NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #27/NN_1992_27.iso/spool/talk/origins/14441

Text File | 1992-11-18 | 1.6 KB | 43 lines

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From: [e-mail] (Robert Derrick)
Subject: Quote, the first
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Date: 18 Nov 92 17:08:47 CST

Chapter 8, "The Doctrine of Evolution", starts out with (on p.183)

"All reputable evolutionary biologists now agree that the evolution of
life is directed by the process of natural selection, and by nothing
else."

  - Julian Huxley, Darwin Centennial Celebration, 1959, quoted
from _Evolution After Darwin_, Tax and Callender, eds, pp.265-266.

Kind of a sweeping statement.  How do folks feel about this?

Of course, he goes on to bring up the "new" debates, the disagreements,
punk eek, etc. as examples of just how wrong Huxley's statement was.


Seems I remember a nineteenth century physicist making the same kind
of sweeping remark about the near state of completation that the field
of physics was then enjoying.  Just before the discovery of X-rays.

He then goes on to what is a fairly typical "Creationist" argument
that the theory of evolution must be in trouble if its foundation
is being so thoroughly shaken.

Using this, he makes the usual claim (why do I think I am going to
be repeating that line, over and over and over...?) that evolution
is a desparate attempt "to enlist natural evidence in support of an
alternative to an unwanted and unsatisfactory spiritual world view." (p.184)

Sound familiar to you, too?
--

rob derrick                [e-mail]