What are Darwinists so afraid of?

worldnetdaily.com ^ | 07/27/2006 | Jonathan Witt

[BrandtMichaels]

What are Darwinists so afraid of?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: July 27, 2006 1:00 a.m. Eastern

By Jonathan Witt © 2006

As a doctoral student at the University of Kansas in the '90s, I found that my professors came in all stripes, and that lazy ideas didn't get off easy. If some professor wanted to preach the virtues of communism after it had failed miserably in the Soviet Union, he was free to do so, but students were also free to hear from other professors who critically analyzed that position.

Conversely, students who believed capitalism and democracy were the great engines of human progress had to grapple with the best arguments against that view, meaning that in the end, they were better able to defend their beliefs.

Such a free marketplace of ideas is crucial to a solid education, and it's what the current Kansas science standards promote. These standards, like those adopted in other states and supported by a three-to-one margin among U.S. voters, don't call for teaching intelligent design. They call for schools to equip students to critically analyze modern evolutionary theory by teaching the evidence both for and against it.

The standards are good for students and good for science.

Some want to protect Darwinism from the competitive marketplace by overturning the critical-analysis standards. My hope is that these efforts will merely lead students to ask, What's the evidence they don't want us to see?

Under the new standards, they'll get an answer. For starters, many high-school biology textbooks have presented Haeckel's 19th century embryo drawings, the four-winged fruit fly, peppered moths hidden on tree trunks and the evolving beak of the Galapagos finch as knockdown evidence for Darwinian evolution. What they don't tell students is that these icons of evolution have been discredited, not by Christian fundamentalists but by mainstream evolutionists.

We now know that 1) Haeckel faked his embryo drawings; 2) Anatomically mutant fruit flies are always dysfunctional; 3) Peppered moths don't rest on tree trunks (the photographs were staged); and 4) the finch beaks returned to normal after the rains returned – no net evolution occurred. Like many species, the average size fluctuates within a given range.

This is microevolution, the age-old observation of change within species. Macroevolution refers to the evolution of fundamentally new body plans and anatomical parts. Biology textbooks use instances of microevolution such as the Galapagos finches to paper over the fact that biologists have never observed, or even described in theoretical terms, a detailed, continually functional pathway to fundamentally new forms like mammals, wings and bats. This is significant because modern Darwinism claims that all life evolved from a common ancestor by a series of tiny, useful genetic mutations.

Textbooks also trumpet a few "missing links" discovered between groups. What they don't mention is that Darwin's theory requires untold millions of missing links, evolving one tiny step at a time. Yes, the fossil record is incomplete, but even mainstream evolutionists have asked, why is it selectively incomplete in just those places where the need for evidence is most crucial?

Opponents of the new science standards don't want Kansas high-school students grappling with that question. They argue that such problems aren't worth bothering with because Darwinism is supported by "overwhelming evidence." But if the evidence is overwhelming, why shield the theory from informed critical analysis? Why the campaign to mischaracterize the current standards and replace them with a plan to spoon-feed students Darwinian pabulum strained of uncooperative evidence?

The truly confident Darwinist should be eager to tell students, "Hey, notice these crucial unsolved problems in modern evolutionary theory. Maybe one day you'll be one of the scientists who discovers a solution."

Confidence is as confidence does.

[Ignatz]

Have you considered that your antipathy to the Theory of Evolution may be a result of a misunderstanding of what it asserts?

Perhaps, I suppose. I haven't read The Origin of Species in it's entiety. I do lurk most of the CREVO threads here at FR. I have a good understanding of what Freepers assert that is says.
So, what does Evolution say about evolving plants and animals? Common ancestor?

[Just mythoughts]

I was raise being told that allllll people came from Adam and Eve, it was not until I turned against 'religion' of any brand and read for my self that I read something totally different than what I had been told was Written.

Now I did not add anything nor did I take away anything, God gave me a brain and I will take what He had Moses penned and read it like it is Written. There is no need to extrapolate if one follows verse upon verse, very plain and simple. Further it removes that very foundation that evolutionists claim the 'creationists' are wrong about.

Now if you read IIPeter 3 the whole chapter it describes the very Darwin controversy among other things. So fairly obvious that the Heavenly Father knew in advance there was to be a controversy.

[Just mythoughts]

You have a good weekend as well.

[Ignatz]

They came from a common ancestor.

I think that's what HR was intimating.
Ok, where does Evolution tell us the common ancestor come from?

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you for your excellent essay-post and challenge!

It seems to me that Darwinist theory is based on the way things appear, and not necessary on what they intrinsically are.

So very true and well said.

Biologists go to great effort to describe living systems and types of life from grand generalities to the tiniest gnat's hair. But it seems to me that only the physicists and mathematicians are interested in what life is.

To me it's like asking a person "what are you?" The descriptive answers - man, father, son, uncle, veteran, engineer, etc. - don't cut to the being, the "are" of the question.

[bray]

Was wondering how long it would take for you to pull the victim card. By the looks of your responses to anyone who questions you, you have a 1 card deck. Enjoy worshiping your fake rocks!

Pray for W and Our Troops
Shalom Israel

[Ignatz]

Network Engineering can be tough and challenging and certainly requires intelligemce but it is not a science profession. Therefore it is not a proper answer to a claim of scientific illiteracy (although there are others)

Network Engineering can be tough and challenging and certainly requires intelligence and critical reasoning skills. Theories must tested and the results compared to what the theory asserts. At least, the type of networking I do requires that. I only offered my vocation as "proof", I guess, that my work requires many of the same skills as, say, chemistry.
To those who would dismiss my arguments merely because of my vocation rather than on the merits of my arguments, these links are for you!

