. . . for reasons that have already been patiently explained to you. What Eugenie C. Scott has proposed is not an abandonment of Charles Darwin but, rather, a tightening and useage of terms within the bigger picture of advancing science, so that ill-informed religionists in their wacky world of pseudo-scientific "creationism" cannot use Darwin in misleading and often disingenuous ways to peddle their theological snake oil at the expense of reputable, proveable, genuine science.
Yet, you remain sadly and stubbornly ill-informed on the entire subject and, more than that, you have been patently dishonest in your stunningly superficial, grossly inaccurate and conveniently selective childish spin that you impose on Scott's actual views.
As one observant RfM poster noted:
"'Katuwiran' has some sort of filter. Only the information she/he liked was picked out of the articles [that he/she picked]. The rest; it's like it didn't exist."
("Re: Yeah, katuwiran displayed deep ignorance," posted by "crom," on "Recovery from Mormonism" discussion board," 13 July 2013, at:
http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,954734,954775#msg-954775)
Most certainly (and for all to see), you have consistently demonstrated a profound, deep and religiously-intoxicated ignorance of science, falsely claiming that physical anthropologist Scott was a "Darwinist" who is now supposedly calling for the abandonment of "Darwinian" evolution because Darwin got it all wrong. (If you were on vaudeville, this is the point where you'd be hooked off the stage).
Here's your primordial posit from the dark closet:
"Darwinist Eugenie Scott: Our boat has a hole... it's time to jump!
"'Don’t Call it “Darwinism':
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12052-008-0111-2"Quote: 'When scientists and teachers use "Darwinism" as synonymous with evolutionary biology, it reinforces such a misleading portrayal and hinders efforts to present the scientific standing of evolution accurately. Accordingly, the term “Darwinism” should be abandoned as a synonym for evolutionary biology.'
"That was her clarion call in 2009. I wonder how many fellow Darwinists heeded her. One can check the evolution genre to verify this.
"Not many.
"Darwinism is a religion. And Darwinists love their religion. They're not going to abandon it for genuine science. . . .
". . . [T]he problem with defenders of this Darwinian religion [is that] [t]hey don't get it. . . .
"[The Cambrian Explosion] turns Darwinian evolution theory on its head. But they don't tell you that. And that is why Eugenie Scott has a big hole in her boat. Time to abandon ship. . . .
"Darwinism isn't science. It is religion. Wake up boys and girls."
No offense, but you wouldn't know science if it rose up and bit you in the Pampers of your pseudo-intellectual baby crib. Your posts are a clear testament to the testifying temper tantrums of theists who know nothing meaningful about science, about the scientific method, about Darwin, about organic evolution or about critical thinking in general. Your pre-determined approach to issues beyond your comprehension is like the uneducated guy who shoots an arrow into a wall, steps forward and draws concentric circles around the arrow, then steps back and boldly declares, "Bull's-eye!"
(Here's the original thread where you got both your clock cleaned and your head handed to you on a platter:
http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,953786,953786#msg-953786)
Your completely-unwarranted and blindly-uneducated assault on Scott was a raping of her views--twisted like only a godly Gumby could do in order to fit your religiously dumbed-down view of the real world. But this kind of jaw-dropping illiteracy is precisely what religiously-confused advocates regard as a heavenly virtue: Namely, becoming like little children who, if they want to live forever with Jesus, must put their brains on hold and their faith in a Big Sky-Daddy.
Yes, Darwin got a lot right--and a lot wrong. But not to worry; that is, if one knows how the self-correcting processes of science work (which you obviously don't). It is the nature of scientific investigation--involving empirical confirmation or denial of claims relying on tools of observable, testable, falsifiable evidence--to propose theories, then to examine them through the systematic and open critiquing process of peer review. This rigorous methodological approach serves to hone and increase human knowledge. The scientific method of interpreting the world around us shapes, adjusts and advances our knowledge base over time and (unlike religion) remains the best, most reliable tool humans have at their dispoal to sift fact from fiction.
