This article's about as good as it gets. I always wonder why these believers never just say to themselves, "Jeez, God, you're not a very nice guy, are you."

Author Rolfsen's parting comments about the doomsday style coverage of weather-related events touches a troubling aspect.

That is the increasing sense among the secular who don't have their heads buried in corporate denial that the environment's sending some pretty strong warnings of doom ahead.

Are these pro-violence Christian media types trying to pull our focus away from the dirty water, bad air and melting ice-caps?

Better to die as god-fearing, commie-haters with a gun for god in your hand than to submit to the consensus-building evils of the United Nations.

This nonsemce about rapture isn't Christian at all, but a new and improved 'Jesus cult'. These people are dangerous as they spew hatred under the guise of Biblical hocus pocus.

Interesting article.

I was actually just thinking of this phenomenon while reading over comments on The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe.

I've seen clips of Left Behind: World at War and it's sufficiently bad that I don't believe it will have much popular appeal.

I heartily admit to being creeped out by it, however. Luckily, that kind of unsubtle proselytizing is never successful with the mainstream. Its basic message is deeply misguided, and gives the whole thing a bad name. It's a mindset whose inherent illiberalism (in the classic sense) explains (if not justifies) the knee-jerk Christophobia of the secular mainstream.

Also, we need to take care that we don’t paint with too broad a brush. There’s a world of difference between Tolkien’s quiet Catholicism or Lewis’ ecumenism and the scary literalism of this new (old) phenomenon. The Religious Right is in full backlash mode right now, and it’s a pendulum motion which over-eager progressives have had no small hand in fostering over the past forty years or so.

Interesting that you would approach the deeply conservative (Evangelical) Regent College for an opinion rather than the progressive (Anglican & Lutheran) VST (Vancouver School of Theology) just around the corner from it. Or either of St. Mark’s College (also UBC) or the Benedictine Monks at Seminary of Christ the King in Mission for a Roman Catholic perspective, which would also be much more critical of this genre. There are some very convincing theological arguments (quite apart from the obvious rational ones we’re all familiar with) for why this kind of interpretation is misguided.

I’m going to forward this article & see if someone with a bit more background than myself will take up the challenge.

Thanks again.

I actually wouldn't put these two in the same category by a long-shot.

Now here's the right answer: Whether Tolkien's quiet catholicism or Lewis'(CS?)ecumenism, it's all pure evil--from Jesus' inane "whosoever shall believeth in me" narcissism to the undecipherable fake prophecies of revelations, to god teasing abraham about stabbing his own son-- these old biblical writers are a pack goofs. The world's a mysterious place, and yes, there is some kind of perhaps unknowable teleological aspect going on, but really, how could anyone really believe all that crap? Nightbloom, I've read your stuff and you're a very intelligent man so what's up with you, trying to foist off a kindler gentler religion--there's no such thing.

Unfortunately, that kind of attitude is everywhere in the secular mainstream (of which I am a part), and one of the reasons why we're in the grip of such a virulent backlash. It's really damaging. I hope you reconsider & try to appreciate some of the subtleties involved.

The prevalence of that attitude is also why the religious Right is making such inroads, while religious progressives are having the rug pulled out from under them from both sides.

Doctrine & Structure encompassing the religious, sexual, hierarchal and aggressive impulses of the human community will always be present. If these are allowed to mature over generations, they eventually develop systems of control that exert a moderating influence on the worst of their manifestations. The lesson of the French Revolution and the Terror is that whatever you seek to replace those ancient structures with will ultimately be far worse, and without restraint.

The problem now is that many of those restraining mechanisms that took so long to evolve are becoming seriously unglued.

Tolkien & Lewis are harmless. I'm glad The Tyee brought stuff like Left Behind into the picture, because it illustrates (for example) that the NYT was barking up the wrong tree in whining about very oblique religious symbolism in the Lord of the Rings, or Lewis' harmless mixture of Classical Greek imagery with an innocuous variety of Christian morality.

Everyone points to their favourite example of Old Testament brutality. I once listened to a Rabbi explain the symbolism of the episode you mentioned with Abraham & his son. The Jews have been teaching the allegorical non-literal interpretation for eons (sure, some are literalists). It's astonishing to me, for example, that the secular liberal-Left and feminists today still point to Lot's words to the mob outside his home as a literal sanctioning of rape and a manifestation of religiously-sanctioned misogyny.

Part of the failure is with the Christians structures themselves. At some point the doctrinal narrative given to children to plant the seeds of the faith (the stories, the parables, the magic, all intended to illustrate the substance of the faith in a manner children could understand, respond to, and internalize on a deep level) superseded the adult faith they were later initiated into. The established churches, and the emerging priestly caste, began treating adults as children. Hence the long struggles over everything from the Divinity/Humanity of Christ, to the Trinity to Transubstantiation. All of these were contingent doctrinal glosses meant to contain and communicate a spiritual notion which was (is) ultimately irrational but not without significant spiritual symbolism & meaning. This long weeding process is chronicled in the very early doctrinal battles of the first millenium.

Anyway, this is getting long, and this isn't my area of expertise. But there's a point at which extremist fundamentalists and extremist secular humanists serve each others' purposes in the political arena. As always, it results in a loss of a tempered middle ground.

I really believe the real challenge of our day is to get that middle ground back.

Nightbloom, your piece cannot really be described as anything more than "cute." You have somehow been overtaken by a nonsensical "a priori" confidence that anything written in any biblical text is other than PARABLIC MODELLING--in the same way that all of the concept inherent in the Unified Theory are actually MODELS and not explanations. The real questions are actually beyond your understanding. I really am not trying to insult you here. Intelligent people understand that the real mysteries have to do with the violation of the law of the conservation of energy that is inherent in Newton's explanation of gravity; how the strong nuclear force defies the law of electic charge (to atomic nuclei together) and how gravity can operate over near infinite distances instantaneously, not even obeying Einstein's special relativity position that nothing can exceed the one hundred and eighty-six thousand miles per second. (C) I shouldn't really bring up evolutionary theory here, because I have found out that perhaps only one percent of the population has any idea what it means. Suffice to say that the doctrine of "acquired characteristics" should have rendered it as ridiculous--not to mention its salvation by the abandoning of the purely "natural selection" model to the mutagenesis one. Unless you are thinking about some of these ideas, you're not really considering the evolution of religion; you're not really "thinking" about the question of religion. You just "imagine" that you are. So I'll just tell you again: as far as anyone on this planet knows, yes there is teleological participation. We unfortunately don't have a clue what it is. No, the bible, Koran or Torah or Talmud are not interesting renderings of the intent of the power that allows the earth to stay in orbit without draining or changing any of the power source which allows it not to fly away from the sun in a straight line as it otherwise would.

Very good points Truman. This now allows me to leap on your comments about evolution and to CHEER LOUDLY that a U.S. judge hearing a case in Pennsylvania (I believe) has ruled that schools have absolutely no right to force Intelligent Design theory into biology courses.

This means, at least in my humble opinion, that intelligence is still evolving south of us even though the official version would make you think otherwise.

Truman, you've grossly mischaracterized my position, and in the process have leaped into a boatload of unfounded and tiresome assumptions about where I'm coming from.

I'm not debating the relative merits of a given set of spiritual beliefs (in that they all contain a basic set of messages which form the building blocks of communal survival in every culture around the globe), or in what manner they conflict or corroborate established science. I certainly wasn't arguing that literal Biblical interpretation should supercede science - not sure how you derived that, if indeed that is what you've done. Science has its own sphere, in which it is sovereign. But there's a lot more going on in society other than scientific advancement, and scientific truths are no substitute for world faith traditions (and most of the world would agree with me). Secular humanists are mistaken when they believe a neutral, civic-minded, vaguely socialist pan-atheism will ever supplant and replace the 'god instinct' in man. It's a universal urge that we need to work with.

My point is ultimately about the use & abuse of religion in the political arena, and the necessity of creating a middle ground for moderates on all sides.

Maybe you should re-read what I wrote.

Yes, nightbloom, and I've been laughing at that since I saw it on tv this morning. The judge, the citizens the media--everyone seems to be totally confused on this issue. Imagine trying to protect the American constitution by outlawing the teaching of the most sensible explanation of evolution AND creation. And that is one of the more galling powers of religion--to confuse all the real problems faced by human beings. What has happened is that the religionists have adopted the idea of intelligent design because, in their minds,it appears to support the creationist theory. (which as you might remember claims that god created everything in its present shape and condition more or less instantaneously. (Now, can you imagine that any believer in intelligent design would ever believe THAT? This is a very unfortunate developement and I can see the instigator of that power I was talking about--the one that defies the law of the conservation of energy--laughing its face off. Here's all I'm saying: The world which is available to the consciousness of human beings has been designed in in a way that will render our easy comprehension of "first causes" very unlikely if not impossible. You are perhaps familiar with Heisenberg's uncertainty principle--that "we can never accurately predict future events unless we can accurately measure the present state of the universe" (paraphrasing Stephen Hawkins)--more precisely it confirms the inherent ambiguity in predicting the position and velocity of subatomic particles. Sadly, we are probably thousands of years away from any knowledge of these first causes--even though the smartest of us has--like Einstein introducing light into the problem of instantaneous tranmission of "gravity"--tried our damnest. The "bend" is actually only in Einstein's mind--not in the world. Even Einstein was only rationalizing Newton's failures in his general theory. Curved space is a "model" not an explanation. And what few understand is that even in the revolutionary quantum physics there is no comprehension of "why" the electron orbits in the fashion that it does; why protons just don't fly off into space (like our earth) or if the electron indeed goes into another universe when it randomly disappears. The "strong nuclear force" is just an arbitrary construct employed to account for the fact that it shouldn't work like that at all. The holy book writers knew none of this. They didn't even know how to frame serious questions about the world. Why people still expect to find answers from their ravings,is way beyond me. The fact that some of the things I have said can easily inspire a certain group of religiously motivated believers to look me up and kill me, should tell you SOMETHING. And this was certainly the modus operandi of Christians until the last couple of hundred years or so, who I must admit, preferred burning at the stake rather than stoning to death, although there are lots of demands for it in the old testament. Read any Leviticus lately? Nightbloom, you are better than this.

Now you're miscontruing someone else's posts for mine.

Open your eyes & R-E-A-D, if only for the sake of quality control on this thread.

Allan - Intelligent Design is both a doctrinal and strategic blunder on the part of the Evangelical Right in the U.S. Notice how the established churches have kept safely out of the blast radius of this one.

The Vatican has refused to endorse it, and Cardinal Schoenborn has refuted it on theological and philosophical grounds (look him up - it's worth the read).

It's actually another manufactured issue to galvanize the nut-cases on both sides while eliminating the blasted patch of earth in the middle.

I'm actually somewhat impressed with the way the Roman Catholic, Anglican and Lutheran authorities have handled this latest American embarassment. The irony here is that these putative age-old structures of Reaction are the ones trailblazing the moderate road now.

Truman,
What are you getting at? Exactly?

nightbloom, you are correct, it was a big blunder, but somehow, I doubt these fundamentalists are ready to give up that one yet.

And while I might also agree it looks like the old guys who used to so proudly roll out the stretching machines, fire, cat-of-nine-tails and other forms of touch for keeping sinners in line, are now in the forefront, if you will, of moderation, it's all relative.

I'd humbly suggest that moderation broke from the churches eons ago and for the most part, is a secular corner of refuge from the boogeymen of mythology.

The "god instinct" you speak of, I'd place along side fear of the dark, but to be generous, I might give it a bit more legs in that early on religious or spiritual leaders or the guy with the big stick, learned through trail and error that an all powerful, quick to anger icon was a pretty effective tool for crowd control.

The Church in the West certainly has a long rap-sheet. However, I’ve come to think of it as a reflection of the universal corrupting influence which power has on human nature. People are the problem. You would have had mass purgings, inquisitions, native genocides, residential schools and the post-Colonial hang-over with or without Christianity, one way or another. It’s in us.

