[net.origins] Guess ew said that?

hopeful@fluke.UUCP (Rod Blaine Foist) (08/09/85)

'ello to me friends of net.oorigins!  Jake O'sHonesty 'ere.  Oy've bean loik a
mouse the last few months -- quiet, but always 'ere lis'nin.  Just thawt Oy'd
speak up fer a moment to odd a litt'l spice to this untirin' discussion.

'ere's a quote:

	To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances
	for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting
	different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical
	and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural
	selection, seems, I confess, absurd in the highest degree.

Guess ew said that?  Was he/she an Evolutionknight or a Creationknight?


Sincerely yer fellow 'knight,

Jake O'sHonesty (care of Rod Foist)

bill@utastro.UUCP (William H. Jefferys) (08/11/85)

> 'ello to me friends of net.oorigins!  Jake O'sHonesty 'ere.  Oy've bean loik a
> mouse the last few months -- quiet, but always 'ere lis'nin.  Just thawt Oy'd
> speak up fer a moment to odd a litt'l spice to this untirin' discussion.
> 
> 'ere's a quote:
> 
> 	To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances
> 	for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting
> 	different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical
> 	and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural
> 	selection, seems, I confess, absurd in the highest degree.
> 
> Guess ew said that?  Was he/she an Evolutionknight or a Creationknight?
> 
> 
> Sincerely yer fellow 'knight,
> 
> Jake O'sHonesty (care of Rod Foist)

It's probably by an evolutionist.
It's probably quoted out of context.
The poster probably won't have the guts to post the reference so
we can confirm these conjectures.

-- 
"Men never do evil so cheerfully and so completely as when they do so from
	religious conviction."  -- Blaise Pascal

	Bill Jefferys  8-%
	Astronomy Dept, University of Texas, Austin TX 78712   (USnail)
	{allegra,ihnp4}!{ut-sally,noao}!utastro!bill	(uucp)
	bill%utastro.UTEXAS@ut-sally.ARPA		(ARPANET)

bill@utastro.UUCP (William H. Jefferys) (08/12/85)

By the way, the quote at the end of this article is from 
Darwin.

Lest anyone feel that Darwin felt that the Eye was designed,
Darwin also wrote (in a letter to Asa Grey, May 22, 1860):

"With respect to the theological view of the question...This is
always painful to me.  I am bewildered.  I had no intention to
write atheistically, but I own that I cannot see as plainly
as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design and
beneficence on all sides of us.  There seems to me too much
misery in the world.  I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent
and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae
with the express intention of their feeding within the living 
bodies of caterpillars, or that a cat would play with mice.  Not
believing this, I see no necessity in the belief that the eye
was exressly designed."

So, shall we cut out this crap?

Quote follows:

> 'ello to me friends of net.oorigins!  Jake O'sHonesty 'ere.  Oy've bean loik a
> mouse the last few months -- quiet, but always 'ere lis'nin.  Just thawt Oy'd
> speak up fer a moment to odd a litt'l spice to this untirin' discussion.
> 
> 'ere's a quote:
> 
> 	To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances
> 	for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting
> 	different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical
> 	and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural
> 	selection, seems, I confess, absurd in the highest degree.
> 
> Guess ew said that?  Was he/she an Evolutionknight or a Creationknight?
> 
> 
> Sincerely yer fellow 'knight,
> 
> Jake O'sHonesty (care of Rod Foist)

-- 
"Men never do evil so cheerfully and so completely as when they do so from
	religious conviction."  -- Blaise Pascal

	Bill Jefferys  8-%
	Astronomy Dept, University of Texas, Austin TX 78712   (USnail)
	{allegra,ihnp4}!{ut-sally,noao}!utastro!bill	(uucp)
	bill%utastro.UTEXAS@ut-sally.ARPA		(ARPANET)

beth@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP (Beth Christy) (08/13/85)

From: bill@utastro.UUCP (William H. Jefferys), Message-ID:<530@utastro.UUCP>:
>> 'ere's a quote:
>> 
>> 	To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances
>> 	for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting
>> 	different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical
>> 	and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural
>> 	selection, seems, I confess, absurd in the highest degree.
>> 
>> Guess ew said that?  Was he/she an Evolutionknight or a Creationknight?
>> 
>> Sincerely yer fellow 'knight,
>> 
>> Jake O'sHonesty (care of Rod Foist)
>
>It's probably by an evolutionist.
>It's probably quoted out of context.
>The poster probably won't have the guts to post the reference so
>we can confirm these conjectures.
>-- 
>	Bill Jefferys  8-%

Getting a bit testy here, aren't we?  I do believe Sir O'sHonesty *got*
it from a posting to this newsgroup.  I distinctly recall reading this
quote here - and it was attributed to Darwin.  I don't recall the exact
refernence, however.

