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Topic: CBC story on creationism in Kansas
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gabong
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8663
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posted 06 April 2005 10:23 PM
quote: Originally posted by Surferosad:
And of course organisms look "designed", you pinheads: natural selection designed them. Ignorant idiots.[]
I find it quite odd that the general public cannot grasp evolution. I heard a critique recently that went like this: It would take billions and billions permutations to finnally arrive at the modern human form. Even over an infinity of time, it is almost impossible that humans could come out of evolution. Anybody that knows anything about evolution will immediately spot the flaw in this argument. Evolution does not aim at anything. Humanity is an accident. If the universe were to start again tomorrow, we might end up with jumping blobs with wings who wonder at how amazing it is that eveloution could have designed such perfect creatures.
From: Newfoundland | Registered: Mar 2005
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Ron Webb
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 2256
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posted 06 April 2005 11:11 PM
Creationists (or maybe anti-evolutionists is a better term) like to talk about how incredibly unlikely it is that certain enzymes, structures, etc., could come together by pure chance. But I've never seen them actually attempt to calculate just how incredibly many chances they had: how many carbon, hydrogen and oxygen atoms exist in the trillions of gallons of ocean water (for instance), and how many billions of times each of them has collided every year over a billion or so years. The odds are indeed small, but the game has been played a truly uncountable number of times.I read "Darwin's Black Box", by Michael Behe, a few years ago. What struck me about Behe's description of various biological processes was quite the opposite of his intention -- not how skillfully designed they were, but how utterly convoluted and stupid they were. His description of the blood clotting mechanism was typical. First you've got substance A, which clots the blood. But protein B regulates the action of A. Then enzyme C reduces the effect of B; and D controls the action of C; and on and on. Rube Goldberg would have been impressed.
From: Winnipeg | Registered: Feb 2002
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Boom Boom
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 7791
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posted 10 April 2005 09:48 PM
quote: Originally posted by TemporalHominid: Scientific American throws in the towelSciAm
"This magazine will be dedicated purely to science, fair and balanced science, and not just the science that scientists say is science. And it will start on April Fools' Day." (I just recently let my subscription to SciAm lapse after 20+ years; reading this article tempts me to renew)
From: Make the rich pay! | Registered: Dec 2004
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