From the abstract to which you have linked:
"Evolutionary biology owes much to Charles Darwin, whose discussions of common descent and natural selection provide the foundations of the discipline.
"But evolutionary biology has expanded well beyond its foundations to encompass ma'y theories and concepts unknown in the 19th century. The term “Darwinism' is, therefore, ambiguous and misleading. Compounding the problem of 'Darwinism' is the hijacking of the term by creationists to portray evolution as a dangerous ideology—an 'ism'—that has no place in the science classroom.
"When scientists and teachers use 'Darwinism” as synonymous with evolutionary biology, it reinforces such a misleading portrayal and hinders efforts to present the scientific standing of evolution accurately. Accordingly, the term 'Darwinism' should be abandoned as a synonym for evolutionary biology."
Good start. Now let's go beyond that abstract and post Scott's views in fuller detail, where she explains in plain English how the term "Darwinism" is often used to hijack and misrepresent sound evolutionary science (typically as a ploy by Bible-bellowing creationists in an effort to deceive the public about the reality of organic evolution).
Scott could not be clearer:
" . . . [W]hat does 'Darwinism” mean? And how is it used? At best, the phrase is ambiguous and misleading about science. At worst, its use echoes a creationist strategy to demonize evolution.
"Even a cursory search of the Internet for 'Darwinism' reveals that the term is not used consistently. Historians and philosophers of science customarily use 'Darwinism”' to refer to the ideas advanced by Charles Darwin, especially the idea of evolution by natural selection, sometimes including related ideas such as sexual selection. This also is how Darwin’s contemporary, Alfred Russel Wallace, who independently formulated the idea of evolution by natural selection, used the term in his book 'Darwinism' (1889).
"Yet, Darwin’s account of evolution by natural selection involves two separable concepts, and it was not accepted as a whole. In 'On the Origin of Species,' Darwin persuasively presented his view that living things descended with modification from common ancestors, and within a decade or so, the majority of the scientific community in Great Britain accepted the basic idea of evolution (with North American scientists not far behind).
"Darwin’s second proposal, that the main engine driving evolutionary change was natural selection, was not nearly as successful in convincing his contemporaries. In the 19th century, a major obstacle to the acceptance of natural selection as a general mechanism of evolution was the assumption that inheritance was a blending process. Blending would result in a reduction of variation each generation, and natural selection depends on variation constantly being available. It was not until the 20th century, after the rediscovery of Mendel’s conception of particulate inheritance, that natural selection was recognized as a powerful mechanism of adaptation and change.
"The point of this historical digression is to illustrate the conceptual and historical decoupling of Darwin’s two 'big ideas'—evolution (common ancestry) and the mechanism of natural selection. The former was accepted decades in advance of the latter. Today, with the insight provided by Mendelian and molecular genetics, natural selection is recognized as a primary component of evolutionary change, especially adaptation. This further complicates the meaning of the term 'Darwinism.' Does it refer to evolution? Natural selection? Evolution by natural selection?
"Modern evolutionary biologists tend not to use 'Darwinism' very often, except—again—in a historical sense to refer to Darwin’s ideas. British biologists, perhaps motivated by patriotic pride, are more likely to refer to evolutionary biology as 'Darwinism' than their American colleagues, but even in Darwin’s homeland, the term now tends to be used as a pejorative (Liberman 2007).
"When they are speaking of the theoretical core of modern evolutionary biology, scientists tend to use the phrase 'the synthetic theory of evolution' to refer to the augmentation of Darwin’s natural selection theory with Mendelian genetics in the 1930s and 1940s, followed by the development in the 1940s and 1950s of mathematical systems allowing the modeling of evolution in populations.
"Not in his wildest dreams could Darwin have dreamed of the scope and power of developments following the modern synthesis. Petto and Godfrey (2007) list many components of modern evolutionary biology that are decidedly 'non-Darwinian' in the sense that Darwin knew nothing about them. This, of course, does not mean that they are incompatible with Darwin’s ideas, still less that they are refutations of Darwin!
