Posted on 02/21/2005 4:03:29 AM PST by PatrickHenry
Nineteenth-century English social scientist Herbert Spencer made this prescient observation: "Those who cavalierly reject the Theory of Evolution, as not adequately supported by facts, seem quite to forget that their own theory is supported by no facts at all." Well over a century later nothing has changed. When I debate creationists, they present not one fact in favor of creation and instead demand "just one transitional fossil" that proves evolution. When I do offer evidence (for example, Ambulocetus natans, a transitional fossil between ancient land mammals and modern whales), they respond that there are now two gaps in the fossil record.
This is a clever debate retort, but it reveals a profound error that I call the Fossil Fallacy: the belief that a "single fossil"--one bit of data--constitutes proof of a multifarious process or historical sequence. In fact, proof is derived through a convergence of evidence from numerous lines of inquiry--multiple, independent inductions, all of which point to an unmistakable conclusion.
We know evolution happened not because of transitional fossils such as A. natans but because of the convergence of evidence from such diverse fields as geology, paleontology, biogeography, comparative anatomy and physiology, molecular biology, genetics, and many more. No single discovery from any of these fields denotes proof of evolution, but together they reveal that life evolved in a certain sequence by a particular process.
One of the finest compilations of evolutionary data and theory since Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species is Richard Dawkins's magnum opus, The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution (Houghton Mifflin, 2004)--688 pages of convergent science recounted with literary elegance. Dawkins traces numerous transitional fossils (what he calls "concestors," the last common ancestor shared by a set of species) from Homo sapiens back four billion years to the origin of heredity and the emergence of evolution. No single concestor proves that evolution happened, but together they reveal a majestic story of process over time.
Consider the tale of the dog. With so many breeds of dogs popular for so many thousands of years, one would think there would be an abundance of transitional fossils providing paleontologists with copious data from which to reconstruct their evolutionary ancestry. In fact, according to Jennifer A. Leonard, an evolutionary biologist then at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History, "the fossil record from wolves to dogs is pretty sparse." Then how do we know whence dogs evolved? In the November 22, 2002, Science, Leonard and her colleagues report that mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) data from early dog remains "strongly support the hypothesis that ancient American and Eurasian domestic dogs share a common origin from Old World gray wolves."
In the same issue, molecular biologist Peter Savolainen of the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm and his colleagues note that even though the fossil record is problematic, their study of mtDNA sequence variation among 654 domestic dogs from around the world "points to an origin of the domestic dog in East Asia" about 15,000 years before the present from a single gene pool of wolves.
Finally, anthropologist Brian Hare of Harvard University and his colleagues describe in this same issue the results of a study showing that domestic dogs are more skillful than wolves at using human signals to indicate the location of hidden food. Yet "dogs and wolves do not perform differently in a nonsocial memory task, ruling out the possibility that dogs outperform wolves in all human-guided tasks," they write. Therefore, "dogs' social-communicative skills with humans were acquired during the process of domestication."
No single fossil proves that dogs came from wolves, but archaeological, morphological, genetic and behavioral "fossils" converge to reveal the concestor of all dogs to be the East Asian wolf. The tale of human evolution is divulged in a similar manner (although here we do have an abundance of fossils), as it is for all concestors in the history of life. We know evolution happened because innumerable bits of data from myriad fields of science conjoin to paint a rich portrait of life's pilgrimage.
AntiGuv stated to sirchtruth:
A theory by definition is a model or framework for organizing the factual evidence. A hypothesis is a provisional idea that remains unverified. You seem to have the two confused.
Evolution is a theory (i.e., a set of axioms, principles, models, and definitions extrapolated from the evidence).
Creation is a hypothesis (i.e., wild-ass guess).
You are correct antiguv. As a geoscientist I think following quotations sum it up nicely:
"Evolution (descent of life with modification) is a fact of life! That is to say, it may be deduced from the facts with near certainty. The fact of evolution is debated in the scientific community about as often as the roundness of the Earth! Both issues have been settled scientifically long ago. If you don't believe me, scan the world's leading scientific journals, such as Nature or Science, and tell me how many articles in the last 24 issues challenge the fact of evolution. After you have answered that question, then note how many articles are based on the fact of evolution. Thus, you will get some feeling as to what's going on in the real world of science. Legitimate scientific disagreement is not over descent with modification, but rather over how best to explain descent with modification. The better explanations constitute the theories of evolution. It is there we find the legitimate scientific debate which creationists are so fond of quoting, often out of context."
