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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?