Russell
Posts: 1082
Joined: April 2005
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Geez, Avo. You're like a cartoon of quote-miner. Check out all your favorite quotes, in context, here.
As for this motley crew:
W. R. Bird, Jonathan Wells, Richard Milton, ... Lee Spetner, Philip Johnson.
They have about as much credibility with people who actually know what they're talking about as do Ken Ham and Pat Robertson. Personally, I have zero respect for any of them. I can only guess that they've earned yours by the usual route: supporting a conclusion that you're already committed to, even if the arguments they use to support it are illogical and mutually contradictory. I know. You say potayto, I say potahto. But there's a reason these guys are not part of the ongoing dialog known as science. Can you guess what that might be?
As for Behe and Denton, I thought we decided that they were OK with the standard evolutionists' interpretation of the paleontological record. Have we changed our minds again?
Now, let's get one thing out of the way, once and for all. Your issue is the inadequacy of "random mutation/natural selection" to account for the unity and diversity of life, right? Not the kinetics by which those things occur in biological populations. Right? Go through those mined quotes - in context - and tell me how many of them have anything do do with your issues.
If your problem is "gradualism" vs. "punctuated equilibrium" that's a whole different thing. Darwin's rough approximation to the history of life was a lot closer than his creationist predecessors'. But we've learned quite a bit since then, haven't we? And we've refined our understanding. In light of what we know now about DNA, population genetics, environmental metastability, etc. etc. why would you think that a punctuated equilibrium pattern is at all inconsistent with good ol' RM/NS? Gould certainly didn't.
As for "sudden appearance" of species - remember, we're talking "sudden" on a geological time scale. Read Gould on this. (Not just the mined quotes.)
So at this point, I regard your "list" as the null set - until such time as you show your skeptics have anything to say about the inadequacy of RM/NS or the need to invoke intelligent design.
As for Behe's Irreducible Complexity scam, read the current post on Panda's Thumb about evolution of hormone-receptor complexity. If that doesn't explain what I mean by the difference between "really really complex" and "irreducibly complex", I can't help you.
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Must... not... scratch... mosquito bite.
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