Posted on 01/11/2003 9:53:34 PM PST by DWar
EVOLUTION WATCH Refuting Darwinism, point by point Author's new book presents case against theory in just 83 pages
Posted: January 11, 2003 1:00 a.m. Eastern
Editor's note: In 1999, author James Perloff wrote the popular "Tornado in a Junkyard," which summarizes much of the evidence against evolution and is considered one of the most understandable (while still scientifically accurate) books on the subject. Recently, WND talked with Perloff about his new book, "The Case Against Darwin."
© 2003 WorldNetDaily.com
QUESTION: Your new book is just 83 pages – and the type is large. What gives?
ANSWER: This past March I got a call from Ohio. There has been a battle there to allow critical examination of evolutionary theory in public schools, and a gentleman wanted 40 copies of Tornado to give to state legislators and school board members. I was delighted to send him the books, but I also knew that a state legislator isn't likely to pick up anything that's 321 pages long.
Q: And not just state legislators.
A: Right. We live in an age when parents often don't have time to read anything long, and their kids, who are usually more into video, may not have the inclination.
Q: So what's the focus of this book?
A: I've divided it into three chapters. The first is called "Is Darwin's Theory Relevant to Our Lives?" In other words, is the subject of this book worth my time or not? A lot of people think this is simply a science issue. And to some of them, science is booooring. But actually, it's the teaching of Darwin's theory as a "fact" that starts many young people doubting the existence of God. Once we stop believing in God, we discard his moral laws and start making up our own rules, which is basically why our society is in so much trouble. In short, Darwinism is very relevant – it's much more than a science matter.
Q: You, yourself, were an atheist for many years, were you not, as a result of evolutionary teaching?
A: That's right. I thought evolution had discredited the Bible. In my books, I give examples of notables who became atheists from being taught evolution, such as Stalin and Carnegie. In fact, the atheist Boy Scout who's been in the news reportedly attributes his atheism to being taught evolution.
Q: Why do you think evolution has such a persuasively negative effect on faith?
A: First, it's taught as "scientific fact." When kids hear "scientific fact," they think "truth." Who wants to go against truth? Second, it's the only viewpoint that's taught. After the Supreme Court kicked God out of schools in the '60s, kids heard the evolutionist viewpoint exclusively. It's like going to a courtroom – if you only heard the prosecutor's summation, you would probably think the defendant guilty. But if you only heard the defendant's attorney, you'd think "innocent." The truth is, we need to hear both sides, and kids haven't been getting it on the subject of origins.
Q: OK, then what?
A: The second chapter is "Evidence Against the Theory of Evolution." Let's face it, no matter what Darwinism's social ramifications, that alone would not be a sufficient basis to criticize it, if it were scientifically proven true.
Q: In a nutshell – if that's possible – what is the scientific evidence against Darwinism?
A: In the book, I focus on six areas of evidence. First, mutations – long claimed by evolutionists to be the building blocks of evolutionary change – are now known to remove information from the genetic code. They never create higher, more complex information – even in the rare cases of beneficial mutations, such as bacterial resistance to antibiotics. That has been laid out by Dr. Lee Spetner in his book "Not By Chance."
Q: What else?
A: Second, cells are now known to be far too complex to have originated by some chance concurrence of chemicals, as Darwin hypothesized and is still being claimed. We detail that in the book. Third, the human body has systems, such as blood clotting and the immune system, that are, in the words of biochemist Michael Behe, "irreducibly complex," meaning they cannot have evolved step-by-step. Behe articulated that in his book "Darwin's Black Box." And then there is the whole issue of transitional forms.
Q: What is a transitional form?
A: Darwin's theory envisioned that single-celled ancestors evolved into invertebrates (creatures without a backbone), who evolved into fish, who evolved into amphibians, who evolved into reptiles, who evolved into mammals. Now, a transitional form would be a creature intermediate between these. There would have to be a great many for Darwin's theory to be true.
Q: Are there?
A: There are three places to look for transitional forms. First, there's the living world around us. We see that it is distinctly divided – you have invertebrates, fish, amphibians, reptiles and mammals. But we don't see transitionals between them. If these creatures ever existed, why did none survive? It is too easy to explain it away by saying they all became extinct. And of course, there is the question: Why aren't these creatures evolving into each other today? Why aren't invertebrates evolving into fish today? Why aren't fish growing little legs and so forth?
Q: Where else would you look for a transitional form?
