the rocks speak

Hi Fencer,Sorry to butt in between you and John bashing each other, but I'd like to revisit one of your earlier posts (I've been out of town). I don't suppose you'd care to share any one or two bits of evidence that you found compelling enough to cause you to dump the theory of evolution? I'd also be interested in hearing how you went about examining the "totality" of the evidence for evolution - and specifically which parts. This is quite an impressive feat: it's as much as I can do to keep up with one or two journals and the occasional recent book (for instance, I just bought Mayr's "Evolution and the Diversity of Life" - Darwin only knows when I'll actually get around to reading it ). I find this kind of a difficult statement to understand. In the first part, you seem to be discussing matter-energy tranformation or nucleosynthesis - subjects more properly in the realm of physics than biology. In the second half, you seem to be arguing against abiogenesis - a subject more properly in the domain of chemistry. I will agree that abiogenesis doesn't happen "magically", but I'll state that there hasn't been any evidence provided to date showing that there is some barrier precludes it happening naturally. Well, of you're really interested in helping readers see how their conclusions are so wrong, you could start by listing the evidence you're talking about. Saying things like, "You've seen the same evidence, but you've reached the wrong conclusions.", doesn't help all that much when we don't know what evidence we've both supposedly looked at. Help me out here. As I requested above, what is the evidence that you say we both examined that proved to be so compellingly anti-evolution on your part? Maybe we shouldn't play this game. After all, over 300 "well educated doctors, scientists, and Ph.D's hailing from every major accredited university in the world" named Steve fully embrace the theory of evolution. Interestingly, all the Steves have a directly related specialty (geology, paleontology, biology, ecology etc). Most creationist scientist lists can't make this claim. Better that I simply stipulate to the fact that not all creationists are ignorant, in-bred, illiterate rednecks, and we can move on to something more substantive, right?Looking forward to your reply.

Well, by the standard creationist "argument from lists of PhD's" it apparently does. Who are we to argue with a Nobel Prize winner? Heheh. C'mon Schraf, don't tell me you haven't heard about the NCSE's famous Project Steve. It's a deliberate parody of the creationist list mania. Get a bunch of high-power PhD's, MD's and others of that ilk to sign off on a statement of support for the theory of evolution (in this case, they all had to be named Steve, Steven, Stephanie, Esteban, etc). The idea was to show how absurd these lists that the creationists seem to rely on really are. And it worked!

Oooh, ooh. I know this one! Pick me, pick me!3-pyridine carboxylic acidAm I right?

Whee! That may be the only thing I remember from sophmore biochemistry lo' those many years ago - since I had to memorize the chemistry in the NAD, NADP bits. That'll show my wife - I am NOT senile like she claims...

Hi Fencer,Glad you're still here. Your attention invited to post #34. Thanks in advance.