Debate still rages over Darwin

Darwin never denounced evolution. Please provide your sources.

The “Lady Hope Story”, published in 1915, claimed that Darwin had reverted back to Christianity on his sickbed. The claims were refuted by Darwin’s children and have been dismissed as false by historians His last words were to his family, telling Emma "I am not the least afraid of death – Remember what a good wife you have been to me – Tell all my children to remember how good they have been to me", then as she laid down for a rest, he repeatedly told Henrietta and Francis "It's almost worth while to be sick to be nursed by you".

[edit on 12-2-2009 by griffinrl]

reply to post by griffinrl


talk about a short memory wasnt this covered like ...last page?

i know recycling is all the rage in a our green society but really thats going just too far

reply to post by noobfun


It's well documented that Darwin never renounced his THEORIES. And I would tend to believe the account of his own children as to what his last words were before he started pushin' up daisies.

reply to post by griffinrl


sorry Griffinrl i replied to your post becasue you were responding to our recycling friend

didnt mean to imply anything against you comments

i agree its been refuted so many times and yet still makes an appearance every so often .. like at the top and bottom of the last page

well that is until the comment that brought it up got a big naughty naughty sticker stuck over the top of it

[edit on 12/2/09 by noobfun]

reply to post by noobfun


No worries noob. I just put theories in all caps to emphasize that is all it is and was. A theory. But it's one that makes a hell of a lot more logical sense than magic and fairy tales

reply to post by griffinrl


Careful, griff....the emphasis on 'theory', even though you clarified your position, still can cause the less intelligent out there to continue to use that 'T' word, and not really understand it.

Here's a prime example: GRAVITY is still theorized. Yup! It is not fully understood, so it remains in 'theory' status....but I doubt anyone reading this will dispute that gravity exists. It is the complete mechanism that is, as yet, not fully described.

Darwin was courageous enough to 'buck' tradition, as he observed facts about the natural world that shook his core religious beliefs. And he was brave enough to publish. He didn't fully understand the inmmensity of what he learned....but his work has been built upon for 150 years, so far.

Continuing advances in DNA research, ever-increasing fossil finds, all of it keeps putting more and more puzzle pieces into the entire picture.

I think, perhaps, nearing death, Darwin may have realized that, although the 'bible stories' he was told weren't entirely accurate, there still might be something bigger that is beyond Human comprehension.

It's like, IF an organism that exists its entire life on the bottom of the sea floor could think....then THAT would be its one and only existence, and it would be unlikely to contemplate anything else.

This is what I believe religions do....not all, of course, but many....and there are SO many..........they can't all be correct!

reply to post by weedwhacker


You're definately correct. But the major issue with fundamentlist (and I use that term as a generalization) thinking is that any new evidence is automatically rejected. No new data is accepted into that mindset. Anything new and even anything that is proof is rejected as it's immediately flagged as a test of their "faith". You can never win an argument with circular reasoning.

reply to post by griffinrl


Truer words were never spoken, griff (to steal a phrase).

I see you're offline, so hope you read this later....as all who come along in interest.

Humans like to debate! To argue, to discuss. Everyone has an opinion....that's kinds sorta why we're here on ATS!

Darwin....he's like the Dutch Boy who took his finger out of the dam.

Science works in mysterious ways....Newton, Brahe, Galileo, Einstein, Hawking. THOSE are just five of the famous names, there are hundreds, thousands others, working 'behind the scenes', as it were, right now to continue the study of great scientific principles that will change our lives in the years to come.

I lost my train of thought, due to a phone call....but I think I said my piece.

reply to post by weedwhacker


Basically Darwin came up with a theory (testable) and said "run with it".

Originally posted by johnsky
Can you back up your claims? Or are you going to side-step the issue by claiming all the evidence was "destroyed" in a massive conspiracy?

No, the evidence still exists, and much of it is freely available, mostly
displayed in various museums, or stored in museum cellars. More of
such evidence is found all the time anyway. There's even a scientific
branch recently created because it became too hard to ignore them
further, called: "Study of the Ooparts".. or Out-Of-Place-Artefacts.

