Evolution - Verdict - Not proven

Fred on Everything ^ | March 7, 2005 | Fred Reed

[rcocean]

Evolutionists are obsessed by Christianity and Creationism, with which they imagine themselves to be in mortal combat. This is peculiar to them. Note that other sciences, such as astronomy and geology, even archaeology, are equally threatened by the notion that the world was created in 4004 BC. Astronomers pay not the slightest attention to creationist ideas. Nobody does—except evolutionists. We are dealing with competing religions—overarching explanations of origin and destiny. Thus the fury of their response to skepticism.

Like any zealots, they cannot recognize their own zealotry. Thus their constant classification of skeptics as enemies (a word they often use)—of truth, of science, of Darwin, of progress.

[rcocean]

Great column on Evolution - Not a science, just another religion.

[My2Cents]

(Waiting for the Darwin apologists to show up, flail their arms around, protest that evolution is a "proven fact" without offering any proof.)

[Ignatius J Reilly]

Time to round up the troops (ie all of us "Darwin Apologists"?)

[Ignatius J Reilly]

by proof do you mean the fossil record, DNA mapping or what?

[the OlLine Rebel]

I have had a question about what is called "evolution" for a long time.

In biology we are taught that species have a certain # of chromosome pairs in their DNA.

How did species evolve "naturally" and change the qty of chromosomes? How could this be?

Maybe there's an explanation, but I don't know it myself.

Anyway, I don't see "evolution" quite the way it's presented. I think it's perfectly plausible God did indeed "evolve" things - but He did it His way, either forcing His own breeding plans to happen and create new things by mutation, or even periodically creating things out of thin air while others had existed for eons, and likewise killing off some. I don't know. But I don't accept that "evolution" could happen totally w/o God's interference. Heck, I don't even know how life could start at all w/o Him.

[mike182d]

proof as in: "we can use our theory to predict with a high degree of probability future occurances" - like every other scientific theory can and not just make claims about the past.

[gdani]

Note that other sciences, such as astronomy and geology, even archaeology, are equally threatened by the notion that the world was created in 4004 BC

No - I don't think anyone gets too worked up by crackpots who think the world is only 6,000 years old.

[My2Cents]

The fossil record is hardly proof, unless you're suggesting it as proof that Darwin was wrong.

[My2Cents]

I think it's perfectly plausible God did indeed "evolve" things - but He did it His way, either forcing His own breeding plans to happen and create new things by mutation

Why would God bother? If this is the way it happened, it suggests that God applied trial-and-error to the rise of species. If he couldn't get it right the first time, but had to "tinker" to give rise to the lifeforms He wanted, this brings into question the concept of an all-knowing, all-powerful God.

[My2Cents]

Percisely. Proof like, "apply the scientific method of experimentation-results-duplicating results to evolution." Can't be done; hence, it doesn't meet the criterion for "science."

[PatrickHenry]

Thanks for the ping, but this article is such total nonsense that I'm not going to bother the evolution list. (Unless there's some popular demand.)

[the OlLine Rebel]

Why do you assume such a theory necessitates God not knowing what He's doing?

It doesn't. It could mean only that he's playing with things.

The problem w/the defensive positions of the "creationists" is that they tell me how I'm assuming God can't do anything - yet why in the world would God need "7 days" to do anything? Do you thus think He cannot do it all *instantly*? How then is 7 days that different from 7 epochs? Do you have little faith in God's ability?


God can do anything He wants. He could have created everything - absolutely everything - in a millisecond.

He didn't have to take a *slow* 7 (our Earth) days. He didn't have to take billions of (our Earth) years, either. But maybe He did. Maybe He did either way just for the heck of it.

So again - why would God bother - to waste 7 days and not just create everything in a nanosecond? ;-)

[JFK_Lib]

