Most biologists take for granted the idea that all life evolved by natural selection over billions of years. They get on with researching and teaching in disciplines that rest squarely on that foundation, secure in the knowledge that natural selection is a fact, in the same way that the Earth orbits the Sun is a fact.
http://www.nature.com/nature/newspdf/evolutiongems.pdf
I don't see how anyone can watch the flu virus and not see that evolution is a fact. Every year a new vaccine must be created because the virus evolves and mutates to resist the vaccines.
Before you comment, please read the article and refute, if you can, the points.
7 comments:
In the article it mentions Henry Gee as a writer, so since his name is mentioned and it is talking about fossils let me quote from Mr Henry.
The Conventional Picture of human evolution is a completely Human Invention created after the fact, shaped to accord with human prejudices. To take a line of fossils and claim that they represent a linage IS NOT A SCIENTIFIC HYPOTHESIS THAT CAN BE TESTED, But an assertion that carries the SAME VALIDITY AS A BEDTIME STORY- amusing, perhaps even instructive, BUT NOT SCIENTIFIC. Henry Gee, "In search of deep time, beyond the fossil Record to a new History of life", Nature Magazine 1999
Another quote by Mr Henry,
"The Intervals of time that separate fossils are so huge that we cannot say anything definite about their possible connection through ancestry and descent. Each fossil is an isolated point, with no knowable connection to any other given fossil, and all float around in overwhelming sea of gaps. All the fossil evidence for human evolution between ten and five million years ago- several thousand generations of living creatures-can be fitted into a small Box" Henry Gee, "In search of deep time, beyond the fossil Record to a new History of life", Nature Magazine 1999
At least he is honest, the evidence is pretty much next to zero.
I give up! You are not open to any evidence. What you offer are out of context quotes. I hate to say this but I feel sorry for you. We are living in the 21st century not the dark ages. I had hope you would begin to learn and understand the myriad information on the subject but you will not. Let's just agree to disagree.
Hello Interested and anyone who reads this and believes in Evolution.
This will make the 3rd time I posted and said this. And the reason I am doing it again is because the lengthy article makes the claim we arose from evolution and spontaneous generation. So we have a serious problem here. The high ranking scientist, George Wald and Nobel prize winner in Biology and self proclaimed Atheist, Is stating their is zero evidence for evolution and God must have created us. Now he also admits he does not like that idea and rejects it and still denys God.
So why is it, you reject what George says and believe this information on this website?
To me it boils down to you believe who and what you want and reject anything that does not agree with your position.
I figure if this guy won a Nobel prize and claims their is no evidence, and the authors of this website have not won Nobel prize at least that we are aware of, and one of them, Henry Gee even seems to question the evidence, it tells me, we can go back and forth all day long, and people who want to believe in a lie of evolution will.
You cannot say I (Rick) will believe what I want, since I at least go so far as to say, look even people who teach evolution deny it or struggle with it. If I only quoted the Bible and creationists, then you could say the same for me. But I give both sides and still dont see this so called empirical evidence for it.
This Scientist, George Wald who is/was a Harvard Professor Emeritus of Biology, and a 1971 Nobel prize winner in Biology.
Said this:
There are only two possible explanations as to how life arose: Spontaneous Generation arising to evolution or a supernatural creative act of God...
There is no other possibility.
Spontaneous generation was scientifically disproved 120 years ago by Louis Pasteur and others, But that leaves us with only one other possibility...
that life came as a supernatural act of creation of God, but I can't accept that philosophy because I do not want to believe in God.
Therefore I choose to believe in that which I know is scientifically impossible, spontaneous generation leading to evolution.
George Wald "Origin, life and evolution," Scientific American (1978).
January 05, 2012 5:53 PM
Interested,
If your going to claim the quotes I give our out of context, then please provide the rest of the quote that I am Supposedly forgetting and show me how they are out of context, otherwise I will concluded they are not and your just saying that.
George Wald (1906 - 1997) Professor of Biology at Harvard University Nobel Laureate Web Amazon GBS AV
The reasonable view was to believe in spontaneous generation; the only alternative, to believe in a single, primary act of supernatural creation. There is no third position. For this reason many scientists a century ago chose to regard the belief in spontaneous generation as a "philosophical necessity." It is a symptom of the philosophical poverty of our time that this necessity is no longer appreciated. Most modern biologists, having reviewed with satisfaction the downfall of the spontaneous generation hypothesis, yet unwilling to accept the alternative belief in special creation, are left with nothing. "The origin of life" Scientific American August 1954 p.46
One has only to contemplate the magnitude of this task to concede that the spontaneous generation of a living organism is impossible. Yet here we are as a result, I believe, of spontaneous generation. "The origin of life" Scientific American August 1954 p.46
The important point is that since the origin of life belongs in the category of at least once phenomena, time is on its side. However improbable we regard this event, or any of the steps which it involves, given enough time it will almost certainly happen at-least-once. And for life as we know it, with its capacity for growth and reproduction, once may be enough.
Time is in fact the hero of the plot. The time with which we have to deal is of the order of two billion years. What we regard as impossible on the basis of human experience is meaningless here. Given so much time, the "impossible" becomes possible, the possible probable, and the probable virtually certain. One has only to wait: time itself performs the miracles. "The origin of life" Scientific American August 1954 p.48
Wherever life is possible, given time, it should arise. It should then ramify into a wide array of forms, differing in detail from those we now observe (as did earlier organisms on the earth) yet including many which should look familiar to us -- perhaps even men.
We are not alone in the universe, and do not bear alone the whole burden of life and what comes of it. Life is a cosmic event -- so far as we know the most complex state of organization that matter has achieved in our cosmos. It has come many times, in many places -- places closed off from us by impenetrable distances, probably never to be crossed even with a signal. "The origin of life" Scientific American August 1954 p.53
Given enough time the impossible becomes possible.
Henry Gee
08 January 2008 | 08:31
Amit, the problem here is more with your question than anything else. God is a matter of ‘belief’, but one does not ‘believe’ in any scientific theory – because science does not work like that. God is absolute, but scientific theories – even one as well-grounded as evolution by natural selection – are always provisional. Fanatical evolutionists such as Richard Dawkins fail to appreciate this categorical distinction, and this failure is seized on by creationists whose agenda is more political than religious. In fact, I’d say that creationism, while terrible science, is worse theology, for the following reason: faith is not such if it requires physical proof for its justification.
I am a senior editor of Nature handling aspects of evolutionary biology for twenty years. I believe in God, but I subscribe to evolution. Faith and Science are two different things, but Amit breaks this categorical distinction by inviting us to compare the two as if they belonged to the same category. This is the classic Dawkinsian error which is probably as damaging to science as any amount of creationism or similar fringe lunacy.
Post a Comment