Not to beat a dead horse to death. But it is difficult to get peer review acceptance of any article that attempts to discredit a current popularly accepted theory. Galileo and Copernicus found that out. A modern example is Halton Arp, who's book "Seeing Red" details how he was black listed, fired and had extreme difficulty publishing any of his articles that questioned the Big Bang Theory. And he was a prominent astronomer. The same was true for the late Fred Hoyle. Hoyle, by the way, believed the earth was seeded by extraterrestrial life. Arp has never indicated any religious beliefs but believes (rightly or wrongly) that the observational evidence does not support the Big Bang. Arp mentions in his book he talked to more than one graduate student who supported his ideas, but they said they couldn't get employment if the didn't support the Big Bang. I think the same is true with respect to David Berlinski trying to get his articles published in a peer reviewed biology journal. Berlinski does not believe in intelligent design or Darwinism as noted in a December 2002 article. He just thinks that macroevolution is flawed (he doesn't have a problem with microevolution). He believes that natural selection and genetic mutation does not work mathematically and their must be some other mechanism that explains nature. I had an interesting experience in graduate school with respect to the cluster NGC 2264. My professor did not believe in circumstellar shells around stars and wanted me to disprove it by measuring stars in the NGC 2264 cluster and proving the extinction, which was the basis for the circumstellar shell theory, was faulty observation evidence and was due to reddening of background stars. He had made up his mind before we even did the research. The data I felt was indeterminate and I didn't feel comfortable writing a paper. That and the low prospects for employment are some of the reasons I did not become a professional astronomer. By the way, the circumstellar shell theory is now accepted. Finally I work in the oil and gas exploration industry. Geologists were adamant that the central Utah Overthrust was devoid of oil because of the lack of source rock. A small company called Wolverine Gas and Oil tried to sell a deal in the central Utah Overthrust for over four years but no "respectable" oil company was interested. He then sold his deal to doctors and dentists and other small investors who didn't know better. He drilled the well and found the biggest oil discovery in the Rockies in the last 20 years just northeast of Richfield, Utah. By the way, I have been talking to the Richfield city government about putting in a lighting ordinance before it is too late. Clear Skies Don Colton -----Original Message----- From: utah-astronomy-bounces+djcolton=piol.com@mailman.xmission.com [mailto:utah-astronomy-bounces+djcolton=piol.com@mailman.xmission.com]On Behalf Of William Biesele Sent: Monday, March 07, 2005 7:54 PM To: Utah Astronomy Subject: Re: [Utah-astronomy] fodder for the list Don: One of the many things that evolution, or intelligent design, has given us is tremendous skill at problem solving and deductive logic. Given something that we don't understand, each of us is capable of coming up with an intelligent argument explaining what we see.. So given a situation we don't understand, how do we pick among the many intelligent possible solutions? Scientists have accepted a system publication of data and conclusions in peer reviewed journals. Publishing to spread knowledge, peer review to ensure that the data supports the conclusion. So, after reading the articles, I checked the website of Commentary to see who peer reviewed the article. Although I didn't find the article you sent, I did check who peer reviewed a couple of articles on the front page. "Free Speech for Terrorists" did not mention a peer review. Nor did "The Settler's Crisis" , or "Social Security, Then and Now." So on to their 'About Us' page: "The magazine is primarily known as the intellectual home of the neoconservative movement." Bottom line, I'd be more impressed with an article from a scientific journal, not a magazine with a political ax to grind. Bill B. On Mar 7, 2005, at 10:08 AM, Don J. Colton wrote:
Bill
You raise some good points. I will email you Berlinski's entire article to your email address listed on the SLAS website. He addresses many of the issues you raise as well as Dawkins writings. The second attachment will be Berlinski's response to critical letters by a host of prominent scientists and biologists including Richard Dawkins.
My main point is that evolution is far from being a confirmed fact and it should be taught as a theory not as incontrovertible. Gould had major problems with the gradualistic model (because of the lack of fossil evidence) that is why he developed the theory of punctuated evolution.
Clear Skies Don Colton
-----Original Message----- From: utah-astronomy-bounces+djcolton=piol.com@mailman.xmission.com [mailto:utah-astronomy- bounces+djcolton=piol.com@mailman.xmission.com]On Behalf Of William Biesele Sent: Friday, March 04, 2005 8:30 PM To: Utah Astronomy Subject: Re: [Utah-astronomy] fodder for the list
Don:
I don't think the quote from Gould is an argument against evolution. Gould spent his professional life studying evolution in land snails and found many examples of evolution. Gould believed and studied punctuated evolution as a way to understand life not to prove or disprove evolution. His popular publications all discuss evolution and cite many examples of evolution. Read his popular works and his professional works. Disagreements between scientists about the rate and mechanics of evolution do not discredit evolution but are an inevitable part of the process of coming to a deeper understanding of evolution.
Geology provides a very imperfect record of life as it does of time. There are few environments where deposition occurs at a steady rate over a long time, and those that do (ocean floors) for example are hard to study, are poor environments for preservation of macro fossils and are recycled by continental drift. Is there a geologic cross section that records a continuous record from the Cambrian to the present? Despite this there are examples of 'intermediate' species in the geologic record.