"But components of modern evolutionary biology such as endosymbiosis, epigenetics, transposons, horizontal gene transfer, somatic hypermutation, neutralism, 'evo-devo,' and the like illustrate that evolutionary biology has not been idle since Darwin shuffled off this mortal coil in 1882.
"Using 'Darwinism' as synonymous with 'evolutionary biology' is thus a touch unfair to the men and women who have contributed to the scientific edifice to which Darwin provided the cornerstone, including (to name a few) Wallace, Huxley, Weisman, De Vries, Romanes, Morgan, Weidenreich, Teilhard, von Frisch, Vavilov, Wright, Fisher, Muller, Haldane, Dobzhansky, Rensch, Ford, McClintock, Simpson, Hutchinson, Lorenz, Mayr, Delbrück, Jukes, Stebbins, Tinbergen, Luria, Maynard Smith, Price, Kimura, Ostrom, Wilson, Hamilton and Gould, to say nothing of even more who are still contributing to evolutionary biology.
"As Olivia Judson (2008) recently commented, terms like 'Darwinism' 'suggest a false narrowness to the field of modern evolutionary biology, as though it was the brainchild of a single person 150 years ago, rather than a vast, complex and evolving subject to which many other great figures have contributed.'
"So, at best, 'Darwinism' is an ambiguous term, having no settled meaning more definite than something to do with Darwin’s ideas. This alone would be an adequate reason for teachers and scientists to avoid using it.
"However, there is another reason to avoid using the term: it plays into the hands of a creationist campaign to suggest that evolution is a disreputable ideology. This is not a new campaign, but intelligent design creationism—the latest incarnation of antievolutionism—prosecutes it with unprecedented vigor.
"The first step in the intelligent design creationist version of this campaign has been to encourage the public’s preexisting association of 'Darwinism' with a generic conception of evolution, as opposed to the historical Darwin’s insights.
"This is illustrated very clearly by examining a change in 'Of Pandas and People,' the intelligent design creationist textbook that figured centrally in Kitzmiller v. Dover (Lebo 2008). Figure 1 illustrates the same page from each of the two editions (Davis and Kenyon 1989; Davis and Kenyon 1993). The word 'evolutionist' in the earlier text consistently is replaced with the term 'Darwinist;''evolution' consistently is replaced by 'Darwinism' and so on.
"Fig. 1
“Evolution” and its cognates in the first edition of the intelligent design creationist textbook 'Of Pandas and People' (Davis and Kenyon 1989) were replaced with 'Darwinism' and its cognates in the second edition (Davis and Kenyon 1993)
"This conflation of the term 'Darwinism' with evolution is reflected in a project of the main intelligent design creationist organization, the Center for Science and Culture (CSC), at Seattle’s Discovery Institute. As detailed by Evans (2001), in the fall of 2001, the CSC published a full-page advertisement in three well-known national periodicals under the title 'A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism.' The advertisement contained a list of about 100 scientists who affirmed a statement reading, 'We are skeptical of the claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged.'
"On its face, the statement suggested only that the signers questioned the power of natural selection, although wording appearing in the advertisement surreptitiously hinted that it was evolution itself that was being questioned by the signatories, not merely the power of natural selection.
"Subsequent promotion of the 'Scientific Dissent from Darwinism' reinforced the idea that these scientists questioned evolution.
"Yet evidently not all scientists on the list knew that a statement ostensibly about natural selection would be so marketed. One signatory, Bob Davidson, a retired professor of medicine at the University of Washington, publicly withdrew his name from the list, saying, 'I didn’t think they were about bashing evolution.' He went on to say that he accepted 'the scientific evidence for evolution [as] overwhelming' (Westneat 2005). Unfortunately, polls indicate that the public disagrees (Miller et al. 2006).
"The 'Scientific Dissent from Darwinism' and state-specific spin-offs (in Texas, Ohio, and Georgia—all battlegrounds over evolution education), reinforce the public’s lack of confidence in evolution by promoting the idea that even scientists reject 'Darwinism.'
"But there is more involved here than a simple choice of terminology. By insisting on talking about 'Darwinism,' creationists are rhetorically transforming evolution into an "-ism"--a position held as a matter of ideology, rather than on the strength of the evidence.
