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.
It did not defy logic, it defied popular scientific belief. Your statement can be used as easily against evolution. Push it to it's ultimate conclusion and the assertion becomes "logic is unreliable." Such a statement is an attempt to exempt your belief system from the laws of logical thinking. If your system of belief must be exempted from the laws of logic then it is nothing but a primitive (!) religion devised by men fearful of facing the God from whom they have fled.
Armchair "logic" is fine for brainstorming some ideas to test, but sooner or later you need to reality-check them or it's all just alchemy.
I'm all for that. Lets put a reality check on your explanation for the existence of matter. Understand, Mr. Dan, that much of your theory is alchemy. You have still failed to address the issue.
3: The third option is that matter was created.
Right, by the Big Bang. Thanks for clearing that up for us.
I think you might be in over your head as well. Why would you, Dan Day, who defends what he calls a scientific theory, ascribe to an explosion the attributes of deity? Do you still claim evolution is not a religion?
Really, now. Philosophers haven't been sitting around twiddling their thumbs since the death of Aquinas - Hume and Kant quite thoroughly and convincingly demonstrated the gross inadequacies and the total failure of the Prime Mover argument, and did it a century and a half ago, no less.
What was that about a defective foundation?
Regrettably, I have only one copy of Kierkegaard's "The Leap of Faith and the Limits of Reason", and am therefore loathe to donate it to the education of others...
Such "arguments" (including the 2nd law of thermodynamics and the phoney law of abiogenesis) when used by creationists are nothing more than jingles, or mantras, or incantations. Those who utter such "arguments" use them mindlessly. There's no substance, no relevance, no logical thread, no understanding, nothing. Abracadabra!
It is not a problem for Creationists who believe that there is a reality beyond this physical universe.
Such a belief raises more questions than it answers as attempts are made to describe such a "reality" without reference to time or space. We are asked not only to accept something unobservable and incomprehensible, as space and time are inherent in all of our ideas. Then we are to suppose that the makings of things as complex as consciousness, sensory preception, and actuation are contained in this incomprehensible "reality". In short, we must simply accept what does not make any sense.
So the pursuit to explain the universe does not end because it is explained, but because it becomes inexplicable.
Let's say God is not as simple minded as the Creationists think he is. Their conception of God is an insult to a supreme being.
So9
At Wounded Knee, the native tribes thought that their Ghost Dance shirts would be impervious to bullets. Not only is it unnecessary to place faith and reason in conflict, sometimes it's positively dangerous....
So9
Then you understand the futility of attempting to explain to others your knowledge of God. It cannot make sense with arguments or observations but only with a teleological connection between God and the individual.
If only creationists would accept Kierkegaard and stop contorting reason and observations with their backward arguments from conclusion, and selective skepticism.
Indeed. Nor as unsubtle.
I suspect that Kierkegaard's status as the intellectual father of existentialism hinders such an acceptance....
Why don't you give us your understanding of their answers?
Here is your reference to time and space:
The universe is expanding at nearly the speed of light.
It cannot expand into nothing since there would be nothing into which it could expand.
Therefore it is expanding into something.
That "something" is outside of the universe.
Therefore there exists something outside of the universe.
If a postulate is invalid because it raises more questions than it answers, then truly evolution is invalid.
Your argument is simply that the volume of the universe is infinite. The argument of a time before the big bang is simply that time is infinite. Logic doesn't require that the universe expand "into" anything, but if the universe does, than what do you suppose separates the universe from that thing? Inherent in your notion of that thing is that it is space. It is simply more of the universe.
The universe is, *by definition*, all that exists. There isn't an existence "outside" or "before" the universe. For the notion of a *finite* universe to have any unique meaning, that definition must be retained.
Maybe you are right and the universe is infinite. However, there is no inherent contradiction in the notion of an expanding universe of finite volume and time.
Next question, please.
I don't know what you mean here by "postulate", but an idea is not invalidated simply by raising questions. The trouble with the creationist view is that it not only ultimately doesn't explain anything (except to say "God makes it happen") but it asks us to accept a "reality" contrary to what we can observe and comprehend.
Many evolutionary theories at least attempt to explain observations within the realm of the observable universe.
Vague assertions that something is absurb or impossible does not make it absurd or impossible.
Now, if you really have something to say on the point, don't be afraid, just say it.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.