A: In the fossil record. And here we have a problem of almost comparable magnitude. We find no fossils showing how the invertebrates evolved, or demonstrating that they came from a common ancestor. That's why you hear of the "Cambrian explosion." And while there are billions of fossils of both invertebrates and fish, fossils linking them are missing. Of course, there are some transitional fossils cited by evolutionists. However, two points about that. First, there should be a lot more if Darwin's theory is correct. Second, 99 percent of the biology of an organism is in its soft anatomy, which you cannot access in a fossil – this makes it easy to invest a fossil with a highly subjective opinion. The Piltdown Man and the recent Archaeoraptor are examples of how easy it is to be misled by preconceptions in this arena.
Q: What is the other place where you can look for transitional forms?
A: Microscopically, in the cell itself. Dr. Michael Denton, the Australian molecular biologist, examined these creatures on a molecular level and found no evidence whatsoever for the fish-amphibian-reptile-mammal sequence. He summarized his findings in his book "Evolution: A Theory in Crisis."
The last chapter is "Re-evaluating Some Evidences Used to Support the Theory" of evolution. That would include evidences that have been discredited, and also some evidences presented as proof that in fact rest on assumptions.
Q: What evidences have been discredited?
A: Ernst Haeckel's comparative embryo drawings. The human body being laden with "vestigial structures" from our animal past. Human blood and sea water having the same percentage of salt. Babies being born with "monkey tails." These are not foundational evidences, but they still hold sway in the public mind.
Q: You mentioned assumptions as proofs.
A: Yes. Anatomical similarities between men and animals are said to prove common ancestry. But intelligent design also results in innumerable similarities, as in the case of two makes of automobile. Also, what has been called "microevolution" – minor adaptive changes within a type of animal – is extrapolated as evidence for "macroevolution" – the changing of one kind of animal into another. However, a species is normally endowed with a rich gene pool that permits a certain amount of variation and adaptation. Certainly, those things happen. But the change is ordinarily limited to the confines of the gene pool. It doesn't mean a fish could adapt its way into being a human.
Q: You covered a lot of this ground in "Tornado in a Junkyard." Can readers expect something new from "The Case Against Darwin"?
A: There is a bit of new material, but no, if you've read "Tornado," or for that matter, if you read the July 2001 Whistleblower, where we looked at evolution, you already know most of the points. What's new is the size. This is a book to give to a busy friend, a book for a high-school student to share with his science teacher.
"The Case Against Darwin" by James Perloff is available from ShopNetDaily.
BWAHAHAHAHAHA! More for the lurkers than for your closed mind, Phaedrus:
Speciation by Punctuated Equilibrium,
Tempo and Mode of Speciation (slideshow), and
All You Need to Know about Punctuated Equilibrium (Almost).
What penetrating insight, Vade! Slay us with your wit.
Some debate. The best I can do is suggest that you reread my post. No particular reason, though, that it should sink in the second time. I remain underwhelmed.
Indeed, if a woman who has had an abortion does not value the unborn as a human life - or if she does not value any human life - perhaps she would never feel regret.
you are assuming that they had "faith" to begin with.
Indeed, if she had no faith to begin with - the statement would not apply to her, i.e. she would have nothing from which to be driven away.
Personally, I think the fundamentalist christians do more to drive people away from "believing" than anything or anyone else.
You are certainly welcome to your views. I am a fundamentalist and disagree with you in part and agree with you in part.
Back in the days of Jesus, the Pharisees were the fundamentalists. Both then and now, some fundamentalists read the Word with their mind instead of their spirit. That leads to mental gymnastics which can be very troubling, especially to non-believers, IMHO:
And as touching the dead, that they rise: have ye not read in the book of Moses, how in the bush God spake unto him, saying, I [am] the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? He is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living: ye therefore do greatly err. – Mark 12:24-27
How many people how many times have to explain to you what evolutionists actually claim so you can get on topic? Can you read?
It is about--corrected version here--the transformation claimed by evolutionists of the egg-laying reproductive system of mammals (like the still-extant monotremes) to the live-birth strategies of the marsupials and placentals. Mammals were mammals before they had any kind of live birth.
First, mammal-like reptiles diverged from other reptile lineages. That was far back, not long after the appearance of basal reptiles. Some lineages of mammal-like reptiles experimented with warm-bloodedness and with walking up completely on the legs (as opposed to dragging the belly and merely pushing with the legs).
