HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: jloucks@uts.amdahl.com (Jim Loucks)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Species, Kinds, and Gaps (was: "Re: Darwin's Enigma")
Date: 16 Apr 92 19:05:36 GMT
Organization: Amdahl Corporation, Sunnyvale CA

alc@netcom.com (Chris Stassen) writes:
>Punctiated equilibrium: transitions at the species level are rare.
>Creationism: transitions at the "kind" level are never found.

>John Morris says that "kind" is above the genus level, in proposing

I didn't know John Morris said that. I figured "kind" was somewhere
between species and genus. It's difficult to define, especially 
since the Bible wasn't written as a science book.

> Regardless of "time," the "systematic" gaps are not
>at the right taxonomic level.

Comprendo!

>If you want to make "kind" the same as "species" in most cases,
>because that is where there are gaps _most_ of the time in the
>fossil record, you get into trouble because speciation has been
>observed.  (And because it is preserved in some places in the
>fossil record.)

Maybe it was more-or-less a generic term and "kind" included 
what's been recently labeled a different species, such as the 
Hawaiian wallabies. I really don't understand the hype over "kind."
Nobody was there to verify exactly what fell into this category.

>If you want to make "kind" the same as "phylum," you're as much
>an "evolutionist" as anyone else here.  Much more than anyone 
>else if you still believe in a young earth.  :-)  

No, no, anything but that! :-)

-- 
Jim Loucks           jloucks@uts.amdahl.com 
{apple, pyramid, sun, uunet}!amdahl!jloucks
From: Dr.Pepper@f241.n103.z1.fidonet.org (Dr Pepper)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Still Waiting For Answers
Date: Sun, 05 Apr 92 22:50:00 PDT
Organization: FidoNet node 1:103/241 - GG Tech, Westminster CA

 > From: news@fedfil.UUCP (Ted "The Idiotic One" Holden)
 > Message-ID: 2709@fedfil.uucp

 > In recorded history, i.e. since the foundation of Rome

A mere 2800 years or so is "recorded history" only to people who never heard of Egypt. Or Assyria, Sumeria, Persia, Babylon...

Having trouble with the felt effect of education again?

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--  

Dr Pepper
Internet: Dr.Pepper@f241.n103.z1.fidonet.org
Compuserve: >internet:Dr.Pepper@f241.n103.z1.fidonet.org
Newsgroups: talk.origins
From: jasonh@aeras.uucp (Jason Harris)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: The Myth Of Morality
Date: 15 Apr 92 16:44:07 GMT
Reply-To: jasonh@aeras.UUCP (Jason Harris)
Followup-To: talk.origins
Organization: Arix Corporation, San Jose, CA.

In article <1992Apr13.151915.1546@city.cs> lionel@cs.city.ac.uk (Lionel Tun) writes:

>I would like to point out that when a person turns to God and repents of
>their sins, they are forgiven completely and God does not remember their
>past transgressions any more. 

Sorry. You're losing me here. Please define "sin".

Jason.
From: ford@hpmcaa.mcm.hp.com (Dan Ford)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Evil Nature
Date: 10 Apr 92 02:58:09 GMT
Organization: HP Cardiology Business Unit - McMinnville, OR


salem@pangea.Stanford.EDU (Bruce Salem) writes:
> 	Vegitarianism was big with Hindus long before there were
> any SDAs. Oh, by the way the SDAs are big on Creationism. I have
> one of their tracts. Aren't they behind some of the lobbying groups
> opposed to Bill Honig in Californaia? Aren't they influiencial in
> places in Orange and San Diago Counties?
> 
> Bruce Salem

  Yes, SDAs are big on creationism (we are all familiar with Mr. Roy's
worn out arguments).  There are also more SDA's in California than in
any other state of the US.  So they might be influencial in Orange and
San Diego counties (Loma Linda University, a major SDA center is just
north-east of Orange).

  However, I would not be quick to implicate the SDA's in the political
battles of California.  The reason being is that SDA's also have a long
and fairly consistent position of defending religion freedom and the
separation of church and state.  Some of the leaders of the SDA "religious
liberty" are quite progressive and liberal in their attitudes.  I don't
know any specifics about the California case, but I would be surprised
if the church is involved in any official way.  A second reason why I
wouldn't expect SDA's to be involved in the Bill Honig case is that SDA's
have a parochial school system (particularly in California) second to none.
That is, second to none in access for their members, not quality of education.
They don't tend to get too heated up about problems in the public school
system because the all figure they'll just send their kids to the church
school. 

