The Biblical Case for Pro-Choice & Stem Cell Research

[Tired_Old_Man 1]

Hence we know it as the theory of evolution, not the law of evolution.

The word theory means something entirely different when used in scientific and mathematical terms than when used in lay terms.

[Wheetsin 714]

Indeed, you are absolutely correct. I assumed layman conversation when I butted in. My bad, perhaps. We can wax scientific (though - to clarify - I'm certainly not a creationist!)

I have a paper on this somewhere in my heaps of articles, let me look.

[Wheetsin 714]

Bear with me:

One of the most common accusations heard from creationists is that "evolution is only a theory and hasn't been proven". Such assertions are also heard from conservatives who give political support to the creationists. For instance, during the 1980 Presidential campaign, Ronald Reagan told an audience, concerning evolution, "Well, it's a theory--it is a scientific theory only, and it has in recent years been challenged in the world of science and is not yet believed in the scientific community to be as infallible as it was once believed." (cited in Berra 1990, p. 123, Wills 1990 p. 120, and Eldredge 1982 p. 28)

This accusation demonstrates a basic ignorance of the methods and principles of science. The scientific method holds as a matter of course that all conclusions are tentative, and that nothing can ever be absolutely proven to a certainty. Every conclusion reached by any scientist must always include, even if it is only assumed, the unspoken preface that "This is true only to the best of our current knowledge". Science does not deal with absolute truths; it deals with hypotheses, theories and models. The distinction between these is important in understanding and in countering creationist arguments, since the word "theory" also has a popular usage that is quite different from its scientific meaning (the vast majority of the US population--some studies have indicated as high as 95%--are in essence scientifically illiterate, and have only the vaguest grasp of modern scientific thinking, and the creationists always make a point of appealing to this popular ignorance).

In the popular view, the word "theory" means simply something that is unproven--an assertion which may or may not be true. It is this meaning which the creationists refer to when they assert that evolution is "just a theory", the implication being that, if evolution hasn't been proven, then it should have no more standing than creation "science". In science, however, the word "theory" has a very definite meaning. Under the scientific method, the first step in investigation is to gather data and information, in the form of verifiable evidence. Once data has been gathered, the next step is to form a hypothesis which would explain the data. This hypothesis is, quite simply, nothing more than an intelligent guess. (A hypothesis is, in fact, the closest scientific term to what most people mean when they say "theory").

Once a hypothesis has been formed, it is compared against the data (both old and new) to see how well it fits with the established facts. If the hypothesis is contradicted by the data, then it must be either modified and tested again, or discarded completely and a new hypothesis formed. Once a hypothesis has passed the test of verification through data, it becomes a scientific theory--i.e., it becomes an established framework within which to interpret the relationship of various bits of raw data. On the basis of this theory, new hypotheses are formed, and areas in which new data may be gathered are identified. If the theory continues to correctly explain new data (and indeed serves to correctly predict the outcome of scientific experiments), it is said to have a high degree of reliability. Such a theory is not a mere supposition or guess; it is a hypothesis that has been verified by direct experimentation and which has demonstrated a high degree of predictive ability.

When a related group of theories are correlated to one another and demonstrate the ability to be predictive and to explain the data, they form a scientific model. Models are the intellectual framework within which vast areas of particular data are explained and described. They also serve to indicate potential new areas of research and new hypotheses which can be tested to see if they can be integrated into the model.

An example may help to illustrate these distinctions. Observational data indicates to us that we can see the masts of tall ships while they are still far out on the horizon, before we can see the deck or the hull. We can also observe that the shadow of the earth, cast upon the moon during a rare eclipse, appears to be circular. We can therefore formulate the hypothesis that the earth is round. This would explain all of our data. Using this hypothesis, we can predict that, if the earth is indeed a sphere, we should be able to sail completely around the earth without falling off or coming to an edge. And, if this experiment is performed, we find that we can indeed do so. Our hypothesis has now been verified by experimentation, shows itself capable of correlating a variety of disparate data, and shows an ability to be predictive, and is therefore established as a scientific theory, the Theory of the Round Earth.

If we combine our theory of the round earth with other theories such as the theory of a round moon and a theory of heliocentrism, we can formulate a model--the moon orbits around the earth, the earth orbits around the sun, and all are part of a system of planets orbiting around a central star. This is the model of the heliocentric solar system.

