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The Fray. 11/19/99

Posted by: Gotch on November 19, 1999 at 15:24:41:

In Reply to: Logic and faith *don't* mix. posted by Gideon Hallett on November 19, 1999 at 12:30:39:

May I quote from Judy?

For those of us who did not understand thermodymanics,
entropy, and punctuated epuilibrium at when they were
first submitted here:

EVOLUTIONARY "FAITH", V. F. VEISSKOFF, Head Dept.
Physics, M.I.T., "The evolutionary history of the
world from the 'big bang' to the present universe is a
series of gradual steps from the simple to the
complicated, from the unordered to the organized, from
the formless gas of elementary particles to the morphic
atoms and molecules and further to the still more
structured liquids and solids, and finally to the
sophisticated living organisms. There is an obvious
tendency of nature from disorder to order and
organization, American Scientist, Vol.65, July/Aug, 1977,
p.409


GALAXIES "THEORETICALLY" IMPOSSIBLE, JAMES
TREFIL, Prof. Physics, George Mason U., "It seems
that the more we learn about the basic laws of nature,
the more those laws seem to tell us that the visible
matter - the stuff we can see - shouldn't be arranged the
way it is. There shouldn't be galaxies out there at all,
and even if there are galaxies, they shouldn't be grouped
together the way they are.... The problem of explaining
the existence of galaxies has proved to be one of the
thorniest in cosmology. By all rights, they just
shouldn't be there, yet there they sit. It's hard to
convey the frustration that this simple fact induces
among scientist. Despite what you may read in the press,
we still have no answer to the question of why the sky is
full of galaxies, although we've succeeded in eliminating
more wrong answers. DARKSIDE OF THE UNIVERSE, 1988, pp.2,
55


DEMANDS BEGINNING, ISAAC ASIMOV, "As far as we know,
all changes are in the direction of increasing entropy,
of increasing disorder, of increasing randomness, of
running down. Yet the universe was once in a position
from which it could run down for trillions of years. How
did it get into that position?" Science Digest, May
1973, pp.76-77


DON'T USE THE FOSSILS, MARK RIDLEY, Oxford, "...a lot
of people just do not know what evidence the theory of
evolution stands upon. They think that the main evidence
is the gradual descent of one species from another in the
fossil record. ...In any case, no real evolutionist,
whether gradualist or punctuationist, uses the fossil
record as evidence in favor of the theory of evolution as
opposed to special creation." New Scientist, June,
1981, p.831
PUNCTUATED EQUILIBRIUM, S.M. STANLEY, Johns Hopkins U.
"The record now reveals that species typically
survive for a hundred thousand generations, or even a
million or more, without evolving very much. We seem
forced to conclude that most evolution takes place
rapidly...a punctuational model of evolution...operated
by a natural mechanism whose major effects are wrought
exactly where we are least able to study them in small,
localized, transitory populations. ...The point here is
that if the transition was typically rapid and the
population small and localized, fossil evidence of the
event would never be found.", New Evolutionary
Timetable, 1981

The above paragraphs copied from The Fray. 11/19/99


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