MacroMicro

Here’s a nice bait-and-switch, courtesy of Frank Sherwin via Your Origins Matter:

Let’s address this issue by first defining our terms. Although many definitions have appeared, science can be described as what we really know to be true mainly through observation. The late G. G. Simpson of Harvard stated in Science magazine that “it is inherent in any definition of science that statements that cannot be checked by observation are not really about anything . . . or at the very least, they are not science.”

But the origins debate centers around macroevolution, and macroevolution has never been observed. One of the architects of neo-Darwinism agrees: “It is manifestly impossible to reproduce in the laboratory the evolution of man from the australopithecine, or of the modern horse from an Eohippus, or of a land vertebrate from a fishlike ancestor. These evolutionary happenings are unique, unrepeatable, and irreversible” (Theodosius Dobzhansky, American Scientist, December 1957).

Lumping at Dmanisi

Palaeontologists at Dmanisi, an increasingly famous village in Georgia, have made some quite interesting discoveries: a small collection of early Homo skeletons from people living in the same place at the same time that are nevertheless fairly variable in appearance, as exemplified by the recently-described “skull 5.” The usual rules of population dynamics say that you can’t have different species that have the same niche (i.e. they have same shtick – they live in the same way, eat the same food etc) living in the same place – one of them will quickly win out and exclude the others. If this hasn’t happened – and it doesn’t seem to have at Dmanisi – we must conclude that the organisms are or were of the same species.

Duane Gish has Died

That should really be old news to you by this point, but I thought I’d better mention it here. The ICR has posted an article on their website called Remembering Dr. Duane T. Gish, Creation’s ‘Bulldog’, which has also appeared at YOM. Similarly Answers in Genesis have posted their own obituary, while the NCSE and  Sensuous Curmudgeon have their own articles, as does Pigeon Chess (hopefully this signals a return to form) and I’m sure a hundred other blogs around the net. There really isn’t anything to say here that hasn’t already been written a dozen times already.

As for where I’ve been, university started this week and I’m still in the process of entirely reassembling my schedule from scratch. I should be able to produce a few catch-up posts by, say, the end of the weekend. (Maybe.)