I think that as the single oldest disciplined multinational multicultural social structure the Church has accomplished a helluva lot in the last two millennia. Let’s not just focus on the f**ck-ups. Moreover, the nature & composition of the Church throughout history is often erroneously identified with the ‘Palace Politics’ at the top of the hierarchy. In fact, it’s always been a reasonably accurate reflection of the society from which it was derived. It’s characterized by an aristocratic and conservative minority at the top of the hierarchy, and a broad, populist and (at times surprisingly) progressive majority at its base.

As you may have noticed, I’m resistant to the stereotypes that have often been slapped on the R.C. My first bracing dose of Sex Ed was administered by a straight-talking seventy-something Dominican Nun who would make Sue Johansen look like a shrinking violet & this gay boy has remained clean, disease-free and reasonably contented throught the worst of the epidemic & ever since.

nightbloom, I am truly pleased to see that you feel fulfilled by your faith and that you can testify to it's strengths and wisdom.

I too gather strength from my beliefs, especially as we see aspects of them played out in front of our eyes.

But that is likely about where we part company on the question of who's in charge.

As messed up as my "god" is(the record's terrible), it offers the only future I think possible of sustaining anything beyond a handfull of generations of declining health, growing chaos and environmental disasters.

Unless humanity can pull itself together, very quickly and very effectively, there is little likelihood our civilization, as we know it now, will survive.

The angry god will be an ulcerated earth in a violent struggle to rid itself of this wretched virus on its skin.

Other than that, the only chance of an apocalypse raining hellfire and brimstone on us is (at least right now), is if the U.S. administration loses it again over something it needs.

nightbloom, I too was born an RC. Survived some of it's schooling system, including Jesuits who always seemed to have a fondness for booze. (That's neither a slight nor a social rarity, I now realize.)[B]

Yes, most religions have great wisdoms within them. To deny that is foolish, but wisdoms are sometimes locked away in the archival vaults as the business of survival, expansion, personal ambition and other priorities, gets played out surprisingly, even in the house of god.

I don't pine for paradise nor do I dread eternal damnation, but I do dream of living on a healthy and peaceful earth.

I appreciate your commentary, allan. I should add that I wasn't making a personal statement of faith per se. My friends always laugh when I describe myself as a 'secular Catholic'. I actually think the cultural and societal contributions of the thing stand on its own merits as a manifestation of enduring human ingenuity.

You're onto something when you identify religion as the only successful pilot project in protracted multi-generational planning (in this case, one which has lasted millennia). I'm not sure if the inculturation of environmental themes into the apocalyptic narrative is the way to go however - but you never know ;-)

Shannon Rupp just posted an interesting article on the rise of secular commercial Christmas. She makes some good points, although she understates the traditional Christian reverence for poverty and abhorrance of commercialism. Pope Benedict was just saying some of the same things last week. She's right about the 'environmental' (i.e. natural) origins of Christmas. The inculturation of the winter solstice into the Christian calendar was a stroke of genius (and not the only pagan holiday which they co-opted). As you know, Catholicism has a long history of environmentalism - Francis of Assisi was quite radical in this regard. I believe the Franciscans are still big on environmental stewardship and sustainable development.

So these aren't such new ideas - we're just rediscovering them after a period of historic amnesia.

Sorry, nightbloom. I responded to allan's comments about the Pennsylvania judge outlawing the teaching of intelligent design. I thought they were written by you. I must be more careful. However, my personal disdain for the "god instinct", as you say, remains. This may be one "universal instinct" (again your words, right?) that we can do without--especially the bizarre need to worship.

Michael Clift, you said, "Truman, what are you getting at. Exactly?" I'm not sure if you're teasing or would be interested in a short, concise paragraph outlining my overall view of the theory of evolution, natural selection, intelligent design and creationism. Let me know. I really can be brief, honest.

That's a valid opinion. I'm simply saying that it's a reality in all human societies that isn't going away, and that overzealous secular efforts to make it go away are one of the reasons the rest of us are stuck with a nasty backlash.

I find the hard-core (highly visible) Evangelical Christians extremely exasperating (even though that particular brand is actually the unrepresentative minority of evangelicals). They've become a liability to the credibility of faith just as the Ayatollahs have. But look how top-down efforts at moderation work against us & increase polarization:
"Military chaplains told to shy from Jesus"
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20051221-121224-6972r.htm

It only plays into the hands of the extremists. So long as they can maintain the illusion of "Christianity under seige" they'll have a ready-made constituency willing to vote for any Texan who'll give them the time of day.

Yes, nightbloom, and there was a time when the condemnation of slavery by abolitionists enraged the slave-holders, too. How many wars, how much slaughter do we have to put up with, fomented by the religionists, before we say, enough! I mean, have you read this in Deuteronomy 7, verse 8. "For thou art an holy people unto the Lord they God: the Lord thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself, above all people that are on the face of the earth." Or how about this from I Corinthians 13,34. "Let your women keep silence in the churches; for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law. And if they will learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church." Really, nightbloom, what kind of monster is this god you guys are in love with, anyway? Any idea how much suffering this stuff has caused?

You're still missing my point, even though I believe I've been perfectly clear & quite repetitious.

No worries tho.

Truman - Just a note on your de-contextualized quotes.

Any religious narrative is necessarily a reflection of the culture and times in which it was written, and a reflection of the prevailing realities in a given moment in history.

You're making the same mistake as the literalists when you hold up these bits of writing & read them with the interpretive lens of the present, mistakenly assuming that these are directives of faith in the modern era. No sane person does that anymore (or at least very few - and certainly no Roman Catholic I've ever met). There's ample scope for social evolution, although some periodic foot-dragging is inevitable.

In some ways, the attitude you're articulating is just as bad as the more obnoxious Evangelists. Your equation of the abolition of slavery with the ongoing attempts of the atheistic Left to replace faith with its own ideology confirms some of the more negative assumptions about the true nature of liberal pluralism.

I'm still waiting for Truman to make his point. Go ahead and say it Truman.....

Michael, here's what I was trying to say regarding the controversy which caused a Pennsylvania judge to outlaw the teaching of intelligent design in schools: There is a confusion surrounding the ideas of evolution, intelligent design and creationism. There are two basic evolutionary ideas. The first or "big E" is that species have "evolved" or changed from the eukaryotes (nucleated cells) to humans over time. This is the "evolution" that evolutionists like to call a "fact." (and rightfully so) "Small e" evolution is not so self-evident. It is about a system or "engine" as some evolutionist say, which describes the method by which species have changed. This is known as "natural selection," an idea which goes back to Aristotle, but is most commonly regarded as the revelation of Charles Darwin. It's main tenets are, (No1) because there is competition among organisms, those individuals which are best able to adapt to changes in the environment will be most likely to have their "genome" inherited by future generations. The idea is that over long periods of time this will cause changes or "evolution" of species due to a continuous aggregation of minute adaptations. The second tenet of "small e" evolution is that random, accidental mutations are "selected for" because they render an individual most adaptable to changes in the environment. A good example of this is the current concern that bacteria which are constantly bombarded with antibiotics may "learn" to deal with the new drugs because the antibiotics destroy the weakest bacteria and allow the strongest ones to survive, resulting in "superbugs" like methicillin-resistant staphlococcus aureas and vancomycin resistant enterococcus which have become a common problem in lower mainland hospitals. My opinion is that: besides the bacterial example of drug resistance, which is likely true due to the exponential nature of the replication system (binary fission), THERE IS NO UNIVERSALLY ACCEPTED PROOF THAT NATURAL SELECTION HAS EVER CREATED A NEW SPECIES. And this is the reason that many scientists are finally examining the entire theory. Another problem concerning the theory of evolution is that, according to many scientists, the complexity found in nature cannot be explained by accidental clashes between adaptation and the environment. This is known as the "irreducible complexity" issue. Also, a crisis of belief concerning the "mutation" issue is causing doubt about its usefulness: mutations are usually degenerate such as those that cause cancer, and it is therefore unlikely that any positive changes, such as new, more adaptable species would ever be the result of accidental mutations, which are, in effect, sequencing errors. Well, I was wrong. I can't do this in a few lines. But if anyone is interested, I'll continue, showing how intertwined these ideas are (intelligent design, the two evolutions and creationism) and why I think that "intelligent design" is the only sensible way to think about the history of life. The best primer I know is an article by evolutionary biologist Elisabet Sahtouris ("A message to us from our Genome") in which she states: "It seems reasonable to suppose that our genomic system, too, is behaving intelligently as a constant hive of activity now known to edit and repair itself. If it did not know what it was doing I believe it would revert to chaos in very short order."

I'm following you so far - Have at it.

Insert some paragraph-breaks tho - you're killing my eyes!

I agree with n. on both parts! Please continue.

Thanks, you guys. I'll try to do some paragraph breaks this time. Before I continue I'd like to include another quote from the Sahtouris article, which can be read online by googling the title. Here's two more ideas from the article: "To this day, every bacterium around the planet can trade bits of DNA with any other it can contact, and as microbiologist Lynn Margulis puts it, they do so with all the fervor of traders on the floor of a stock exchange. We have, in fact, been stymied by their ability to alter their genomes in response to our anti-bacterial warfare."
And from Gene Myers, the Celera computer scientist who actually assembled the (human) genome map:

"The system is extremely complex. It's like it was designed. There's a huge intelligence there. I don't see that as being unscientific. Others may, but not me."

And now back to more problems with the Theory of Evolution. I have mentioned the greatest problems with the theory, but there are others which I encountered on first coming into contact with the idea.

Darwin gave much importance to struggles among animals in his theory, and the concept of "the survival of the fittest" was paramount in the developement of the idea. This is an obvious tautology, meaning a "statement of situations that could not have been otherwise," according to Thomas S. Kuhn in his book, "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions." Which is to say that the famous idea ACTUALLY tells us NOTHING.
And that was, I think, what first instigated my doubt concerning the famous theory.

Darwin represented these struggles by describing the contests between members of several large species of animals. He describes the contest among male wolves chasing deer and that between two male deer vying for the attention of females. I must have read these accounts fifty times before deciding that he just plain misinterpreted what was going on. He claimed that the struggles would result in the "fittest" or toughest getting the right to pass on its genes and that such inheritance would result in some minute change, leading to variation of the species and eventually speciation. What I saw was that an opposite effect was really happening. Struggles among individuals do not change a species, but rather ensure that no change will, in fact occur. My term for this is "speciation inertia," and by it I mean that the strongest specimen is the archetypical individual and, by winning such battles, it will ensure that no variations will be inherited by its offspring--the exact opposite of Darwin's proposition. His account of the toughest wolves slowly morphing into another species by virtue of the toughest among them passing on adaptations suffers from a similar misunderstanding.

The last problem I will mention is that which is encompassed in the concept of, "acquired characteristics." That was a belief, developed by Jean Lamarck, a contemporary of Darwin, which goes like this: "Individual organisms adapt to the environment and that the changes made are then passed on to their descendants."
Briefly, this is a belief that what we do as individuals, such as learn to play baseball, fly a plane, or make french fries, can somehow get into our genetic material and be passed on to future generations. CHARLES DARWIN BELIEVED EVERY WORD OF IT. And this is the greatest source of the humour I find in the entire idea, and my greatest surprise that intelligent men--some of the best scientists who evey lived--would actually believe it.

Alright - I'm still with you. Thank for the cogent summary.

I'm wondering if I should hold my questions 'til your finished, as I don't want to sidetrack you until you've finished your argument.

But maybe just briefly: For example, if 'survival of the fittest' is actually a formula that supports stasis ('speciation inertia') rather than evolution, how do we explain the progressive fossil record? What is the agent of change, if not competition?

Is this where your intelligent design comes into play?

