Evolution of creationism: Pseudoscience doesn't stand up to natural selection

Daytona Beach News-Journal ^ | 29 November 2004 | Editorial (unsigned)

[longshadow]

So much of creation science is about not seeing what is there.

"He's dead, Jim."

[VadeRetro]

You know, looking harder at that letter, I suppose you're to be congratulated. Patterson is pointing to one part of his text as refuting the creationist interpretation of an earlier section. But you've mined your snippet from the part Patterson cites, not what someone else used earlier.

It's the same thing, of course. The part you left out is where Patterson actually explains in detail what he's saying.

The reason is that statements about ancestry and descent are not applicable in the fossil record. Is Archaeopteryx the ancestor of all birds? Perhaps yes, perhaps no: there is no way of answering the question.

He's pointing out something frequently acknowledged. Non-DNA fossils won't let you do paternity testing. Even when it appears that Thing A is obviously an ancestor of Thing B, an even better contemporary candidate for ancestor of Thing B could turn up later, making Thing A basically a great uncle. That's too limited in scope for your purposes, so you simply picked up the bit of hyperbole that followed it.

It is easy enough to make up stories of how one form gave rise to another, and to find reasons why the stages should be favoured by natural selection. But such stories are not part of science, for there is no way to put them to the test.

Patterson's original protest would work as well for your latest bit of mining. Were he alive, he might say:

"I think the continuation of material preceding the passage shows clearly that your interpretation (at the end of your letter) is correct, and the creationists' is false..."

[NJ_gent]

"As such, and in the same way, the theory of evolution cannot preclude the possibility that some race of fruit flies may at some point evolve into something whale-like."

Convergent evolution is something that's especially tricky, but yes, by the theory itself, it could happen. Now, for something that incredibly complex to occur, one must also allow for a significant amount of time to pass. Without trying to claim I'm any sort of expert, I'd guess that no less than 200 million years would be necessary under optimal conditions. Optimal conditions in this case would be those conditions that specifically favor traits in fruit flies that lead them down the long, winding path toward whales. The conditions would need to change at the right times, in the right ways so as to favor each of the necessary traits while eliminating those who do not share those traits, without eliminating a proportion of the species significant enough to nullify genetic diversity. Divergent evolution is far easier to make happen than convergent evolution. Simply allowing species to diverge in order to fill available niches is most certainly easier than attempting to force a species into a specific and completely different niche.

[balrog666]

Just keep telling yourself that. If God exists, He has a special level in Hell for the Liars For Christ. Does God want people to be stupid? Does he want us to not use the brains and reason that he gave us? Does he want us to ignore the natural world? The evidence of the natural world *all* points to evolution. If you choose to believe parable over fact, that's fine.... but if you try to dumb down society to get them to believe the same nonsense... prepare for a cosmic bitch-slap from the Almighty. You make his followers look... well... pretty bad.

If God has spoken, why is the world not convinced. -Percy Bysshe Shelley

[newgeezer]

Mithraism, which is what Christians copied to get many of their tenets.

You keep saying that. Who is feeding you such nonsense?

[DouglasKC]

The theory of evolution explicitly claims that whales evolved from Very Small Non-Mammalian Organisms. (Yes, I realize there's a lot of steps between there and here.) As such, and in the same way, the theory of evolution cannot preclude the possibility that some race of fruit flies may at some point evolve into something whale-like. A smart boy like you could probably even spell out the necessary mutations to make such a thing come to pass.

I'll even give you the experimental setup to make this come to pass. For the first stage have a food source close to the surface of the water. Gradually, over many many fruit fly generation put the food source closer and closer to the water. Eventually the food source will be below the water and eventually at the bottom of the tank.

You can run thousands of similiar experiements in one room. Eventually through random chance/mutation/natural selection or whatever you would have to have some fruitflies that evolve into a creature that can swim to the bottom of a tank and get food.

Absurd? Doesn't evolution ask us to believe that something similiar has happened (albeit without any invervention) literally trillions of times to millions or billions of different species?

[metacognative]

Why isn't the fossil record one continuous change, instead of entirely separate suddenly appearing 'kinds'?

[Michael_Michaelangelo]

[metacognative]

Yes, I'm looking all over for one major evidence for one major claim: something from nothing...uphill! [ie; darwinism]

[PatrickHenry]

Why isn't the fossil record one continuous change, instead of entirely separate suddenly appearing 'kinds'?

Explained nearly 150 years ago:
The Origin of Species, by Charles Darwin: Chapter 9 - On the Imperfection of the Geological Record.

[Right Wing Professor]

It would appear from the discussion that such changes are not so obvious as you claim, given that the process leads, in mice at least, to live births of healthy offspring.

That's a non-sequitur. Putting pesticide resistance genes in corn also leads to healthy corn. While it's not automatic that adding a new gene would leave an organism healthy, there's no a priori reason simply adding a foreign gene will be lethal.

The major assumptions on your part are that manipulation would "stick out" (why?), and that they'd be obviously taken from "some other species." Neither of these is necessary.

Sure it is. Monkeys don't have fluorescent proteins of this sort. There is nothing even closely homologous in the various mammalian genomes. The mutation would 'stick out' because using a standard genetic search engine, like BLAST, we'd get hits from this gene to jellyfish genes, but none to humans or other monkeys. Believe me, that would stick out. I'd be thinking 'Nature paper' as soon as I saw the hits.

