Dear Archie,
I think the thing that got all this started was my comments that other methods of treatment for PD might be helpful like pdrecovery,org.  Why do we think that Western medicine is the only thing when the Asians have had a high civilization a lot longer than we have.  Perhaps they have a clue.

I think the evidence for evolution is very weak.  I feel that if the talking points for evolution are wrong, then the alternative would be Intelligent Design.  Complexity does imply a master creator.  How can chance with all that is going against it build something very complex.  You wouldn't look at a skyscraper and think that it "just happened."  It had designers, and engineers, and carpenters, and on and on.  Society as I see it was started by God when he created man.  He gave instructions to them as to how to have the best life.  Obviously, they decided not to pay attention.

Micro or macro evolution are very important distinctions.  Micro evolution happens all the time.  If as in your example an elephant developed a longer and longer trunk, that is micro evolution because it is still and elephant.  Not a rino or a giraffe.  There are no fossils or  provable examples of intermediates between different species.  Possibly some guesses, but not without good discussion against it. Even mutations don't make macro evolution.  The creature is still the same species as it was before.  There are no intermediates.  Two headed snakes aren't headed to be a new species.  They are just defective snakes that probably won't live too long.  Two headed snakes, six fingers on a human are all examples of poor mutations. I had a friend with six fingers too when I was young.  They are still the same species, and it is probably not a mutation that would be inherited by the next generation.

The scientific community is very cliquish, and very powerful.  If a well qualified, graduate from a noted institution with a PhD, decided that he can see more in Intelligent Design than in evolution, he probably won't let it be known because he might not get a job, lose his job or even his degrees!  It happens.  When they write intelligent papers for the scientific journals, they won't get them published. Then they are told they aren't creditable because they aren't published.  It is very hard to make yourself known under those parameters.  Now I make my self uncredible because I can't remember exactly who, when, or what the problem was, but it was about a well thought of astrophysicist that photographed the stars and planets, and noticed that in one of the stars the red-shift showed it should be moving swiftly away from another star, and it wasn't.  His comments got him fired and he had to go to Europe to get another job because he wasn't backing up the current thoughts on !
 the big
 bang.  A Calif. high school science teacher, very well thought of, was teaching evolution, but also had his students look up the problems with evolution in the science journals.  He got moved from his job to a non teaching position.  He had tenure so they couldn't fire him.  Legally he could teach that, and also Intelligent Design, but the school board was too afraid of being sued by the ACLU.

All the dating methods, except the circular reasoning of the fossils and rocks which are dated by which fossils or rocks they seem to be connected with, are defective due to the fact that they are based on the faulty assumption that everything continues on as it is.  They may try to allow for certain changes, but not for major interruption in the nature like the global flood, a lot of volcanic activity, the separation of the continents.  The fact that the lower rocks show there was more oxygen in the past, and the larger than life fossils in the past shows that things were different.  An interesting option concerning the ice cores, each strata doesn't mark a year, each strata marks a change in the weather resulting in melt and freezes.  There is a strange thing that happened at the end of  WWII.   A series of war planes landed in an area were it snowed a lot.  Fifty years later, they were under 250 feet of ice.  They knew when the planes landed there, but the ice cores showe!
 d a
 thousand stratas,  years? Later they went and dug them out and they are flying now.  I can't remember all the details accurately, but I saw the documentary on it.

Good luck. Paula

archier <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Hi Paula

I'm not certain how this is relevant to Parkinson's, but much of the
evidence for "intelligent design" is very weak. Most of the things you
mention here are criticisms of evolution rather than talking points for ID.
My spin on a tiny bit of it

Complexity does not imply a master creator. Take the complexity of our
society for example. There's no way any of us could understand more than an
infinitesimal portion of it; many of us can't even handle the complexities
of running even our own lives! Yet 6 billion people interact every day and
keep the world fed, clothed, housed, and emailing -- not through one
pre-ordained plan, but through the independent actions of each of us.

The micro-evolution/macro-evolution distinction is a bit of a red herring.
To take a silly philosophical exercise: when does a bald man become bald?
Each additional hair that falls out does not make much difference...but
summed together over years they do. It's the same with micro and macro
evolution. Growing something so distinct that you'd call it macro evolution
-- like the trunk of an elephant -- could take thousands of generations, but
at each generation you'd only see a slight "micro" change -- in the
elephant's trunk case, a slightly longer nose.

