Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site cbscc.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxl!cbosgd!cbscc!pmd From: pmd@cbscc.UUCP (Paul Dubuc) Newsgroups: net.origins Subject: Let's have scientific evolutionism too Message-ID: <3388@cbscc.UUCP> Date: Wed, 8-Aug-84 11:51:38 EDT Article-I.D.: cbscc.3388 Posted: Wed Aug 8 11:51:38 1984 Date-Received: Thu, 9-Aug-84 04:43:52 EDT References: <654@opus.UUCP> Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Columbus Lines: 72 >[from Dick Dunn:] >In the few months that I've been following this group, I've seen a number >of complaints along the lines of: > "You're talking about religious creationism. That's not the same > as scientific creationism. There is a creationist view which > doesn't rely on the Bible." >and I've occasionally seen offers to post some information on the basics of >scientific creationism. > >Maybe I've missed it, but I haven't yet seen an explanation of what is >meant by scientific creationism. If the article has appeared and I just >missed it, would someone please send email to point it out to me. But if, >as I suspect, there hasn't been anything, would one of the scientific- >creation proponents please try to post something, subject to the following >two constraints: > 1. Don't just give references. References are fine for someone > who wants to spend the time/effort/money to locate them for further > reading, but all we need here are some basics to get us started, > and a lot more people will read the material if it's right here in > front of their noses. > 2. Try to focus on what scientific creationism has to say, on its > own merits, rather than comparing it with evolution. That is, I > think we need to see some creationist material which is positive on > its own ground rather than negative toward evolution. [Stated yet > another way, I'm interested in evaluating creationism, not weighing > it against evolutionism. After all, they might both be wrong:-] A very good idea, I think. I think articles of that nature have been posted back in the early days before net.origins was (the battle went on in net.misc then). But one thing I have noticed in trying to follow the debate is that no evolutionist has been under these constraints to do the same thing with evolutionism... and no one has complained about that. I wonder just how well evolutionism stands on its own merits. There seems to be the tacit assumption that evolutionism relys more heavily upon, or is even derived wholly from empirical scientific data--that there is little "filling in of cracks" with a religious type belief and speculation. Evolutionism has enjoyed being the status quo, the basic assumption, in the public education of most of us. We've all been told how scientific it is--indeed, that it *is* science. (And so we've been told by evolutionists that creationism is not.) All in all I think the general public has a very fuzzy idea of the definite workings of evolutionary theory. We all know about Darwin, and the concept most people have of evolution rests on fragments of neo-Darwinian evolutionism. But is neo-Darwinism more than just fragments? Norman MacBeth, an evolutionist and lawyer who has made the study of evolution his avocation for more than a decade, has said that it is not. He claims that the main reason the synthetic theory has enjoyed such wide acceptance is that no one ever took the time to formulate it and work out the details. Then we have people like Steven J. Gould saying that neo-Darwinian theory is dead while still proclaiming evolution to be a fact (although not in the sense that we are used to thinking of facts. He qualifies the word "fact".) There is much internal debate on the very mechanisms that are supposed to be responsible for evolutionary progression. Whether it be natural selection, genetic mutation, hopful monsters, inherited traits (Lamarkianism still lives in some quarters) or Gould's own (along with Niles Eldredge) punctuated equilibria. In my understanding all of these have problems and fall short of being a plausible mechanism. Some are mutually exclusive, others are built around the lack of evidence (fossils) rather than its existence. It's hard to image, for example, punctuated equlibria accounting for all the gaps in the fossil record. PE is concievable, but it couldn't have all happened that way. So Dick Dunn's suggestion is a good one. But let's have the same from evolutionist too. Why should creationists have to cater to the assumption that evolutionism has "made the grade" as a solid explanation of origins? -- Paul Dubuc {cbosgd,ihnp4}!cbscc!pmd The true light that enlightens every one was coming into the world... (John 1:9)