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.
And its also utterly irrelevant to anything I posted to you. I note that you didn't address any of my points; you just responded with a non sequitur.
Don't add to your stupidity in posting the original claim. You are the one making an absurd claim, that purified gold is transparent. The burden of proof is on you. Do you realise how bad this inability you have to accept reality makes you look? (and by implication how bad it makes your religion look)
Fall about laughing. The "everyone laughed at Columbus except the devout scripturalists" lie is my favourite creationist canard, as longtime evo posters will have noticed. Having the idiotic claim that pure gold is transparent in the same post was gilding the lily rather.
This is your brain on creationism!
Yes you are. You are assuming there are only two possibilities:
a. Jesus rose from the dead
b. The disciples knowingly went to their deaths for a lie
There are many other possibilities that you are a priori discounting when you offer up that dichotomy. The dichotomy only exists for those who already believe the Bible to be inerrant. For the rest of us who think that it may be partially or entirely false your dichotomy is no evidence at all.
That's codswallop. Metals, no matter how pure, are not transparent below their plasma frequency which is generally in the ultraviolet region of the spectrum.
This is a post I made some time ago on the same topic so I'm going to quote it here:
Actually it's due to interband transitions. In copper for instance, electrons from the filled 3d bands can transition to unoccupied states in the 4s band above the Fermi level. Thus, above a threshold of ca. 2eV, the reflectivity decreases drastically. Gold has a slightly higher interband absorption edge which is the reason why it has a yellowish color as opposed to copper with its reddish tinge. Silver on the other hand has no color (i.e. reflectivity is pretty high and constant over the whole visible spectrum) because it's threshold is at about 4eV which is in the ultraviolet region of the spectrum.
In the days since you and I used to swat this around, I noticed there's a standard template these conversations take. I'm curious to know what you think of it.
Then we can see how you do. I tend to disagree that the transitionals Darwin predicted 147 years ago have not turned up. I'd say he should be credited as being either a seer or the most incredibly lucky charlatan to ever publish a bad theory.
- Tap-Dancing Science-Denier declares that the fossil record lacks instances of things changing in an orderly series from some Thing A to Thing Z. As this kind of evidence is to be expected, the lack of it must weigh against evolution having happened. By the very statement of this objection we are invited to believe the Tap-Dancing Science-Denier would accept such evidence IF ONLY IT EXISTED but the thing is it doesn't exist.
- Someone who disagrees demonstrates many instances well known in the literature of fossil series intermediate in form and time between some Thing A and some Thing Z.
- The Tap-Dancer then declares fossil series evidence to be irrelevant. How do we know ... various things? The dates of the fossils? Whether fossil A lies exactly on the ancestral line of fossil B?
But wasn't the evidence valid when it was supposedly missing?
But first I'd like to know if you'd accept fossil evidence for transitionals IF ONLY SUCH EVIDECE EXISTED.
Darwin’s theory, a staple in science curriculums, states that evolution in organisms occurs gradually over time. His theory also states that gaps in the fossil record, in which there are missing links between the different phases of evolution in organisms are temporary because the linking fossils haven’t been found yet.And from further down the page, where someone posted another article on the same person:[Jeffrey] Schwartz [a Pitt professor in the department of anthropology and the department of history and philosophy of science], through research of the fossil record and use of Maresca’s findings about cell structure, believes otherwise.
“If you look at the fossil record, organisms didn’t gain new items like teeth and jaws gradually,” Schwartz said. “It’s not like fish developed bony teeth one piece at a time. It happened suddenly.”
A recurring theme in that conversation is one that creation scientists often seize upon. If life evolves gradually, where are all the “missing links”? Although that term conjures images of “ape-men,” the challenge to the theory is much more serious than that. The fossil record is riddled with gaps.If the fossil record weren't problematic for Darwinian evolution, which predicts slow and gradual change, why are scientists like Schwartz and Stephen Jay Gould (whose expertise on the subject far outstrip yours, I would assume) trying to work out models of Punctuated Equillibrium?Life forms evolve, it seems, in a kind of punctuated equilibrium. Successful species change slowly and gradually over millions of years, then new species originate suddenly, arising in dramatically different forms with, in many cases, no intermediate examples.
There are two general theories to explain this absence of transitional creatures. One group has insisted that the intermediate examples will be found; the other has argued that geographic separation and environmental change drive rapid development of new species.
Schwartz sides with the latter group and tackles two important unanswered questions in his “New Evolution” as to the underlying cause of novel characteristics that lead quickly to new species: “How will novelty look when it does appear?” and “how does more than one individual come to have a novel structure?”
No tap-dancing required; even scientists who believe in evolution recognize that the fossil record does not evidence slow change over time, but millions of years of stasis combined with sudden shifts in morphology.
Really? I asked you if you would accept fossil evidence for transitional species IF ONLY SUCH EVIDENCE EXISTED. Somehow, you managed to miss the point of my post.
You ran out and got an irrelevant datum. That is, you waved Schwartz saying there isn't any such evidence. That is to say, you have instantly, before even being confronted with any data, appealed to an "authority," a rapidly self-marginalizing voice in the wilderness--most authorities don't see a need for a "hopeful monster" theory--one with whom I obviously do not agree. We had a thread on Schwartz. Let me charitably speculate that he may be unacquainted with the evidence that he is wrong.