Also, I'm not saying that all of science failed.. mostly science has done
a good job explaining how things work, but in some areas, it really did
fail, especially in the ancient history area. The science academies also
have the obnoxious habit of ignoring evidence and theories that would
prove existing theories of leading scientists, wrong.

We'd have a lot more to work with if the churches (Catholic for one example) didn't habitually destroy documentation that went against religious dogma. The Mayan's are one excellent example...4 codecs survived the religous purging of the church. Imagine how much more we'd understand if that didn't happen.

reply to post by griffinrl


griff....you touched upon a tender spot....there.

Let's imagine IF Alexandria, and all of its works, had been preserved??

Wow!

The incredible knowledge of the ancients.....lost not just once, but many times.

We've managed to scramble back up the hill, though. And assert ourselves....gone to the Moon, sent numerous probes to the planets in our System.....so, from a technological standpoint, we've done well....

It is our 'concept' of how to use this knowledge, that is the crux of this thread, In my opinion.

We still, as a species, covet greed over community.

It is built in to our mammilian, our 'tribal' heritage.

We have a long way to go, to find enlightenment.

"Survival of the Species"....that is a title that resonates as much today as it did 150 years ago....

It's nothing more than power....those who have it don't want to let it go. It's easy to reign over the ignorant and the scared.

Those who keep their heads in the sand waiting on a handout from their supernatural sugardaddy will most likely be disappointed in the end.

[edit on 12-2-2009 by griffinrl]

For those interested, there was a great NOVA documentary recently on just this topic. Since so few of us here are actually biologists, I suggest you watch it.

Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial
www.pbs.org...

The rural community of Dover, Pennsylvania is torn apart in the latest battle over the teaching of evolution, and parents file a lawsuit against the town's school board in federal court.

This documentary is a fantastic example of the objective look at Intelligent Design vs Evolution. As I watched, I expected to be floored by the arguments on both sides, and the arguments in court. One side lived up to this expectation, the other side did not.

Judgment Day has full of reenactments and interviews with proponents of both sides of the debate. I highly recommend this documentary to anyone interested in this topic.



[edit on 12-2-2009 by Hellish-D]

As far as I'm concerned there is absolutely nothing "intelligent" with the Intelligent Design idea. It's just another word for religion. Once ID is allowed in schools then the battle will begin as to what denomination is the most intelligent.

Originally posted by Wehali
There's even a scientific branch recently created because it became too hard to ignore them further, called: "Study of the Ooparts".. or Out-Of-Place-Artefacts.

you do realise that it isnt really a branch of science?

its creationist science,

which means no thorough research, no testing just giving artifact a quick glance at ignore or alter some/most/all the facts surrounding it, making some idle speculation and jumping to the most likley 'god must have done it like' conclussion, failing that the oe that most opposes legitimate science so they can pretend some how this disproves a whole gammet of science theories that it has nothing to do with but they dont like much

Originally posted by Hellish-D
For those interested, there was a great NOVA documentary recently on just this topic. Since so few of us here are actually biologists, I suggest you watch it.

Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial
www.pbs.org...

The rural community of Dover, Pennsylvania is torn apart in the latest battle over the teaching of evolution, and parents file a lawsuit against the town's school board in federal court.

This documentary is a fantastic example of the objective look at Intelligent Design vs Evolution. As I watched, I expected to be floored by the arguments on both sides, and the arguments in court. One side lived up to this expectation, the other side did not.

Judgment Day has full of reenactments and interviews with proponents of both sides of the debate. I highly recommend this documentary to anyone interested in this topic.
[edit on 12-2-2009 by Hellish-D]

You must be talking about the PBS station that hosts flaming liberals like "Tavis Smiley" and Neil Degrasse Tyson who is quite candid about using the show to advance atheism.

PBS is notoriously BIASED

There are many portrayals of it, but one of special relevance is the PBS seven part series, Evolution, telecast in September, 2001. When I learned of it I was teaching an undergraduate course titled The Darwinian Revolution. The pre-broadcast promos aroused my interest because the series was designed to assist secondary and tertiary teaching. It was, the promos promised, a no cost spared production (funded by the former Microsoft wizard Paul Allen) that recruited the support of major names in contemporary evolutionary thought. It would address, fairly and impartially, the great vexed question in U.S. evolutionary instruction, Intelligent Design vs Natural Selection. Nor was that all. The documentary was supported by a multimedia apparatus of teacher training, teaching tools, student exercises and projects, electronic texts and visuals. So I was primed and ready for the telecast of this flagship teaching tool.

