Panderichthys -vs- Tiktaalik

Darwinians start out arguing with Creationists and ID believers, but end up contradicting themselves . Actually, I'm being too harsh; they are making scientific progress. They find something like Tiktaalik and put it forward as a missing link. Then, later, they find Panderichthys, and start trumpeting that find, while denegrating the previously touted Tiktaalik.

I am not a biologist, so all I can do is use my reason to evaluate what's out there. All science is not clear cut: Scientists make inferences based upon existing data, much of which is not clear to start with. Educated people make judgments to get from point A to point B. You cannot discount human nature's role in connecting the dots: To a Darwinian, those radial bones look like tetrapod digits. Skeptics like Dr. Roy Spencer do not denigrate Darwinism, but simply want more data.

Meanwhile, politicized cohorts beat their chests and hurl insults at the enemy.

Big Bang/Darwinism/Atheism/Democratic Underground

- vs -
Creationism/ID/Belief in God/Free Republic

Despite all the sturm und drang, the science is not "settled" (apologies to Al Gore). There are smart scientists of goodwill on both sides.

A final question for the belligerent Darwinists: If it's all so clear, why must you strain so hard to prove the obvious? It's still a long way from fish gills to human ears.


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12168265/
http://tiktaalik.uchicago.edu/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panderichthys
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2008/09/the_rise_and_fall_of_tiktaalik.html
http://www.arn.org/blogs/index.php/2/2008/09/23/iconic_status_of_tiktaalik_a_hard_pill_t
http://www.actionbioscience.org/evolution/nhmag.html

Matters of Faith: Intelligent Design & Global Warming

The climate change movement, bereft of convincing scientific proof, has devolved into a religion. It has its own Orthodoxy Which Shall Not Be Questioned, lists of anathematized heretical scientists, and a green morality it uses to admonish the unwashed as it determines sinful and virtuous behavior.

Arguments over global warming, like those over religion, are exhausting and futile due to a lack of verifiable scientific data. What I've found interesting is the apparent (anecdotal) inverse relationship between belief in a creator and belief in climate change: The stronger one's belief in a creator the more skeptical one is of climate change; The stronger one's belief in climate change, the more skeptical one is about a creator.

Dr. Roy Spencer is a climatologist and former NASA scientist, and he has addressed both issues.

Although imminently qualified to refute Al Gore's climate nonsense (and he has in numerous articles and books) Dr. Spencer's recent blog post lists Gore's propaganda devices and gives examples of each one. Philosophers and students of logic will recognize these devices Mr. Gore employs, as they are the rhetorical rocks that a loser throws when he has expended his magazine of logic.

Here is the list. Dr. Spencer provides examples as well in his blog article:

Appeal to Authority
Bandwagon
Flag-waving
Ad Hominem Attacks
Appeal to Prejudice (using loaded words, appeals to a moral code)
Black and White Fallacy (False dilemma)
Euphoria (Movies and live events that make televangelists green with envy)
Falsifying Information
Stereotyping or Labeling

Even more interesting is Dr Spencer's defense of Intelligent Design. Here are some excerpts from his short, interesting defense of Intelligent Design. Note his adherence to scientific methods and lack of Gore-esque hot air rhetoric.

I came to the realization that intelligent design, as a theory of origins, is no more religious, and no less scientific, than evolutionism.

True evolution, in the macro-sense, has never been observed, only inferred. A population of moths that changes from light to dark based upon environmental pressures is not evolution — they are still moths.

In the biological realm, natural selection (which is operating in these examples) is supposedly the mechanism by which evolution advances, and intelligent design theory certainly does not deny its existence. While natural selection can indeed preserve the stronger and more resilient members of a gene pool, intelligent design maintains that it cannot explain entirely new kinds of life — and that is what evolution is.

Common ancestry requires transitional forms of life to have existed through the millions of years of supposed biological evolution. Yet the fossil record, our only source of the history of life on Earth, is almost (if not totally) devoid of transitional forms of life that would connect the supposed evolution of amphibians to reptiles, reptiles to birds, etc.

One finally comes to the conclusion that, despite vigorous protests, belief in evolution and intelligent design are matters of faith. Even some evolutionists have admitted as much in their writings. Modern biology does not “fall apart” without evolution, as some will claim.

Intelligent design can be studied and taught without resorting to human creation traditions and beliefs... Just as someone can recognize and study some machine of unknown purpose built by another company, country (or alien intelligence?), one can also examine the natural world and ask the question: did this machine arise by semi-random natural physical processes, or could it have been designed by a higher power? Indeed, I was convinced of the intelligent design arguments based upon the science alone.

Religion and climate change: Two separate issues, but the arguments sure sound the same. When a climate change proponent finally in desperation employs Pascal's Wager (even though we can't prove we're destroying the planet, we've got to do something just in case!), the skeptic has won the argument.

Of course, the God-denier could say the same of the believer. The difference is this:

My belief in God doesn't require everyone to use only one square of toilet paper, drive expensive battery-powered crap-boxes, and economically castrate themselves upon the altar of Gaia.

http://www.drroyspencer.com/2009/01/al-gores-propaganda/
http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/roy-spencer-on-intelligent-design/