In other cases we have seen evolutionary jumps toward macro evolution, but
these giant leaps usually fail miserably. Two-headed snakes appear in nature
occassionally. In some case having an extra head might be an advantage (say,
if an eagle bit one of your heads off) but for the most part two-headed
snakes are at a big disadvantage relative to single headed snakes. They
can't ever decide which way to go, can't fit through thin openings, and
constantly fight over food. They don't often lead long, healthy lives. For a
human example: I have a friend who was born with six fingers. You could call
it "macro" evolution but he really didn't have much need for the sixth
finger, so he had it chopped off.

As far as ID researchers being censored by their peers, science, like any
social organization, can be very cliquish and set in its ways, but one thing
to remember is that there is an army of graduate students and professors out
there trying to make their mark on the world by discovering something new.
If some indisputable evidence of ID shows up, the person who tapes his name
to it will be famous.

Lastly, you are correct that carbon-14 dating is affected by changes in the
environment, but scientists have built calibration models to account for
this. In any case, carbon-14 is not usually used to date fossils, as they
are much older than 60,000 years -- the limit of carbon-14 dating. From the
wikipedia: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiocarbon_dating)

The raw BP date cannot be used directly as a calendar date, because the
assumption that the level of 14C absorption remains constant does not hold
true in practice. The level is maintained by high energy particles
interacting with the earth's upper atmosphere, which may be affected by
changes in the earth's magnetic
fieldor in the
cosmic ray background,
e.g. variations caused by solar
storms.
In addition there are substantial reservoirs of carbon in organic matter,
the ocean , ocean sediments (see methane
hydrate ), and sedimentary
rocks ; and changing
climatecan sometimes disrupt the
carbon flow between these reservoirs and the
atmosphere. The level has also been affected by human activities -- it was
almost doubled for a short period due to atomic
bombtests in the
1950s and
1960sand has been reduced by the
release of large amounts of CO
2 from ancient organic sources where 14C is not present -- the fossil
fuels

used in industry and transportation.

The BP dates are therefore calibrated to give
calendar dates. Standard calibration
curvesare
available, based on comparison of radiocarbon dates with other methods
such as examination of tree growth rings
(dendrochronology),
ice cores , deep ocean
sedimentcores, lake sediment
varves ,
coralsamples, and
speleothems (cave deposits).