The first instalment establishes the bias that controls the series. It does not begin with the initial phase evolutionary theory. It begins with the youthful Charles Darwin, who has no doubts about the Creationist scheme of things he learned at Cambridge, but who is keen to make something of himself. His Cambridge teacher and friend, the botanist Rev John Henslow, recommended him as the naturalist for the voyage of the Beagle. Henslow also recommended that he take with him Charles. Lyell's just published Principles of Geology, which became Darwin's golden thread for the interpretation of natural history during the five-year voyage. The depiction of the voyage as Darwin's personal journey to the discovery of momentous things culminates in the Beagle's six-week visit to the Galpagos Archipelago.

The Archipelago is a geographical isolate whose flora and fauna originated from Ecuador. Darwin observes the variance of the fauna, especially turtles and finches, not only from continental species, but also between the islands. The pattern of distribution (or adaptive radiation in evolutionary language) prompts the youthful naturalist to open his species notebooks on his return to England . He keeps them secret because he is playing with a ‘dangerous idea' — the notion that species can evolve from a common ancestor over time. In a bare seven years, Darwin has made the transition from Creationism to evolution. So says the PBS dramatization.

This account faithfully depicts the first episode of the Darwin legend as told by many science history teachers. Alas it is bogus history from start to finish. Let us look at particulars.

1. The most egregious error is the pretence that Darwin's personal journey of discovery is of any significance. By 1831 evolutionary theory and evidence had been developed to a sophisticated pitch. Indeed Darwin equipped himself with a library of the evolution literature. One title worthy of note is the evolutionist Bory de Saint-Vincent's seventeen-volume Dictionnaire classique d'histoire naturelle. Another is Lyell's Principles of Geology, which contains a lengthy summary of Lamarck's theory. As it happens, an event significant for the development of evolutionary thought occurred a year prior to the Beagle 's departure: the debate between Georges Cuvier, the founder of paleontology, and Geoffroy Etienne Saint-Hilaire about Geoffroy's unity of type principle. A re-enactment of this debate would be a suitable beginning for the PBS documentary. The young Darwin would be nowhere in sight, but the principles of evolutionary thought would be prominent. Cuvier, defending catastrophic geology, mass extinctions, and discontinuity of the fossil record vs Geoffroy, defending uniformitarian geology and continuity of the fossil record.


2. The Beagle's naturalist was Robert McKormick. Darwin was the gentleman companion to Captain Robert FitzRoy, on the recommendation of Henslow. Darwin paid all his expenses throughout the five-year voyage and was never a servant of the Admiralty. This is an embarrassment because in the first sentence of the Origin Darwin claims to have been the Beagle's naturalist. The embarrassment is covered by styling Darwin an ‘unofficial naturalist' or ‘unpaid naturalist'. This is a historian's ‘just so' story.


3. Young Darwin's specimens and commentaries made a favourable impression back home, but his supposed insight into evolution based on adaptive radiation in the Galapagos is a tale of failure converted to success. The data required for this insight was labelling each specimen by location, but Darwin labelled all specimens ‘Galapagos'! Only later, in England, when the taxonomist John Gould assigned specie status to his finch specimens did he realize his blunder. He attempted to correct it by asking other crew members, who had also collected specimens, whether they had labelled the place of the collection. His effort resulted in some augmentation of information, but it was insufficient to support an argument for their evolution from a common mainland ancestor. Nevertheless, Darwin claimed this insight in the opening sentences of Origin:

‘When on board HMS Beagle, as naturalist, I was much struck with certain facts in the distribution of the inhabitants of South America . . . These facts seemed to throw some light on the origin of species—the mystery of mysteries…'

The article goes on to say more about PBS and their Darwinian liberal agenda than anything it could conjure up about Darwit

The PBS series purports to be a thoughtful, accurate instructional aid for a troubled and important field. Unfortunately, it is committed to the idea that the vindication of evolution against Creationism requires the valorization of Darwin as evolution's hero. This, I believe, is a grave misrecognition of how science works, and thus is a bad lesson for students.

