Re:

[ltrwritr@moscow.com (Mark Rounds)]

Again the issues are scrambled to as to ellicit an emotional rather than
logical response.  Let me hit them one at time.

1.      There is no conspiracy of "Darwinists".  There is a rather an
intense debate carried on through scientific journals and conferences that
is the check and counter balance to scientific claims.  Claims are made be
researchers who must defend them in conferences.  Other researchers do their
best to dismantle and recreate the work.  Only those claims that have the
best grounding and facts behind them stand.  There is not one group but
hundreds of labs and tens of thousands of individuals.  It is heady and
exciting and does a great deal to winnow out false claims as accusations.

2.      Did they apologize for the wrongs of the 1850's concerning racism? I
am going to take a bit of a leap here.  As I said above there is no cabal of
Darwinists trying to push fiction on people.  THe Scientific community, for
all its flaws ( and I can go into great detail on that subject) beat up the
concept that Darwin proposed, used it as the synthesis for other ideas, with
a stronger base in fact.  They did more that apologize.  Science gave us the
DNA testing that proved that all human kind came from a single small gene
pool and that the races of man differ less than the different breeds of dogs
or horses and they are considered on one species.  Math and science gave us
the statisitcal and socialogical studies that not only showed there was
essentially no difference between the races but actually showed how our
institutions of learning were causing some of the problems attributed to
race and began to show them how to fix it.  They did a great deal more than
apologize for what happened in the 1850's, they led the charge to fix those
wrongs.  On the other hand the Presbyterian Church formally apologized in
2000 and the Baptist Church 1998, a little late in the day.

3.      Evolution is going on right now as we speak.  However it moves at
the speed of generations.  The premise that the races were separate species
was debunked before most of us were born.  Coontz continued to write on that
point to his death but was proven false even before his death.  There are
those individuals that have used bits of science to prove that they can and
should descriminate against people "for their own good" but do not be
fooled.  They don't view the whole picture.

4.      Finally, after half a dozen posts, does the point of this debate
come clear.  The debate is not on Evolution which has been proven to greater
degree than Relativity (and folks, nukes really do work).  The debate is
whether or not to teach this in school and/or supplant it with teaching
Creation.  I would submit that if this thread had been properly labeled from
the beginning, it would have died still born.  Nobody would have taken the
time to respond.  AS Ducan so ably put it, we all know how to use our delete
keys.

5.      Nobody has asked you to leave or even to shut up.  My response was
to ask folks on this list to choose.  Are we going to have a rational
discussion on Evolution or are we going to get emotional in trying to defend
a scientist from the 1850's who had very little data go on and extrapolated
too much from his data?  

6.      You speak of my liberal sensibilities as if you know me and how I
would speak and react to given stimuli.  I could on and on about what I
really am, where my politics, ethics or morals are, but you don't know so
please refrain from telling me to which camp I belong.  In my humble
opinion, the first step of discrimination is when you start putting people
in boxes.  Ask around and you find that I don't fit well into any group or
political grouping.  I like it that way ;-)

7.      Now I have one for you.  What if Evolution and Creation are both
true?  I am by trade an engineer and I think that God is a much better
engineer than I am ;-)  What if he built the laws of chemistry, physics,
etc... so that at some point we would evolve to be self aware.  And then,
when he tipped his hand to a hebrew mystic and showed him his handiwork, how
close to right do you think he (the mystic) could get it?  Take some time to
compare the generation of life on this planet as given by science and
compare it to how  the Bible describes it.  If you leave out the time frame
(because it probably would have taken 7 days to show a human even a synopis
of it all) how true to it does it follow?  



Mark Rounds



><html>
>Dear visionaries.<br><br>
>Mark Rounds points out that many Christian groups have sought forgiveness
>for their complicity in the racism of the 19th century. Have the
>Darwinists done as much?<br><br>
>Part of the reason why they may not have is that they are better
>logicians than that. Eugenics based on evolutionary assumptions was
>enthusiastically supported by the usual suspects up until WWII. It was
>abandoned at that time for PR reasons (for obvious reasons), and is now
>making its not so surreptitious comeback. Survival of the fittest
>presupposes another category -- the unfit, and the ramifications are
>many. Check out Thornhill and Palmer, <i>A Natural History of Rape</i>
>(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000).<br><br>
>All this is happening because the logic is unassailable. If evolution has
>not stopped, what <i>a priori</i> scientific reason can be given, based
>on natural selection, that would require all human races to grow into the
>same new species, or to do so at the same rate? If evolution has stopped,
>why should it have done so? You may not like it, and it may offend
>liberal sensibilities, but I would like someone to tell me why a <i>blind
></i>process like natural selection cares about your liberal
>sensibilities, or the Civil Rights Act of 1964. <br><br>
>As for getting people all riled up, I have offered repeatedly to scram.
>And I hereby do so again, and most cheerfully. But if I do, and when I
>do, realize that the source of the agitation is an unwillingness to
>answer the most basic questions about education. And those who want to
>talk about education reform need to do more than rearrange the deck
>chairs on the Titanic.<br><br>
><br>
></html>
>
>