[Avodah] evolution [was: Clear Thinking about Male Homosexuals]

[T613K at aol.com]

From: "Jonathan Baker" _jjbaker at panix.com_ (mailto:jjbaker at panix.com) 

> [3]   "Evolutionary advantage"?  Perhaps you should rather have  said,  
> "survival advantage." Evolution is an unproven hypothesis and even if  it 
did 
> occur, it was Divinely guided. [--TK]

Evolution is a fact, no matter how many Christian zealots like to  claim 
otherwise.  The descent of Man is the unproven hypothesis, the  idea that
natural selection is sufficient to explain the diversity of species  and
the development of  mankind.

name: jon  baker              







>>>>>>
 
You are correct, and it is unfortunate that we have only one word --  
"evolution" -- to describe two different processes, which have been loosely and  
somewhat clumsily called "micro-evolution" and "macro-evolution."
Microevolution -- e.g., microbes developing immunity to antibiotics -- is a 
 fact, as you say.  Macroevolution -- the development of one species into  
another completely different one, like dinosaurs to birds -- is an unproven  
hypothesis.  Darwin's "explanation" of the mechanism -- "natural selection, 
 survival of the fittest" -- is a trivial and tautological "explanation" 
that  explains nothing, except that those individuals that survive and 
reproduce,  were capable of surviving and reproducing.  
 
I don't know why you throw in  "Christian zealots."  You seem to  be 
simultaneously insulting both Christians and....me!  You are implying  that what I 
know of science is what I got from reading the books of "Christian  
zealots."    That's rather condescending.  First of all, I  have access to both 
science and Torah quite unrelated to anything Christians  write or believe.  
And second of all, even the people you call  "Christian zealots" are fully 
aware that microevolution is "a fact." Who denies  that bacteria can become 
resistant to antibiotics?!
 
There is a spectrum of beliefs among Christians, all the way from a belief  
in the absolute literal word of the Bible -- seven days exactly, the world 
some  5000 years old -- to various possible scenarios that either read 
Bereishis  non-literally or supply various back-stories.  Some Christians  
believe there may have been multiple creations (as the Talmud says, Hashem  
created and destroyed many worlds) and/or non-literal "days" that were actually  
eras.  Some believe in guided evolution (guided /macro/ evolution), some  
don't believe in evolution at all (macro evolution).  
 
The same spectrum of beliefs can be found among Orthodox Jews.  So I  don't 
know why there is a need to condescend to believing Christians, or to  
assume that Jews who believe in a literal seven-day creation somehow got that  
notion from the Christians.  
 
For the record, I myself tend to think that the seven days were  probably 
either [A] seven eras, OR were [B] literal days in which natural  processes 
were so speeded up that what would have normally taken millions of  years, 
happened in one day.  (Really I think [A] and [B] are probably  equivalent -- 
not two different things, but two different ways of looking  at the same 
thing.  What is time, with no clocks and no calendars, no sun  and no moon, and 
no observer?)  Having read -- with avid interest -- many  books by 
scientists who actually believe that evolution  (macroevolution) explains 
everything, I am more than ever convinced that  most of what they write is ad hoc 
"just so" stories, building castles in the air  out of the most tenuous, 
gossamer threads of actual fact.  
 
I have indeed noticed that the majority of secular science writers, who  
write for popular science magazines or the science section of the NY Times, 
are  entirely unaware that there is any distinction between macro and micro  
evolution.  Because one word is used for both, over and over  the smartest 
people keep making simple category mistakes, conflating  entirely different 
processes.   That's another way of saying that the  smartest people aren't 
nearly as smart as they think they are -- and their  condescension towards 
their betters is entirely unearned. I wish I had a  dollar for every time one of 
these idiots savants said triumphantly, "So if you  believe in Genesis, I 
guess you don't believe in modern medicine!?"
 
 
 
--Toby Katz
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