  Having said that however, I realize that there are plenty of individual
crackpot SDA's in California that would love to defend society against the
Satanic influences.   

Dan
From: rowe@pender.ee.upenn.edu (Mickey Rowe)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Does Evolution Have Practical Uses? -- yes
Date: 10 Apr 92 21:00:33 GMT
Reply-To: rowe@pender.ee.upenn.edu (Mickey Rowe)
Organization: University of Pennsylvania

In article <1992Apr7.172417.6472@imagen.com> isaak@imagen.com 
     (mark isaak) writes:

>Biology would still be viable without evolution binding it all
>together.  After all, biology existed before Darwin, and other fields,
>such as psychology, lack a unifying paradigm but still inspire a lot
>of research.  

Oddly enough, at a colloquium in the psychology department here last
year, a speaker began by talking about a conversation that he had with
another faculty person where they said that what psychology really
needed was to have someone like Charles Darwin come in and give the
field a unifying concept.  He said that upon further reflection and a
bit of digging, he discovered that there already had been such a
person.  The person's name was Charles Darwin. 

>Mark Isaak    imagen!isaak@decwrl.dec.com  or  {decwrl,sun}!imagen!isaak

Mickey Rowe     (rowe@pender.ee.upenn.edu)
From: jloucks@uts.amdahl.com (Jim Loucks)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Darwin's Enigma
Date: 15 Apr 92 22:07:57 GMT
Organization: Amdahl Corporation, Sunnyvale CA

alc@netcom.com (Chris Stassen) writes:
>I can't make a judgement on the entire event until I get my copy of
>the transcripts. 

It may be awhile before I can get that to you as I may return and 
attempt to get better prints of some pages. I won't be making 
copies for anyone else, so please don't ask.

>How did geologists, in the days when they couldn't
>have been biased by acceptance of evolution, order the geologic
>column in exactly the same order that is accepted today?

If they were creationists, maybe they believed in some sort of
theistic evolution, that God occasionally created more complex
organisms as time progressed. After that, geologists could have
accepted the theory of evolution and had the geologic column 
already set up to support their theory.

>It sounds like you are asking for the name of a person, and I
>am not sure what you mean by "validates."  Could you please
>clarify?

A name isn't what I was looking for, sorry for not being clear.  
How is the geologic column accepted? Has a formal discussion or
argument taken place, presenting the facts of the geologic column? 
If so, any conclusions from such?

>Well, Jim, here's one "flood geologists" can't wish away, and it
>isn't based on any "evolutionary model."  Around 1830, Deshayes
>performed an exhaustive survey of fossil shells, comparing several
>thousand fossilized and living examples.

"Wish away?" 

>  He found:

>Quaternary:	  90-95% of fossil shells identical to modern species
>Late Tertiary:	  35-50% of fossil shells identical to modern species
>Middle Tertiary:  17% of fossil shells identical to modern species
>Early Tertiary:	   3.5% of fossil shells identical to modern species

This says the apparent older time periods contain fewer fossil shells
identical to modern species than the more recent. How are these time
periods justified?

-- 
Jim Loucks           jloucks@uts.amdahl.com 
{apple, pyramid, sun, uunet}!amdahl!jloucks
From: mls@cbnewsm.cb.att.com (mike.siemon)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Great paper
Summary: apology
Date: 13 Apr 92 13:19:59 GMT
Distribution: na
Organization: AT&T


Mr. Squires has asked me for an apology, and I freely offer it.
I appear to have been misreading him at least somewhat, and in
consequence imagining him as having some sort of chip on his
shoulder.  We can discuss, if need be, why I mistook him that
way, but I don't think it is material; I am more than happy to
accept that I was wrong.

