Wings

[Neil Jones]

In message <45F8A30CE009D2118F850000F805064D1EC4B6 at hqmail.gensym.com> Mark Walker writes:
> 	You can think that I'm simple-minded for considering all of this
> (and I've been appropriately warned that you will), but that is no concern
> of mine.

No doubt you have been consulting a fellow creationist.
Simple-minded? No. but backward thinking yes.

> My concern is only to make a stand - and to voice my observations.
> All of the squashing from those who feel they have attained a higher
> understanding through some institution is nothing but dogmatic spewing, and
> reminds me of Orwellian mind-control.

Orwellian mind-control. Science???!
If you read 1984 you will find that the party in control uses exactly
the same psychological control methods as have been used by religious
zelots in the past. What about the old Jesuit idea that if you have a child
until he is seven then you have the man? Isn't that mind control?
It seems that it has worked with some. 

Science dogmatic? The word dogma derives from the greek and actually means
the doctrine laid down by the  _church_.

Science is based around disprovable hypotheses. Religion is based on blind
faith. It would be possible for me to sit here at my computer and produce
a completely circular argument that the world is flat and on the back of a 
giant turtle. I choose this  analogy because it reflects the
ridiculousness of the fundamentalism that lies behind creationist thinking.

Creationism uses a series of pseudoscientific conjectures to trap the naive
into believing that science can back their faith.
Only those who believe in that faith believe these conjectures. Yet another
example of the circularity of the argument.

Evolution exists. The theory of natural selection is a sound as 
Newtonian mechanics, relativity theory etc. (and the second law of
thermodynamics when properly understood :-) )

You could argue as much as you like that they sun is driven across the sky
in a chariot and you would be just as wrong.

There are umpteen other human explanations for our origin. Which is right?!

Natural selection exists. There are numerous examples of its effects.
If you want a lepdipterous example look at the industrial melanism
of the Peppered Moth (Biston betularia)

Galileo had the same problems convincing the church of his time that the
earth went around the sun.

> No thanks, as long as I am breathing.
> 	Oh, and by the way - I'm still a collector, too.
>
> 	Mark Walker.
> 
> 

-- 
Neil Jones- Neil at nwjones.demon.co.uk http://www.nwjones.demon.co.uk/
"At some point I had to stand up and be counted. Who speaks for the
butterflies?" Andrew Lees - The quotation on his memorial at Crymlyn Bog
National Nature Reserve