[presently no screen name]

that God created men and women, of all races on the 6th day,

NO - just Adam and Eve, first Adam and then Eve. Just two singular people like you quote. And Adam and Eve had children and so the human race continued.

on the 7th day He rested..

YES

and then continued on to an 8th day, and created Adam and Eve,

No, He completed it all at the end of the sixth day and rested on the 7th. No 8th day to creation, finished it all the end of the sixth day.

By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested [a] from all his work.

And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.

Adam was the very first human created

YES. Adam was the very first.

which is it?...were many men and women of several races created first

No. He created Adam, then Eve and they had children and started the human race.

or were Adam and Eve the first created humans....

YES, you have it, that's it. Adam first, then Eve on the sixth day. All creation was completed the end of the sixth day, rested on the seventh.

[Ignatz]

And I have done network engineering and indeed had to sacrifice small animals (or a Grad student or 2, depending o availablity).

Ah, you're a college man! Very good!

[Jorge]

It's cool.

[Ignatz]

Iggy: "I so hope they have the bones of the walking, talking, breathing, eating dandelions!"

That would DISPROVE evolution.

Gosh, I hope NOT! Some are saying that Evolution sez that plants and animals have a common ancestor. You have strayed from the plantation in their eyes. I hope you don't get derision piled upon you by "them" (and yes, by "them" I do mean the giant ants from the 1950's sci-fi movie).
Say-y-y-y...what is your vocation, anyway? Are you even qualified to post on this subject?
Be that as it may, anyone following my argument with critical thinking skills would reason (correctly) that the existence of Evolution is essential to my argument. Remember, I am arguing that Evolution is inadequate to 'splain, Lucy, how we arrived at what we are today. Intelligent design does do that, does it not?

Does ID at this time require faith in something science has not yet measured? Unequivocally "yes"! As does believing that there was a "Big Bang" from nothing that somehow, billions of years later, caused lightning to strike in a primordial soup (yes, I know: Evolution doesn't concern itself with primary forms. Please see "inadequate" and it's synonyms:
bare, barren, bush league, deficient, depleted, dry, failing, faulty, feeble, found wanting, glitch*, imperfect, impotent, inappreciable, inapt, incapable, incommensurate, incompetent, incomplete, inconsiderable, insubstantial, junk*, lacking, lame*, lemon*, lousy, low, meager, minus, miserly, niggardly, not enough, parsimonious, poor, scanty, scarce, short, shy*, sketchy*, skimpy*, sleazy, small, spare, sparse, sterile, stinted, stunted*, thin*, too little, unequal, unproductive, unqualified, weak) that began an abiogenesis (also called autogenesis or spontaneous generation) that resulted in a chain of incredibly lucky events that led to the evolution of every disparate kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species and that has thus far yielded an advanced, top-of-the-food-chain, creature that possesses so many nonadaptive attributes that it must be the luckiest creature in the history of Evolution to not to have become and evolutionary dead-end and survived to this day!

Why, to be so lucky defies the odds! It almost makes me believe that there was some kind of "plan" or "design" to this "evolution" theory! (now that's sarcasm)!

[Ignatz]

What I question is why a person of faith would throw up his hands and decline to look for a scientific explanation, saying instead that somehow at some point, that we can stop looking for a scientific chain of cause and effect, and instead it must have been designed. As for spirituality, I don't see why looking for scientific explanations is inconsistent with spirituality.

I hope no one of faith would decline to look at scientific explanations for our existence.
Indeed, the more scientific explanations the better! It just buttresses my argument: cause and effect work so well in accordance with the laws of physics that come from...where? Lightning in a soup? An explosion of universal energy (meaning all of the energy contained in the universe, allowing that energy equals mass multiplied by the speed of light squared) from nothing?
Bwahahaha! To paraphrase what I said before: Who has a "religion", now?

[fabian]

I was told that Darwin had a belief in God just before his death. I think if he were alive today he would be open minded enough to admit that his theory falls apart simply on the lack of true transitional fossils which he said were needed to be discovered for his theory to hold water. And he didn't mean fossils of completed life forms but ones that would show the gradual change over millions of years. It would be nice if the TOE proponents would at least admit that truth.

[stands2reason]

Some are saying that Evolution sez that plants and animals have a common ancestor.

Yes. The common ancestor is a single-celled animal, not a dandelion, so if you find a dandelion with bones, you would disprove ToE.

[stands2reason]

Your rudeness only reflects on you.

Witnessing for Christ again?

[stands2reason]

I always heard there is no Gravity -- the Earth sucks.

Anti-Earthman!!! Where's your planetary patriotism???

[Oztrich Boy]

I was told that Darwin had a belief in God just before his death.

You were lied to.

[stands2reason]

However, the evo-fanatics engage in real, intentional, savage rudeness and outright insults on almost every page of these threads,

Every thread, it never fails. A CR/IDer will complain about the insults of the evos with an insult in the very same post.

"Evo-fanatic" is an insult. Do you think you should be able to throw out insults and at the same time complain about them?

[stands2reason]

I think a basic reason, and one probably no evolutionist would admit even to themselves, is if they were to accept the possiblity of the existance of God, they might have to worry about being accountable for their behavior afterall.

Not for most of them.

[RetiredSWO]

You have it backwards -- a theory is an abstract based on observable facts.
That does not make a theory a fact.

Imagine someone observing that water is a liquid which the human body needs to consume to survive (a FACT)
Now imagine another person observes that adding Kool-aid to water makes it more enjoyable to consume (a FACT)
Along comes number three and theories that since Kool-aid is more enjoyable to consume than water everyone must drink Kool-aid to survive.(a THEORY)

I think I just discovered the Democratic Party's platform -- do what is enjoyable and don't worry about the consequences.