Posted on 02/12/2006 10:32:27 AM PST by PatrickHenry
MORE THAN A CENTURY and a half since Charles Darwin wrote "On the Origin of Species," evolution remains a controversial concept among much of the population. The situation is quite different in the scientific community, where evolution is almost universally accepted. Still, attacks on the teaching of evolution continue.
The more recent criticism of evolution comes from proponents of intelligent design, a new label for creation "science." They claim ID is a valid scientific alternative to explaining life on Earth and demand it be taught in science classes in our schools along with evolution.
Although intelligent design is cloaked in the language of science and may appear at first glance to be a viable theory, it clearly is not. In fact, intelligent design is neither a theory nor even a testable hypothesis. It is a nonscientific philosophical conjecture that does not belong in any science curriculum in any school.
A theory in the scientific sense is quite different from how the word is often used in conversation.
Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. They are based on extensive data and their predictions are tested and verified time and again.
Biological evolution -- genetic change over time -- is both a theory and a fact, according to paleontologist Stephen Gould. Virtually all biologists consider the existence of evolution to be a fact. It can be demonstrated in the lab and in nature today, and the historical evidence for its occurrence in the past is overwhelming.
However, biologists readily admit that they are less certain of the exact mechanism of evolution; there are several theories of the mechanics of evolution, which are supported by data and are constantly being refined by researchers whose work is subject to peer review.
But there are many established facts concerning evolution, according to R.C. Lewontin, Alexander Agassiz Professor Emeritus of Zoology at Harvard University. He, as do virtually all biological scientists, agree that it is a fact that the Earth with liquid water has been around for more than 3.6 billion years and that cellular life has been around for at least half of that period.
We know for a fact that organized multicellular life is at least 800 million years old and that major life forms now on Earth did not exist in the past.
It is considered a fact by biologists that all living forms today come from previous living forms.
A fact is not the same as absolute certitude, which exists only in defined systems such as mathematics. Scientists consider a "fact" to be something that has been confirmed to such a degree of reliability and logic that it would be absurd to think otherwise.
Denying the facts of evolution is akin to denying that gravity exists. What is debatable, with both evolution and gravity, are the theories of the mechanics of how each operates.
Supporters of intelligent design vehemently disagree, but they do not offer alternative theories or verifiable data. Instead, intelligent design proponents attack evolution with misinformation, half-truths and outright falsehoods.
Intelligent design does not develop hypotheses nor does it test anything. As such, intelligent design is simply a conjecture that does not hold up to scrutiny.
False arguments
Unfortunately, intelligent design has considerable credibility outside the scientific community by making specious claims about evolution. Below are some of the leading charges made by intelligent design and creationist proponents in the past several years.
• Evolution has never been observed: But it has. Biologists define evolution as a change in the gene pool of a population of living organisms over time.
For example, insects develop resistance to pesticides. Bacteria mutate and become resistant to antibiotics. The origin of new species by evolution (speciation) has been observed both in the laboratory and in the wild.
Some intelligent design supporters admit this is true, but falsely say that such changes are not enough to account for the diversity of all living things. Logic and observation show that these small incremental changes are enough to account for evolution.
Even without direct observation, there is a mountain of evidence that confirms the existence of evolution.
Biologists make predictions based on evolution about the fossil record, anatomy, genetic sequences and geographical distribution of species. Such predictions have been verified many times, and the number of observations supporting evolution is overwhelming and growing, especially in the field of genetics.
Biologists have not observed one species of animal or plant changing quickly into a far different one. If they did, it would be evidence against evolution.
• Evolution violates the second law of thermodynamics: It clearly does not. This law of physics states essentially that disorder increases in a closed system. Some intelligent design and creationist proponents say this means that the order required in the evolution of simple life forms to more complex ones cannot take place, at least not on a long-term basis.
What critics of evolution don't say is that the Earth's environment is not a closed system. It absorbs enormous heat energy from the sun, which is all that is required to supply fuel for the evolution of plants and animals.
Order arises from disorder in the physical world as well, in the formation of crystals and weather systems, for example. It is even more prevalent in dynamic living things.
• There are no transitional fossils: This argument is a flat-out falsehood. Transitional fossils are ones that lie between two lineages with characteristics of both a former and latter lineage. Even though transitional fossils are relatively rare, thousands of them have been found.
There are fossils showing transitions from reptile to mammal, from land animal to whale, the progression of animals leading to the modern horse, and from early apes to humans.
• Theory says that evolution proceeds by random chance: This is an example of a half-truth perpetuated by intelligent design and creation supporters.