Please note that none of this is to be treated as an absolute fact. It is entirely possible that some later observation or data will completely upset our model. Many times, a model must be modified and altered in order to explain new data or to expand its explanatory power. No scientific model can be viewed as an absolute proof. Perhaps at some point in time the shadow of the earth upon the moon will be seen to be a square, or perhaps one day we will see that the moon does not really revolve around the earth. However, based upon all of the data we possess currently, we can conclude that neither of these possibilities is very likely, and we are justified in having a high degree of confidence in the solar system model. Although it has not been (and cannot logically be) proven to an absolute certainty, it has been verified by every experiment we have conducted so far, and it has proven to have profound predictive power.

This model then becomes a basis on which to formulate new hypotheses and to investigate new areas of research. As various scientists produce new data and formulate new theories and hypotheses, a consensus will be reached about which theories are better suited to the data and which have a higher degree of confidence. In this manner, the model is constantly being modified, improved and expanded in order to encompass more and more data. Scientific models can never be stagnant--they are constantly changing and expanding as our knowledge of the universe increases.

Thus, scientific models can never be viewed as "the truth". At best, they are an approximation to truth, and these approximations become progressively closer to "the truth" as more testing of new evidence and data is done. However, no scientific model can ever reach "the truth", since no one will ever possess knowledge of ALL facts and data. As long as we do not have perfect and complete knowledge, our scientific models must be considered tentative, and valid only within the current limits of what we know.

The current theories of evolutionary mechanisms (Darwinian gradualism through natural selection, punctuated equilibria and neutralist evolution) together constitute a scientific model. This model has survived (with some modifications) every experimental test, and has not been invalidated by any data or evidence we now possess. Evolutionary theory has demonstrated an ability to correlate and explain a wide variety of disparate data with a high degree of confidence, and has proven to have the ability to predict experimental results and to point out new areas that may be investigated for new data. As a scientific theory, the theory of evolution has the same standing and authority that atomic theory, the theory of relativity and the theory of quantum physics possess.

As a complement to labelling evolution as "just a theory", the creationists also like to refer to their own particular outlook as a "model". Examination will quickly show that this is simply not true--creationism is not a scientific model in any sense of the word. Scientific hypotheses, theories and models are all based upon several fundamental criteria. First, they must explain the world as it is observed, using naturalistic mechanisms which can be tested and verified by independent observation and experimentation. Although the existence of God is not necessarily denied by science, supernatural explanations which are based upon the unseen actions of God are excluded from science as a matter of necessity. As biologist J.B.S. Haldane pointed out, science is dependent upon the assumption that the world is real and operates according to regular and predictable laws, which are not changed from moment to moment at the whim of supernatural forces: "My practice as a scientist is atheistic. That is to say, when I set up an experiment I assume that no god, angel or devil is going to interfere with its course." (cited in Montagu, 1984, p. 241) Geologist and theologian Dr James Skehan also notes, "I undertake my scientific research with the confident assumption that the earth follows the laws of nature which God established at creation . . . . My studies are performed with the confidence that God will not capriciously confound scientific results by 'slipping in' a miracle!" (Strahler, 1987, pp. 40-41)

In a manner similar to that of science, the actions of supernatural entities are also excluded from the legal arena--no person is permitted to argue in a US court that they are not responsible for a crime because Satan was in control of them, or that such and such a crime happened because it was the will of God. Neither system denies the existence of God, but both exclude God as an explanatory mechanism.

The creationist idea that God divinely created the universe may or may not be true, but, by postulating a supernatural event which occurs outside of the natural laws of the universe, such an idea places itself firmly outside the realm of science. There is simply no experiment which can verify any of its assertions and no predictions of future data that can be drawn from this hypothesis, and those who hold such conclusions can do so only on the basis of faith. This is fine for a religious outlook or an ideology, but it has nothing at all in common with science.

Another characteristic of science is that it must be falsifiable. As we have seen, it is not possible to "prove" that any scientific model is absolutely true and correct. It is, however, quite possible to prove that any given scientific model is not correct--that is, it can be conclusively shown to be false. The evolution model, for instance, could be falsified in any number of ways--a new species could be reliably observed to suddenly POOF! into existence from nowhere, for instance. On a more realistic level, the evolution model would be conclusively falsified if any of the three basics we pointed out earlier--variation, heritability or selection, were shown by experiment to be invalid (i.e., if some genetic mechanism were to be found which made it chemically impossible for mutations to occur in the DNA, or for any such mutations to be passed down from one generation to the next). The evolutionary model would also be falsified if the fossil remains of a fully modern human being or a flowering plant were to be reliably found in strata that have been dated to the Cambrian period of earth's history, or the Devonian, or the Permian, or if it were to be conclusively shown that all fossils found to date are elaborate fakes, planted by an international conspiracy of evolution scientists to impose secular humanism upon the earth. So far, however, no evidence has been reliably presented, by the creationists or by anyone else, which falsifies the evolution model. Every experiment that has been performed and every bit of data which has been collected has tended to confirm its validity.