"By the same token, 'Darwinists' is used to transform those who accept evolution into ists—devotees of '-isms'. So, for example, CSC Senior Fellow Jonathan Witt, lamenting the decision in Kitzmiller v. Dover that the teaching of intelligent design creationism in the public schools was unconstitutional, referred to Judge John E. Jones III as a “Darwinist judge” (2005)--even though Jones acknowledged that, before the trial, he had little knowledge of or interest in evolution.
"Sometimes the trick is employed with almost comical regularity, as in the last chapter of CSC Senior Fellow Jonathan Wells’s 'Icons of Evolution' (2000), where the phrase 'dogmatic Darwinists' occurs almost on every page, and often more than once.
"It is worth adding that 'Darwinism' is not just an '-ism,' it is an '-ism' that is associated with a single person. Calling evolution 'evolutionism' is a specious rhetorical tactic, since it suggests that evolution is an ideology; calling evolution 'Darwinism' is specious in spades, since it suggests that evolution is not only an ideology but an ideology that stands or falls with Darwin’s particular formulation of it, and with Darwin’s personal reputation.
"By calling evolution 'Darwinism,' creationists are hoping to plant the idea that evolution is the outmoded and dismissible brainchild of a Victorian amateur, rather than the robust product of a century-and-a-half of dogged scientific inquiry. In the same vein, Darwin is compared to Freud and Marx, all supposedly purveyors of discredited ideologies that deserve to be abandoned; a t-shirt peddled by an intelligent design creationist organization quotes Phillip Johnson, the godfather of intelligent design creationism, as saying, 'Freud is dead, Marx is dead, and Darwin isn’t feeling very well' (ARN 2005).
"So the rhetoric of 'Darwinism' dovetails with the longstanding creationist campaign of vilification of Darwin. When 'The Simpsons' caricatured creationism with a video featuring Darwin in a hot embrace with Satan, it was only a slight exaggeration.
"Similarly, in creationist rhetoric, 'Darwinism' is used as an epithet to link evolution to objectionable political ideologies. CSC Communications Director Rob Crowther described a group of anticreationist scientists as a 'Darwinian politburo' (Crowther 2008). At a conference, Discovery Institute Senior Fellow George Gilder reportedly referred to 'Darwinist storm troopers' (Cohen 2007), while intelligent design blogger Denyse O’Leary rails against 'Darwinian brownshirts' (O’Leary 2007)—the brownshirts, of course, were the stormtroopers of the Nazi Sturmabteilung. On his personal blog, prominent intelligent design creationism promoter (and CSC Senior Fellow) William Dembski complains of 'Darwinian fascists' (later revised, if not noticeably softened, to 'Darwinian enforcers') (Dembski 2006). The linking of evolution with ideologies such as Nazism and Stalinism is clearly intended to encourage the view that evolution is not science, but a dangerous ideology in its own right.
"Since the fear that evolution is a threat to religion is at the bottom of creationism, it is not surprising to find that 'Darwinism' is also used to couple evolution with atheism, which creationists, practically by definition, deplore. In his book asking 'What is Darwinism?,' Princeton Theological Seminary professor Charles Hodge answered the titular question by concluding, 'It is atheism' (Hodge 1874: 177). Almost 120 years later, the godfather of intelligent design creationism, Phillip Johnson, expressed much the same view, asking, 'What is Darwinism?' and answering, 'It is a necessary implication of a philosophical doctrine called scientific naturalism, which is based on the a priori assumption that God was always absent from the realm of nature. As such evolution in the Darwinian sense is inherently antithetical to theism . . . . ' (Johnson 1993: 189).
"In summary, then, 'Darwinism' is an ambiguous term that impairs communication even about Darwin’s own ideas. It fails to convey the full panoply of modern evolutionary biology accurately, and it fosters the inaccurate perception that the field stagnated for 150 years after Darwin’s day.
