From: news@fedfil.UUCP (news)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Ted makes some sense!!!!!
Date: 16 Nov 92 00:11:42 GMT
Organization: HTE

In article <101988@bu.edu>, colby@bu-bio.bu.edu (Chris Colby) writes:
> In article <107@fedfil.UUCP> news@fedfil.UUCP (news) writes:
 
> >schools has to tell you something;  either evolution is wrong outright, or
> >something is massively wrong in the manner in which it is being taught
>  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> >and/or explained (mechanism).
> 
> Ted,
> This is the only thing you have ever said on t.o. that has made any
> sense. Please reward yourself with a donut or something. 

Everything I've ever said on t.o makes sense.  The other 99% will sink in
sooner or later.

> Evolution is taught abyssmally almost everywhere. 

For reasons too numerous to mention, natural selection and the other
various mechanisms which are commonly given out as driving engines for
evolution just don't cut it, and teaching a theory with obvious holes in
it is difficult for anybody.  Natural selection is what is known (outside
the realm of evolution studies) as a tautology:  the fittest survive, and
those who survive do so because they are most "fit" (the survivers are the
fit).

The only sensical version of evolution out there is Velikovsky's, the version
found in EARTH IN UPHEAVAL.  This explains evolution to the extent that it
can be explained at all.  It does NOT give out any reason for believing
that humans and other more complex forms have arisen via an almost infinite
series of finite steps, over gigantic lengths of time, from single celled
organisms which, themselves, somehow just got lucky and arose from dust and
raw materials.


> Even most professional
> biologists are completely without a clue as to even the _basics_
> of evolution. I was just forced to attend a very stupid training
> session on handling animals in research recently. 


That just makes good sense.  Most ordinary peoples' reaction to the idiots
you see out at night rounding up stray dogs and cats on the streets for
NIH and other research centers is just to shoot them (the nerds, not the
animals).  

> Several times during 
> the session we (biologists) were urged to use animals as "low on the
> evolutionary scale as possible". 

The only limit here is your imagination:  drug-addicts, Bush supporters,
Meritt...

> In addition, the words "higher"
> and "lower" kept getting bandied about. (When the question and answer
> period came, I pointed out the fact that using the term "evolutionary
> scale" seriously distorts the true pattern of relationships between
> organisms.)

Try more/less complex.  The problem is still the requirement for an end
run around the 2'nd law for each of the multitudinous steps you'd need
to arrive at humans starting from dust.

Now, once you've already GOT complex life forms on earth, via creation,
importation, or whatever, THEN evolution is bound to occur in the manner
described in EARTH IN UPHEAVAL and, to a lesser extent, via the processes
which allow todays dogs starting from wolves and solf-like creatures.
> 
> Almost nobody understands evolution. Almost everyone thinks they do.
> This is a problem. IMHO, the problem lies in how evolution is
> taught. Most biologists were taught evolution poorly and teach evolution
> poorly because they don't understand there is "real science" involved.
> 


-- 
Ted Holden
HTE