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.
In practically every field, we are coming to understand that evolution is not supportable.
You can't see the DNA for the spider web.
If my statement can be shown to be inaccurate, I'll retract it. But it's based on years of experience.
Not really. sure there are some things that become mundane, but whenever I learn something new here I check it out and apply it.
My views may be simplistic, but I try to make every effort to be intellectually honest so I may learn new science.
There are some VERY smart people on these threads.
And here are some of The Laws of Itelligent Design:
The universe is made for life, therefore ID.
Life can't arise naturally, therefore ID.
Anything produced in the lab is proof of Intelligent Design.
Anything not produced in the lab is proof of Intelligent Design.
Verrry interesting. What are your references for that statement?
I don`t think there is anything that you can do or believe will change that.They are going to hate us no matter what.
"Who cares what you "think?" Intelligent design is evidence whether or not you want to accept it."
And here are some of The Laws of Itelligent Design:
The universe is made for life, therefore ID.
Life can't arise naturally, therefore ID.
Anything produced in the lab is proof of Intelligent Design.
Anything not produced in the lab is proof of Intelligent Design.
...odd that only the *creationists* say this -- I don't find any such conclusions in the science journals. In fact, quite the opposite. Every week there are more and more research articles confirming evolution. How many would you like me to post here?
In practically every field, we are coming to understand that evolution is not supportable.
...and yet, every time you post an actual "example" of this claim, we show you how it's fatally flawed and based on creationist misunderstandings of the topic.
Haven't you begun to see a pattern yet?
Feel free to try another one, though. Give a *specific* item you feel supports your claim. Maybe you'll get lucky one of these days and post something that's actually valid and actually means what you think it does.
Which are amazingly similar to Evolution's, "we can't consider God or a designer, so even if we don't understand it, there must be a natural cause".
Ironically, God is natural, everything else is a creation.
Yeah, I'm a flat earther. haha
Believe me, that ain't the case. I'm a Christian, but the natural world, however it happens to exist, doesn't threaten my faith. I'm also an amateur astronomer, a science fiction junkie (which requires some knowledge of real science to make it fun), and I almost went into the Navy's nuke power program after high school, so I know a little about atomic physics. I just didn't want to sit underneath the polar ice cap for six months at a time.
It's not my profession, but I do find science interesting. I just question the practical value of this incessant debate. We are over here in a corner arguing over minutiae, meanwhile we haven't built a nuclear power plant in what- 30 years? All because the junk science leftist kooks have scared everybody.
Who cares what you "think?" Intelligent design is evidence whether or not you want to accept it. If only the fantasy referred to as "evolution" had as much evidence. Meanwhile, enjoy your sterile worms.
And there's empirical proof that conscious beings increasingly understand nature to increasingly control nature, as seen in a multitude of man's creations.. Conscious beings are the panicle of intelligent design. At least that is what empirical proof shows. The obvious -- most probable -- conclusion is that if the universe and or life on Earth is in part caused by intelligent design it is conscious beings doing the design and creation work.
Conscious beings are a fact. Conscious beings increasingly understand and control nature is fact. Omnipotent God is belief. Omnipotent God that designs and creates is belief.
There is a multitude of evidence that conscious beings design and create. No need to conjure a mystical omnipotent God.
There was a poll about it posted on FR as a thread back in December, but I don't have the link handy. I could go track it down for you if you'd like.
As I recall, I think the numbers were about like this:
49% evolution (39% guided by god/s - 10% unguided)
45% young-earth creationism
6% undecided
I might be off by a percent or two in the guided/unguided evolution breakdown, but the 49% part I'm sure I remember correctly. There were also some older polls listed, and I think there's also some polling archived at religioustolerance.org that I seem to remember someone posting.
Nice ad hominem attack. Just as predicted.
To be honest, I know a lot of folks on the fence whose *main* reason for rejecting conservatism is the sort of anti-science belligerence that comes from the creationists.
There are millions of science-literate people in this country, and when they see creationists spew what is very obviously nonsense with regards to science, it does *not* reflect well on conservatism -- in exactly the same way that the whacky environmentalists, whacky "capitalism is slavery" nuts, and other assorted fruitcakes reflect badly on liberalism, and turn off folks who might otherwise have been persuaded to vote Democratic.
Actually I agree with you this one time. :-)
Since evolution starts with life after it was already formed, the science does not have to consider God or whatever "designed" life. This is simply because the mechanisms found by science and other mechanisms yet to be found sufficiently explain how live changes over time.
It is solely the attempt by creationists to insert origin of life in the theory of evolution that causes what really is a non-debate.
The two sides are talking past each other. One side quotes misunderstandings of the science and the other side states what the science really says, but the first side won't listen because they think they will be damned.
The literalist view of the Bible is worse than their absence of science.
As a Christian, I argue both the science and against the apostasy of creationism, because creationism is anti-evangelical as well as being ignorant. It turns off seekers looking for God and scientists looking for conservatism.
You are grossly misrepresenting that, but I've come to expect that from you.
This is a very good fact filled piece that puts together the many pieces of evolution in a way that is very easy to understand. Yet, I'm amazed that some here call it "an opinion piece". Reading this article requires one to accept that, for example, mtDNA of today's dogs traces back to one gene pool of East Asian wolves. If one has a distrust of the mtDNA information and thus feel this is another attempt to prop up the "failed theory of evolution", the options here are to 1) fact check the mtDNA data through scientific inspection, if one has the expertise to do that and present the reasons why this is false. Lacking the expertise, it would seem wise to accept the interpretations of those that have the knowledge or expertise. The other option is to 2) use a lack of expertise and the highly technical nature of the mtDNA information to create the notion that this is only opinion.
It boggles my mind how people can flat out deny this evidence. Faith must never conflict with reason, but some just don't want to see that.
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