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From: rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen)
Newsgroups: net.origins
Subject: Re: An old voice.
Message-ID: <1199@pyuxd.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 10-Jul-85 22:06:12 EDT
Article-I.D.: pyuxd.1199
Posted: Wed Jul 10 22:06:12 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 12-Jul-85 03:54:43 EDT
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Organization: Whatever we're calling ourselves this week
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>  This is just not so! The central hypothesis has been attacked over and
>  over. When it is, however, netters change their tune and claim that
>  evidence against evolution is NOT evidence for creation. [BOSKOVICH]

1)  It's not, to put it bluntly.  Any "evidence against evolution" is merely
evidence against a particular proposed methodology for evolution, and evidence
against it does not cause creationism to follow logically, much as some might
like.
2)  Attacking something over and over shows persistence, not proof.  Attacking
substantively is another matter.

>  The variations within species are predicted by the creation model.
>  It has been stated that N.S. predicts everything, therefore it predicts
>  nothing.

This notion of what these models "predict" is most intriguing.  The creation
model is used as 20/20 hindsight, not in any predictive way.  It cannot
be used in such a way.  (Well, it can, when something unexplained happens,
you just say god did it, and that was "predicted" by saying god can and does
do everything.)  What's more, the other models do not "predict" either, they
merely describe what occurs.  You couldn't go back 100 million years and
look at the world and "predict" that humans or any other animals would evolve.
The circumstances that caused those events are so elaborate and intertwining
as to make that impossible.  What natural selection and evolution "predict"
is that, for that set of circumstances that occurs over a period of time, the
organisms that survive that period will be the ones best suited for those
circumstances, and those of course will be the ones that produce the offspring
that follow into the next period.

>  Evolution really has more problems than you are willing to believe.

Oh, yes.  For instance, one problem is that it describes human beings as being
just another part of the physical spectrum, the "animal kingdom", rather than
some special creation of a deity, with special powers and a "soul".  Big
problem, that is, if you find yourself unable to shirk yourself of that
presumption and others like it.
-- 
Like a bourbon?  (HIC!)  Drunk for the very first time...
			Rich Rosen   ihnp4!pyuxd!rlr