Full document also available online, Lenny Flank, ©1995.

[Tired_Old_Man 1]

Neo-Cons and members of the UnChristian Never-Right Politcal Movement, Including BuSh, only believe in Science when in regards to advancing Warfare.

[lisah25 3]

I would be happy to, but I'm currently working on a dial-up connection from my car, en route to Las Vegas . Give me a few hours and I'll get it to you. My connection is tediously slow.

However, your quote seems to say the same thing with different words.

LOL-it's Friday and I'm feeling silly. So I have this mental picture of this REALLLLYY LOOONNGG phone cord following behind your car.

I don't think it's saying the same thing at all.

He's saying that "A" is farther from "D" then "M" is from "N", from that quote at least. He's not saying that "D" is closer to "M" then it is to "A".

I read that to mean that the difference between what his culture defined as "civilized people" and "savages" was bigger then between a domestic animal and a wild one. Comparing civilized people to domestic animals, savage ones to wild animals.

[green 6]

19th century Europeans did not hold Enlightened views about their fellow human beings. They were a long way from being politically correct.

[BJean 16]

Ahhh, now I know why my husband insists on keeping all of his graduate level papers and books. You just never know when you might be tested... forgive me, it's Friday and I'm feeling silly too.

Truth is, I have enjoyed reading evey entry on this twine (thicker and more important than a thread).

[green 6]

Gadget's gonna have a long, long phone line because anything more up to date is a theory.

(Sorry, Gadget! I know that that is a cheap shot and I am fond of you. I just can't resist being a goof!)

[gadgetlady 4]

Scientists have only been able to change the species of organisms which have extremely short life-spans, since evolution takes place at a very slow pace.

Sigh. So little time right now, and so much to say. I WILL be back.

Scientists have NEVER been able to change one KIND of organism into another KIND of organism. They have been able to demonstrate small mutations over time, but they have never turned a cat into a dog, or a fish into a bird, or any organism into a whole other type of organism. Darwin's theory posits that whole kinds changed into whole other kinds, and yet all scientists are able to do is to demonstrate that small mutations occur over time -- mutations that do not effect the TYPE of organism you are dealing with.

Further, Darwin indicated that the fossil record would be flush with evidence of transitional forms, yet scientists have yet to find ONE such transitional form. With billions of fossils, not ONE. What does that say? They're just REALLY WELL hidden? Or perhaps not there at all.

[anonemouse 1]

Further, Darwin indicated that the fossil record would be flush with evidence of transitional forms, yet scientists have yet to find ONE such transitional form. With billions of fossils, not ONE. What does that say? They're just REALLY WELL hidden? Or perhaps not there at all.

Well, who says what a "transitional organism" is? Are Therasaurs transitional? They had both reptilian and mammalian traits.

and yet all scientists are able to do is to demonstrate that small mutations occur over time -- mutations that do not effect the TYPE of organism you are dealing with.

It also makes sense that after generations of small mutations, eventually the final product is totally different from what it started out as. Think of it as the snowball effect you see all the time in old cartoons. As the snowball rolls down a hill, it only picks up small amounts of snow and debris at a time. Eventually, though, all those little clumps of snow add up, and you get a massive ball of snow.

[anonemouse 1]

Evidence of Evolutionary Transitions

By Michael Benton

One of the most startling discoveries of the past two centuries has been that all living organisms -- all the millions of species of microbes, plants and animals alive on Earth today -- share a common ancestry. However different an elephant, a dung beetle, an oak tree, and an AIDS virus may look, they can all be tracked back to common ancestors in the depths of geologic time. This insight was first articulated by Charles Darwin in 1859, and new lines of evidence have confirmed his discovery time and time again since then. There are two key lines of evidence:

• missing links
  
• shared characteristics

The role of missing links is most difficult to understand. Surely, argue the creationists and other religious fundamentalists, if evolutionists claim that all of life is related through a single huge family tree extending from the present day back millions of years to a single point of origin, we should find fossils that are midway between established groups. 'Where are the missing links?' they cry. Palaeontologists have them!

Archaeopteryx - half reptile, half bird

The first dramatic missing link came to light in 1861, only a couple of years after Darwin's Origin of Species had been published. The first specimen of Archaeopteryx was discovered in a limestone quarry in southern Germany, and it was studied avidly by scientists throughout Europe. Early writers, such as Thomas Henry Huxley, immediately noticed that Archaeopteryx was an intermediate form.