Hope this helps.
Archie

On 10/10/05, Paula Nixon
wrote:
>
> Intelligent design scientists use the scientific methods. They went to the
> big important universities. But the evolutionists don't let the intelligent
> design papers be printed in their journals, and encourage the public to
> believe that they just follow myths.
>
> "Facts" have been known to change as more information is learned. The
> earth is not flat, etc. Facts are seen and interpreted by the philosophy's
> of the beholder. Neither intelligent design nor evolution can be tested by
> scientific method. No one has been able to see macro-evolution at work, or
> reproduce it in the laboratories. The missing links are still missing. Lots
> of micro-evolution is seen, like all the varieties of dogs, but they are
> still dogs. The peppered moth is still a moth. Not any slight change to be
> something else. Both evolution and intelligent design see the results of
> what has happened on the earth and we put those results into our theories,
> keeping what fits and trying to figure out what doesn't. Steven Jay Gould,
> one of Harvard's eminent scientists had suggested that evolutionist not
> debate intelligent design scientists because they usually lose.
>
> Intelligent design does use scientific methods. They can't assume anything
> or the label that they believe fables might be true. On the other hand, when
> you read the textbooks, they are peppered with "probably", "could be",
> "might have" when they are talking about evolution. All the dating methods
> start with the assumption that everything has continued on as it was in the
> beginning, however there are signs of too much oxygen, etc. in the past,
> hence the 3 ft. dragonflies, and other huge plants and animals found in the
> fossil beds. Obviously the environment has changed.
>
> The geologic column isn't found anywhere on earth except in the textbooks.
> It was thought up with evolution in mind. The fossils are dated by the rocks
> they are found in, and the rocks are dated by which fossils are in them,
> circular reasoning. (Some of those "fossils" have been found alive today
> like the coelacanth fish, somewhat ruining the idea that the rocks they are
> found in may not be that old.) Carbon 14 has dated living mollusks as being
> dead for 2300 years. Fresh seal skins dated at 1,300. And even in the
> textbooks, the geologic column has very little life in the Precambrian
> level, and suddenly there are all sorts of complex creatures in the Cambrian
> level. Where did they come from?
>
> The evolutionists aren't that magnanimous a bunch. They have their ideas
> and they are sticking to them. There are some good evolutionary scientists,
> that see logical problems with the Big Bang. They aren't working on the
> right track so they get very little press from the big boys".
>
> What has this to do with PD? Just you have to think for yourself. Science
> is very political.
>
> While we are at trying to find money for PD research, why don't we get
> some of the AIDS money? I guess it's to political.
>
> Paula
>
> rayilynlee wrote:
> KF has taken the time and trouble to explain the scientific method and how
> science works. It would be so helpful if others took the time and trouble
> to READ what he has said.
>
> It seems to me science is the "business" of obtaining better and better
> understanding of what is I get that it explains how things work, is
> descriptive, predictive and self-correcting. Religion and faith are
> limiting and dogmatic - you have to believe a certain way and go through
> amazing mental gymnastics to make the facts fit what you already believe
> is
> true..Science could cause you to change your mind, but not religion. The
> existence or non-existence of God is not a question for science, but for a
> comparative religion or philosophy class like Metaphysics where I wrote a
> paper on Kant's arguments for the existence of God. However, even in
> Metaphysics you ended up with math....ideas had letters like a, b, c, and
> you had formulas because the ideas were complicated..
>
> When I taught Advanced Placement History I peppered my very smart students
> with questions about the 'why' of science and math because my science
> background was so skimpy. They always said, "It just is, Miss Brown."
>
> We will never be able to discuss or debate these issues unless you
> understand the kind of truth science deals with.
> Ray
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "K. F. Etzold"
> To:
>
> Sent: Saturday, October 08, 2005 9:29 PM
> Subject: Re: The Scientific Method and intelligent design
>
>
> > Paula Nixon wrote:
> >
> >>Dear Ray
> >>When Darwin first started talking about Evolution, it sounded very
> >>rational that life evolved from the simple cell which was thought to be
> a
> >>jelly like mass of protoplasm with a nucleus. I remember drawing those
> in
> >>school. Now we know there is no such thing as a simple cell, it is a
> >>single cell. In 1963 Dr. George Palade of the Rockerfeller Institute in
> >>NY, discovered it was an amazingly intricate system of incredibly fine
> >>tubes and chain of minute bags that totally permeate the entire cell. To
> >>summary your 10 pages of the "simple cell" It has structural design,
> >>energy generators, invasion guards , transport systems, food factories,
> >>waste disposal systems, protective barriers, communication links within
> >>and without the cell city that it is. Just the "skin" of the cell is
> >>amazing. It controls the entry and exit of everything for the cell,
> >>almost as if it had a chemical sense of taste as it grabs or rejects the
> >>needed nutrients into the cell by forming a little "finger"!
> > !
> >> that
> >> reaches out and pulls the needed nutrient inside. Then there is the DNA
> >> and RNA! Science hasn't a clue how this could have just happened, but
> >> they don't say that in the schools or in science books, or if they do
> it
> >> is very low keyed. It couldn't have just happened.
> >>
> >>There was a quote I read once, that I can't find when I need it, that
> >>said, "Evolution expects us to believe the unbelievable, but to do
> >>otherwise is to believe in a Creator and that is unacceptable."
> >>Paula
> >>
> > Paula:
> >
> > Just because the scientific community does not know everything does not
> > imply or force us to speculate on intelligent design. Any scientist
> > worth his salt will readily "admit" that his/her knowledge is limited.
> > The leap from this is unjustified and illogic. Had scientists made that
> > leap all scientific progress would have stopped, because there is no
> > more knowledge to obtain.
> > A basic tenet is that our understanding of nature is always incomplete
> > and that we must strive for further knowledge. If we had accepted the
> > scientific knowledge of say 200 years ago
> > there would be a faith based understanding of, for instance, the cell
> > but no modern medicine no modern biology. Indeed our present society is
> > inconceivable had we accepted the '"final" knowledge of 200 years ago.
> >
> > The details of the construction of the cell is just what I described in
> > my article on science: The knowledge was refined but that does not
> > change our basic understanding. Just because something is complicated
> > does not imply intelligent design. The little finger you describe has
> > some man made analogs. Chemistry can now construct molecules at will
> > with specific properties (such as a little finger). But I would argue
> > that these molecules were not created by God. Most pharmacological
> > products were designed that way and in fact the latest Nobel prize nin
> > Chemistry rewards such a new process. If one did not know how this was
> > arrived at one could readily argue it was intelligent design.
> >
> > K. F.
> >
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