As to the humorousness of his comment on the uniformitarian thing,
I fear that humor in a group that boasts the egregrious, and ap-
parently serious, Ted Holden has to be either very carefully done
or very subtle.  I did not assume that Mr. Squires was actually
maintaining that the paper was fatally flawed -- I simply failed
to see any coherent point to his comment.  Since humor needn't be
coherent, I should perhaps have thought of that possibility, and
charitably assumed it.
-- 
Michael L. Siemon		   "Oh, stand, stand at the window,
					As the tears scald and start;
mls@usl.com			   You shall love your crooked neighbor
standard disclaimer			With your crooked heart."
From: jsanders@matt.ksu.ksu.edu (Justin M. Sanders)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: biologic diversity since the Cambrian
Date: 15 Apr 1992 01:42:52 -0500
Organization: Kansas State University
NNTP-Posting-Host: matt.ksu.ksu.edu
Keywords: scientific creationism

In article <83986@bu.edu> colby@bu-bio.UUCP (Chris Colby) writes:
>
>	Maybe someone has worked this out and I'm just ignorant of
>that field, but I can't for the life of me understand how you would
>measure (or define) complexity. I'll ask an easy question. Let's
>say you have a human being and a bacterium (E. Coli); which is
>more complex and why? What objective criteria can you establish to
>show that humans are more complex than bacteria (or vice versa if
>you wish 8-)?

This is the point I was trying to get at with my single cell/multicellar
organism discussion-- unfortunately, I brought those damned clocks into
and probably obscured the point.

> I get the feeling that measuring complexity will
>suffer from the same problems as measuring IQ -- trying to assign
>a scalar value to a vector property. For every amazing thing a
>human can do that an E. Coli can't (compose a symphony, for instance)
>I'll bet there's an amazing thing an E. Coli can do (O.K., maybe I'm
>strectching it a bit, but you get the picture).

For E. Coli's amazing trick which a human can't do, I propose reproduction
by fission. :-)

    Returning to complexity and diversity, the notion of ever increasing
complexity of life is derived from the notion of evolution as progress.
And it is through this notion of increasing complexity that the argument
from the 2nd Law of Thermo gets dragged in.

    We could carefully discuss and define "complexity" and "diversity"
in some manner which might be acceptable to biologists and physicists, but
those carefully circumscribed definitions would be lost on the general
public.

    Finally, a question about measures of diversity (which Chris already
touched on).  Some time back, I read an article indicating that much
of the claims for the diversity of rain-forests (such as in the Amazon)
were extrapolated from species/hectare counts on islands (with some
reasonably similar ecology).  Is my memory correct?


-- 
Justin M. Sanders         "I can trace my ancestry back to a primordial,
Dept. of Physics            protoplasmal, atomic globule."
Kansas State Univ.           --Poo-Bah, in _The_Mikado_, Act I
From: lindsay+@cs.cmu.edu (Donald Lindsay)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Darwin's Enigma
Date: 17 Apr 92 01:34:33 GMT
Organization: School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon


jloucks@uts.amdahl.com (Jim Loucks) writes:
>How 
>does a scientist determine the difference in the evidence between 
>a fossil that was the result of punctuated equilibria, and a 
>fossil that was the result of special creation? The physical 
>evidence (fossil record) for both will be identical.

Yes - but only if Creationism predicts that tens of thousands of
creation events have occured, and that these events were spread out
in time, and that all of the created species were (in the bigger
scale of things) very small variations on what had come before. Plus,
of course, Creationism should predict that some valuable,
"inevitable" steps took ridiculous amounts of time (like, 400 million
years), should predict that many useful forms should inexplicably
fail to occur, should predict that there would be many pieces of
outright bad design, should predict that many pieces of good design
would appear in a series of incremental steps rather than
full-blown,...

I could go on. In short, Creationism would have to predict the
*entire* theory of evolution, with two exceptions: that God guided
it, in such a way as to make the fossiles look like he hadn't: and
that God did it in jumps rather than gradually. Oops, we've observed
speciation in the wild. Better retract that last: God either stopped
doing it in jumps, or else he doesn't always bother, or else he does
it in slow gradations. In, of course, a way that will make it look
exactly as if he hadn't.