• It had bird characters, feathers and wings.
  
• It also had reptilian characters, the skeleton of a small theropod (flesh-eating) dinosaur, with a long bony tail, fingers with claws on the leading edge of the wing, and teeth in the jaws.

The role of Archaeopteryx has been debated ever since 1861. Is it really a missing link between reptiles and birds, or is it just a bird and not a missing link at all?

• A further seven skeletons have come to light, and all of them confirm that Huxley was correct.
  
• In addition, fantastic new specimens of birds have been found in Spain and China, which are some 30 or 40 million years younger than Archaeopteryx, and they are more bird-like, exactly as an evolutionist predicts.
  
• The new Spanish and Chinese birds have short bony tails, and their hand claws are reduced - they are becoming more bird-like.
  The Chinese localities have not only produced amazing new birds, but also new dinosaur specimens with feathers!

These new specimens clinch the argument. Archaeopteryx is no longer on its own, a single species that attests to the reality of an evolutionary transition from reptiles to birds. Below it, on the evolutionary tree, stretch countless theropod dinosaurs that become ever more birdlike through time, and above it stretch numerous bird species that bridge every step of the way from Archaeopteryx to fully-fledged birds. A long series of fossils through the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, a span of 140 million years, document the evolutionary transition from reptile to bird.

Jaws to ears: An example of tracking missing links

The evolutionary route from reptile to mammal is known in just as much detail. Between the Permian and Triassic periods, mammal-like reptiles evolved from basal forms that were fully reptilian. Through dozens of intermediate steps they evolved into mammals by the Late Triassic, some 225 million years ago. All the steps are evident in fossils:

• Step-by-step, palaeontologists can see the switch from peg-like reptilian teeth to the differentiated teeth of mammals (incisors, canines, molars).
  
• Step-by-step the complex reptilian jaw, with five separate bones, changes to the mammalian jaw, with only one bone, the dentary.
  • In reptiles, both today and in the past, the jaw joint lies between the articular bone at the back of the lower jaw, and the quadrate bone in the skull.
    
  • In mammals, on the other hand, the jaw joint is between the dentary and the squamosal element of the skull.

Most amazing of all is the evolutionary transition to the mammalian middle ear.

• In reptiles, as in amphibians and fishes, there is a single hearing bone, the stapes, which is simply a straight rod that links the eardrum to the hearing structures of the inner ear and the brain.
  
• Mammals, including humans, have three ear ossicles (small bones), the malleus, incus and stapes (or hammer, anvil, and stirrup).

The evolutionary steps were worked out first in Victorian times by the study of mammal embryos and then the fossils confirmed it:

• The mammalian stapes is the same as that of their ancestors. But the malleus and incus have moved into the middle ear from their former function as the reptilian jaw joint.
  
• Life is stranger than fiction: the reptilian lower jaw has been subsumed into the mammalian middle ear to enhance the hearing function.
  
• And the fossils show how some Triassic mammal-like reptiles had effectively two jaw joints: the reptilian joint was reduced, and the new dentary-squamosal joint came into play.
  
• At a certain point, in the Late Triassic, the reptilian jaw joint had shifted function.
  
• We can still detect the legacy of this astonishing transition: when you chew a hamburger, you can hear your jaw movements deep inside your ears.

Every day, new fossil finds are reported -- the first insect, the oldest hominid, the first sauropod dinosaur, an Eocene whale with legs -- and so it goes on. The new fossil finds that hit the headlines are all concrete evidence of evolutionary transitions. The fossils are rarely bizarre or unexpected; they fit into the predictions of evolutionary trees. Dinosaurs with feathers and whales with legs are pretty startling discoveries, but biologists were convinced they existed from the predictions of their evolutionary trees. But is this the sole evidence of evolutionary transitions?

The great tree of life

The single great tree of life is profound evidence for evolutionary transitions. Darwin, as he toured South America and the Galapagos Islands in the 1830s, became increasingly puzzled about the distributions of plants and animals, both geographically and geologically. He went out on the expedition as a traditional creationist. Instead, this is what he discovered:

• He saw that the strange and wonderful plants and animals of South America were related to each other. Why should that be if they had simply been created?
  
• He also saw some of the relatively recent fossils of South American mammals -- the giant ground sloths and glyptodonts. Why were these fossils so obviously relatives of the modern sloths and anteaters that are unique to South America?
  
• Famously, he saw that the singular animals of the Galapagos Islands were all close relatives of animals from the mainland of Ecuador, and they varied from island to island. Why?