This tactical demonization is not unique to evolution. “Creationist” is to evolution what “racist” is to politics: A way of preventing discussion of what you do not want to discuss. Evolution is the political correctness of science. But they didn’t answer the questions. They ducked and dodged and evaded. After thirty years in journalism, I know ducking and dodging when I see it. It was like cross-examining hostile witnesses. I tried to force the issue, pointing out that the available answers were “Yes,” “No,” “I don’t know,” or “The question is not legitimate,” followed by any desired discussion. Still no straight answer. They would neither tell me of what the early oceans consisted, nor admit that they didn’t know. This is the behavior not of scientists, but of advocates, of True Believers. I used to think that science was about asking questions, not about defending things you didn’t really know. Religion, I thought, was the other way around. I guess I was wrong. ..... A caterpillar has no obvious resemblance to a butterfly. The disparity in engineering is huge. The caterpillar has no legs, properly speaking, certainly no wings, no proboscis. How did a species that did not undergo metamorphosis evolve into one that did? Pupating looks like something you do well or not at all: If you don’t turn into something practical at the end, you don’t get another chance. Think about this. The ancestor of a modern caterpillar necessarily was something that could reproduce already. To get to be a butterfly-producing sort of organism, it would have to evolve silk-extruding organs, since they are what you make a cocoon with. OK, maybe it did this to tie leaves together, or maybe the beast resembled a tent-caterpillar. (Again, plausibility over evidence.) Then some mutation caused it to wrap itself experimentally in silk. (What mutation? Are we serious?) It then died, wrapped, because it had no machinery to cause it to undergo the fantastically complex transformation into a butterfly. Death is usually a discouragement to reproduction. Tell me how the beast can gradually acquire, by accident, the capacity gradually to undergo all the formidably elaborate changes from worm to butterfly, so that each intermediate form is a practical organism that survives. If evolutionists cannot answer such questions, the theory fails. Here the evolutionist will say, “Fred, caterpillars are soft, squashy things and don’t leave good fossils, so it’s unreasonable to expect us to find proof.” I see the problem. But it is unreasonable to expect me to accept something on the grounds that it can’t be proved. Yes, it is possible that an explanation exists and that we just haven’t found it. But you can say that of anything whatever. Is it good science to assume that evidence will be forthcoming because we sure would like it to be? I’ll gladly give you evidence Wednesday for a theory today? ...... What is consciousness? Does it have a derived definition, like f = ma? Or is it an undefined primitive, like “line” or “point”? With what instrument do you detect it? Is something either conscious or not, or do you have shades and degrees? Is a tree conscious, or a rock? How do you know? Evolution means a continuous change over time. How do you document such changes? Do we have fossilized consciousness, consciousness preserved in amber? Does consciousness have physical existence? If it does, is it electromagnetic, gravitational, or what? If it doesn’t have physical existence, what kind of existence does it have? If you cannot define it, detect it, or measure it, how do you study its evolution, if any? Indeed, how do the sciences, based on physics, handle the physically undetectable? Speculation disguised as science never ends. For example, some say that consciousness is just a side-effect of complexity. How do they know? Complexity defined how? If a man is conscious because he’s complex, then a whole room full of people must be even more conscious, because the total complexity would have to be more than any one fellow’s complexity. The universe has got to be more complex than anything in it, so it must be motingator conscious. Ah, but the crucial questions, though: (Again, the possible answers are, “Yes,” “No,” “I don’t know,” or “The question doesn’t make sense.”) First, does consciousness interact with matter? It seems to. When I drop a cinder block on my foot, it sure interacts with my consciousness. And if I consciously tell my hand to move, it does. Second, if consciousness interacts with matter, then don’t you have to take it into account in describing physical systems?

[JFK_Lib]

This tactical demonization is not unique to evolution. “Creationist” is to evolution what “racist” is to politics: A way of preventing discussion of what you do not want to discuss. Evolution is the political correctness of science.


But they didn’t answer the questions. They ducked and dodged and evaded. After thirty years in journalism, I know ducking and dodging when I see it. It was like cross-examining hostile witnesses. I tried to force the issue, pointing out that the available answers were “Yes,” “No,” “I don’t know,” or “The question is not legitimate,” followed by any desired discussion. Still no straight answer. They would neither tell me of what the early oceans consisted, nor admit that they didn’t know.

This is the behavior not of scientists, but of advocates, of True Believers. I used to think that science was about asking questions, not about defending things you didn’t really know. Religion, I thought, was the other way around. I guess I was wrong.

.....
A caterpillar has no obvious resemblance to a butterfly. The disparity in engineering is huge. The caterpillar has no legs, properly speaking, certainly no wings, no proboscis. How did a species that did not undergo metamorphosis evolve into one that did? Pupating looks like something you do well or not at all: If you don’t turn into something practical at the end, you don’t get another chance.

Think about this. The ancestor of a modern caterpillar necessarily was something that could reproduce already. To get to be a butterfly-producing sort of organism, it would have to evolve silk-extruding organs, since they are what you make a cocoon with. OK, maybe it did this to tie leaves together, or maybe the beast resembled a tent-caterpillar. (Again, plausibility over evidence.) Then some mutation caused it to wrap itself experimentally in silk. (What mutation? Are we serious?) It then died, wrapped, because it had no machinery to cause it to undergo the fantastically complex transformation into a butterfly. Death is usually a discouragement to reproduction.

Tell me how the beast can gradually acquire, by accident, the capacity gradually to undergo all the formidably elaborate changes from worm to butterfly, so that each intermediate form is a practical organism that survives. If evolutionists cannot answer such questions, the theory fails.