Is that Creationism as you know it? Because if not, then Evolution
predicts a fossil record such as is found, and Creationism predicts a
fossil record that isn't found.
-- 
Don		D.C.Lindsay 	Carnegie Mellon Computer Science
From: scharle@lukasiewicz.cc.nd.edu (Scharle)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: biologic diversity since the Cambrian
Keywords: scientific creationism
Date: 13 Apr 92 17:28:37 GMT
Article-I.D.: news.1992Apr13.172837.14875
Reply-To: scharle@lukasiewicz.cc.nd.edu (Scharle)
Organization: Univ. of Notre Dame

In article <s700tINNcu2@matt.ksu.ksu.edu>, jsanders@matt.ksu.ksu.edu (Justin M. Sanders) writes:
|> In article <83702@bu.edu> colby@bu-bio.UUCP (Chris Colby) writes:
|> >In article <1992Apr6.124012.1268@news.nd.edu> scharle@lukasiewicz.cc.nd.edu (Scharle) writes:
|> >
|> >>At least since Cambrian times (please correct me if I am 
|> >>wrong here, this is just a layman's opinion) there has been no 
|> >>overall increase in the complexity of life on earth.
|> >
|> >	I don't think there is really a consensus on this. Clearly
|> >diversity changes with time both within and between lineages.
|> >example, diversity (as measured by number of families) has gone
    [...much deleted, including discussion about what biological
        complexity might be...]
|>     As with many creationist arguments, the abuse of the 2nd Law of 
|> Thermo dynamics stems in part from semantics.  They take advantage of
|> the fact that complexity has slightly different meanings and that the
|> definition of complexity which might be properly applied to the 2nd Law
|> is not a very common or well known one.
    [...]
    What I was trying to get at was number 3 in this list of problems
with the "creationist" use of the "2nd law argument":

1.  The 2nd law does not apply to complexity in senses appropriate to 
evolutionary change.  (I believe that this is your point here.)

2.  The 2nd law applies to closed systems, and the earth is not a 
closed system (it gets energy from the sun, for example).

3.  Evolution does not dictate increasing complexity (either in 
diversity among organisms, or in degree of organization of individual 
organisms, or within the cell).  Furthermore, whether there was 
increase in complexity in *any* sense in the last few hundred million 
years is debatable.

    And, let us not forget:
0.  An argument against evolution is not an argument for creation.
Nor is an argument for creation an argument against evolution.  (Nor,
for that matter, is an argument for evolution an argument against
creation.)

    In summary, the 2nd law argument is both incorrect (points 1 and
2) and irrelevant (points 3 and 0).

-- 
Tom Scharle                |cm65n6@irishmvs(Bitnet)
Room G003 Computing Center |scharle@lukasiewicz.cc.nd.edu(Internet)
University of Notre Dame  Notre Dame, IN 46556-0539 USA
Xref: sparky talk.origins:4167 talk.religion.misc:6446
From: colby@bu-bio.bu.edu (Chris Colby)
Newsgroups: talk.origins,talk.religion.misc
Subject: a short allegorical play -- by Chris Colby
Date: 8 Apr 92 23:47:06 GMT
Reply-To: colby@bu-bio.UUCP (Chris Colby)
Followup-To: talk.origins
Organization: Biology Dept., Bost

In article <1992Apr3.144045.23560@city.cs> lionel@cs.city.ac.uk (Lionel Tun) writes:

>I apologise for presenting claims unaccompanied by the evidence to back
>them up. To all those I have offended by not presenting the evidence -
>my apologies. I retract the offending statements until further notice.
>If I re present these assertions in the future I will try to have some
>references handy.

District attorney: The defendant is a known child-molesting, Nazi, alcoholic,
wife-beating, nun-raping, mass-murdering, public-urinating psychopath
who often leaves the cap off the toothpaste.

Defense attorney: Objection!

Judge: Sustained. The jury will ignore those remarks.

District attorney: Now, Mr. Smith, you _claim_ to have had your
left turn signal on...

>Lionel Tun   (lionel@cs.city.ac.uk)
>Vision Group, City University, London, EC1V 0HB. 071-477 8000 x 3889

Chris "move over Ed Albee" Colby -- email: colby@bu-bio.bu.edu	---
"'My boy,' he said, 'you are descended from a long line of determined,
resourceful, microscopic tadpoles--champions every one.'"
 	--Kurt Vonnegut from "Galapagos"
From: jloucks@uts.amdahl.com (Jim Loucks)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Darwin's Enigma
Date: 14 Apr 92 17:54:49 GMT
Organization: Amdahl Corporation, Sunnyvale CA

lindsay+@cs.cmu.edu (Donald Lindsay) writes:
>jloucks@uts.amdahl.com (Jim Loucks) writes:
>>That is, if you're trying to prove a theory or make a point, you're
>>only going to display evidence that supports your position, this
>>is natural for humans.

>But unacceptable in science.