Incidentally, Lamarckianism was thoroughly discredited by the turn of the century. The most remarkable thing about the "Theory" is that it actually survived the demise of Lamarck's big idea. Both ideas should have died together because, if Lamarck was correct I doubt that Darwin's theory could have ever been challenged--Lamarkianism covers too many deficiencies. (wrongfully) As Thomas S. Kuhn suggests, in his famous work, "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions," a scientific theory does not die until another one comes along to replace it. And that is what accounts for the longevity of Darwin's banal idea. The idea of "intelligent design," although not yet adaptable to the rigours of scientific investigation, will slowly become the "new kid on the block" of future attempts to understand the history of life--though not the ORIGIN of life, which will come after "intelligent design" is generally accepted. Wish I was gonna be around for THAT one!

That is an excellent question, nightbloom but even Darwin recognized that the fossil record was NOT progressive, and he admitted in his "Origin" (in a chapter entitled, "Difficulties with the Theory" that he was completely unable to explain why transitional species were never found in the fossil records. Stephen J. Gould, perhaps the all-time defender of Darwin's theory, came up with something called, "punctuated equilibria" to explain this problem but he too has been thoroughly discredited, even mocked because of it. In fact, I once had an extended email conversation with a UBC biology professor, Dolph Schluter (a true believer, incidentally) in which we both had fun with Gould's big idea. Darwin rationalized the problem as follows: "...but as by this theory innumerable transitional forms must have existed, why do we not find them embedded in countless numbers in the crust of the earth? It will be more convenient to discuss this question in the chapter on the Imperfection of the Geological Record, and I can only state here that I believe the answer mainly lies in the record being incomparably less perfect than is generally accepted."

Suffice to say the problem has never been solved--perhaps the lack of transitional species is the most famous fault of the Theory. The entire Origin of Species is available online.

Truman, things were simple until you came along with your "theories." lol

I have the book beside his 'Voyage of the Beagle', but have never read past the sailing adventure, in which he muses on his budding theory.

Yeah, allan. He was a fascinating man, pretending to just have "discovered" his theory while hanging around on the Beagle. I know for a fact that he couldn't have believed a word of it. He was much too smart; and the theory's much too stupid. In fact, besides the theory of salvation by grace, it's easily the dumbest idea ever invented and widely believed by human beings.

Thanks for the explanation Truman.

How do you account for the fact that there are dozens of living "transitional species" observed today?
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-transitional.html

So how do you fill in the blanks, Truman?

Michael I would account for the "possibility" that there are a few transitional species by reminding you that there are between 1.5 and 2 million known species living on the earth today and that 98 percent of all species that have ever lived on the earth are now KNOWN TO BE EXTINCT. The evolutionists are fighting back identifying many similar species as indeed "transitional." As you have found, their sites are all over the internet. Some sites identify hundreds of "intermediary" species. It is a matter of opinion. The fossil record would have to include transitionals for all (at least many) of the extinct species, too, and I don't think even the most die-hard evolutionist would claim that. Remember, if there are only 2 percent of all species still ALIVE, that means there have been about fifty million species present in the last 2 billion years ago. The numbers of transitionals should be in the millions, and everywhere present in the fossil record, not just a few dozen, which paleontologists are now arguing about. This question will eventually be solved by historical genetics techniques, but as yet noone is very excited about doing the work, because scientists are in no hurry to disprove the very theory around which they IMAGINE much of their work is based. My personal opinion is that most, if not all, of the species which have been identified by hopeful evolutionists as "transitional," are merely variations of known species. The question may be a "red herring" anyway, depending on how the intelligent design theory progresses. It can hardly be claimed that whatever force is found to have driven evolution could not have allowed for the inclusion of a few dozen transitionals.

Well, nightbloom, I could write for days on this topic, but how about the theory of creationism first. It is more than a little disconcerting that Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell would both be cheering me on if they were reading this, not to mention Stockwell Day. (Stock's version of creation is ACTUALLY pretty much supported by the Genesis myth, by the way, and unfairly, everyone is pretty happy to laugh at him, but few are laughing at the Genesis story, which is really a lot funnier.) Creationism is embodied in the Genesis story of the Old Testament. The most remarkable thing about the nexus that the religionists have made between intelligent design and creationism is that creationism does not really account for what is easily discernible by even an elementary understanding of the developement of life.

Basically, creationism is the idea that "god" said, "let there be light"--and continued from there, creating as he went, in one fell swoop, lasting six or seven days--no fossils of dinosaurs, no billion-year history of species' developement, nothing, except instantaneous heaven and earth. This clearly isn't the way it happened. Things "evolved." But only in a "big e" way, of course. Enough said, really. The nexus between intelligent design and creationism is just another myth.

Interesting, and thank you.

None of the traditional faiths maintain Genesis as a literal narrative (although there are literalists, to be sure).

It's an allegorical story about the nature of creation (and sub-creation), intended to convey a set of abstract concepts in an effective way that is still comprehensible to the young. The literal surface narrative is only for children and adult children.

This is the essence of the Roman Catholic position on Genesis & Creation. It is not incompatible with science - it simply exists in an entirely separate sphere. This is also the source of the Catholic critique of the 'intelligent design' currently being promoted in the U.S....that it is a contingent attempt to marry faith & science that will ultimately prove inadequate.

Here's a cursory summary of Cardinal Schoenborn's critique:

http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=3036&program=News&callingPage=discoMainPage

And his NYT Op-Ed that caused the row this past summer:
http://www.millerandlevine.com/km/evol/catholic/schonborn-NYTimes.html

An allegory, you say. That's pretty convenient, eh. Why didn't they say that before when they were burning people at the stake and confining Gallileo to his room? The Genesis story just, "exists in an entirely separate sphere"? I wonder what sphere that is. Perhaps the same sphere as the movie, "King Kong"--where they have dinosaurs and giant apes co-existing, because, really, nightbloom, that's pretty much all the accuracy embodied in it. This, of course, begs the question: If Genesis is an allegory, why not, then the entire Bible?--which is all I'm saying. But it's a MISTAKEN allegory, too. So what's its real value, except aiding and abetting religious, cultural and intellectual chauvinism? And whatever the Catholic Church says--even as an allegory--it is NOT compatible with science. The Catholic church might just be interested in its OWN longevity.

Anyway, I was going to end, (if noone's interested) or begin my discussion of intelligent design by saying that it is basically, a "theory by default."

Gallileo was actually promoting faulty science when he was placed under house arrest (although his hypothesis was borne out after he was gone...and not that I agree with the censure, but that's neither here nor there).

Also of possible interest, comments by the Jesuit scientist George Coyne (the Vatican's chief Astronomer):
Intelligent design 'not science'
http://washingtontimes.com/world/20051118-110234-8122r.htm

Yes, I'm following your argument - please continue.

Nightbloom, you wrote, "Gallileo was actually promoting faulty science when he was placed under house arrest (although his hypothesis was borne out after he was gone..." I really tried to understand this but I'm not sure how he could have been promoting faulty science if his hypothesis was borne out after he was gone. Doesn't that suggest that he was promoting ACCURATE SCIENCE?

On Intelligent Design:

Darwin wrote: "If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, succesive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down."

I believe that this is the case. He was aware of the complexity of the human eyeball and was puzzled by it. Neo-darwinians claim that this problem has been solved. I do not. I think the same problem arises with the human ear and in many other organs in other organisms. Subtract any component and you have nothing. There is a certain bacteria--E Coli, I think, that has an actual rotary motor comprised of a flagellum attached to it, used as a means of propulsion.

I believe all of these things were "projects."
I think there is learning and planning going on in nature, as I suggested by including quotes from the work of Elisabet Sahtouris and Gene Myers, the Celera (Human Genome Project) computer scientist.

In fact, I think that there is no reason to think that any complex organism came into existence in any method other than the ones we employ to create all of the machines of this civilization--a knowledge and application of what has been built in the past. And I think that is the case with the genetic system--a system of developement by which 20 amino acids in conjunction with 4 (sometimes 5) nucleotides pass through a factory known as a ribosome to develop all of the proteins needed by living organisms. It doesn't seem even remotely possible to me that such a system could come into existence by chance or
accident.

I believed this in l980, long before the current debate began, although I preferred to call it something like the "teleological (purposeful) aspect of evolution." This aspect cannot yet be studied scientifically because it cannot be observed or reproduced.

I refer to it as the "default theory" because evolution by natural selection and creationism are, to me, entirely incorrect (although what I called big E evolution is a FACT) and what is left is that some force that we know nothing about exists in the world and this is especially borne out by the complete mystery surrounding the existence of gravity, which physicists have not been able to include in a theory of everything.

My intent in this discussion is that people will think about it. Thanks so much nightbloom, Michael and Allen for your encouragement.

Thank you, Truman - I've found your posts succinct & informative.

On a sidenote: The Galileo kerfuffle is an interesting example of how things become erroneously typecast with their repetition over generations. I, too, used to cite Galileo as an example of religious totalitarianism in the West.

The theories of heliocentrism & the rotation of the earth on its axis had been around for a while before Galileo came along. However, scientists were having difficulty proving it, so it remained only a theory & the established Aristotelean cosmology held firm. Nevertheless, the scientific community was actively engaged in seeking proofs (often sponsored by the unsung patron of early science - the Roman Catholic Church).

Galileo pissed off the entire scientific community first by publishing Kepler's theories as his own, and then by claiming to have proven heliocentrism & the rotation of the earth. His proof included observation of the movements of tides (again scorning Kepler's argument that the movements of the tides was connected to the placement of the moon). He claimed credit for having 'proven' his theories, and began teaching it as scientific truth in spite of opposition from within the scientific community.

That was just the beginning of his troubles, of course, and it's an interesting story in itself. Copernican heliocentrism was, of course, eventually proven as a scientific fact using sound science. But Galileo's science was faulty, not to mention his ethics.

His real contribution to science remains his development of the telescope. He should not be celebrated as some sort of martyr of science, as has been done for so long by so many.

Thanks for the heads-up regarding Galileo, nightbloom I bought the "science martyr" story hook, line and sinker, as they say.

I guess we're all wondering where the universal ancestor came from.

I say chance, Nightbloom says God (I think) and Truman says something outside of our realm of understanding but not God.

How pleasant that we can all "play nice" on this controversial subject.

Keeriste, I thought I mighta convinced you that it's not chance, Michael. I have one more argument--Cosmology. So anyway...LIGHT--wave or particle? (photon) We don't know. GRAVITY--acts over any distance with NO power source and takes NO time to do its thing.(at least the sun has hydrogen and its effect, light takes 8 minutes to get here.) TIME--Einstein said it doesn't really exist--it's humanity's biggest illusion.

ALL OF THESE THINGS ARE BEYOND OUR UNDERSTANDING. Big singularity (big bang)--nuclear fusion creates a cascade of explosions over 10 billion years. Could it really be NOT TRUE that these early events occurred in order to create the ELEMENTS for life, seeing as how they RESULTED in a progression: hydrogen to helium to carbon etc.

Is it a co-incidence (chance) that these are all the elements required by life, which is comprised of CHONPS (carbon, hydrogen, oxygen,nitrogen, phosphorus and sulphur? If I'm wrong, then the universe is just a really stupid place with no meaning, wouldn't you say? So, Michael, when you say, "chance" are you saying that it's just a coincidence that we got everything we need to exist from these explosions? I think life--whether here or elsewhere in this--or another universe--is the only interesting thing going. SOMETHING was trying to create life. Would you even say, "maybe"? I know my belief is a generic rendering of the "anthropic principle." But, damn, it just seems so obvious to me. So, the "work in progress" idea just doesn't appeal to you, then? Then why did it take 3.5 billion years after all the elements were in place to create a sentient being with a consciousness like we're now using to think about these things?

That was my best shot.

I think it will ulitmately prove to be beyond our ability to perceive & comprehend, irrespective of the onward march of science & philosophy. GOD is the word our culture(s) have developed to define the unknowable, and will ultimately prove to be as good as any word, while providing a personification that helps tame our irrational fear of the unknown void. The God-in-Man innovation that is to be found in Christianity has a significance indepent of rational science and the knowable universe - it is a many-layered philosophy that says more about us than it does about the composition of atoms within & around us. Its basis is really just a resonating call to be better than our lesser selves.

