Comments:

Eric * - 2005-01-15 00:41:48
This is probably not the point of what you are getting at, but anyone who's paid attention in a high school physics class understands gravity.

Gravitational force = (G * m1 * m2) / (d2)

To be fair, there are two types of evolution -- micro and macro. Micro-evloution is observable while macro-evolution is not. Macro-evolution is the theory that transforms one type of organism into an entirely different type of organism. Because this process takes millions of years to occur, it is not observable. No one has ever observed a fish becoming a bird or a monkey becoming a man. Because micro-evolution exists, we imply that macro-evolution can exist as well.

In essence, we have faith that macro-evolution occurs. It's all quite comical. No matter what side you come down on, you need faith.

As a final note, it's alarming that the Thomas More Center -- a Catholic-based group -- is leading this charge considering the Pope accepts evolution as a scientific fact. The Pope says that only God can create a soul. I don't remember Darwin doing much work in the area of soul research.
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Dan Arbor - 2005-01-15 02:33:39
It's important to remember that there are many different points of view within the Catholic church. On one hand you have Tom Monaghan's Ave Maria College, The Thomas Moore Law Center and Opus Dei. On the other, we see people like Dorothy Day, Revolution Theology and the Catholic Worker Party.

Any one of these phalanges within the church may speak loudly, but that doesn't mean they speak for the entire church, or even the church at all.

Clearly, in the case of that dork from Thomas Moore, he is most definitely not speaking for the Pope, nor the Catholic church.

Not to diminish the potential threat by agitating religious fascists, I would like to point out that science and reason have won out over wacky theories in the past. I mean, no one really believes that the Earth is flat, or that illnesses are caused by bodily humors anymore. Heck, even the Pope believes in science.

I'm reminded of that preacher who used to shout at the passersby on the Diag. Sure, there was always a crowd, but did he ever actually convert anyone?

Eventually, people will stop listening and wander away...
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raymond - 2005-01-15 09:58:26
William Keinzle's mystery novels, from "The Rosary Murders" on, dwell sometimes tediously on differing opinions within the Catholic Church. Despite the tedium, find in the books interesting descriptions of Detroit area landmarks and locations.
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Laura - 2005-01-15 15:27:20
Eric *, I'm impressed that you can just whip out the old gravitational formula like that. I studied high school physics, but such formulae have long since disappeared under time-accumulated brain-silt. Although we have a formula for it, I don't think anyone really *understands* why a massy thing exerts a gravitational force. I sure don't. Yeah, we can measure it, but that's different from really understanding how and why it works.
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Laura - 2005-01-15 15:31:20
Eric * posits some interesting ideas about evolution. But both macro-and micro-evolution are observable. If, indeed, there even exists such a distinction. We observe macro evolution in the (incomplete) fossil record. Things like the whale with vestigial leg bones on display at the Ruthven Nat'l History Museum show us how organisms changed from one to the other.

Darwin may not have researched the soul, but he was a Christian all his life.
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Laura - 2005-01-15 15:35:35
Dan makes some good points about Catholicism, all of which I agree with. In my experience, Catholicism, more than any other Christian denomination, has people with opinions "all around the dial," as a Catholic friend put it, ranging from ultraleftist social-justice workers to the rock-ribbed conservatism of the Thomas More Law Center. As Dan notes, one cannot take this Law Center guy as representative of the oldest and most complex of Christian denominations.
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Laura - 2005-01-15 15:37:39
Raymond, I hadn't heard of that author, but then, I'm not a mystery novel fan, though I do read true crime novels.
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Cracker - 2005-01-15 18:16:42
Ah don't know how thangs work up north, but where ah come frum it's the law.
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Eric * - 2005-01-15 21:00:46
What did this whale change from and change to?
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Anna - 2005-01-15 21:42:50
There's no distinction between macro- and micro-evolution. The creature that Laura described represented a change from a whale-creatures with legs to ones without (of course, no one organism changes; each is what it is). Names are abirtrary. You can say it changed from an Eric to an Anna if you like. Finally, the idea that evolution is 'just' a theory misses what a theory is in real science. Clearly we need to do a better job of educating our citizens if they're going around calling something as powerful as evolutionary theory "just" a theory (end rant).
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Laura - 2005-01-15 22:47:34
Eric: the whale on display downtown changed from some mud-grubbing quadriped to an oceanic creature.

Creationists love to skewer the term "theory," as in "evolutionary theory," to insinuate that a "theory" means that a thought is shaky and unproved. The scientific interpretation of the term "theory," however, is different. "Theory" means "the sum total of evidence to date." This difference between the lay understanding of the term "theory" and the scientific interpretation of the term has left a loophole for the creationists to storm in and try and discredit evolutionary theory.
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raymond - 2005-01-16 08:17:41
A humanities class about creation myths through time and around the world should be part of required curriculum. Christians could have their day (or seven days) just as could the Mayans. Etcetera the myriad others.
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Laura - 2005-01-16 20:43:44
That's a good idea. I've always been partial to the "turtles all the way down" story.
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raymond - 2005-01-17 08:05:50
Evolution Theory, alas, doesn't qualify for the creation myths curriculum. ET'll have to continue to languish in science.
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