From: bvickers@valentine.ics.uci.edu (Brett J. Vickers)
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic
Subject: Re: Logic and God (was: Young earth creationist logic NOT!)
Date: 28 Aug 92 08:22:26 GMT
Reply-To: bvickers@ics.uci.edu (Brett J. Vickers)
Organization: Univ. of Calif., Irvine, Info. & Computer Sci. Dept.

riggs@descartes.tec.army.mil (Bill Riggs) writes:
>	Methinks you protest too much. The part of my article that you
>chose not to respond to stated that creationism is an antitheory, designed
>to counter the theory of evolution. My real complaint is that you
>and many, many others have stated repeatedly and dogmatically that
>if we just were intellectually honest and followed the data, it would
>automatically lead us to believe in evolution. That is clearly what
>Steven Jay Gould means when he states that evolution is a fact.

I have not dogmatically repeated anything.  Evolution is a scientifically
factual process.  Do you know what evolution is?  Your comments suggest
that you don't.  That's okay, a lot of people don't.  Put simply, it is
a change in allele frequencies of a given population over a period
of time.  This change occurs, and is observed to occur all the time.
No one would debate that it occurs, not even you.  In this manner, it
is a scientific fact.  The theory of evolution and the fact of evolution
are two different things; the theory explains how the factual process
of evolution occurs.  This is what Steven Jay Gould and other respectable
biologists mean when they state that evolution is a fact.  Unless you
disagree that allele frequencies within populations change over time,
you must also accept evolution as fact.

Understand what you're debating before you begin the debate, please.
Your statements betray a lack of knowledge concerning evolutionary
theory.

>	I would really like to know what your definition of a
>"scientifically factual process" is supposed to be. The Marxists
>claimed that they had a "scientifically factual process" as well
>(objective, too).

I just gave it to you.  I fail to see the parallels between
Marxism and evolution.  Please don't sidetrack the debate with
silly and potentially slanderous political arguments.

>We have not disproved evolution as a means of
>explaining the rise of man any more than we have disproved Marxism
>as a means of explaining human society. But do you not see that
>simply avowing evolutionary theory as being the only "right"
>basis to look at these issues automatically limits what we can determine,
>yes scientifically determine ?

Nobody is saying evolutionary theory is the only "right" way to
look at the evidence.  But as things stand right now, it's the
best.  If you have a better theory supported by the evidence,
produce it.  Until then, I humbly request you squelch your protest.
What you've said about evolution is just as easily applied to any
other scientific discipline.  Your beef is not with evolutionary
theory, but with science and the way it is advanced.

>Darwin and Lamarck could be just as wrong
>as Galen and Aristotle were, but we have not found the way to
>extract the data yet which proves them so.

This is just plain balderdash.  Lamarckianism has already been disproven,
and much of Darwinian evolution has been completely overhauled.  It's
really quite simple to disprove the sufficiency of Darwinian theory;
find evidence of situations where individuals are selected for on some
basis other than reproductive fitness.  That would do it nicely.

>It is
>quite possible to be logically consistent, intellectually balanced,
>and just plain wrong if you are working off the wrong data. I would
>have thought this point to be relatively non-controversial.

Please explain what you perceive this "wrong data" to be, and why
it is wrong.  Where does "wrong data" come from?  Doesn't everything
we are presented with on this earth serve as data?  How, therefore,
can it be "wrong"?   (Unless, of course, you're one of those
creationists who believes in a deceitful god).

>[My 5000 bouncing ball argument deleted for brevity]

I'm not going to bother to respond to the determinism vs. probability
thread; it has lost its relevance with respect to the rest of this
article.  Suffice it to say that nothing is truly deterministic
as evidenced by quantum mechanics.

>	As a historian, I would not hang my hat on evolution. There is not
>enough data there to prove beans. Whether Darwin was right or not depends
>quite solely on his ability to have made a calculated scientific
>wild-ass guess. On the other hand, we have the option to believe in a Creator,
>at the minimum out there with a set of cosmic dice, designing creatures
>and experimenting with gene pools. The contrast in beliefs is clear - the
>rest is an argument over the data.

Let me see if I understand you correctly.  The theory of natural selection
is a "wild-ass guess" completely unsupported by the evidence?  Perhaps
you'd like to put your money were your big mouth is, and support that
claim.  That is perhaps one of the most disingenuous and ignorant claims
that a creationist has made in this forum in some time.  The data
supporting evolution the fact and evolution the theory is voluminous.
Look at the fossil record, the strands of DNA that make life what it
is, the comparative anatomy of living things, etc.  The fact that
speciation is observed in occurrence should be enough to pound your
silly refrain of "lack of evidence" back into the ground.  I couldn't
possibly go into detail on all of the evidence given its overwhelming
abundance.  But all of these things are evidence for the evolutionary
nature of life.

If you're going to dance around the issues and try to pass creationism
off as a valid scientific theory, then you've really got your work cut
out for you.  But I'm hoping to see you try.

--
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Brett J. Vickers (bvickers@ics.uci.edu)