Here the evolutionist will say, “Fred, caterpillars are soft, squashy things and don’t leave good fossils, so it’s unreasonable to expect us to find proof.” I see the problem. But it is unreasonable to expect me to accept something on the grounds that it can’t be proved. Yes, it is possible that an explanation exists and that we just haven’t found it. But you can say that of anything whatever. Is it good science to assume that evidence will be forthcoming because we sure would like it to be? I’ll gladly give you evidence Wednesday for a theory today?
......
What is consciousness? Does it have a derived definition, like f = ma? Or is it an undefined primitive, like “line” or “point”? With what instrument do you detect it? Is something either conscious or not, or do you have shades and degrees? Is a tree conscious, or a rock? How do you know? Evolution means a continuous change over time. How do you document such changes? Do we have fossilized consciousness, consciousness preserved in amber? Does consciousness have physical existence? If it does, is it electromagnetic, gravitational, or what? If it doesn’t have physical existence, what kind of existence does it have?

If you cannot define it, detect it, or measure it, how do you study its evolution, if any? Indeed, how do the sciences, based on physics, handle the physically undetectable?

Speculation disguised as science never ends. For example, some say that consciousness is just a side-effect of complexity. How do they know? Complexity defined how? If a man is conscious because he’s complex, then a whole room full of people must be even more conscious, because the total complexity would have to be more than any one fellow’s complexity. The universe has got to be more complex than anything in it, so it must be motingator conscious.

Ah, but the crucial questions, though: (Again, the possible answers are, “Yes,” “No,” “I don’t know,” or “The question doesn’t make sense.”)

First, does consciousness interact with matter? It seems to. When I drop a cinder block on my foot, it sure interacts with my consciousness. And if I consciously tell my hand to move, it does.

Second, if consciousness interacts with matter, then don’t you have to take it into account in describing physical systems?

[JFK_Lib]

Lord, I am having some connectivity issues or something today.

The above two posts are questions from Fred's column I thought it would be interesting to see some answers to, though I doubt any evilutionista will deign to bother.

But there they are anyway.

I have always enjoyed Freds columns and this one is a gem.

[js1138]

Third, evolutionists are obsessed by Christianity and Creationism, with which they imagine themselves to be in mortal combat. This is peculiar to them. Note that other sciences, such as astronomy and geology, even archaeology, are equally threatened by the notion that the world was created in 4004 BC. Astronomers pay not the slightest attention to creationist ideas. Nobody does—except evolutionists.

That would be because creationists are not stupid enough to try putting teachers in jail for teaching physics.

But wait, they did burn one at the stake for saying the stars are suns like our own.

[JFK_Lib]

Well, lets see, Christendomk around for roughly 1500 years - jailed one evolutionist teacher and maybe burned another at the stake. Feeling generous, lets throw in the 3000 or so the Catholic Inquisition had executed over its entire history as well.

Bring us to about 2 people per year average.

Now, in comparison, lets look at modern atheistic states in their ever so breif era of 1917 to today, 88 years. We observe that thes atheistic states ahve slaughtered anywhere from 60 million in the Soviet Union to around 90 million, and from 80 million to over 250 million in China, and assorted other millions in various third world countries. For ease of calculation let just truncate it down to a good ole round 140 million and drop the change.

That averages out to about 1,590,000 per year.

Hmm, 2/anum vrs 1.6 mil per anum.

Yeah, atheists sure are the victims, here.

We are all much better off under atheistic scientific secular regimes run in the name of the people and Proggress rather than some dusty ole Xtianity.

ROTFLMAO!!!

[JFK_Lib]

Excellent post.

I think God built it all into the fabric of the universe in the very instant of the Big Bang and hasnt done anything to assist it since. Sort of an incredible cosmic 5 bank corner shot on a long table with the eyes closed.

But yeah, He is that good.

[r9etb]

DNA mapping or what?

DNA mapping wouldn't be "proof" of evolution, but rather an exercise in showing where the information content in DNA might be (the latest articles seem to show that there may not always be a straightforward correlation between traits and DNA structure).

Moreover, given the increasingly successful human ability to manipulate DNA to achieve desired ends, I'd say that the existence of DNA, in and of itself, probably does not provide conclusive proof that evolution alone is responsible for the development of life. DNA may indeed be the mechanism for evolution, but (as with human activity) it could also be the mechanism by which the dreaded "intelligent agents" manipulated the development of life.

Now, it's possible that evolution alone is responsible for what we see -- but the fact that we can manipulate DNA makes it impossible to rule out the possibility that somebody else did, too.

[billybudd]

From the full article:

I bear no animus against the theory, and champion no competing creed.

Hahaha! Good one!