Chance is an important element of evolution, but it is not the only thing involved.
This argument ignores other forces such as natural selection, which weeds out dysfunctional species, and is the opposite of chance.
Chance takes place in genetic mutations, which provide the raw material of evolutionary change, which is then modified and refined by natural selection. But even at the genetic level, mutations occur within the framework of the laws of physics and chemistry.
Opponents of evolution argue that chance, even enhanced by natural selection and the laws of physics, is not enough to account for the complexity of DNA, the basic building blocks of almost all life forms. (RNA is the foundation of some microbes). However, there literally were oceans of organic molecules that had hundreds of millions of years to interact to form the first self-replicating molecules that make life possible.
Irreducible complexity
The attack on evolution that intelligent design proponents use most often today is one based on "irreducible complexity." This has become the foundation of their attempts to cast doubt on evolution.
They argue that certain components of living organisms are so complex that they could not have evolved through natural processes without the direct intervention of an intelligent designer.
Michael Behe, a leading proponent of intelligent design, defined irreducibly complex as "a system composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning."
In other words, irreducible complexity refers to an organism that does something (a function) in such a way that a portion of the organism that performs the function (a system) has no more parts than are absolutely necessary.
The argument made is that the entire system with all its parts, such as an enzyme used in digestion or a flagellum used to propel a bacterium (an example Behe favors in his defense of irreducible complexity), would have to come into being at one time -- a virtual impossibility.
If one of the parts were missing, Behe argues, the system would not be able to function, and thus a simpler, earlier evolving system could not exist.
It is not as easy as it may appear at first glance to define irreducible complexity because there is not a good definition of what a part is. Is it a particular type of tissue, a cell, or segment of DNA? Behe is not clear. But even if he were able to define a true IC system, his argument would fail.
There are several ways an irreducible complexity system could evolve. An early version could have more parts than necessary for a particular function. The individual parts could evolve. Most likely, an earlier version of the system could have had a different function.
This is observed in nature. For example, take the tail-like flagellum of a bacteria, which Behe says supports irreducible complexity. It is used for functions other than motion. A flagellum can be used to attach a bacteria to a cell or to detect a food source.
Thus, a precursor to a more complex flagellum could have had a useful, but different, function with fewer parts. Its function would have changed as the system evolved.
Simply put, the irreducibly complex system argument doesn't work. Most, if not all, of the irreducible complexity systems mentioned by intelligent design adherents are not truly IC. Even if they were, they clearly could have evolved. That is the consensus of almost all biological scientists.
Intelligent design is not science
The theory of evolution and common descent were once controversial in scientific circles. This is no longer the case.
Debates continue about how various aspects of evolution work. However, evolution and common descent are considered fact by the scientific community.
Scientific creationism, or intelligent design, is not science. Believers of intelligent design do not base their objections on scientific reasoning or data.
Instead, it appears that their ideas are based on religious dogma. They create straw men like irreducible complexity or lack of transitional fossils, and shoot them down. They fabricate data, quote scientists out of context and appeal to emotions.
Intelligent design disciples do not conduct scientific experiments, nor do they seek publication in peer-reviewed scientific journals.
Still, they have had an impact far beyond the merits of their arguments.
One of their most persuasive arguments is an appeal to fair play, pleading to present both sides of the argument. The answer is no. They do not present a valid scientific argument.
Within the scientific community, there is virtually no acceptance of intelligent design. It has no more place in a biology class than astrology in an astronomy class or alchemy in a chemistry class.
LOL!! Somehow this reminds me of the last two lines of The Impossible Fact by Christian Morgenstern:
for, he reasons pointedly,Though, I think it sounds better in the original German ;^)
that which must not, can not be.
Weil, so schliesst er messerscharf,
nicht sein kann, was nicht sein darf.
You misunderstand human nature.
men will and do voluntarily die for what they believe in, whether that belief is backed by evidence or not. They will die for lies as long as they believe the lies to be truth. Their belief can not be taken as proof of any 'truth' value.
Lotta suicide bombers running around these days ... I guess they must be right.
So the responsibility for decisions on the education of children should be left to elitists like yourself, huh?
God bless.
As a Member of DarwinCentral™'s "Imaginary Grand Army of the Galapagos," you must realize the importance of Keeping Up Appearances.
By that token, being an atheist today would be equally unfulfilling intellectually because intellectual honesty demands an explanation for the very existence of life in the first place.