Jeez, you people are so *serious*.

-- 

--JB       (Beth Christy, U. of Chicago, ..!ihnp4!gargoyle!sphinx!beth)

		"Oh yeah, P.S.,
		 I, I feel, feel like, I am
		 in a burning building
		 And I gotta go."            (Laurie Anderson)

carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes) (08/13/85)

[Funding for this article was provided by the Corporation for Public
Broadcasting and the Chubb Group of insurance companies.]

>> 'ere's a quote:
>> 
>> 	To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances
>> 	for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting
>> 	different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical
>> 	and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural
>> 	selection, seems, I confess, absurd in the highest degree.
>> 
>> Guess ew said that?  Was he/she an Evolutionknight or a Creationknight?

I found it!  It's in a little-known work by a 19th-century English
biologist, Charles Darwin, called *On the Origin of Species*.
Although from the quotation above he was obviously not an
evolutionist, a lot of what Darwin says (to judge from skimming
through the book) is strikingly similar to some of what the
evolutionists in net.origins have been saying.  Quite remarkable,
given the early date of publication (1859).  Does anyone have any
more info about this guy?  

Jake me boy, be a fine lad and send me my prize if I was the first to
submit a correct answer.

Richard Carnes, ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes

bill@utastro.UUCP (William H. Jefferys) (08/14/85)

> >The poster probably won't have the guts to post the reference so
> >we can confirm these conjectures.
> >-- 
> >	Bill Jefferys  8-%
> 
> Getting a bit testy here, aren't we?  
> 
> Jeez, you people are so *serious*.

Guilty as charged.  This article just put me in a bad mood.  I
apologize to one and all.

-- 
"Men never do evil so cheerfully and so completely as when they do so from
	religious conviction."  -- Blaise Pascal

	Bill Jefferys  8-%
	Astronomy Dept, University of Texas, Austin TX 78712   (USnail)
	{allegra,ihnp4}!{ut-sally,noao}!utastro!bill	(uucp)
	bill%utastro.UTEXAS@ut-sally.ARPA		(ARPANET)

hopeful@fluke.UUCP (Jake O'sHonesty) (08/16/85)

> 'ere's a quote:
> 
> 	To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances
> 	for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting
> 	different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical
> 	and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural
> 	selection, seems, I confess, absurd in the highest degree.
> 

Ew said that?  It was Charles Darwin, as quoted in _What Darwin Really Said_,
pp. 48,49 (by Benjamin Farrington, New York: Schocken Books, 1982).


Jake O'sHonesty

bill@utastro.UUCP (William H. Jefferys) (08/20/85)

> 
> 
> > 'ere's a quote:
> > 
> > 	To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances
> > 	for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting
> > 	different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical
> > 	and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural
> > 	selection, seems, I confess, absurd in the highest degree.
> > 
> 
> Ew said that?  It was Charles Darwin, as quoted in _What Darwin Really Said_,
> pp. 48,49 (by Benjamin Farrington, New York: Schocken Books, 1982).
> 
> 
> Jake O'sHonesty

If that's the complete quote as given in *What Darwin Really Said*, then
I would consider it a pretty unreliable source of what Darwin really 
thought.

-- 
"Men never do evil so cheerfully and so completely as when they do so from
	religious conviction."  -- Blaise Pascal

	Bill Jefferys  8-%
	Astronomy Dept, University of Texas, Austin TX 78712   (USnail)
	{allegra,ihnp4}!{ut-sally,noao}!utastro!bill	(uucp)
	bill%utastro.UTEXAS@ut-sally.ARPA		(ARPANET)