Religion has its uses. Its moderate manifestations should be encouraged & shored-up, lest the current devolution continue, and we find ourselves grappling with something much newer & more virulent, without evolved systems of restraint & control.

nightbloom, I agree with EVERYTHING you said, but I'm not trying to figure out what's USEFUL.
I'm trying to figure out what's true.

Uh, well maybe not everything.

nightbloom, this is fairly cheeky of me, I admit, but you have to say WHY you believe what you believe--beyond the official position of various church officials. How did you come to your conclusions? What EVIDENCE supports your position--you know, stuff like THAT.

Yes Truman, I do mean coincidence. I am cautiously optimistic that we will find the answers to the questions you posed.

Our ability to ask the question and ponder its meaning is our greatest tool. Simply because we do not know the answers now does not mean that the answers are neither supernatural nor unknowable.

Truman - I've actually refrained from making statements of personal belief here. I'm actually not clear which conclusions you would like me to provide evidence for.

Are you looking for evidence that Jesus really existed? That is to be found in established (non-religious) historical sources composed by contemporaries - namely the historians Josephus & Tacitus. The man *did* exist & *was* indeed crucified by Roman authorities at the direction of governor Pontius Pilate.

If you're looking for proofs of the Christian faith, that is another story altogether. That's why it's called "faith" and "belief" instead of "science". To each its own sphere. Using the language of one sphere to comprehend the other is pure contingency - it doesn't really work. Ultimately all things are known because we want to believe we know.

Keep at it guys.

This is pure pleasure and, I think, why I first found Tyee so interesting.

Here's tar -n- feather athiest listening to debate about players in the hereafter and I'm enjoying it.

And the tone is civil.

nightbloom, while I have never seriously doubted that there was indeed a man, probably called Jesus, who ran a cult in Judea, and was adored by his followers, I am not particularly enamoured by much that Josephus had to say about it as I once spent many days out of my precious allotment studying Josephus' mostly interpolated account of the suicide of 900 Jews at Masada. And precious little did he have to say about Christ, anyway--about 200 words in all of his "Antiquities".

Despite the paucity of his history in this regard, I believe that his account is reliable--as I say-that there was a guy persecuted and murdered by the Romans--as Romans were wont to do, even to the most benign of dissenters.

Tacitus, who referred to the Christians' belief as a "pernicious superstition," has not fared so well among historians, and most--except Christian apologists--dismiss his account as unreliable.

While your description of these men as "contemporaries" of Christ might bear some generic accuracy, it is important to note that Christ was dead before either of them were born.

This morning I was going over Luke and Matthew again, and noted that Luke seemed to think that Jesus was born in a manger, writing: "And they came with haste, and found Mary, and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger." (Luke 2,16) Matthew wrote that: "And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down and worshipped him..." (Matthew 2, 11)

Admittedly, I'm hardly the first to notice this discrepancy, and certainly it didn't become "news" to me only this morning, but I would suggest that this is far more interesting than whatever Josephus and Tacitus had to say, because Luke and Matthew were known to be "actual" contemporaries and should have at least been able to get their stories straight.

There's actually far more interesting discrepancies among the various texts, but I'm actually not here to defend the Bible's literal accuracy or its authority as a linear historical record. I regard it as a cultural expression of the West's 'god-instinct' and regard its relevance to be derived principally from that.

Lest I give you the wrong impression, let me enunciate that I believe the true 'meaning' of the Bible lies in the basic emotive messages imparted in it. I personally am not disturbed by lapses in literal interpretation.

In fact, I'd be putting forward the same set of arguments even if it were definitively proven tomorrow that no crucifixion or resurrection ever took place (or that the man never actually existed). This is because the basic messages underlying the narrative convey their own set of abstract truths. As for the lesser messages tied to the historic cultural contexts in which various texts were compiled: I'm not worried about the offense of wearing three different weaves of fabric, or desecrating my body by eating the flesh of a hooved animal, or what have you.

nightbloom,I thought you believed in the "whosoever believeth in me shall not perish but shall have everlasting life" kind of stuff. The Christian message REALLY is an exhortation to accept the life, death and sacrifice of Jesus Christ, as a personage (Son) of God--and by virtue of this belief, inherit the earth, and stuff like that, and be taken up into heaven in the fashion described by various pushers of the "Left Behind" series described by Catherine Rolfsen--not to mention such goodies as "everlasting life."

Your creed really doesn't seem to be much different than mine. In fact, unless you employ the word, "Christian" to mean just a "good person," as some do, I wonder why you would identify yourself in that way at all.

I too, think there's some interesting stuff in the bible, and certainly SOME of the things Jesus said are inspirational, but I really don't like the guy all that much. I mean, this guy comes up and asks him if he could go and bury his father before joining the tour and Jesus says basically, forget it--"Let the bury bury the dead." In a silly kind of Bushian fashion, his whole take on winning heart's and minds seems to be, "You're either with me or you're against me, eh."

Definitely not my kind of saviour. I think modern day shrinks would be combing the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders if he should arrive in the clouds as he promised, especially after having earning the reward as the most tardy saviour ever.

Seriously, though, nightbloom. I really don't like Jesus. What do YOU see in him?

nightbloom, did you really mean to write, "or that the man never actually existed." I might be missing something here, but I don't see any Christian congregation being overly inspired by that bit of apostasy.

I meant to say, "Let the DEAD bury the dead."

It's funny how any and all cultural references employed today to illustrate anything anti-social invariably involves the surname 'Bush'. Is Bush the limit of our cultural & political memories and frame of reference? That's an aside, however...

The funny thing about this thread is that I never claimed to be a Christian apologist. I described myself (tongue in cheek) on another thread as a 'Secular Catholic' (in the same fashion as 'Secular Jew'). I have devulged very little of my personal belief system (because it's not really important here) save perhaps my belief in the reality of evil & good.

I simply distrust the compulsive - and often sly & underhanded - impulse of the Left to uproot faith and religion in order to leverage its own brand of salvation & liberation. I see the religious impulse in man as a universal, cyclical and often unconscious activity. It is the most dangerous vacuum that can be allowed to exist in the human community. Doing away with traditional faiths will mark a commercialized interregnum of unbridled self-help commercialism, eccentric & cultish new age experimentations, and basic confusion about the meaning & reality of personhood in society....followed by a virulent return of fanaticism in some new & unrestained incarnation.

The current hard core literalist & politically aggressive fundamentalism we're seeing in the US, which traditional faith structures are careful to hold at arms length, is partly a manifestation of this trend. It is a Reaction.

The significance of Christianity (and the Bible, the pantheon of Saints, the sediment of historical reference points) are their irreplaceable relevance as cultural artifacts that mirror who we are....whether we like it or not. Even you, Truman, are a product of their narratives, their value-system, their symbolic coding, their formalisms. Christianity, with its pagan sub-code, all its uses & abuses throughout history, is a mirror reflecting the Western consciousness, and which holds deep significance for us whether we love it or hate it (the latter being pernicious form of self-loathing, again seen more frequently within the compulsively 'guilty' liberal-Left). It is a cultural artifact offering a basic blueprint for mutual acceptance & community living - and one of the better ones to have evolved in human history (in my opinion).

The problems start when fanatics or politically-motivated interests are allowed to seize control of it & warp its definition for their own purposes. This is what the liberal-Left and the secular humanists have done in the modern era. Now it's becoming another instrument of 'political' crusading.

So you didn't direct me towards Josephus and Tacitus, then, as evidence of the historicity of Christ, or try to create a balance between the good and evil done by the church. And you didn'tleave links to the official position of the Catholic Pope, regarding "intelligent design," and inform me of the "god instinct" in people.

Are you absolutely sure that, "Christianity is a mirror reflecting Western consciousness"? Are you equally sure that I, Truman, am, "a product of their narratives, their value systems, their symbolic codings, their formulism? ...the latter being a pernicious form of self-loathing, again seen more frequently with the compulsively-guilty liberal left." I think one could say that Christianity is a cartoon reflecting Western unconsiousness, but, then that's just me.

One could, if one was so inclined, make a good case that your last paragraph, "The problem starts when fanatics or politically-motivated interests are allowed to seize control of it and warp its definition for their own purposes...now it's become another instrument of "political crusading" might be at least as meaningfully applied to the "political RIGHT, as to the political LEFT--which would I suspect you'll admit, destroy your entire argument that us lefties are more likely to misuse religion than you righties. Seems to be some bigotry going on here, wouldn't you say.

Which, I might add, was, afterall your main thesis--that the shrillness of the so-called Christian Right, is really just a REACTION to the too loudly-stated secular-humanist opinions of the Left--or something--which kinda smacks of scapegoatism, I think.

That hasn't been my argument exactly. My argument has been all along (on other threads too) that the current virulence of Rightist Christian fundamentalism is a problem created in part because the Left has never cultivated a constituency within the moderate religious centre. It's a ready-made constituency (just add water!).
The only notable exception that springs to mind are the evangelical African-American churches in the U.S. who invariably support Democrats (and liberal-minded policies), and perhaps the less Marxist manifestations of Liberation Theology in Latin America.

I am hardly defending the bigoted aspects of organized religion (which certainly exist & need to be discouraged using their own language, faith & philosophy). In fact, as a gay man I am a direct beneficiary of the secularization of the public sphere.

My point is that instead of engaging these people & cultivating a moderate constituency, the liberal-Left has focused a great deal of effort in challenging religion in its own sphere. This has gone beyond the elementary secularization of the public sphere (which I agree with) to 'social engineering' efforts intended (in my opinion) to re-code culture and supplant faith with liberal ideology.

Yes, the 'god instinct' (I'm open to alternate terminology) I refer to can be observed in all human cultures. The universal existence of this cultural theme is an objective fact. Linking official Catholic commentaries on Intelligent Design was in context - I was pointing out their distinctions between the spheres of faith & science, and that they corroborate the criticism of neo-Darwinism which you yourself have articulated (quite well, I might add).

Hence, the putative 'War on Christmas'...? =)

Well,for the Catholic Church to denigrate the Intelligent Design idea is a particularly ironic developement, since the idea, at least superficially, supports the idea that there are forces out there beyond the understanding of human beings. And I have tried to point out to you that the official positions of churches are NOT made to increase understanding of how the world works, but rather, to chose that set of descriptions that will best ensure the longevity of the instituion--which is ALL the Catholic Church has ever been concerned about, and I think that you, in good faith, must acknowledge that such is the case.

Seeing, however, that this is my big chance to to enlighten readers about the theory of evolution (remember, small e, only) I would like to discuss one more aspect--the one which, I think, supplies the most commom-sense argument against its accuracy. And that is the conclusion I have arrived at concerning domestic dogs.

To reiterate, the theory is that certain members of a species are chosen "for the future" because they are embodiments of variations "selected" because those specific variations make them more able to adapt to certain changes in the environment. The archetypical parable is that of the peppered moth and industrial melanism in Britain, which I invite everyone to google. Suffice to say that the story is incorrect because all of the moths-black or white-are still MEMBERS OF THE SAME SPECIES, and in fact, no speciation has taken place.

All domestic dogs are members of the SAME SPECIES. Their traits, (variations) have been chosen by human beings in order to develope certain breeds which humans deem desireable.
Evolutionists refer to such developement as ARTIFICIAL SELECTION. Perhaps ALL evolutionists view this "selecting" as an analogue to natural selection, with the agent of change being humans instead of random clashes with changes in the environment.

Here's my point: regardless of how many variations (breeds) that humans have been able to construct by artificial selection, there is no hint that such artificial selection has ever or will ever lead to the developement of a single new species, such as hypothesized by the "natural" selection or "mutation-modelled" theories of speciation.