"Moreover, creationists use 'Darwinism' to frame evolutionary biology as an '-ism' or ideology, and the public understanding of evolution and science suffers as a result. True, in science, we do not shape our research because of what creationists claim about our subject matter. But when we are in the classroom or otherwise dealing with the public understanding of science, it is entirely appropriate to consider whether what we say may be misunderstood. We cannot expect to change preconceptions if we are not willing to avoid exacerbating them. A first step is eschewing the careless use of 'Darwinism.'
" . . . [A]long with the increase in coverage of Darwin’s life and work, readers of this journal can . . . expect a surge in anti-evolutionism, as creationists use the increased exposure to evolution as a 'hook' for their own ideas. If ever there was a teachable moment for increasing the understanding of evolutionary biology, it will be 2009. Teachers and scientists ought to take the opportunity to think about how better to present the ideas of evolutionary biology, which has grown and flourished from the seeds planted by a remarkable and brilliant nineteenth-century scientist."
("Overcoming Obstacles to Evolution Education: Don't Call It 'Darwinism,'" by Eugenie C. Scott and Glenn Branch, at:
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12052-008-0111-2/fulltext.html; for further recommended reading, see: "Brilliant Blunders and the Genuises Who Made Them from Darwin to Einstein: Colossal Mistakes by Great Scientists that Changed Our Understanding of Life and the Universe," by Mario Livio [2013, Simon and Schuster, 340 pp])
It bears noting at this point that theists like yourseslf prefer that atheists process like theists do; namely, in terms and context of "belief." Theists are big into "belief"-thinking (a true oxymoron) and seek to control the court by telling atheists that they (atheists) "believe" in their own "religion" of atheism. Religious processing of ideas through the use of "belief" language is the only kind of lingo that theists really know and feel comfortable with. It is a familiar, thumb-sucking Linus-like blanket to them.
http://possil.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/linus-blanket.gifTherefore, it not only makes theists feel angry, it makes them feel uneasy and vulnerable when they are confronted with non-believers who don't buy into the believer's game of thought control through theistic terminology control. Deep down, theists may well realize that thinking is more grounded than believing. (For evidence of that, one need look no further than the futile and dishonest attempts by anti-science creationists to gain credibility in the real world by wrapping their other-worldly religious beliefs in the trappings of pseudo-scientific language).
Despite your protestations to the contrary, atheists scare the hell out of theists. Otherwise, you wouldn't keep scaring up under-the-bed boogymen which you vainly then seek to hurl against the pillars of mainstream evolutionary science that make you tremble--and that also make you look silly.
____
Now, back to Eugenie Scott, whom I know.
She is director of the National Center for Science Education, based in San Diego, California. We first met a few years ago over a B&B breakfast at a national convention for the Freedom from Religion Foundation where we were both program speakers. During the course of friendly conversation, she mentioned that she was taking a group of scientists and interested laypersons on a river-rafting trip through the Grand Canyon. I had always wanted to go on such an expedition so I notified my regular group of hiking friends (all scientists themselves) with whom I take annual excursions into the national parklands and wilderness areas of West. We decided to put it on our to-do list and soon thereafter found ourselves on a nine-day white-water/calm-eddy river raft of the Colorado River in the company of a group of various science professionals (including geneticists, biologists, anthropologists and physicists).
It was an amazing and educating experience, with Eugenie at the helm. She's a critical thinker who uses language much more preciesly than theists do. Those, like her, in the professional scientific community who understand the importance of word-meaning don't "believe" in evolution any more than they "believe" in god. Rather, they "accept" evolution as fact.
During the course of the 200 mile-plus trip that wound its way through the Grand Canyon, we camped out at night on the Colorado's sandbars and during the day--launching from a point in the Grand Canyon where the rocks, sediments and fossils were the oldest--steadily made our way along the river, examining the observable evidence for the long-term evolution of the Canyon. What was particularly interesting was to have compare-and-contrast presentations made by scientists along the way regarding the real-science evolutionary vs. the pseudo-science creationary explanations for how the Grand Canyon physically came to be.