For me, whether it's unacceptable in science really depends on 
the scientist, most are honest while some are not. This is true
in every profession, including pastors/tel-evangelists/etc.

>I pointed this out recently to Ted Holden (but perhaps you don't
>follow those threads).

Good guess. I don't follow all threads as sometimes there's just
too much bulk news. Some t.o regulars have suggested that I ignore 
the vociferous types and concentrate on those that desire to 
communicate and not just argue. This isn't always easy to determine.

>A good theory must not only have supporting
>evidence: it should also explain why the other evidence fails to be
>evidence against.

This is an area I struggle with, as I never hear from evolutionists
of evidence that fails to support the fossil record. You have
scientists in both camps, some support gradualism, while others
are proponents of punctuated equilibria. The latter of which I 
fail to see the difference between Goldschmidt's hopeful monster
concept and evidence for creation. How can a theory be falsified
if it is so generalized that it can explain any conceivable type
of evidence?  What good is it to science if it's not falsifiable?

-- 
Jim Loucks           jloucks@uts.amdahl.com 
{apple, pyramid, sun, uunet}!amdahl!jloucks
From: shafto@ils.nwu.edu (Eric Shafto)
Subject: Re: biologic diversity since the Cambrian
Organization: The Institute for the Learning Sciences
Date: Wed, 15 Apr 1992 17:32:21 GMT

jsanders@matt.ksu.ksu.edu (Justin M. Sanders) writes:
> 
>     Returning to complexity and diversity, the notion of ever increasing
> complexity of life is derived from the notion of evolution as progress.

Well, it is legitimate to say that the trend in evolution has been
toward more complex creatures and systems.  The first organisms were
very simple, now some are very complex.  If you take the "average"
complexity with respect to time, it has been increasing.  

However, that is only true because the first organisms were very
simple.  If the first organisms had been massively complex, very
simple forms would have evolved from them, filling niches that complex
organisms cannot fill.  In that case, creationists would be arguing
that the process of refinement and successful simplification could not
take place without intelligent guidance.  "Imagine taking half the
genes away from a dog.  What are the odds that you would take away
just the ones that would turn the dog into a fish?"  Therefore there
is a creator, and the Darwin's theory of Devolution is false, QED.

In other words, such a universe would end up being strangely like this
one. 

-- 
*Eric Shafto             * Sometimes, I think we are alone.  Sometimes I  *
*Institute for the       * think we are not.  In either case, the thought *
*    Learning Sciences   * is quite staggering.                           *
*Northwestern University *     -- R. Buckminster Fuller                   *
From: jtisdel@digi.lonestar.org (Michael Tisdel)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Still Waiting For Answers
Summary: a few selected missiles
Date: 6 Apr 92 16:58:07 GMT
Organization: DSC Communications Corp, Plano, TX

In article <2709@fedfil.UUCP> news@fedfil.UUCP (news) writes:
>In article <1992Mar31.210126.4682@ac.dal.ca>, hyde@ac.dal.ca writes:
[..bandwidth savings..]
>"It has already been explained to me"?  By who?  God??  By somebody
>disinterested, i.e. whose entire life hasn't been wasted persuing "science"
>which is entirely based upon this false axiom of uniformity, as yours has?

i.e.  if the refutation comes from a scientist, then you automatically reject
it?  What, then, would you accept?  A coalminer?  [apologies to coalminers]

>
>In recorded history, i.e. since the foundation of Rome, the arctic regions
>have
>always had the temperature which they have now, and the standard hypotheses
>which you use can provide no reason for this ever having been different within
>millions if not billions of years.  

Two questions:
  (1) Do you mean to state that there is no recorded history prior to the
      foundation of Rome?  What about _The Mahabarata_, _The Illiad_, _The
      Odyssey_, the writings of the Hitite empire, the writings of the
      Egyptian Kingdoms, the Babylonians, the Sumerians, even the Isrealites?

  (2) I know the Romans sailed all over the Med.  I was unaware that they
      also mounted artic expeditions and took climatic measurements.
 
The refutation of your argument about temperature changes, I'll leave to
geologists and others with more specific facts.

-- 
 J. Michael Tisdel              | 
 jtisdel@digi.lonestar.org      | "I want to lie, shipwrecked and comatose,
 DSC Communications Corporation |  Drinking fresh mango juice."
 *** Standard Disclaimer ***    |           -- Red Dwarf