"In the scientific world theory does not mean guesswork or speculation but rather a well tested concept which gives order and scientific meaning to a great many facts. ... Saying that evolution is only a theory is like saying that a car is only a Cadillac! It is a scientific compliment.[emphasis added]
For further reading go here
A: Proof once and for all that God does not exist, everything is a moral free-for-all and religious people are stupid. or,
B: God created the universe 6,000 years ago, the true believers have God's timetable correctly calculated down to the last millisecond, and by the way this somehow means that Henry Kissinger is the Antichrist and women should not wear pants or vote.
Well put! I recognize reality in this post, and it made me chuckle. The best jokes have a lot of truth in them!!
In practically every field, we are coming to understand that evolution is not supportable.
Proof that at least one of two (evolution, ice age) key theories is false , May 2004
cheap trick behind the most devasting lie in the history of mankind - how fools were mislead to believe in human evolution, October 15, 2003
"If sound science appears to contradict the Bible, we may be sure that it is our interpretation of the Bible that is at fault." Christian Observer, 1832, pg. 437
"Christians should look on evolution simply as the method by which God works." Rev. James McCosh, theologian and President of Princeton, 1890
If you were in charge we would still probably be living in caves and grunting.
You are right. The lack of atomic energy has restricted our economic growth and made us more dependent on OPEC.
This would have been in the plan for sabotage of USSR operatives. Similarly, Al Qaeda is trying to destroy us economically, too. It has already wrecked our airline industry and is costing us billions to defend from plots they are probably not planning. The are all laughing in their caves.
Only in your very little tiny world.
"Christians should look on evolution simply as the method by which God works." Rev. James McCosh, theologian and President of Princeton, 1890
I've enjoyed your posts on this thread.
For several years I regularly attended a fundamentalist bible study as their "token scientist/nonbeliever". I thought one of the highest complements that I received was that I acted more "Christian" than most Christians.
Often, creationist video tapes would be shown, which I would either refute or do research on and then refute, but it just became tiresome after a time.
I thought my best argument was: If you insist that God created the world 6,000 years ago, why not just recognize that he created it with all the fossil evidence, carbon dating, radioactivity, speed of light, etc, when he created it. Then both you and I are happy, and everything is copasetic. I can't argue against a creation such as that, it is beyond science.
The answer was: But that would support a God that planted evidence to fool people, and we can't believe in that!
Eventually I gave up. Good people, still good friends, but their very personalities are so bound up in their version of literal interpretation that they refuse to let reason get in their way.
I would not doubt that I have some blind spots as well.
I am writing an article with another scientist, who is a Christian, translating Genesis 1 from the Hebrew.
It will demonstrate the science God revealed in Genesis 1 that comports quite well with what we observe.
I have a lot of experience with fundamentalists, too. I am beginning to think they are not really part of the Body of Christ. Christ does not like double minded liars.
Er, you err, sir.
As one whose ideas on evolution have been published in one scientific journal and cited in others, I am not an IDiot.
My point is by constantly calling it a "record" evolutionists imply that it is, like real records, complete and thus open themselves to attack by the IDiots as well as by those somewhat lesser fools, Gouldian "punks."
Strange. No definitive fossil proof of a theory, yet it is regarded as gospel amongst so many. And if the theory is questioned or challenged, vitriol is often invoked.
Please see post #6. It's for you.
Heh. I don't need a lecture, thanks.
Probably February 30. And your nick serves you well.
Gen 3:6 And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.
At what point do you declare that the science is sound? When it sounds good? When it looks pleasant to the eyes? When enough people accept it? When you will be considered wise by others? When it no longer relies on anything "supernatural"?
"Creation is a hypothesis (i.e., wild-ass guess)."
You do the word hypothesis a disservice, sir :^).
"Any idea on what day the big bang occurred?"
"Probably February 30. And your nick serves you well."
You seemed to be up on the subject/topic of creation and evolution so I thought I'd ask. :-)
Actually, there ARE teams working on artificially created life-forms. Read about it on Wired or Slashdot sometime in the last few weeks.
Mind you, if successful, it merely proves that we understand the process that is called "life" to the point where we can replicate the process ourselves.
As I said earlier, you want Truth, head for the Religion or Philosophy departments. You want empirical models suitable for reliable engineering, hit the Science Department. . .
Festival of slow learners
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