Tiny breeds remain completely reproductively compatible with Great Danes and Newfoundlanders. Species are therefore NOT developed by the progression of variation, which is the big idea of Charles Darwin, and his followers, such as Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Dawkins. The mystery in the Theory of Evolution debacle is why anyone would ever think it's a smart idea. And, of course, creationism is even more ridiculous, as I should have proven to anyone who's followed this discussion. Bye and thanks.

Thanks Truman - An interesting & informative post (as always). We actually agree on a lot more points than you probably think (just not in the way you think!). In fact, I don't think there's a single statement in your latest post that I objectively disagree with. In any case, C U on the other threadz - nightbloom.

Dare I ask! How does one state one's beliefs without appearing sanctimonious or self-righteous? It's the trouble with these public writing exercises that if one is to participate that there is always the risk that one cannot avoid a certain degree of egoism and self-aggrandizement in the process. An uncomfortable position for the uninitiated here for sure. I am somewaht intrigued with the notion of the "god-instinct" as mentioned over a week ago in this column - I wonder if there is any chance that we evolve from that quirky instinct which often rears its ugly head detracting us from following forth on a more noble spiritual quest?

Is the Nightbloom vs Truman Green contest over?If so who won?

Bromac, regarding, "...wonder if there is any chance that we evolve from that quirky instinct which often rears its ugly head detracting us from following forth on a more noble spiritual quest?"

I wish I had said it.

I've already used up 75% of my allotment(in years, at least) but I'm sure once the species has tired of all the goofy religions, they'll start to take a serious look at what's really going on. (including the religion of evolution by "natural selection."

I also recognize the wisdom of the first part of your statement, too, about not being able to avoid, "a certain degree of egoism and self-aggrandizement..."

Did you read Bromac, nightbloom?

Kent, Bromac won.

I didn't find Truman's posts to be particularly sanctimonious or self-aggrandizing. His posts explaining some of the flaws of neo-Darwinist theory were particularly succinct.

What I find interesting is just how many "fundamentalisms" there are out there. Religious fundamentalism is only one variety. There are Secular Humanist fundamentalists too. There is a tendency to categorize opinions according to our own assumptions regarding the opposing viewpoint (or that which sounds like the opposing viewpoint at first glance). Take this quote, (NOT Truman's), which I'm taking from the 'War on Christmas' thread:

When did I denigrate everything non-Christian? When did I strive to demonstrate "how strong (my) faith is."? These were both unfounded assumptions. This same poster referred to me as a "fundamentalist" and equated my viewpoint to that of the Taliban. Go figure.

There is a point at which such caricatures (and characters!) at either end of the spectrum actually feed on each other. Secular Humanist fundamentalists need the Jerry Falwells & the Fred Phelps (of "God Hates Fags" notoriety) nutcases. It serves a political purpose to be able the lump all forms of faith under these caricatures, even though it is profoundly untrue. Lumping myself and other moderates in with these crazy people grants those at the far end of the secular humanist or liberal-Left spectrum the automatic license to dismiss or ridicule anything I might say afterwards. This happens to moderates of all stripes all the time.

The fact that I linked Cardinal Schoenborn's comments on Intelligent Design (or the Vatican's Chief Astronomer) to demonstrate that not everyone (certainly not every Christian) is on the hard-core Evangelical Christian bandwagon, and to demonstrate that traditional Churches in the West have internalized the separation of Church & State virtually as an article of doctrine, says absolutely nothing about me. It was only a demonstration that some religious organizations are actually acting as forces of moderation. It's a grey areas that irks the Secular Humanist fundamentalists among us. Or when I referred to Josephus & Tacitus to illustrate the difference between historically established fact (with the accepted limitations identified by modern scholarship, which Truman touched upon) and the belief tradition that was derived from those basic facts & events, likewise says nothing about me.

A final note on the putative "god instinct" - I explained that in two separate postings: it is simply my shorthand (not mine, actually) for the universal prevalence in human cultures around the globe to develop a cosmology & supporting narrative structure to explain the unknowable...almost always with a god or gods (or spirits, guiding cycle, auto-catalyzing force, or higher intelligence directing creation). This "god instinct" has been observed & commented upon by scholars & thinkers far greater than myself. It's fairly self-evident.

Just a correction: they're not exactly denigrating it - they're just not jumping on the bandwagon, and are certainly not supporting the notion that it should be taught in the classroom alongside other scientific theories. They are also preserving the integrity of the salvation narrative - but that's an aside - the Catholic faith - its Roman, Eastern Orthodox and (nominally) Anglican branches - adhere to a very different doctrine on salvation and liberation that do 'the sects' (Protestantism's many offshoots) . The R.C. has seen its fair share of doctrinal fads to know one when it sees it. There's a huge gulf separating U.S. style Christian evangelism (let along fundamentalism) and Roman Catholicism (of which the North American variety is undoubtedly the most 'liberal'....although the Archdiocese of Vancouver tends to be quite conservative).

In the case of Intelligent Design, the Catholic Church is actually defending Reason in opposing the premature introduction of 'Intelligent Design' into the classroom as 'science'. This is what's so interesting about the Church's position. The theory actually hasn't been proven using rational (scientific) method. Therefore it's not science (yet).....Just as Galileo's theory "proving" heliocentrism and the rotation of the Earth was not science (right hypothesis, but wrong proof....therefore unproven = not science). The R.C. held the line on that one too (and Galileo was treated generously considering the times & context).

There is a certain irony in observing the Roman Catholic Church holding the line for secular humanism at a time when the latter (secular humanism) has exhausted public tolerance for its own peculiar experimentations (in the U.S., that is, and only for the time being), but the Church is really doing what they've (almost) always done since the Enlightenment in upholding the integrity of science.

I wonder how mucn defending of the Catholic Church you would have to do before I may fairly consider you to be a defender of the Catholic Church, nightbloom. Just asking.

The Catholic Church persecuted Galileo because he had the intellectual honesty to explore the Copernican heliocentric theory, and to use his new telescope to provide evidence that it was, indeed, the correct view. (pun intended) (Although, he had, himself, taught the wrong view at college--a circumstance from which lesser lights often fail to emerge). When you write that he was, "treated generously considering the times and context," you are placing yourself squarely within the realm of "presentism," not to mention "apologetics, which, in reverse order, some would say are the two final refuges of a scoundrel. (Any crime ever committed, from slavery to female circumcision, can be diminished using such an ignoble rationalization)

While I would not necessarily concur with such harsh criticism, it seems unavoidable for me (in good faith) to repeat that you are in a singularly black hole of DENIAL, from which, as I'm certain your physics has taught you, "NO LIGHT WILL EVER ESCAPE."

You still don't get it Truman - this isn't about me. My arguments stand on their own. You and others began behaving as though I had made bona fide statements of faith which seemingly confirmed some sort of "fundamentalism" on my part. My opinions were even equated with the Taliban, even though I had articulated no religious beliefs, only a moderate opinion. Such is the rabid nature of nihilist secular humanist fundamentalism.

You and others are just plain wrong & misguided in that regard, and have tried to spin my argument into something it wasn't.

And to take account of the historical context of a given event in history is not "presentism" or "apology" - You're getting tangled up in your own runaway categorizations. It's just responsible scholarship. Galileo was prosecuted for teaching an unproven theory as 'science', and he was indeed treated leniently for the times because he had powerful sypathizers both within the Church and the scientific community (which the Church was funding), notwithstanding his flawed methods & sloppy ethics.

I'm not the one seeing fundamentalists & taliban gremlins everywhere.....I'm simply demonstrating that the situation isn't as black & white as the caricatures on the Left and the Evangelical Right would have us believe. My discussion of the Catholic Church (the oldest surviving institution of Western Civilization) has the express purpose of demonstrating the grey areas involved in this issue. What's upsetting to many (including you, I suspect) is that the caricatures we've invented to justify our secular humanist fundamentalism just doesn't match the reality of those institutions which the atheistic Left would love to pull up by their roots.

I challenge you to demonstrate is what manner I am in a putative "black hole of denial" from which "no light will ever escape". Is this theory or science on your part? I anxiously await your secular humanist Inquisition into my belief system.

I should probably add that your own rendition on 'Intelligent Design' also amounts to an unproven (i.e. unscientific) belief system in itself, requiring a certain reliance upon its own inherent kernel of faith.

Ergo you're a 'believer' Truman. Are you sure you're not the one who's in denial?

Uh, no, this IS about YOU. At least I was "talking to you" as some, long forgotten movie actor once asked. (I think, Robert de Niro). You ARE defending the Catholic Church, no matter how much you squeal. You do think Jesus was, at minimum, worth considering as a possible saviour. I think he was a raving maniac, not to mention hopelessly inflicted with the modern ailment known as narcicisstic personality disorder. At lastly, although you claim this hasn't been a contest, it was, and apparently remains a contest. I was trying to come up with better stuff than you were to prove my point about religion; you were trying to come up with better stuff than me to prove your point. Dammit, man, that's a CONTEST.

I know my view of Intelligent Design is an unproven theory. Did you catch the part where I said I know it can't be studied as a science because it can't be objectively observed, let alone predicted or reproduced--some fairly important exigencies of scientific investigation. SOME FAITH.

Furthermore, as I'm sure you understand, an argument in formal logic is valid if and only if it is not possible for the premises of the argument to be true while the conclusion is false. And, as I repeat that your denial of the hope for salvation through the magic of the Jesus death and revival story,(and consequent emergence into heaven on the right hand of God) renders you a unique "defender of the faith indeed,"--at best. In view of that, I must suggest that I have adequately proven my claim that you are a defender of the Catholic Church because, as any self-respecting bishop would admit, without Jesus Christ, there is no Catholic Church, nor any good reason to await his appearance as a thief in the night, or indeed, in the morning or any other secret part of day.

Likewise, your strange position that, "it's not about you," while not as stringent in its authority as the phrase, "you are what you eat," it can hardly be DENIED (that pesky word again) that you ARE WHAT YOU THINK. And I would highly recommend your assumption of this non-dissociative state in order for you to continue in good health, which I, lastly, do not hesitate to bid you.

No, Truman. You're in a darkened box, and I don't know if I can direct you to the way out. I was stating objective facts, not making statements of faith. Conflating one with the other reveals a deeper confusion on your part (& others) that I'm not sure I can resolve here.

I was stating objective facts. The R.C. position on 'intelligent design' did not conform to the 'fundamentalist' stereotype of Christianity which was being promulgated on this thread and on this website. Nor did its position on neo-Darwinism conform to stereotypes either. In fact, nothing about it seems to conform to popular stereotypes created by the media....nor does it conform to the self-serving stereotypes promulgated by the institution-busting, culture-erasing, history-rewriting, legitimacy-craving, secular humanist liberal-Left (hehe). That's been a consistent theme in my postings on various threads that touched upon the R.C. - from sex education to condom distribution in Africa to support for the sciences and the institutionalized separation of Church & State. Virtually nothing mentioned in popular media or on these threads reflect the reality of any of these equations. There's a reason for that, which I've touched upon, but which warrants its own thread in order to do it justice.

The R.C.'s relationship to science has been grossly misrepresented in the popular mind. Galileo's "false martyrdom" is just one component of the founding myth which radical secular humanist fundamentalism has created for itself. In fact, from Copernicus to Gregory Mendel modern science owes a massive debt to the scholars of the Roman Church. We wouldn't even know about stem cells if that Augustinian Monk (Mendel) hadn't started breeding peas to demonstrate the elementary workings of the genetic code. I'm not attempting a whitewash here, I'm just resisting the blackwash. Whether in the form of education, facilities, protection, financial patronage & promotion, the R.C. has not been the monolithic agent of cultural atavism it has been painted as here & elsewhere....and nor has Christianity at large. For most of its history it has been a crucial - nay, the crucial - civilizing, moderating bulwark in Western history....which is why it is such a prime target for the New Puritans (i.e. the secular humanist fundamentalists of the liberal-Left).

