Date sent: Wed, 14 Apr 2004 11:25:41 -0700 (PDT)

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Roger: I did a little more searching for that article. I still can't find the article, but is this the Woese you are talking about? The one that wrote the article you are talking about?

http://www.news.uiuc.edu/news/00/1113woese.html

Quote from the article...

"Woese, who holds the UI Stanley O. Ikenberry Endowed Chair, said: 'This award represents a recognition by peers and public alike that the incredible diversity of life on this planet, most of which is microbial, can only be understood in an evolutionary framework.'"

read on, he says that "The universal ancestor is not an entity, not a thing."

"It is a process" since there is no common anscestor, the periodic elements are as much our anscestor as the primordial soup. he concludes that there is no tree and anscestor has no meaning under this viewpoint.

What he also says is that the incongruities "are sufficiently frequent and statistically solid [enough] that they can neither be overlooked nor dismissed on methodological grounds."

He research was significant because it added convincing evidence to the notion that we have no common ancsestor, and incongruities, there is a process going on, but it isn't necessarily, certainly not classical, evolution. It undid a phylology and found three strands. we have a process -- but origins are not understood and the tree is rotten at the root.

my reference to him was to undo the tree thing, a point you may have conceded already

Date sent: Wed, 14 Apr 2004 19:29:55 -0700 (PDT)

Toby: sorry i will give you more detail. I gave you more than one article, you only found one ?

There was more than one? Your citations were confusing -- too jumbled together. Where did you get them from?

Date sent: Wed, 14 Apr 2004 19:36:10 -0700 (PDT)

> read on, he says that "The universal ancestor is not an entity, not a thing....

He doesn't say that on the web page I pointed you to! Where are you reading that? But... here's what I'm seeing: you've picked up, as part of your conservative Catholic view, the concept that "evolution is the devil's work",

NOOOO the catholic view is that evolution as a concept has much to offer and has opened valuable scientific analysis. there is good stuff, therein, but evolution as a faith or religion is a failure and the absence of the tree is just one example of its failure as a be all end all/

and you'd rather fight the evolution concept than understand it and try to incorporate it into your Catholic view.

Let me suggest this to you:

Try to avoid thinking of evolution as a philosophy, and think of it as a tool -- like Prisoner's Dilemma. Evolution does a wonderful job of predicting. This is its virtue, and this is an important virtue for science progress.

see above, it's conection to functionality is very catholic and very useful, my critique was based upon a thought that you needed to be disabused of its place as a philosophy or as a fact in its all explanatory form.

I would really like to see you come to some sort of peaceful coexistence with evolution because I worry that you will "vote your conscience" and not support the potential for human progress that evolutionary-based thinking offers to mankind. When you take action against evolution, you are making a poorer world for your kids, and mine, and I think that is a shame.

I have, see above. the world is a poorer place when you make it a religion, i make it part of where faith and reason work together.

You can argue vigorously against evolutionary-based philosophies -- of which Communism is one, and one worth arguing against, in my opinion -- but don't throw out the tool. Tools can be used for good and bad, they are simply tools.

I think we agree, but it troubles me that you have no philosophy that you can articulate. you seem totally in process -- pascal's trap of distraction away from ultimate issues.

 

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