An Evaluation of the Myth That “Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution”

Darwinian assumptions are not needed for the day-to-day work of science.

http://www.answersingenesis.org/article ... th-biology

More than 40,000 scientific articles used the keyword evolution last year:
http://lclane2.net/evolcitation.html

Those of us who are professional scientists as well as those with good high school science backgrounds and even most of those who barely stayed awake in high school science recognize Answers in Genesis as a source of fundamentalist Christian apologetics rather than science. As such it promotes the lowest level of science competence (nearby thread) and is a source of science humor, not science expertise.

I disagree with Dembski. As long as there are religious humanist and atheist the need for something to believe in regardless how foolish or how irrelevant it is will continue. I expect the number of converts to the faith to grow as the selected selective methods of indoctrination run ramped through socity.

Attacking the messenger and ignoring the message is common response for most evolutionist, but we won't hold that against you. Sighting the word count of 'evolution' in articles online is pretty sad. The word evolution could be incorporated into the life of a roll of toilet paper. How do you respond to the lack of Darwinian evolution's necessity in practical application?

The only real utility I find for Darwainen evolution is to preach it, teach it, sell it and go after government funds. There is nothing else.

This is a science discussion board, not a fundamentalist Christian apologetics discussion board.

Science discussions? It that why there have been so many anti religion posts?

You don't need to know or understand the underlying theory in most subjects to be able to perform basic tasks in that subject. I could probably do arithmetic just fine without learning number theory. I can have a conversation in English without knowing exactly which words are appositives and which are participles. I can operate a radar or gps without knowing electromagnetic theory. I can work on my car's engine without learning thermodynamics or kinetic theory. I could probably observe and measure chemical reactions without learning any theoretical chemistry. I can certainly prepare a wet mount and count skin cells under a microscope without knowing evolutionary theory. So yeah, I would guess that while all of biology is based on evolutionary theory, a lot of the basic tasks in biology do not require direct knowledge of it.

Fortunately, we don't just teach students rote memorization and formulaic problem solving skills. We teach them the underlying theories so that they can apply those theories to new problems, so that they can check their solutions against a set of basic principles, and so they can innovate. Those on the cutting edge of science apply theory all the time.

Your post also infers that there are no practical applications to evolutionary theory (so why learn it). You only have to think as far as agriculture and pharmaceuticals to understand how preposterous that inference is. But there is much more, http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CA/CA215.html.

Mike, You interject religion into this forum to sour conversation as much as (probably more than) anybody. You have persistently argued, in quite negative terms, that science equals atheism, and you have never been shy about using strawmen, quote mining, ad homs, and guilt-by-association tactics to take some quote by some atheist and try to smear Science and anyone defending it.

Your hyperbolic anti-theist paranoia is as defaming to religious sensibilities as anything you can claim about anybody else. And ABO's anti-muslim rants are certainly more.

Are fundamentalist Christian apologetics important to science? If so how?

To O'Henry: yes, and yes, to what you said in your your last couple of posts.

Most humorous. Will just ignore Dobzhansky's unsubstantiated comment that "Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution" just because the secular material was collected by a Christian organization.

Les, being a professional scientist how do you measure full of crap?

Unclear what you're saying and what the evidence is.