If you want to check this out, go to the National Library of Medicine site . Pick some human gene at random, and look to see what it's most closely related to. Lots of monkeys, lots of rats and mice, no jellyfish; at least, not in the first 50 hits or so.

BLAST and similar software is quite easy to use ( I taught a class of freshmen to do it this fall) and it's a great way to learn first hand the issues involved in comparing genes across species.

What people claim that? And of those who might make that claim, do they make the further claim that no other designs are possible than what they, themselves, would recognize?

I simply googled 'universal design principles' and got scads of hits. Do thee in like manner.

The crux of your argument seems to be this:

We certainly can do that -- but we cannot then simultaneously denounce as "idiotic" a purported design that far exceeds the capabilities of what humans can presently achieve.

This is a quasi-religious assertion that there are beings of superior intelligence to ourselves, whose purpose is ineffable to our limited intelligences. Sorry, no dice. Until you can show me some system that works, but whose principles are beyond the power of contemporary rational analysis, that's an unproven and decidedly mystical claim, no different than 'There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio' - which, you'll recall, was an argument for the reality of ghosts.

[ColdSteelTalon]

History over longer than about 100 year periods...

You are comparing apples to oranges here. History was witnessed by someone and the humanities are not science. But since you bring up the subject of observation, clearly history is actually observed by someone and then at that time a record is made. Macro-evolution on the other hand is not witnessed by anyone but people study something past tense and render an opinion as to what they see.

I am willing to believe that species can change to adapt but the fossil record can only be interpreted to mean one thing or another, and that opinion changes from time to time. And there is a huge difference between micro and macro evolution. once does not lead into the other (unless you assume).

[MissAmericanPie]

Your statement doesn't change anything. Science, as you stated, is not exact. It is just as probable, more so in fact, given the body of evidence recorded in scriptures, that a Creator plugged in what ever DNA or genetic element required for the particular species that He wished to create, thus the similarities.

Certainly a species will adapt to it's environment, but one species does not turn into, nor evolve into another species. And wasn't there evidence just released that there were several spontaneous eruptions of different species over time?

As in, "and God said let there be fish in the sea, and birds to fly in the firmament, and let there be creeping things, and cattle all after their own kind"? Now hasn't evolution rather confirmed scripture which is why it is either being toss'ed out of the education curriculum, as Darwin said it should be if his theory failed to present evidence of one species evolving into another? At best evolution should be taught alongside the just as valid alternative.

[Oztrich Boy]

That's interesting, because I did not get those quotes from a linked site.

Your inability to comprehend is indcative

Henry never said you did.

I've found a book review by his favorite source, William Provine. ... in his own words, from the linked site:

[NJ_gent]

Your experiment is ridiculous. The problem is twofold. Moving the food into water isn't going to turn the flies into fish. What it's far more likely to do is force the flies to go after a different source of food. Those who depend on the food you've moved will simply die out slowly (you'd best be moving the food over a period of a few million years with no other changes to the environment or all the flies will simply die) while those who have an alternate source of food will simply ignore the food moved under the water. Your example also seems to point toward flies turning into whales. The problem there is that you've skipped probably a few tens of thousands of different species that would need to evolve over tens or hundreds of millions of years to get from fly to whale. You're also ignoring the fact that species do not respond exclusively to a single stimuli. Every aspect of the environment in which they live would have to be controlled, and an extreme amount of knowledge and foresight would be required to create an environment that yields the traits necessary to "push" the development of the proper traits at the proper time via natural selection.

It's a monumental task, and not likely one humans will ever manage to approach achieving in a lab or a field.

[Fester Chugabrew]

Isotopic dating of the sedimentary record: Does it observe/process material already in existence and then require the observer to extrapolate periods of time? If so, then it does not qualify as anything but a tool for storytelling, albeit with a scientific ring to it, because we cannot test or observe whether all matter has behaved the same throughout all time. We do not even know for certain whether time has behaved the same throughout all time. These may be fair assumptions, but are they "provable?"

As for proof of your existence I would not be so obtuse as to deny it in any way, since it can fairly well be proven. The evidence is very good.

[Right Wing Professor]

Do you actually believe that the study that was done in the 50's on Drosophila Paulistorum shows a legitimate speciation event?

Tell me why it isn't.

And you might consider addressing some of the other examples of speciation too. I rather like the copper-tolerant Mimulus.

[VadeRetro]

Why isn't the fossil record one continuous change, instead of entirely separate suddenly appearing 'kinds'?

I hope that's not supposed to be some sort of rebuttal to my previous post to you. If it is, that's not so much weak as virtually a change of subject. What you asked for, I presented.

Darwin knew the answer to your question in 1859. It's about the geology. Not everything gets fossilized in the first place and sediments erode. Still, smooth transitional sequences are found, especially in cores from deep ocean sediments where in some cases there has been no erosion for millions of years.

My turn. If your story in fact is that gaps in the record are gaps in the history, why are the gaps in the record continuously filling in? Why are they being filled in ways which further outline a family tree of life? Creationism has been yammering about the gaps since Darwin's time. The gaps have shattered into gaplets since then, but the lawyerly gap game goes on for those who do not see.

[VadeRetro]

You are QUICK with that link!

[RadioAstronomer]

Not without making assumptions about unobserved, and unobservable phenomena. You may see it as it is, but you cannot see beyond your own experience, let alone millions of years ago. Any sentient being can be a storyteller.

SN1987a shows the universe is at a minimum older than 170,000 years. The CMB of course shows it is far older. :-)