Besides, contextually, that's not possible. Dawkins wrote The Blind Watchmaker as a direct response to Paley's argument, and the entire point of the book is to prove that a designer isn't really necessary to explain the existence of life, but that the "blind" forces of nature are sufficient in an evolutionary context to explain how it came about. I believe his arguments are misconstrued as a result of his initial premise--that God could not exist except as a fantasy--but that is in fact his argument.
Far from being an answer to "everything that the theist points to God for," evolution through natural selection provided the answer to the one big, giant, glaring, obvious thing that the atheist had no answer for at that time.
Properly and narrowly defined, that's true. And strangely, I don't have a real problem with the theory of evolution, though having studied the issue, I don't believe that the evidence for it is nearly as strong as it's made out to be.
For example, Darwin himself put forth a falsifiability test for his theory: He was troubled by the lack of transitional fossils--that is, we see numerous fossils of one animal form and numerous of another, but not a smooth, continuous change over time. He supposed that this was due to the fact that paleantology was in its infancy in his day, and believed that if his theory were true, further digging would provide the smooth transitions.
Guess what? We're still lacking those transitions, causing many scientists to posit that evolution from one form to another takes place so quickly that it doesn't get captured in the fossil record. Punctuated Equilibrium is a theory designed not on the basis of the evidence, but to explain away a lack of evidence while retaining the evolutionary paradigm.
Now, do I deny that things change over time? Not at all; clearly, there are many animals that once existed that no longer do, and others that appear later in the fossil record than the first forms. Microevolution--evolution within a type--is a fact of life, proven by thousands of years of breeding dogs. Strangely enough, though, despite all our breeding, dogs are still dogs, and fruitflies are still fruitflies (the latter after thousands of generations).
Here is where we must separate, far more carefully than we do, the Theory of Evolution (an attempt to explain speciation) from the Religion of Evolution. The Theory of Evolution plainly admits that it has no solution for abiogenesis, for the Cambrian Explosion, for the lack of continuous change over time in the fossil record, no fossil evidence directly linking Man to other primates, etc. If that were all that was being taught in schools and shown on government-funded PBS specials, I don't think you'd hear nearly as much objection from my side of the issue.
However, what we do is blur the line between Theory and Religion. In the Religion of Evolution, the universe emerged spontaneously from the Big Bang, evolved without direction for billions of years, that life "evolved" from muck, and then evolved into all the modern forms. It goes further and speaks of the "evolution" of morality (which is to suggest that the "old" morality of all other religions has been superceded by its own "do as thou wilt").
I'm a youth minister, among my other duties. I recently had some of the kids in my group come to me, disturbed because they were taught in their science class that it had been proven that life could "evolve" spontaneously from the so-called primordial soup with just a strike of lightning. Fortunately, having done my homework, I could show them that they had been . . . misinformed . . . by their textbooks.
The fact that evolution on the one hand dodges the question of abiogenesis and on the other claims that life "evolved" into being (depending on which is more advantageous for the particular conversation) frankly bugs the heck out of me. I don't care if the classrooms teach ID per se, so long as they and the textbooks are frank in saying, "We have no idea how life came about," and explaining the current problems evolution has as a theory.
The fact that those on the evolutionist side of the debate demand that IDers and Creationists publish peer-reviewed research while making it impossible for anyone to do so (at least without sacrificing their reputations and careers) also bugs me. It's frankly hypocritical, and it actually retards scientific progress.
Yes, but there is grandeur in the controversy.
It's not "elitism" to say that some parents are absolutely unqualified to make any sort of education decisions, and that society has the right and responsiblity to dictate that children must be educated to some minimum standard.
For example, Darwin himself put forth a falsifiability test for his theory: He was troubled by the lack of transitional fossils--that is, we see numerous fossils of one animal form and numerous of another, but not a smooth, continuous change over time. He supposed that this was due to the fact that paleantology was in its infancy in his day, and believed that if his theory were true, further digging would provide the smooth transitions.
Darwin also convincingly explained the reasons for the lack of fossils. p>The discovery of a random fossil is highly unlikely, a specific fossil, moreso, almost impossible. The likelihood of the discovery of a sequence of fossils, although not zero, is incredibly close to zero. However, even given that low likelihood, many sequences of transitional fossils have been found, some with relatively large gaps between the specimens and other sequences showing short but roughly gradual and more or less complete transitions (check bivalves). Unfortunately the short sequences can not show an evolution from one higher taxon to another, as this would require literally millions of fossils each of which is within the main species lineage.
"Guess what? We're still lacking those transitions, causing many scientists to posit that evolution from one form to another takes place so quickly that it doesn't get captured in the fossil record. Punctuated Equilibrium is a theory designed not on the basis of the evidence, but to explain away a lack of evidence while retaining the evolutionary paradigm.
