From: salem@pangea.Stanford.EDU (Bruce Salem)
Subject: Re: From the heart!
Organization: DSG, Stanford University
Date: 16 Apr 92 03:33:43 GMT

bk186@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Julie Thomas) writes:

>Bruce's primary complaint is that I am not offering an alternative to 
>evolution.  He asks (more than a half-dozen times) for my 
>alternative.  In fact, he goes so far as to suggest that my failure to 
>provide an alternative counts heavily against my skepticism and in 
>fact, might suggest a bias.

>1.  Bruce seems to be confused about the burden of proof here.  Bruce 
>maintains that the heart evolved and I suppose he considers this to 
>be a scientific truth.  Now I am not saying that the heart did NOT 
>evolve.  I am not asserting any negative statement.  I have no 
>"evolution belief".  That is, I am simply agnostic on this topic and 
>have no alternative.  Bruce is making a postive assertion, I am 
>making no assertion.  I simply question, and find myself increasingly 
>skeptical of these evolutionary tales.  

	What is the problem you are trying to solve by raising these
opinions? If you are only being a skeptic, then so what? What does
your skeptical opinion matter? What are you trying to contribute
to my edification or to anyone else's by being a skeptic, only?

	The reason I appeal to positive alternatives is that if you
are trying to deal with the suitability of scientific explainations,
and you find evolutionary "tales" somehow incomplete or insufficient,
you must tell us in some deatil how they are incomplete and in
addition YOU must suggest something useful as an alternative means
to a different theory. If it is science that you are doing you must
not simply make negative statements, that is what Bob Bales does.
You must at least suggest an alternate way to ask questions that
do not lead to evolution. What are these questions?

	Now, if it is rhetoric you are doing, you can make negative
statements and try to compel me to "prove" that the heart evolved.
I never claimed to have a proof. I started off by saying that the
record was lacking, no fossils, and that IF the heart was to have
evolved, that the clues were to have to be sought in the developmental
anatomy. Then, I chose a weak case for the connection between
ontogeny and phylogeny, well aware of the traps therein. Again,
what are the alternatives to evolution if you are skeptical?

>Bruce, are you suggesting that we can test this notion that hearts 
>evolved?  How so?  What new and decisive evidence does this belief 
>about evloving hearts entail?  Why not present it "with your 
>arguments"?  If you can't do any of this, why am I supposed to?

	You say you are skeptical of an evolutionary "just so"
story based on development. Now you want proof for such a story?
I think that the evidence for a difinative history of cardiac
evolution is weaker than for many other such stories. I am not
saying that I know such history for sure, or can prove anything
about anything to anyone. But, why do you care one way or the
other? Is this just something you go around with a burr in
your saddle about? What if I said, no one knows very much, and
left it at that? Why do you care so much? What is the problem
you are addressing by this concern?

	One thing I am curious about? What is your professional
background? Are you a biologist? Are you religious? If so, does
your faith incline you to oppose evolution? If not, what other
experience inclines you to not accept evolution? Have you done
some research that has called evolution into question?

Bruce Salem