Eugenie has made it a point, then and since, that when educating supporters of evolution on how to deal with an remarkably uninformed and illiterate public, it is very important to "watch your language," so to speak. In efforts to defend and explain the realities of evolution to novices and (in particular) to anti-science religious believer types, language is a critically important tactical device for use in the delivery of facts.
Below is the text of an interview with her on the importance of using words, language and terminology precisely and meaningfully:
"Watch your language! It’s a common message from Eugenie Scott, a physical anthropologist and director of the National Center for Science Education (www.ncseweb.org), an organization dedicated to promoting and defending the teaching of evolution in public schools. Scott recently spoke with Science News writer Susan Milius.
"[Question to Scott]: 'So you urge scientists not to say that they 'believe' in evolution?!'
"[Scott's answer]: 'Right. What your audience hears is more important than what you say. . . .What [people] hear is that evolution is a belief, it’s an opinion, it’s not well-substantiated science. And that is something that scientists need to avoid communicating.
"'You believe in God. You believe your sports team is going to win. But you don’t believe in cell division. You don’t believe in thermodynamics. Instead, you might say you 'accept evolution.'
"Q: 'How does the language used to discuss new discoveries add to the problem?'
"Scott: 'To put it mildly, it doesn’t help when evolutionary biologists say things like, “This completely revolutionizes our view of X.” Because hardly anything we come up with is going to completely revolutionize our view of the core ideas of science. . . . An insight into the early ape-men of East and South Africa is not going to completely change our understanding of Neandertals, for example. So the statement is just wrong. Worse, it’s miseducating the public as to the soundness of our understanding of evolution.
"'You can say that this fossil or this new bit of data 'sheds new light on this part of evolution.'
"Q: 'So people get confused when scientists discover things and change ideas?'
"Scott: 'Yes, all the time. This is one of the real confusions about evolution. Creationists have done a splendid job of convincing the public that evolution is weak science because scientists are always changing their minds about things.'
"Q: 'So how do you explain what science is?'
"Scott: 'An idea that I stole from [physicist] James Trefil visualizes the content of science as three concentric circles: the core ideas in the center, the frontier ideas in the next ring out and the fringe ideas in the outermost ring. . . .
"'[We need to] help the public understand that the nature of scientific explanations is to change with new information or new theory — this is a strength of science — but that science is still reliable. And the core ideas of science do not change much, if at all.
"'The core idea of evolution is common ancestry, and we’re not likely to change our minds about that. But we argue a lot about … how the tree of life is branched and what mechanisms bring evolutionary change about. That’s the frontier area of science.
"'And then of course you have areas that claim to be science, like "creation science" and "intelligent design,” that are off in the fringe. Scientists don’t spend much time here because the ideas haven’t proven useful in understanding the natural world.
"Q: 'You’ve been on talk radio a lot. What’s your sense of what the public understands about evolutionary biology?'
"Scott: 'The public has a very poor understanding of evolution. People don’t recognize evolution as referring to the common ancestry of living things. Even those who accept evolution often don’t understand it well. They think it’s a great chain . . . of gradual increases in complexity of forms through time, which is certainly an impoverished view of evolutionary biology. That view is the source, in my opinion, of: “If man evolved from monkeys, then why are there still monkeys?” ... That’s probably the second most common question I get on talk radio.
"'It’s like saying, "If you evolved from your cousins, why are your cousins still here?" And of course the answer is, well, in fact, I didn’t evolve from my cousins. My cousins and I shared common ancestors, in our grandparents.'
"Q: 'What’s the current state of the effort to keep schools teaching evolution?'
"Scott: 'Sometimes it feels like the Red Queen around here, where we’re running as hard as we can to stay in the same place. The thing is, creationism evolves. And for every victory we have, there’s pressure on the creationists to change their approach. We constantly have to shift our response. Ultimately the solution to this problem is not going to come from pouring more science on it."
"Q: 'What should scientists and people who care about science do?'
"Scott: 'I’m calling on scientists to be citizens. American education is decentralized. Which means it’s politicized. To make a change . . . you have to be a citizen who pays attention to local elections and votes [for] the right people. You can’t just sit back and expect that the magnificence of science will reveal itself and everybody will . . . accept the science."