The solution then hit Darwin like a hammer blow. The similarities in time and space were easy to explain: life had evolved. It had not been created, species by species. The Galapagos finches, tortoises, and iguanas had diverged from single ancestors that arrived by chance on the islands a few thousand or million years ago. South America had been isolated from the rest of the world, and its own unique birds and mammals had evolved through long spans of time from single ancestors. Tracking back to the very origin of life, he suggested, daringly, that all of life came from a single ancestor.

Molecular confirmation

Since 1859, that great tree has been built up painstakingly by close study of fossils and modern organisms. And then, Darwin's speculation, and all that careful work, was confirmed from an unpredicted source -- the molecules.

• Proteins in the bodies of all organisms, and indeed DNA and RNA, the fundamental molecules of life, carry records of evolutionary transitions.
  
• Simply put, the degree of difference between the same Proteins (or the DNA or RNA) in different species is proportional to the time since they split apart. So, humans have molecules that are nearly identical to those of chimpanzees, rather more different from those of cows, and very different from those of slime molds. The amount of difference is proportional to the time of divergence on the evolutionary tree.

Since 1960, molecular biologists have been drawing up their own evolutionary trees, and these match those based on fossils and museum specimens of living plants and animals. The final, and most startling, confirmation of Darwin's insight also comes from the molecular biology. All living things, from viruses to humans, from bacteria to grasses, share complex molecular machinery -- the whole DNA/ RNA code of life and Protein synthesis machinery and the ATP system of energy transfer.

Conclusion

Evolutionary transitions are demonstrated by so-called 'missing links', fossils like Archaeopteryx, and the whole array of intermediates between dinosaurs and modern birds that lie on either side of it. There are thousands of other fossils that plug the gaps between modern groups that are quite separate, and new finds every year plug yet more gaps. But, the evidence for evolutionary transitions can be seen also in geographic distributions: close relatives are often found close to each other at the base of the evolutionary branch. The shapes of evolutionary trees have now been confirmed from independent evidence of molecular structures. Indeed, the fact that all microbes, plants, and animals today possess certain complex molecular mechanisms proves conclusively that all of life arose ultimately from a single ancestor billions of years ago.

© 2001, American Institute of Biological Sciences.

About the author: Michael Benton, Ph.D., is a vertebrate palaeontologist with interests in dinosaur origins and fossil history. He holds the Chair in Vertebrate Palaeontology at the University of Bristol, UK, in addition to chairing the Masters program in palaeobiology at the university. He has written some 30 books on dinosaurs and palaeobiology, ranging from professional tomes to popular kids' books.

http://www.gly.bris.ac.uk/www/admin/personnel/MJB.html

[anonemouse 1]

And here are a couple of other links:

http://darwiniana.org/transitionals.htm

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-transitional.html

http://www.religioustolerance.org/ev_noway.htm

[Wheetsin 714]

Scientists have NEVER been able to change one KIND of organism into another KIND of organism.

At what hierarchical level are you talking? I think most scientists would consider different species to be different "kinds" of organisms. Otherwise we wouldn't have different species, we'd stop at genus. From News Scientist, 2003:

...until now, that is. Oliver and his team have engineered the chromosomes of brewer's yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae to make it indistinguishable from a related species S. mikatae. Essentially, they have reversed a process by which one species splits into two.

So yes, scientists actually *have* changed one kind of organism into another. Almost 4 years ago.

[Sunta 5]

I'm surprised no one would ever answer that for you. His wife was his sister.

EWWWW! That is super gross.

It's just a pigment issue

What?!?!?!?!? Race is a skin pigment issue only??? Nothing to do with genetics?

If it's an issue of skin pigment only, where did the varied features of different races come from? Where did propensity towards certain diseases come from?

Wait... are you one of those people who thinks the earth is 6,000 years old?

[Tired_Old_Man 1]

Scientists have NEVER been able to change one KIND of organism into another KIND of organism. They have been able to demonstrate small mutations over time, but they have never turned a cat into a dog, or a fish into a bird, or any organism into a whole other type of organism. Darwin's theory posits that whole kinds changed into whole other kinds, and yet all scientists are able to do is to demonstrate that small mutations occur over time -- mutations that do not effect the TYPE of organism you are dealing with.

No one has ever said, except maybe some right wing phonies trying to distort the opposition's beliefs, that evolution turned one species into another already insisting species.

We, human beings, came from primitive primates and so did monkeys, chimps and gorillas.

Only the people who want to mock evolution, lie by claiming that Darwin said we came from monkeys.