In pointing this out, I'm simply correcting a popular error in perception. The fact that this error is useful to those supporting an ideology-driven program to de-institutionale Western culture (including its faith tradition) is an aside on my part.

It should be possible in modern discourse to point out these errors on the part of secular humanist liberal-Left ideologues (and the fundamentalists among them) without having one's own secular humanist credentials (or Christian credentials for that matter) made into the primary subject of debate.

...that should have read: "...an ideology-drive program to de-institutionalize Western culture..."

Geez - I still didn't get it right -

"...an ideology-driven program to de-institutionalize Western culture..."

I hope you're printing that stuff out, nightbloom. It could be a really funny play, eh. Not saying, of course, that I don't appear just as funny. All I'm saying is the Pope's not really that old fisherman, Peter's representative, eh. It's a pile of crap to get walls to hang stuff on like the Sistine Chapel and places like that in the Vatican City. I do cartoons and my all--time favourite is one of Jonah coming alive on the Chapel with his finger pointing downward and his head up to the heavens and he says, "Jeez Christ, God. You're always playing the blame game. YOU created it. You fix it."

LOL - Truman, you seem to have to same sense of humour as a good friend of mine, who also happens to be an ordained Anglican priest (who can't stand Pope Benedict incidentally....and whose wife happens to be a secular Jewess who can't stand organized religion). He cracks jokes like that all the time (not during his sermons, of course).

You can't judge a book by its cover, Truman. You should know that by now.

You've made some fairly sweeping & unfounded assumptions about where I'm coming from when I put forward the arguments I have.

The faith tradition as it has evolved during its long journey to the present day is still better than what we'd end up with if we started from scratch all over again (which is precisely what would happen, and has already begun to happen).

The faith tradition is a repository of accumulated lessons and institutionalized restraints, some of the them hard bought indeed. These lessons range from everything from the separation of Church & State (which traditional religious structures have internalized as a virtual article of faith), to the abolition of ecclesiastical Star Chamber courts, to a basic civic ethic of religious tolerance that emerged from the Religious Wars (necessary for a pluralistic society such as our own). I could go on - it certainly doesn't end there.

The fact that is so inconvenient to the secular humanist fundamentalists is simply this: The faith tradition of the West (to which U.S.-style evangelical Christianity is a very marginal & very new arrival) is fairly moderate. None of the caricatures really apply. In any case, Christianity in North American & Europe is far more moderate that the movements waiting to take its place.

The basic problem is this: Secular Humanists and the atheistic Left would like to generate a state of artificially-induced cultural amnesia in order to realize their long-standing project to replace the Western faith tradition with their own flimsy ideology. Instead, Secular Humanists should be realistic & pragmatic: bite the bullet & do the deal for the sake of preserving the gains we've made as an evolved society. I'm thinking long term, and I don't trust what would fill the vacuum if the secular humanist fundamentalists ever succeed in their goal of uprooting the Western faith tradition and exorcising it from existence (which is exactly what they want, as demonstrated by your own & others' statements on this thread).

If you want to know my "belief system" underpinning the arguments I've put forward on this & other thread, this is basically it.

Hey everyone,

Your discussion was brought to my attention by a friend of mine, and I have found it quite interesting thus far. As a student of biology, and now ecology I have learned much about evolution as biology is generally taught by the doctrine "nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution" as dobzanski once said. The problem with that statement is that there is argument in the biological community over when evolution has happened; is it when a new gene becomes popular in a population or when two species become reproductively isolated?

Anyways, while i can relate to much of what was said above, i find some general misunderstandings of evolution as it being taught today. Darwin's original argument of evolution is no longer the accepted view, though it has been very useful in guiding us towards a greater understanding. Instead of natural selection there has been much emphasis on the seperation of a population into seperate populations through the natural creation of barriers (e.g. mountains, rivers, oceans and others). WHile natural selection does occur, and has been found to occur through gene changes over time, this type of speciation seems to fit better with patterns in genes. These patterns are also corroborated by geological knowledge.

Now having said this, I do understand some elements of the critique of evolution. We haven't seen species become reproductively isolated to my knowledge, and that makes it difficult to be certain about how species arise. But i'd like to know if intelligent design can explain the patterns in genes and geology quite as well. Until then, in science we work with the model that fits what we see with our eyes best.

biawakgila, you say, "while natural selection does occur, and has been found to occur through gene changes over time, this type of speciation seems to fit better with patterns in genes." I would remind you that "patterns in genes" are indeed, "gene changes," and that your sentence is basically a tautology which adds no new information. Do you mean, by this, that there is some kind of predictable pressure for genes to change in response to environmental changes, and that such changes can be seen to adaptive? Random gene changes can be thought of as mutations.

In an email discussion with me, Dolphe Schluter (UBC biologist) wrote, "We still know very little about mutation. We know it happens (we can measure it too) but have difficulty figuring out why some genes seem to mutate more than others and why. We also would like to know whether the genetic changes that happen to a population in a new environment (such as a stickleback in a new lake environment) are based on new mutations or on GENETIC CHANGES BROUGHT BY ANCESTORS (eg the marine stickleback). But now is the genomic era, and lots of progress is being made."

The idea of "natural selection" is about how variations in populations arise through adaptative response to environmental change, and how these variations result in speciation. You may, of course, apply the term, "natural selection" to such changes, even on the level of genes, but I see no reason to believe that this description is more than arbitrary, unless there is some predictability resulting from observation, and some adherence to the basic concept.

While it is possible to move the goalposts, so to speak in the discussion of "natural selection" I think the question remains the same: Whether on a genomic or phenomic level, is the method of change random response to environmental pressure?

The basic idea of intelligent design is that while the random response to environmental change is certainly a very "elegant" idea and would seem to provide a model for the dizzying array of a 100 million or so species since the eukaryotes, it doesn't seem to be sufficient to explain the vast complexity which exists within each species, nor any explanation of extinction.

Certainly intelligent design cannot yet be studied as a science, as it isn't commensurate with any of the requirements of analysis. The idea is that there seems to be genetic choices being made for which the term "random" remains wholly insufficient, and if such choices are not random or accidental, they must be purposeful or teleologic, even if algorithmic, such as seems likely with features like mandelbrot fractals.

I think the use of the term "natural selection" as a description of the impetus for evolutionary genetics will prove to be just as unhelpful as it is as an explanation of phenomic speciation.

I'd like to add: Dobzanski's statement that, "nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution," is perhaps one of the more unfortunate exaggerations in the history of the philosophy of science. And it is rendered more unfortunate because most members of the public do not understand the controversy between general evolution, which is the indisputable FACT that species have changed over time, and the METHOD by which they have changed--which is the continuing speculation.

While originally trying to think about speciation I once invented my own theory. I called it "variant saturation," by which I supposed that there was a finite number of variations possible within a species and when this number was reached a new species would arise. This model resolves all of the problems associated with observations in the fossil record (foolishly resolved by Stephen Jay Gould in his "punctuated equilibria" hypothesis) as well as gives a perfect rationale for extinction--and is indeed very elegant.

Unfortunately, like "natural selection" it doesn't really increase our knowledge except to imply that something is deciding at which point saturation arises, or at least responsible for prescribing the algorithm.

D, you asked: "When does evolution occur? Is it when a new gene becomes popular within a species or when two species become reproductively isolated?" Here's the answer: No, the popularization of a gene within a species is NOT evidence of evolution. Evolution occurs when a single (or two, depending on one's reference) species becomes reproductively isolated, as is agreed upon by ALL evolutionists. (Where talking speciation here) There is no divergence of opinion on this question, as you maintain. A most obvious manifestation of this is perhaps skin colour in human beings. As you might have noticed some colours have become very popular in the species, but they do not herald the emergence of a new species. Such is also the case with domestic dogs, as I have mentioned. Regardless of the popularity of specific genes for variation, speciation, it is broadly accepted has yet to occur. Ascribing evolution to the mere popularity of genes would not only be moving the goal posts but setting them on fire, too.

...which all suggests, of course, that it is you who has, "general misunderstading of evolution as it is being taught today."

I would remind you that "patterns in genes" are indeed, "gene changes," and that your sentence is basically a tautology which adds no new information

Ok then i will rephrase, patterns that we see in genes provide evidence that much of speciation has occured through reproductive isolation, and this is corroborated by geological data.

There are many well documented cases of natural selection that have occured within populations, and i suggest you read pick up a scientific journal if you don't beleive it. They do not prove speciation by natural selection (which you must of thought i was arguing for), that is for sure. But they provide evidence for some genes being more successful in certain environments while others are more successful in others.

Near neutral theory has also been widely accepted, which suggests that the relative importance of genetic drift and natural selection varies with populations sizes. Is your argument against EVOLUTION by a few different paths or EVOLUTION BY NATURAL SELECTION only. Or is it EVOLUTION in general?

You wrote a lot, and i haven't responded to it all, but i'll write more later.

I have not ascribed evolution to merely the changes of genes as you say, i agree with your assessment of evolution as reproductive isolation. But NATURAL SELECTION is gene changes over through differential fitness. Whether NATURAL SELECTION can result in new species is under some debate, but theories that replace natural selection are not any less random than natural selection, and still do not require an intelligent designer.

This "designer" is redundant in our explanation of nature, and cannot be proven.
Speciation through natural selection has not been seen in a small time scale of a human life. NO speciation has been seen. But we have not seen a poof of smoke and a new species appear either.

Your rephrasing of the tautology question was an improvement.

I think here is a good place to define our terms. The best definition I have come across yet is that given to me by Dolphe Schluter of UBC in our email discussion:

"...but I should make sure the two of us mean the same thing by "species". Here's what I mean: two populations of animals aren't necessarily different species just because they look different or are genetically different (your example of the variations of dog breeds). Donkeys and horses are different species because although they can poduce hybrids (mules) the mules are sterile. To biologists the defining feature of species is "reproductive incompatibility", that is, barriers to gene exchange. The study of how new species form is then the study of how traits evolve that cause reproductive incompatibilities."

I would also mention that Darwin's historical work was, "Origin of SPECIES", not ORIGIN of VARIATIONS."

One can hardly deny that natural selection occurs in nature, as you say, but the question discussed here, and I think in the scientific and religious realm, is whether evolution by natural selection is the agent which brings about speciation--or GOD, which, I repeat is anathema to my program--at least any GOD that appears in any religious tradition.

I applaud your sentence, "Speciation through natural selection has not been seen on a small-time scale of human life. We have not seen a poof of smoke and a new species appear, either."

These statements, may seem mundane to you, but they are as difficult as pulling teeth to extract from nearly all neo-darwinians. They keep claiming that speciation has occurred by natural selection--all over the place. Such is the case, for instance, with those who have studied Darwin's Galapogos finches.

The "poof of smoke" you mentioned leads perfectly into how I think the evolutionists got it wrong:

SPECIES APPEAR SUDDENLY AS GENOMIC PACKETS.

That's my big idea and I think it occurred to me when reading how Max Planck, the physicist, theorized that light and x-rays could only be emitted in certain packets that he called, "quanta."

As I mentioned, Darwin, himself, and others, such as Stephen Jay Gould (who accounted for it by his "punctuated equilibrium) noticed that species (and extinction of species) seem to arise suddenly in the fossil records and many other evolutionists since have confirmed this.

As I suggested, my "variant saturation" accounts for this, as does the current idea of "intelligent design." But "natural selection" by assumption of adaptive variation does not because there would have to be "missing links" (transitional species) everywhere still present and throughout history, in spite of many shrill attempts to explain their absence.

I'm glad you brought up human evolution, because I think this is fertile ground on which to continue this discussion.

Well i am glad you have some meat to your arguments of intelligent design. More than just "God did it".

I am aware of Gould's punctuated equilibrium idea, but i don't find it particularly that great. But we also do not have complete fossil record, due to the fact that fossils only are created under certain circumstances. NOW, I am not taking sides on that one, but i am saying it shouldn't be used as evidence for or against evolution by natural selection or intelligent design.