(Eugenie Scott, "Accept It: Talk about Evolution Needs to Evolve," in "Science News: Magazine for the Society for Science and the Public," vol. 176, #3, 1 August 2009, p. 32, at:
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/45594/title/Comment__Accept_it_Talk_about_evolution_needs_to_evolve; for a related thread, see: "Why I hate the phrase 'I don't believe in god.'" posted by "kolobian," on "Recovery from Mormonism" discussion board, 5 December 2011, at:
http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,357373)
**********
Although you apparently fancy yourself as some kind of expert on the philosophy of science, you have been properly called out on your anti-Darwin kick before.
As one RfM respondent noted back in May of this year:
"katuwiran,
"In a previous post you mentioned that 'Darwinism is some kind of bad religion. When you read evolution literature always keep in mind that you're reading half science and half theology. That's how they're written ever since the days of Charles Darwin.'
"I would like to point out that DNA was not discovered until much later than Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution. If you read what Charles Darwin wrote you will find that he was very wrong on many points. For example, he thought that whales evolved from from a type of bear which is now known to be false. Despite its errors though, it is probably the theory that has made the most predictions that have turned out to be true.
"If you really want to liken Darwinism to a religion then it is like a religion that got the general order of the creation right. Plus, it predicted the existence of as yet undiscovered hereditary molecules. How many religions have done that? Darwinism, if a religion, would have to rate as the best religion in the world, and Darwin the best prophet that ever lived.
"Anyhoo, the debate on Darwinism was resolved back in Darwin's day. It is only because of religious types that refuse to accept the facts that it is still debated today."
("Re: katuwiran - this was on the Dawkin's Foundation page today," posted by "Green Potato," on "Recovery from Mormonism" bulletin board, 20 May 2013, at:
http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,900607,901152#msg-901152)
You don't have to be scared of Eugenie Scott, "katuwiran," or of evolutionary science. But you are stuck in the language of religion because you obviously don't know how else to communicate your ideas. Instead of lashing out theistically, try thinking rationally. It's more reliable and would make you look less nutty and uneducated.
In the meantime, it's obvious that can dish it but that you certainly can't take it. You mindlessly spew your raving diatribes against Darwin in ways that are uninformed to their core with regard to how Darwin's contributions to the understanding of evolution are actually regarded within the global scientific community.
Then you completely twist what Scott was saying in an astoundingly superficial way that would make even a grade schooler blush. (That last observation is a direct response to your condescending admonition to those who disagree with you: "Darwinism isn't science. It is religion. Wake up boys and girls").
To cap it off, you then have the utter audacity to whine about "vitriol"?
Hypocrite.
By the way, I spoke recently with an internationally-respected physicist who, after hearing me recite to him your ludicrous "arguments," replied that what you have claimed "makes no sense." He noted (as anyone would who credibly knows Darwin's proper place in the history of science) that while Darwin didn't understand DNA or genetics and, in fact, got some particulars fundamentally wrong in his evolutionary theorizing, what he did get wrong related to matters that had not yet been discovered. (Well, duh).
This scientist also observed that Darwin's lasting legacy was his establishment of the foundation of evolutionary science as pertaining to the processes of natural selection--a bedrock that has not only withstood the test of time, but has been empirically validated in critical respects. To insist, as you foolishly do, that the scientific world is abandoning Darwin is absurd, false and ignorant. Just what is the so-called "genuine science" that you supposedly are in possession of that the supposedly deceived elements of the scientific community just don't seem to get?
As my scientist friend summed up, I can point these facts out to you, but "it probably won't do any good." He observed that you haven't expressed "a single original idea"--and what you have parroted is obviously "borrowed from the creationists."
Double duh.
_____
To summarize, your skull is clearly beyond penetration by mainstream scientific evidence that demonstrably underscores Darwin's historic and legitimate contributions to the discipline of evolutionary science.
I would therefore respectfully suggest that you take your bawl and go home.
You're both out of your league and stuck in the wrong century.
Edited 24 time(s). Last edit at 07/15/2013 12:45PM by steve benson.