But what about you? How hard is my question? Would you accept fossil evidence for transitional forms unknown in Darwin's day if such were presented to you?
Because you're trying to play the issue: You're going to pick some form that appears to be morphologically between two other forms and declare it to be a transitional fossil. That quite misses the point.
My point is that the fossil record does not support smooth, constant change over time as Darwin's theory predicts. Rather, it supports species continuing essentially unchanged for millions of years (we'll assume your dating is correct for the sake of discussion) with abrupt "evolution" which takes place too quickly to be captured in the record. Thus, we have Punk Eek, the world's first "scientific" theory built to explain a lack of evidence.
Your tactic is good, but its logic quickly falls apart as soon as someone refuses to accept your definition of the transitional fossil problem.
For now, I'm just going to point out that the fossil record most definitely does not support smooth and gradual transitions over time, but rather millions of years of stasis followed by sudden "leaps" in evolution--that's why Gould came up with Punctuated Equilibrium, to explain the lack of smooth transitions.
Because you know I've got you nailed. What Darwin said would show up has shown up in abundance and you know it.
You're going to pick some form that appears to be morphologically between two other forms and declare it to be a transitional fossil.
I've got bags of them by now, as you no doubt have anticipated.
That quite misses the point.
No, it's exactly my point. You're claiming something reasonably to be expected in the fossil record isn't there, but it is. We have basically the fossil record our models of geology and evolution tell us to expect. Finding a dingbat like Schwartz (or a surgically mangled George Gaylord Simpson quote from 1944, or any other of a hundred creationist quote mines) does not help with this.
My point is that the fossil record does not support smooth, constant change over time as Darwin's theory predicts.
Then your point is wrong. Darwin on the Imperfection of the Geologic Record. Any quote you can mine from there implying a smooth and continuous record of change will be one of his well-known rhetorical questions which he goes on to rebut fully. But you won't try it because you're better than that, right?
Now, here's my main point. It's wrong to constantly tell people that something reasonably to be expected is missing if [as most creationists have done] it turns out that you have defined away that thing to where nothing, nothing, nothing can be it. Or [in your particular case] you have misstated the requirement for the thing to such a level that once again it is "missing" even though the expected amount of it has been found.
The Bible may hint at a tiny amount of science but it certainly is NOT a source if scientific information. You can go backwards and retrofit modern knowledge to bible passages (I assume you are doing so in the original languages it was written in and not in the translations).
As written, the Bible says "streets of gold". Most would assume "streets of gold." Why would God obfuscate clear science?
Strawman arguments, just for the record, are not lies. They are obfuscations or bad analogies at worst. Lying would be stating what I know not to be true as true.
Obfuscation ON PURPOSE isn't lying? A half-truth is a lie. Logical fallacies, when knowingly employed for the purpose of falsification ARE LIES. You don't get to redefine lying then say "given my new definition of lying, I am not lying." This is begging the question, big time (another fallacy but that is you CRIDers standard stock in trade).
Haven't done that...
Yes you have. When you are busted on a particular logical fallacy and you use it again, then you are lying.
I just think the spirit behind EvoThink is not spiritually benign. But that is a theological discussion that weighs the bios and words and deeds and beliefs of EvoThink's proponents -- following how John tells us to "Test all the spirits, for not everything is of God"" and not for this thread.
You can "think" all you want. Put up proof. Make a direct casual correlation between Evolution Theory and Spiritual Malignancy.
As I said before, we all know what kind of people deal in "feelings" instead of facts. The words and deeds of proponents of Evolutionists is no more at issue than the words and deeds of bakers, doormen, waitresses, race car drivers, CEOs or anyone else.
I have shown you to have much in common with the streets of Heaven: Transparent.
Scanning back through this, I see your assertions about the Bible being some sort of scientific text have been crushed. I mean crushed. Then the parts were run through a crusher. Then the crushed parts were crushed. Then the remaining powder was scattered to the 4 winds.
You should say "thank you" to all these people who have provided you with facts that you can't pretend to ignore.
And you also learned not to lead with Biblical Urban Legends.
I'm dense, you'll have to explain it to me.
The question is, how much, how quickly, and by what mechanism? Darwinism, proposing slow, gradual changes over time is shot out of the water by the fossil record, leaving us to speculate either on some form of Punk Eek, or requiring us to look in a different avenue entirely.
There is no 'who' necessary, both DNA and RNA by their nature replicate as a simple function of their chemical composition. Whether the DNA 'code' is more or less complex than computer code is irrelevant, computer code is not, by its very nature, capable of replication. It does not take intelligence for a group of chemicals to combine, all it takes is an influx of energy.
Actually, Darwin didn't predict that. You might want to look at this post by Ichneumon, it's post #66, where he quotes what Darwin had to say on that subject.
This statement appears to have no basis in fact. If you read over our exchange on this thread, you should already know better than to be saying this.
Blown out of the water, you come back with a simple restatement--to somebody else yet.
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