Your genomic packets thing is interesting and i've heard that kind of thing before. But when did these genomic packets come if that were the case? Will you accept the fossil record as being complete? Does this idea fit what the bible says or do you seek a new interpretation?

This article fields your arguments against evolution much more eloquently than I do:

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000D4FEC-7D5B-1D07-8E49809EC588EEDF&pageNumber=1&catID=2

I'd just like to remind you that evolution works by many ways other than natural selection
as i mentioned and as this article will mention. BUt all of the mechanisms by which it works are natural.

Well, biawakgila, there are sites all over the web either in support of my opinions or against them. If the resolution was as simple as finding the proper link, there would, of course, be no need for debate.

A discussion like this might be useful in exploring our own ideas as well as those of others, and finding how they "stack up" when met with resistance.

I was going to get into how Darwin thought the "races" of humans were evidence of the continuing evolution of the species and how he concluded that black people were basically glorified apes, and stuff like that--and how his theory of natural selection lead him inevitably into those unfortunate positions--
nd what modern evolutionary genetics has to say about it.

Darwin's tought of the "races" is silly, and i don't think any of the scientific community accepts that stuff. No one i know studying evolutionary biology or ecology, thats for sure.

Scientific theory changes through a process of falsification of hypotheses. Many of Darwin's ideas have been falsified, some falsified in particular cases, and some not falsified at all. Natural selection stands, speciation stands, but the methods of speciation are more complex than originally thought, and more complex than your portrayal.

Okey, but an assertion is not an argument. Explain!

What is it you'd like me to explain? Have a happy new years in the meantime!

Thanks for the good wishes. But I should add that for you to say, "Speciation's a given," makes me wonder if you really have an understanding of the controversy. Yes, speciation is a given. Besides you, I doubt if there's a single evolutionists or even biology student that's wondering if speciation actually happened--or not. Uh... yes, speciation's a given. OR THERE'D BE NO SPECIES.

Anyhew, I've been trying to explain what the intelligent design "paradigm" means to me. I'll lose the investigation of human evolution and a critique of Darwin's racism, but I think it comes out of any idea of a seamless evolutionary progression among the species.

Darwin thought of racial differences as variations which would be the basis for selection, and it was therefore inevitable that he would view such differences as evidence of adaptive advantage, and that the future would show that one "race" must therefore be in ascendency because of the advantage that its racial characteristics afforded it.

Species, or genome packets, as I referred to them seem to have leapt, whole cloth, from the conglomerations of information that came before them. They are not resultant from seamless adoption of adaptive advantages, as the evolutionary theory has it. Human's appeared relatively suddenly in evolutionary time. And somewhere in the future another leap will occur--another species, similar to us--not seamlessly, but a brand new model, just as we differ mysteriously from the rest of the hominids.

It will have been intelligently designed.

Recommended reading: The Descent of Man by Charles Darwin.

A Message to Us, From Our Genome. by Elisabet Sahtouris.

First of all as i have said before, using the fossil record as evidence for that is suspect, as the fossil record is not complete due to the manner, eras, and select regions where fossils form.

Today, many years after Darwin's ideas we have two major forms of speciation, the most prominent is allopatric speciation. In allopatric speciation new species are formed after a population has been separated geographically. Sympatric speciation is the natural selection, that darwin postulated and that is under attack. There is also parapatric speciation that occurs when a species becomes effectively seperated within the same geographical area by entering a new habitat or niche.

If we were to have a complete fossil record and still see leaps in the fossil record, the forces involved in creating this leaps will be natural, and not require a designer. But thats not to say one might have been active through these processes that we view as natural, but our view of natural will be enough to explain things. We could be explaining God as we explain nature, but to say that there is or isn't a God based on natural processes is a leap from something scientifically testable to a matter of faith.

bia, if you have total faith in science's ability to solve all mysteries then that will be your intellectual legacy.

I don't think in absolutes or totality. In my opinion, no single narrative or perspective has the ability to solve all mysteries.

Well I hope not, especially since it's mostly scientists who are at the forefront in the renewal of the intelligent design idea--although the creationists are jumping aboard because they think it supports the genesis theory.

Since the completion of the Human Genome Project, Intelligent Design is receiving more consideration among geneticists, who are having a hard time believing that such a mind-boggling system could have constructed itself.

There are many scientists from many different backgrounds, trying to reconcile an ingrained belief with theories with supporting evidence.
I am sure some scientists might accept it but i have still not heard a scientific explanation of these genomic packets. How did all these species get here in a burst? If you can't explain it, scientists cannot test it, if it cannot be tested, then its not science.

The reason i stress that intelligent design at the moment is not science is because the argument in the media is about whether it should be taught in science class. In its current form, it should not be.

Good point, and I tend to agree with you, but I think the idea could be taught in school with the caveat that it does not support the genesis creationist theory because according to genesis a god created the world and all life more or less in one fell swoop, and that, of course is not what happened, nor would any intellectually honest person claim that it was.

Life from the eukaryotes to humans evolves over a few billion years. That is not arguable.

One note on the new modes of speciation as being proposed in colleges and schools. Whether genetic drift or various kinds of isolation or, as you say, sympatric or parapatric, they are still embodiments of the speciation by adoption of variation paradigm. And that is the paradigm that many scientists are beginning to question.

I think if you do a few years going over the new genetic information about the evolutionary history of hominids, you will begin to wonder if it is true, as I believe, that we seem to have been the result of a genetic leap.

They have not found our missing link because it doesn't exist.

I am not sure what you mean by speciation by adoption of variation... but in parapatry and allopatry, species are seperated, and different alleles become fixed due to the mere odds of it.

Leaps are possible under these types of speciation, and the leap from chimpanzee to human is actually more of a hop (i recall an article in Nature maybe last month looking at genetic differences between chimps and humans).

Maybe you can propose a new type of speciation that can be tested. I welcome the idea. If you beleive that speciation has occured over billions of years, it seems you are proposing a new mode of how evolution occurs. Thats great, new ideas are welcome. And maybe it will add to our current understanding of evolution. We will add it in our text books to parapatry, sympatry, allopatry, and highlight the different types of situations that are required for each to occur.

Good to see you read Nature. Yes, according to my "Science" article by Svante Paabo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology, (yes, Max Planck is the same physicist from whom I borrowed the term, "packets."), chimps and humans share a DNA sequencing similarity of 99%.

Chimps and humans share a common ancestor(famous missing link) which lived (according to all the evolutionists) about 6 million years ago. We arrived intermediately between gorillas and Urangutans, which arrived 16 million and 9 million years ago respectively. (old world monkeys came along about 40 million years ago.)

Now bia, is it of any concern to you that paleontologists have never found any trace of this hypothetical creature in spite of the fact that they have found millions of tiny specimens of even insect-sized animals?

This would have been a very large animal.

According to my theory they have not found one because none ever existed.

The entire evolutionary paradigm of speciation by adoption of variation is entirely wrong.

By that I mean: the theory is, (whether about genetic drift, various kinds of isolation, parapatry, allopatry--or whatever interesting terms evolutionists invent)--speciation by the
adoption of variation. Quite simply this means that species come into existence because some variation or conglomeration of variations lends certain advantages.

This is the idea that I am challenging. It doesn't fit. Can you imagine how different humans and chimps are, in spite of the fact that they share all of that sequencing information. There has to be either a MISSING LINK or SOME OTHER METHOD OF SPECIATION, not dependent upon seamless inheritance of variation. There can be no doubt about that.

I really wonder why any one would challenge this. It is as self-evident as things ever become.

There's no missing link. It would be about a hundred pounds, eh, and lived 30 or so million years after old world and new world monkeys whose fossils are so common that I think I have one back in my shed. Just kidding!

Okay, this is pathetically simplistic, of course, but what I'm saying is SOMETHING came along, looked at chimps and said, "I think I can do better than that, because I have my own list of characterists. This "whatever" was pretty intelligent, eh. And this "whatever"--even if it was only an algorithm, supplied by a higher up, didn't require any missing links to get the job done.

This same something decided that it had had enough of dinosaurs, too, and all the other creatures (90 million or so species, I think) that have become extinct. It's a work in progress.

I know what those tricky evolutionists are going to do next, of course. They're going to say, okay, we don't need a missing link. We'll just pull an Occam's Razor--and pout.

(whether about genetic drift, various kinds of isolation, parapatry, allopatry--or whatever interesting terms evolutionists invent)--speciation by the
adoption of variation.

-Not invent... postulate and provide evidence for.

You are right, a missing link is not needed... small genetic differences can bring about large changes, as is evident in your dog example. I am not referring to that science article as the 99% difference between chimps and humans is old news.

You're just not understanding it. In my dog examples there is NO speciation regardless of how many alleles are fixed in the population through humans selecting variations. I used the varieties of dogs (breeds) as a demonstration that small genetic differences do not bring about speciation.

No matter how many small genetic changes occur, if speciation doesn't happen, neither does evolution. For example, even if there are a thousand varieties of moths, represented by hundreds of thousands of fractal designs on their wings, unless a new, reproductively isolated population is produced by the introduction of small genetic changes into the population, the number of species of moths in the world is not increased, only the number of varieties of the same species.

ALL DOG BREEDS ARE THE SAME SPECIES. There is no indication that humans, no matter what varieties are selected will ever develope new species of dogs or even sub-species.

ALL DOGS REMAIN THE SAME SPECIES. THERE IS CONTINUOUS REPRODUCTIVE CAPABILITY AMONG ALL BREEDS OF DOGS REGARDLESS OF THE VARIETIES THAT BECOME FIXED IN THE POPULATIONS.

Poodles are perfectly reproductively capatible with Great Danes, Pitbulls and Chihuahuas. Each of these breeds is the result of small genetic changes being gradually selected by humans.

You have missed my point completely.

And I don't know what this means: "I am not referring to that science article as the 99% difference between chimps and humans is old news."

There is not "99% percent difference, anyway.

There is 1% difference.

"A missing link is not needed," you say. Well not in my paradigm. But it is in yours. Absence of a missing link, such as between humans and chimps is a mystery in standard evolutionary theory.

With no missing link, how do species change from chimps to humans?

Do you realize that if you believe that no missing link is needed you have arrived at EXACTLY THE SAME POINT AS I?

IF SMALL GENETIC DIFFERENCES BRING ABOUT LARGE CHANGES, HOW ARE THESE LARGE CHANGES REPRESENTED BETWEEN CHIMPS AND HUMANS? Where's the creature?

Small genetic changes can bring about any number of small or large changes, but if they do not bring about speciation, then evolution has not occurred.

Do you think you understand what a "species" is? You didn't when this discussion began. What is your understanding of the word, "variety?"

You do not understand that i completely understand what you are saying.
I was there already because these types of speciation are already accounted for.

The 99% similarity between chimpanzees and humans is old news. Very few changes in genes resulted in the human mind. Very few genetic changes results in large morphological changes. Reproductive isolation is not required. As far as i know we never tried to cross a human and a chimpanzee... because we would say its immoral.

You are right. I don't know what a species is, THERE IS NO SET DEFINITION OF WHAT A SPECIES IS. There is not a set genetic difference that can define what a species is. Wolves can be mated with dogs, but we define them as different species. The fluidity of species does not fit into our categorical system.

THe differences between humans is greater than between different breeds of dogs. That is why i say a small genetic difference brings about a large morphological difference. Thus a small genetic difference can result in a large morphological difference, such as the difference between a chimp and a human.

No creature is required, because no creature is needed. All that is needed is small genetic mutations. Its obvious that you will continue to say that i don't understand but i understand EVERYTHING you say.

Reproductive isolation does not mean they can no longer produce offspring. It means they won't, for whatever reason, cultural, geographical, or actual reproductive difficulties.

We understand little about what a species is. But we don't have to invent some kind of magical non mechanistic process... yet.