Reptile ears aren't very good with the head out of contact with the ground. Thus, some of the high-walkers coopted their rearward lower jaw bones to resonate with the original reptilian earbone and enhance their hearing. This wasn't as hard as it may sound, since reptiles have losely-jointed, expandable jaws for swallowing large objects whole.
Eventually, this second useage of the rearward jawbones overwhelmed the original one. A "double-joint" allowed the use of a single bone for chewing and biting and completely freed the rearmost lower jaw bones for hearing.
This transition, well documented in the fossil record, is where taxonomists draw a line and say, "From here forward, we call them mammals." Admittedly, they pick this point as much because you can't see in the fossil record if a creature had mammary glands, or bore scales versus fur. (Fur isn't exactly diagnostic anyway as, for one thing, there's evidence for fur in pterosaurs, diapsid reptiles more related to dinosaurs than to mammals. But nothing else in nature has those ear bones.)
Later yet, some time after the monotremes had diverged from the basal mammal stock, mammals experimented with live-birth schemes. Marsupials are one result. Placentals are the latest and most successful.
Now do you understand what Dan Day's 378 is about?
the post-modern age of switch-flip-spin-DEFORMITY-cancer...
Atheist secular materialists through ATHEISM/evolution CHANGED-REMOVED the foundations...
demolished the wall(separation of state/religion)--trampled the TRUTH-GOD...built a satanic temple/SWAMP-MALARIA/RELIGION(cult of darwin-marx-satan) over them---
.. .. .. REDACTED and made these absolutes subordinate--relative - - -
and calling/CHANGING all the... residuals---technology/science === TO evolution - - - .. .. .. via schlock/sMUCK IDEOLOGY/lies/bias...to substantiate/justify their efforts--claims - - - social engineering--PC--atheism...anti-God/Truth RELIGION(USSC monopoly)---
.. .. .. and declared a crusade/WAR--JIHAD--INTOLERANCE/TYRANNY(breaking the establishment clause)...
against God--man--society/FREEDOM/LIBERTY/SCIENCE!!
yeah . . . hopeless dichotomy // schizophrenia - - - EVOLUTION ! ! !
I have no idea what you are trying to say. Please seek help.
Not a "single evolutionist writer", eh?
Correct. The examples you give are of bones which have absolutely nothing to do with the transformation of the reproductive system which is what is under discussion. Your shark examples show quite well why this is not a valid method. In sharks, with similar body plans we have some which reproduce by eggs, some by a placental like system in late development and some that cannibalize other young for nutrition. This proves quite well that fossils cannot answer the big questions of evolution, certainly not those being discussed here.
My orginal point was that one should not bring religion or God into a debate about evolution. Evolution is a sceientific theory, religion is based purely on faith and should not be used in a scientific debate. IMO
Thank you for your posts and your obvious gentle spirit.
The above is garbage since fossils do not show a placenta and there is no DNA to make such a comparison. What we do have are live specimens with and without a placenta. The problem is that since both examples are alive NOW it is only an evolutionist assumption that leads to the conclusion that those without a placenta came before those with one. In addition because there is no way at all to tell what the DNA of any species was a million years ago or a hundred million years ago, there is absolutely no way to calibrate this so called 'clock'. There are more problems with the molecular clock such as that different DNA tests give different cladistic diagrams and the fact that evolution assumes that all species are continually being changed by mutations which means that according to evolutionist assumptions a human and lizard have undergone as many years of mutations as each other since the supposed descent from fish. Thus any study that claims to use a molecular clock is dishonest and absolute nonsense.
I regret that we fundamentalists have failed you. Above everything else we who believe the Bible is the inerrant Word of God - owe to everyone the out-pouring of God's unconditional love. There is no other way to comply with the law and the prophets.
So with that apology, I agree that it is time to let the subject return to evolution. Hugs!
Alamo-girl is a sweetheart. Her posts are always good-natured.
Yes, it has every appearance of being envy and resentment (and, of course, is highly hypocritical).
Oh, and Anti-Pope GoreMMM is the only one allowed to get away with comparisons to the Taliban and the like, so step carefully with such clear and accurate descriptions.
Right after you explain the didactic usefulness of the obfuscation of systematic discontinuities throughout your theory.
I contend that the evos' failure to deal with the origin of matter and the Prime Mover disqualifies them from continued building on a defective foundation. I contend that it is logically impossible to rule out a Creator. Having destroyed the foundation of your theory, it collapsed. Now you want to continue to discuss your discredited theory?
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