Let us repeat it six times before breakfast: science does not depend on authority.

On the contrary, clinging to authority is another way of evading the force of evidence.
Ernst Mayr and the Darwin Cult

The PBS series comes with the endorsement of leading evolutionists. I wondered whether anyone, scientist or historian, had challenged its egregious disregard for fact.

A Google search turned up criticisms, but all were from the Intelligent Design and Creationist camp. The sample I read complained of misrepresentations of their case; they did not touch on the issues I am raising. The negative result of the Google search is of course no proof of the absence of criticism by scientists or historians in the evolution camp.

The circumstance that such criticism is liable to be appropriated by religionists in their on-going struggle with science would tend to discourage pro-evolution critics from going public. Who wants to be quoted by a Creationist, against evolution, at the next meeting of the Kansas Board of Education? However that may be, I know from the printed word and from personal knowledge that some senior evolutionists concur with the PBS baloney.

I shall discuss one case, chosen because of this scholar's golden credentials, because of his numerous publications on the history of evolutionary thought, and because he is the paradigm of Darwin worship.

I refer to the recently deceased Agassiz Professor of Zoology at Harvard, Ernst Mayr.

I watched the documentary several times now and always find it interesting how Ken Miller uses the mouse trap as a tie clip suggesting it as some clever anecdote for how IC gets trumped by natural selection but fails to explain how natural selection works for the mouse trap missing a part when Ken Miller isn't there to act as the mindless aimless mechanism called Natural Selection.

What Ken Miller did is the same mistake Richard Dawkins has made trying to explain Natuarl Selection when he came out with his computer algorthm for his "me thinks it's a weasel software to illustrate a mindless. aimless natural selection process.

Ken Miller is not there to figure out what other way the now useless mousetrap can be used for something else.

Never mind that in nature and according to natural selection's own definition, that it wouldn't even care to find another use for it because natural selection is not Ken Miller and is not trying to win an argument.

PBS displays this as a classic response to the fool Michael Behe is when what Ken Miller did was prove Behe's point.

The fact is the the mouse trap needed a damn college educated scientist as the guiding hand ie(god) to give that mouse trap a purpose. This is also the reason Dawkins little program has now been terminated as an accurate illustration for natural selection and why they depend so much on the plausibility of mutation to fill in where Natural Selection fails to be logically explained. It simply doesn't work. Prof. Lennox shut out Dawkins using mathmatics pure science this way also.

Mutations being the mechanism??

I give you the fruit flys failures

There is both of your mechanism's

Now what?

Does that occur to anyone out there in Atheist land??

NOPE

Did you happen to notice the time devoted for the explanation of evolution and how that was set up?

1) Scientists lawyers from several firms including the ACLU were gave questions and answered un-challenged by a cross examination of any kind. More of a yes man argument.

2) ID had Michael Behe and an adversarial court system that used tactics so bombastic even going as far as stacking a pile of books infront of someone the court recognised as an "expert witness". Can you imagine the amount of side bar conversations that would take place in a court of law where the most heard phrase is "asked and answered your honor" can you imagine everytime an expert witness took the stand all anyone would have to do is buy a stack of books and overwhelm the expert by suggesting he read all those books.

Did you happen to notice the rullings given by Judge Jones were explained using a document from the Judges final statement as early as a month before it was over? Did you happen to notice where he got that from?

The ACLU.

of the over 5000 words in that statement 98% were written by the ACLU and as supiciously strange as that is, it is not illegal but using it, to justify decisions on rulings during a trial is indicative of a Judge who not only didn't know how to speak for himself, but never cared enough to give this a serious impartial trial making up his mind well before the trial was even half way through.

The documentary on PBS is not an accurate depiction of ID but is more of the same liberal media that wants to use the media and science to effect public policy and elect Presidents.

just like they accuse Religion of doing

[edit on 12-2-2009 by Aermacchi]

This thread is starting to become uncivil.

Please mind your manners. Discuss the issue and not each other.