I finally see where you're missing it. You've got a backward understanding of "reproductive isolation." A group of animals is reproductively isolated if it only breeds with members of its own kind and produces fertile offspring.

You wrote,"Reproductive isolation does not mean that they can no longer produce offspring. It means they won't, for whatever reason, cultural, geographical, or actual reproductive difficulties."

At least I found out what you're doing.

You're not getting the word, "isolated." It means a group that successfully breeds only among itself. Not the other way around. Some of these terms in evolutionary theory are tricky.

There you go again," All you need is small genetic changes." Well you do need a changing creature to go with these "small genetic changes," or you haven't got "small genetic changes." The changes have to be manifested. Similarly, for chimps to slowly merge into humans by way of small genetic changes, you need manifestations of these animals (chimps) showing these small genetic changes. And noone claims that such animals ever existed. THERE'S NO MISSING LINKS.

Actually I'm starting to think you're just stupid. No offence!

Sorry about that. I don't actually think you're stupid,(actually quite smart) but I guess what I'm saying is that "small genetic changes" are manifested as "variations" like different breeds of dogs or different coloured butterflies, but not as speciation which is what would have to occur to get from chimps to humans. And you say you don't need any missing links to cross this gap. Well, you're the only one on earth who thinks a chimp just woke up one morning as a human, without even mating--as everyone knows they can't mate successfully, so you need some fantastical intermediate creature that can breed successfully with BOTH HUMANS AND CHIMPS to bridge the gap--otherwise you've got INTELLIGENT DESIGN.

Actually, I was wondering if you have actually arrived at the point where you believe in intelligent design. Maybe you just don't realize that you have.

So, maybe you're the one who believes in magic.

Yes, you do need a missing link. There's a million sites speculating on the missing link, and why we can't find it, and if it's already been found. Everytime some scientist claims he's found the misssing link he get's shot down. Some of them have been pure hoaxes, like the Piltdown Man.

Listen, if you want to avoid the meat of arguments and get into ad hominems, then we can just end it here.

Reproductive isolation implies isolation from ANOTHER group, that means it WILL not reproduce with another population. YOu have to be isolated from something to be isolated.

We have manifestation of the change from a chimp to a human... we have a chimp and a human... no link is needed because a change of a few genes results in the difference between a human and a chimp. THese genes all humans have in common. No slow merge is required for these changes. It is not required in evolutionary theory.

If you want to end this discussion, please continue with insults that make you feel better about your position.

There is evidence for evolution by the three mechanisms i have mentioned above. Intelligent design on the other hand has zero evidence. The burden of proof is on you.... create a mechanistic theory, test it and fail to be able to falsify it, and you will have your very own nobel prize, and i would be there applauding you if that were the case.

Now it's, "no slow merge is required." Before it was small genetic changes result in...."

You're a very confused person, bia. There's just no other way of saying it.

It's a new intellectual venture, not only for me but for all the scientists who are thinking about it. I don't recall any of us ever claiming to be able to test it or reproduce any of its effects.

"No link is needed." "No slow merge is needed."

Sorry, I thought you were serious before. Now I realize that you're only kidding.

80% percent of the proteins produced by rna developement are different between chimps and humans, by the way. Nematodes have a 75% similarity with human beings. So chimps are only half way between nematodes and humans in production of the proteins needed to run human systems. Don't let dna sequences fool you. Chimps are an awful long way from humans. They also have 10% more dna.

See as how you don't even need the missing links paleontologists are all looking for (and a few of them claiming they've found...)

Welcome to the SCHOOL OF INTELLIGENT DESIGN.

You have about nine major contradictions! But then you've got your own theory. Why not!

NO links, lotsa links, isolations means they don't breed, isolation means they breed only in isolation.

I guess anything can mean anything. Thanks for the debate. You can have the last word.

Really, your arguments are not following any kind of progressive logic.

You really don't understand evolutionary theory, biawakgila. In conventional evolutionary theory, you need TRANSITIONAL SPECIES to get from one species to another.

That's what all the fuss is about. The intelligent design people are claiming there are no transitional species in the fossil record or anywhere else and evolutionists are now claiming they've found lots of them.

If you don't think you need them then you believe in intelligent design, or at least speciation by means of an unknown teleologic agent.

In a way I was being a bit stupid myself, not picking up that you don't have a basic understanding.

Seriously, thanks a lot for the discussion. I learned a lot.

And really the science philosopher who claimed that nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution is just a big fat liar.

All the discoveries biologists have made retain their value whichever side turns out to be correct about the origin of species.

Biawak,
I apologize for getting you involved in this "discussion". Had I known that it would result in name calling, I would not have wasted your time.

Truman,
I was enjoying the comments, and thank you for adding paragraph breaks. However, this discussion has become a little obnoxious, and a return to the provision of factual information would be appreciated.

I apologize for playing mediator, but does anybody have anything to say about the article, or are we all just taking this opportunity to post our own personal theories?

If nothing else, Biawak, at least you provided Nightbloom with the opportunity for escape.

No link, no merge, small genetic changes... same thing.

They all say that you have chimps, you have a mutation...(which if i could find the recent article to verify it, i beleive it is a duplication of a gene segment) and then you have the hominids which include lucy and 20 other hominid species that are linked to humans. Of course i don't mean that one mutation resulted in all 20 species of hominids so don't say i mean that.

Yes you need transitional species, you are right. You need something (many) transitional between a eukaryote and a human. But i am saying that morphological leaps happen, with slight genetic changes. If we have 20 species of hominids already, what more do you want. A half chimp half man creature? -> that is not needed.

I certainly learned a lot as well about people who push ID nonsense. Read the article, and i will also suggest Evolutionary Analysis.. get the latest edition from Freeman and Herron. Great text book with illustrations and lots of information of the many different forms of speciation that occur. Read it cover to cover and see if that helps you out.

I admit that i am rusty on the topic of evolution, but my misunderstandings are superficial while yours run deep into the heart of the evolutionary theory.

Intelligent design is not science, and it will not be science until we find a mechanism that can explain any problems we have with current evolutionary theory. Once we have this mechanism, God will not be needed to describe its processes.

Evolutionary theory is not set in stone, and there will be more changes as we find more information, dig up more fossils, and sequence more genes. In our lifetime we will see lots of advances, but we will not see a intelligent designer placed into evolution text books. Nor will we see an intelligent designer hypothesis accepted in a scientific journal, because its not science.

Thanks for your mediation Pre_t ;)

While this has gotten out of hand, i appreciated some of the discussion. THere are problems with evolutionary theory as there are with quantum physics and every scientific theory. Thats because the world is more complex that we can ever be able to grasp. But thats not to say we have learned a lot about the natural world. Its an exciting time with neuroscience, quantum mechanics, and the human genome, and i look forward to many profound scientific discoveries in the future.

But i will keep my religious faith (or lack thereof) out of my scientific because it doesn't belong.

In fact Bia, here's how funny this discussion became:

If you really believe that evolution has continued without transitional species then you are ACTUALLY ARGUING MY CASE FOR ME.

Whadya think I've been trying to tell you?

Your constant mantra that Intelligent Design is not a science is also very weird.

How many times do I have to agree with you on that?

As far as what will be placed in textbooks, I tend to agree that it won't happen soon, but I think in say 20 years or so it probably will.
(Scientists will tire of looking for transitional species some day.)

Not a single human being understands what gravity is either, but many still wonder about it and Newton and Einstein developed ideas about it.

Who cares if it's science or not. Not me.

Meanwhile, welcome to the ID club, Bia. If you include your real name I'll send you a T-shirt.

And thanks for arguing my argument for me.

Well pre-t, I have to admit, I was initially interested in the article, but I admit you are absolutely correct. I was just using this space as an opportunity to post my own theories. I'm not sure that was cool, but way way back a couple of posters asked me to continue a few times when I got a bit wordy.

I'd go slow on the prophecies about what will be placed in textbooks, Bia.

Potential error:

May not be duplication of gene segment, may be duplication of a chromosome segment that resulted in the hominid lineage. I apologize for not being able to find the article.

Of course, I DO have a thesis to write so i will give myself a break.

I think its safe to prophecize that non-science will not be placed in a scientific textbook.

I am certainly not arguing your case for you, but you misunderstand me completely. I have admitted you are right that SOME transitional species are needed. But you don't need an large number of species with small morphological differences as a sort of ladder to another species.

Take your ID shirt and burn it on an altar as a sacrifice to your God. I'm sure He will appreciate the smell of plastic and cotton.

Thanks for advice re. the t.shirt. But I don't believe in God.

God = Intelligent Designer

Well, unless chimps and humans learned how to successfully breed and produce fertile offspring you're going to need some transitional species to get them across the bridge.

Or, at least, some kinda intelligence to help them across.

Even with exponential notation, any number of genetic changes won't matter unless they're manifested IN AN ACTUAL CRITTER.

Thanks for coming out...like I said, read a textbook, and stay on top of the literature.

Intelligence doesn't have to equal god. It could just be an inherit characteristic of the entire universe. Lotsa people think so, eh.

Something figured out how to make helium from hydrogen before people starting thinking about it.

Including me.

There's more planets in the universe than there are grains of sand on all the beaches in Canada. Maybe there's important information waiting for us on one of them. It's still a huge mystery that anything even exists.

Your faith that science has supplied answers for just about everything may be a bit overdone. Besides, it's many scientists who are beginning to wonder if there IS intelligence in the universe outside of human and animal brains. Some of them have even done theses, like you. Elisabet Sahtouris, for instance taught at M.I.T. and the University of Massachusetts. Gene Celera, who I quote, was head of an entire wing of the Human Genome Project. He's got credentials all over the plaace. In fact, it was his work with the Project that got him to thinking that the whole system is intelligent.

In some weird, strange unimaginable way, that none of us can understand the system is choosing which species will become extinct and which ones will contine.

I'd like to explain why speciation by natural selection always was a very lame idea. You don't have to be a geneticist or an evolutionist. Unfortunately, you have to have a very good brain to understand that it could never have worked.

It goes like this:

Regardless of how many times animals within a species are mated, whatever the number, there is a limitation on what kind of genetic information is involved. Whether the group is isolated or not is not relevant.

The point is that the only genes that can be involved are those which make the individual an archetypical member of that species.

THAT IS THE LIMITATION.

So when evolutionists say that speciation can happen by the transfer of small genetic changes over a long period of time, they don't understand that every single one of these genetic changes is coded as a certain species' archetype. You may get a thousand different colours of individual but each individual is always an archetype.

That is why regardless of how many varieties of dogs are bred, every variety or breed is "stamped" (genetically speaking), "dog."

No other choices are available.

That is why no transitional species have ever been found. Nor will one ever be found. That is why no missing link between chimpanzees and humans has ever been found. None will ever be found.

They don't exist because they can't exist.

It is absolutely impossible.

If any paleontologist claims he has found a transitional species he is incorrect.
It is impossible.

If this were not the case organisms could not survive on this planet. There would be chaos everywhere. Animals would exist as an infinite number of intermediate individuals.

THAT IS THE PURPOSE OF THE EXISTENCE OF INDIVIDUAL GROUPINGS OF ANIMALS KNOWN AS SPECIES.

I have been repetitive because very few scientists have ever understood this.

They haven't understood it because they have not been intelligent enough to understand it.

They lack the required neural capacity.

That is why the next stage of evolutionary theory progressed to MUTATIONS, an even sillier idea, because mutations are statistically too retrograde to even consider as a progressive route to speciation.

Of course nothing I have written about natural selection should be interpreted as meaning that it cannot be the major force in the evolution of bacteria and viruses, due to the exponential nature of their replication.

That is why the avian flu virus H5Nl will very likely NEVER advance to the stage of being a pandemic threat. That virus would require genuine evolutionary change to accomplish this and that is very unlikely. The real flu danger is in regular flu viruses getting out of
control.

The l918 virus came out of conditions caused by the first world war and until that kind of a scenaria is repeated evolutionary change of H5N1 remains unlikely.