Yes, scientists have been fooled on occasion; but it was scientific inquiry that exposed the fakes. The Piltdown Man does not disprove the long record of evolution of australopithicene and homo species that has been found in east Africa. Instead it shows the fallability of scientists that start with a presumption (England is more advanced than Africa so modern man must have evolved in England) are prone to errors of judgement. Science is open to all evidence and scrutinizes that evidence to reach conclusions that further our understanding of this marvelous world. 'Intelligent Design' starts with a foregone conclusion and searches for evidence that supports the initial conclusion. It does not stand up to scientific scrutiny; not because of prejudices or financial concerns of the scientific community, but because the overwhelming evidence is for evolution.
The genesis of life does not require intelligent design. Billions of years and uncountable miniscule changes in life have produced the diversity we see now. Read Richard Dawkins The Blind Watchmaker. We haven't created life in the laboratory because we haven't had billions of years to run the experiment nor a lab the size of the earth powered by a dynamo as powerful as the sun.
You have never seen an intermediate species, neither have I, and we never will find 'intermediate species.' The term is an oxymoron. There are no cars intermediate between Chevrolet and Toyota, but both have 'evolved' from the horseless carriages. The designs between the two are not 'intermediate' cars but were cars, complete and running. Mechanical objects are a bad analogy for biology but I hope you see my point: there is no species intermediate between dogs and horses so we will never find it. But dogs and horses do share a common ancestor somewhere between the Permian and the Paleocene. And from the Permian to the Paleocene it was not a linear progression but a many branched progression through time, all of the branches and leaves were species, not one was intermediate between dog and a horse.
There are differing viewpoints about many things. Einstein did not believe in quantum mechanics, but turn on your green laser and you can see quantum mechanics at work in spite of Einstein's disbelief. Science reaches conclusions by examining facts and reaching conclusions that can explain the facts, not by starting with a conclusion and looking for evidence that might support the supposition.
Can I disprove intelligent design? No. Throwing a pair of dice and getting a pair of sixes is a rare event. If it happens to me is it because that's what someone with metaphysical control of the dice wanted or is it just a random event? I can't tell just by looking at the dice. No. Does intelligent design explain life on earth better than random events? I think not, you think so. Can we resolve our differences on this? Probably not so let's make a deal, let's enjoy the clear dark nights on the Cretaceous at The Wedge and save the belief discussions for the cloudy nights out there.
Clear skies,
Bill B.
On Mar 4, 2005, at 10:23 AM, Don J. Colton wrote:
There are several viewpoints about intelligent design including those of Phillip Johnson and microbiologist Michael Behe. Johnson and Behe believe that intelligent design (God) in some manner placed life on earth over geological time frames. I recently responded to Rick Fienberg's editorial in the March, Sky and Telescope, as shown below. It will be interesting to see if they publish it. I hope this isn't too controversial for the list.
Working with several geologists and drilling wells to depths of over 16,000 feet we have never seen any transitional species in well cutting to support a gradualistic theory of evolution. The facts are the fossil record does not support it. What you see are new species arising during each time period as Steven J. Gould has said "almost as if they have been planted". I will be glad to email a copy of Berlinski's article to anyone who wants it.
In response to: Evolution: We Can't Sit Idly By
I hate to see Rick Fienberg fall into the trap of using the old whipping boy of the 6,000-year-old earth as the only alternative to evolution.
Proponents of macroevolution have been fooled many times by such frauds as the Piltdown man, Nebraska man and most recently evolution frauds committed in China and published in 1999 in National Geographic 196:98-107, November 1999. Dinosaur bones were put together with the bones of a newer species of bird and they tried to pass it off as a very important new evolutionary intermediate. The reason proponents of macroevolution are fooled so easily is they are as guilty of gullibility as are the Christian fundamentalists they criticize.
The most prominent and credible opponents of macroevolution such as Phillip Johnson, David Berlinski and microbiologist Michael Behe do not have problems with geological timeframes. Some like Johnson and Behe believe that intelligent design (God) brought about life on earth over a long period of time. Others like Berlinski don't take a stand they just point out the main problems with the theory.
David Berlinski in the June 1996 issue of Commentary Magazine described in his article "The Deniable Darwin" the many flaws in macroevolution that are glossed over. As he states: "The facts in favor of evolution are often held to be incontrovertible; prominent biologists shake their heads at the obduracy of those who would dispute them. Those facts, however, have been rather less forthcoming than evolutionary biologists might have hoped. If life progressed by an accumulation of small changes, as they say it has, the fossil record should reflect its flow, the dead stacked up in barely separated strata. But for well over 150 years, the dead have been remarkably diffident about confirming Darwin's theory. Their bones lie suspended in the sands of time-theromorphs and therapsids and things that must have gibbered and then squeaked; but there are gaps in the graveyard, places where there should be intermediate forms but where there is nothing whatsoever instead." This is why Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge developed the theory of punctuated evolution because as Stephen Gould observed with respect to the Cambrian explosion "it is almost as if the species were planted there". "The known fossil record," Steven Stanley observes, "fails to document a single example of phyletic evolution accomplishing a major morphologic transition and hence offers no evidence that the gradualistic model can be valid."
As briefly described above, there are many problems with macroevolution and it ought to be taught as a theory not fact. It has no predictive power like Einstein's theories, it is just a flawed historical hypothesis.
Clear Skies Don J. Colton
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