Actually Punk Ek is simply an expansion of Darwin's gradualism which was not about the speed of evolution or even the consistancy of the speed, but about the stepwise accumulation of changes, and specifically targets the lack of smooth intraspecies evolution. Gould had no problem with the sequence of transitionals spanning higher taxa transitions. Most sequences of transitional fossils are collections of snapshots taken every few million years during the cumulative speciation that we as the irrepressible categorists we are, tend to place in separate classes. Those morphologically evidenced lineages proposed by the paleontologists that discover the fossils are reinforced by the linkages found in the genomes of extant species. For example, the link between artiodactyls and cetaceans is backed not just by the morphological evidence of fossil sequences but by the genomic evidence of a link between modern artiodactyls and modern whales.
What is missing, and what Gould and Lewontin were concerned with, is the lack of fossils that show the gradual stepwise change within the 'jumps' between fossils. We have significant DNA evidence that the morphological sequence is correct so Punk Ek is not necessary to 'prove' the cetacean-artiodactyl link. What it does explain is the reason some sequences of fossils are difficult to find, especially those from the distant past.
"Now, do I deny that things change over time? Not at all; clearly, there are many animals that once existed that no longer do, and others that appear later in the fossil record than the first forms. Microevolution--evolution within a type--is a fact of life, proven by thousands of years of breeding dogs. Strangely enough, though, despite all our breeding, dogs are still dogs, and fruitflies are still fruitflies (the latter after thousands of generations).
Yet if we ignore our observation of the gradual changes from a wolf to a Great Dane and from a wolf to a pug, we would surely consider them (Great Dane and Pug) to be different species. All of the changes in domestic dogs have been directed by us where weird jumps that could possibly result in dramatic changes to the species are eliminated (selected out). We not only speed up the morphological changes in Canis familiarus we restrict the development of new species from those same animals. We are a form of natural selection that is much narrower and constrained than what we observe in nature.
I've heard quite a few claim that dogs are still dogs so do not show evidence of evolutionary mechanisms in action, yet I have never heard any of those same people list off the mophological differences between the two most disparate sub-species and justify why they should be considered the same species. Are the morphological differences between a wolf and a Cheetah more dramatic than the differences between a Great Dane and a Pug?
As far as drosophilia is concerned, flies do not have 4 wings, they have two (Diptera). It can be convincingly argued that a 4 wing drosophilia is no longer a fruit fly but a member of Hymenoptera.
This is not said to claim that we have indeed artificially created a new member of Hymenoptera but to show that limiting observed evolution to that of the much misused and abused category of micro-evolution is an artificial and ill-founded construct.
Knowing something is a lie certainly rules out believing it is the truth.
Luk 24:12 Then arose Peter, and ran unto the sepulchre; and stooping down, he beheld the linen clothes laid by themselves, and departed, wondering in himself at that which was come to pass.
True. But what does this have to do with the question?
"Luk 24:12 Then arose Peter, and ran unto the sepulchre; and stooping down, he beheld the linen clothes laid by themselves, and departed, wondering in himself at that which was come to pass.
I assume this is meant to bolster the point given above, but what does this have to do with knowledge of a lie?
"The point I have been arguing here is that evolution is not inherently atheistic."
Why can't people figure this out? If God intelligently designed the world, then couldn't he have intelligentlky designed species to evolve into more complex life forms? Doesn't a human embryo evolve from a sperm cell and an ovary into a complex human being? If God didn't want anything to evolve, and wanted everything to work simply, then wouldn't full grown adults appear out of thin air the second a man and woman have sex?
Study the statements carefully. It might come to you. You see the truth of my statement and that is a positive indicator for your eventual discovery of the connection.
""You'd better hope not because from what I hear there's a pretty severe punishment for liars who bear false witness.""
As well as false teachers.
I am fascinated by the various interpretations of Genesis. For instance, the Jewish commentary (Chumash) says that God looked into the Torah to create the world, that the firmament divides between spiritual and physical, that portions of the Torah (including Genesis 1) cannot be common knowledge and thus is passed down orally from generation to generation among a very few.
Also, the word "myth" has morphed over the years to mean something factually incorrect and also, untrue. But historically, myths were used to convey truth which is 'beyond' simple language - or which survive regardless of language.
The parables for instance are like tiny myths. When Jesus was speaking of the sower and seed or the vineyard owner and the tenants, He was conveying Truth but not facts.
How can God experiment if he's all knowing. Kindof a paradox.
Thank you for your reply! In some worldviews, I would be a figment of your imagination - as would be all physical reality.
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