubt on evolution, you wonder if it would or could be accepted.

  ExpandedMind

  "The mind, once expanded to the dimensions of larger ideas, never returns to its original size." --- Oliver Wendell Holmes
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  AlanF

  Pye appears quite ignorant of what Darwinism is all about. Darwinism is not equivalent to what many people think of as "evolution as a whole". Darwinism is not a theory about the origin of life itself, but about how life changes once brought into existence. Darwin himself made that clear in his first book. Thus, anyone who rags on Darwinism's lack of ability to explain the origin of life is simply ignorant. There are other theories -- not very good -- about the origin of life.

  Pye's comments about geology and so forth are fairly typical of the writings of ignorant amateurs. For example, he says that 4.0 billion years ago the earth was still a ball of cooling magma. Yet he describes fossil bacteria found in the rocks. He is quite unaware that bacteria fossils cannot be preserved in liquid magma, and that bacteria of any sort cannot live in it, and that the fossils were actually found in sedimentary rock which would not exist on a ball of cooling magma. This sort of gross ignorance inspires no confidence in anything else he claims.

  Moreover, Pye's notion of "terraformers" suffers from exactly the same problem he complains about with respect to "Darwinism": How did his terraformers originate? Naturally or by intelligent creation? At some point, you have to bite the bullet and stop somewhere. Like most crackpots, he seems unaware of this gaping hole in his theory.

  AlanF
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  Realist

  not very convincing.

  a) he states things without any references...anyone can makeup things and change facts.

  b) noone claims that archae and eubacteria emerged at the same time. and what he states about the cambrian explosion is also inaccurate http://www.palaeos.com/Ecology/Radiations/CambrianExplosion.html

  c) his alternative of extraterrestrians bringing new lifeforms is at best weird.
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  Robdar

  Thanks, guys, for your input. I must admit that Darwinism is not something that I understand completely. The article did intrigue me, though.

  I have been planning a short trip to Amsterdam next March for my website and was thinking about purchasing a ticket to the Nexus convention. Now I am thinking it would just be a waste of time.

  Thanks again.

  Robyn
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  rem

  We begin by understanding that Charles Darwin stood on a very slippery slope when trying to explain how something as biologically and biochemically complex as even the simplest form of life could have spontaneously generated itself from organic molecules and compounds loose in the early Earth's environment. Because that part of Darwin's theory has always been glaringly specious, modern Darwinists get hammered about it from all sides, including from the likes of me, with a net result that the edifice of "authority" they've hidden behind for 140 years is crumbling under the assault.

  Not surprisingly, the author doesn't seem to provide any references to back up this claim.

  In 1972, (the late) Stephen J. Gould of Harvard and Niles Eldredge of the American Museum of Natural History went ahead and bit the bullet by announcing that fact to the world. Gradual evolution simply was not borne out by the fossil record, and that fact had to be dealt with. Darwin's view of change had to be modified. It wasn't a gradual, haphazard process dictated by random, favourable mutations in genes. It was something else.

  Wow, this is just as sad and ignorant statement. Pseudoscientists just love taking real scientists words horribly out of context. This is also a common, yet flawed, Creationist 'argument'.

  Yeah, this guy really knows what he's talking about. lol

  rem

  Edited by - rem on 29 December 2002 16:4:26