On Jan 13, 2008 6:01 PM, boddi satva <lbo.boddi at gmail.com> wrote:
> Referring to Ron Paul's out-and-out rejection of science, Shane Mage wrote:
>
> "So what did he mean by "the theory of
> evolution?"
> Presumably the standard textbook "NeoDarwinian" explanation of the
> *fact* of evolution by gradual mechanical/ecological/statistical
> processes to the explicit exclusion of any factors implying
> consciousness or teleology. "
>
> Right, and that is not "Neo-Darwinism" but is the modern evolutionary
> synthesis. It's also the act of accepting that for which there is
> evidence (evolution as we understand it) and rejecting that for which
> there is no evidence at all (consciousness or teleology playing a role
> in evolution).
>
> "He rejects that theory, he says, because he believes that there was a
> Creator of the universe"
>
> No, he said he "know(s)" that there is a Creator, and that's different.
>
> " (and surely belief in a Big Banger is at least as
> reasonable a belief as belief in the Big Bang),"
>
> Not even close. Not even within the same intellectual Universe. The
> belief in a Big Bang jibes with observed physics down to many decimal
> places. The belief in a Creator requires you reject essentially all of
> science.
>
> "with the argument implicit that such a
> Creator would continue to exert a meaningful influence over its
> Creation."
>
> "Implicit"??? On what planet?
>
> "So Ron Paul is--who'd a thunk it-- a theist."
>
> But of course belief in the Christian God is scarcely necessary to
> reject NeoDarwinism as a general model of evolution."
>
> "No," "it helps" and "no" as there are plenty of theists who are
> willing as a scientific matter to suspend their belief in their theory
> of God in view of the total lack of evidence, and there are even some
> Christians who are willing to do the same. Ron Paul is expressly a
> Judeo-Christian monotheist who holds on to discredited notions in the
> face of science, as the Bible teaches him to do. NeoDarwinism - the
> actual neo-Darwinism and not the modern evolutionary synthesis - has
> already been rejected by science.
>
> "NeoLamarckian approaches are powerful alternative explanations for
> the rapidity of evolutionary
> change under radically catastrophic stresses."
>
> At their absolute best, neo-Lamarckian theories are things for which
> there is no proposed mechanisms. Neo-Lamarckianism is simply a
> slippery intellectual slope down which one slides if one forgets that
> there are actual nucleic acids and actual proteins that actually
> create new life and that these proteins are not magic or philosophical
> but are as real and common as dirt.
>
> "Exchanges" between the parent and germ cells are no doubt influenced
> by many things, but we know to what chemicals MUST be influenced to
> create change in an organism and there has never, ever, ever, ever
> been any observation which suggests that those chemicals can be
> altered by anything remotely resembling teleology.
>
> So please.....huh?
>