From: rh@smds.com (Richard Harter)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Atheistic creationism -- a tutorial
Date: 30 Sep 92 09:29:07 GMT
Reply-To: rh@ishmael.UUCP (Richard Harter)
Organization: Software Maintenance & Development Systems, Inc.

In article <1130@tdat.teradata.COM> swf@tdat.teradata.com (Stanley Friesen) writes:
>In article <1992Sep26.071853.5636@smds.com> rh@ishmael.UUCP (Richard Harter) writes:

||Evolution involves both a claimed fact, common descent, and a claimed
||mechanism, genetic change.  To impeach evolution it suffices to impeach
||either the "fact" or the "mechanism".  Now the "fact" really rests on
||some plausibility assumptions.  For example, extant life forms over
||time vary.  The obvious explanations are quasi-continuous creation,
||and common descent.  ...

|Ah yes, Charles Lyell's "steady-state' theory of life.
|This was considered fairly well demolished by Darwin's "Origin".

Huh, where do you get this from?  Lyell's "steady-state" theory was
indeed demolished because it was inconsistent with the observed historical
record.  Throughout this exercise I have explicitly conceded the historical
record.

|The evidence for common descent is so strong that one needs a *mighty*
|bizarre form of 'continuous' crration to account for the evidence.
|Not only are living things similar to one another, they are similar in
|rather *odd* way's.  There are numerous cases of vestigial organs, strange
|homologies (the panda's "thumb" is built from a *wrist* bone, not a
|replicated finger), meaningless differences (like the differences between
|a bat's wing and that of a pterosaur).

|Any form of 'creation', one-week, or long-term, has a great deal of
|difficulty explaining this sort of hodge-podge.

	I infer from this that you're not attending the argument.
	The catastrophists postulated cycles of creation/stasis/catastrophe.
	When this scenario was demolished, there was a degenerate form
	of catastrophist creation that postulated continuous creation
	in the form of new whole individuals, i.e. independent lines of
	descent.  This is indeed inconsistent with the observed data
	unless one also postulates malicious aliens practicing genetic
	engineering over the eons, or equivalent.  You are quite right
	in that the straw man you are refuting is indeed stuffed with
	straw.
	
	My particular straw man has a rather different constitution,
	since the "creation" involved is moved to the genetic level
	and is quite compatible with common descent in the higher taxa.

||  The claim is that the available evidence is compatible
||with either explanation.  We must therefore turn to the mechanism;
||are there feasible and compelling mechanisms for evolution.  The
||claim here is that the postulated mechanisms are not adequate.  Ergo,
||since the dominant (natural) explanation has been refuted, the
||alternatives must be considered.

|The *claim* is that the purported mechanisms are inadequate.  Are they?
|I have yet to see any reason to believe they are.  What reasons do you have
|to say this?  (This issue was thoroughly debated by biologists in the 40's
|and 50's, and they have, by and large, concluded that the mechanisms now
|known are *more* than adequate, what evidence do you have that they
|have not already considered).

This is a rather disappointing comment; I expected better from you.  I
have posted arguments which I expect to be refuted and what do I get?
-- appeals to authority -- appeals to anonymous authority at that.  If
you are going to do the authority gig the least you could do is something
like "Re your argument on selection:  The obvious fallacy is .... which
is thoroughly in Dobzhansky, _Genetics and the Origin of Species_".
-- 
Richard Harter: SMDS Inc.  Net address: rh@smds.com Phone: 508-369-7398 
US Mail: SMDS Inc., PO Box 555, Concord MA 01742.    Fax: 508-369-8272
In the fields of Hell where the grass grows high
Are the graves of dreams allowed to die.