"Fletis Humplebacker" wrote in message
...
John Harshman wrote:
Fletis Humplebacker wrote:
Not in the strict sense of the word species. I agree that a species
diversifies over time due to the environment they are in. Humans

What happens when the environment changes? Some examples:
1. When photosynthetic organisms developed (I am avoiding the word
"evolution"), they started consuming CO2 and releasing O2, which was toxic
to many organisms (still is to some, such as methanophiles). It took a long
time for the atmosphere to change from reducing to oxidizing.
2. Continents move, choking off warm currents and leading to an ice age, in
near-polar areas. This sort of thing has happened repeatedly, Antarctica is
in an ice age now. Sea level changes occur everywhere as large amounts of
water are sequestered as ice. These events cause a lot of stress on
organisms, especially the ones that aren't mobile enough to follow the
environment to which they are adapted. Species become extinct, new ones
arise to fill the ecological niches. When the ice age ends, the process
reverses, but in many cases, the old species do not reappear.

There are many more examples that I know less about. New diseases arise,
as bird flu is doing now. Some are local, like the Grand Canyon eroding a
deep barrier, resulting in different flora on the rims. Others operate on a
larger scale: the strait between the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic has
opened and closed repeatedly. This has resulted in large changes in
salinity in the Med. There is a lot of geological evidence as well as
fossil evidence for these events and their consequences. The Black Sea is
the remnant of a much larger body of water which was released in a great
flood downstream - probably the actual event recorded as Noah's flood.

Some organisms adapted, many others became extinct, creating ecological
niches, which often got filled by new species. Evolution provides a
straightforward explanation for all this. ID can only assert that it is too
complicated to understand, that there is missing fossil evidence and must
have required divine intervention. If it is fourth down, punt.

that are separated change too but that doesn't prove that they came
from apes.
snip

Chemistry? No, I don't see that but philosophy does find it's way
into physics as well when we discuss origins. Many, many theories
abound and are no doubt taught in class. Anything but God.
True, 'god' is vague except within a religion, which is why the
ID supporters use the term Intelligent Designer. That does not
imply any particular religious connotation.

snip
Probably most do by implication, maybe some outright. Believe it
or not I went to school. When one is taught that life formed by
chemical reactions, maybe triggered by lightening and crawled out
of the mud, all on it's own somehow, what do you suppose the message
is? Science can't say for certain that it's all natural (or supernatural)
but look at how hard people fight at the slightest hint of the G word.
Tell me people aren't conditioned.

Science is the study of things that exist in nature, and leave interrelated
observations, and the effort to create a widely applicable intellectual
framework to explain how these things happen. You keep trying to expand it
to include a designer, even though nature does not have examples that do not
fit into the scientific framework (whether you believe it or not).

snip

What you said. A few thousand generations won't show up in the
fossil record at all?

I already illustrated how sparse the fossil record is, maybe 1 fossil per
10^17 organisms. (Suppose I am off by a factor of a million. Then it is 1
fossil per 10^11 organisms.)

Steve