Why Do You Keep Boring Us with Darwinism?

From Sea to Shining Sea ^ | 5/19/08 | Purple Mountains

[PurpleMountains]

I’ve written several columns about my skepticism regarding Darwinism. Each time I do I receive snooty comments attesting to my stupidity and my ignorance. The Darwinists never seem to want to discuss any of the points I have tried to make, just to ridicule the very thought that there may be some kind of guiding intelligence behind the structures, the amounts of information, the complexities, the fine balance and the mysteries of life and our universe.

If anything is subject to ridicule, it is the answer that the world’s leading proponent and defender of Darwinian dogma, Richard Dawkins, gave to Ben Stein when Stein asked him about the origin of life.

[Coyoteman]

Statistically, there should be tens of thousands of accidental mutation species that are the in-between species that didn’t quite work out for every species that now exists. The problem is, there is no fossil evidence of these in-between species. Just lots of fossils of those species that exist or did exist. Seems a little odd that we find hundreds of thousands of fossils of fully developed species, but not any that I’ve heard of the in betweens. In my mind, that leaves Darwinism just as a theory - an idea still awaiting proof.

In science, the highest level of attainment is a theory. "Proof" is not possible using the scientific method. I have a lot of definitions of these terms, and others, as they are used in science on my FR home page. Please take a look. The terms are often used differently in science than in common usage.

I think your problem with the "in-betweens" may be a misunderstanding of how evolution works.

There are no huge jumps between one generation and the next; there are small changes -- you differ from your parents and your grandparents, but not by much at all. Normally, with limited amounts of selection pressure, thousands or tens of thousands of years could go by with little change in a population. However, given higher degrees of selection pressure, change occurs quickly. If you couple this with the "founders effect" and throw in a lot of time, what creationists call macro-evolution occurs. But note that each generation differs only slightly from the previous one. There is no "fish giving birth to a bird" that some creationists expect, even demand, to see in the fossil record.

But if you are looking for "in-betweens" (transitionals) there is evidence of these in the fossil record. This is evidence that everyone but creationists accept.

Here is one example of a transitional. Note its position in the chart which follows (hint--in the right center):

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Fossil: KNM-ER 3733

Site: Koobi Fora (Upper KBS tuff, area 104), Lake Turkana, Kenya (4, 1)

Discovered By: B. Ngeneo, 1975 (1)

Estimated Age of Fossil: 1.75 mya * determined by Stratigraphic, faunal, paleomagnetic & radiometric data (1, 4)

Species Name: Homo ergaster (1, 7, 8), Homo erectus (3, 4, 7), Homo erectus ergaster (25)

Gender: Female (species presumed to be sexually dimorphic) (1, 8)

Cranial Capacity: 850 cc (1, 3, 4)

Information: Tools found in same layer (8, 9). Found with KNM-ER 406 A. boisei (effectively eliminating single species hypothesis) (1)

Interpretation: Adult (based on cranial sutures, molar eruption and dental wear) (1)

See original source for notes:
Source: http://www.mos.org/evolution/fossils/fossilview.php?fid=33

Source

[Coyoteman]

Darwinism, or more accurately, the modern synthesis of evolutionary theory, is the underpinning of modern biology. It is unclear to me why you feel necessary to link it to Nazism and Soviet Communism; my impression from the beginning of your piece was that you are interested in the truth of evolution. Surely you would agree that the truth of an idea is unrelated to whether evil persons abuse it.

Some folks find it easier to libel Darwin and the theory of evolution by shouting "Nazi" than actually studying the evidence and learning enough to make meaningful criticisms of the theory.

Studying the evidence might take years of intense work, but any rabble-rouser can shout at passers-by from his soapbox.

[DeLaVerdad]

A Christian will see everything through the lens of the Scriptures. Same as a heathen will see everything though a lens of disbelief.

Can I get an "amen!?" - That was a divinely inspired response ... gave me chills!

[antiRepublicrat]

The many hoaxes perpetrated by advocates of this fairy tale

Always, always, always the creationists fail to add that it is the other "advocates" themselves who exposed and discredited the hoaxes.

[antiRepublicrat]

Darwinism ranks right up there with global warming as part of the new mythology

Natural Selection, 150+ years old and counting, conceived by a man who at the time was extremely devout. Had to succeed on scientific merits as the underdog despite shouts of heresy from the religious establishment.

Global Warming, around 25 or so years old, initiated and pushed by leftists, globalists and other chicken littles since the Global Cooling scare didn't pan out.

I don't see any parallels.

[valkyry1]

Call it a transitional if you will, but that is not a fossil, it is a composite built up of what looks like well over a hundred fragments. And they are all 1.75 mya?

The flow chart is conjecture. How many times in the last 40 years or so have these kind of flow charts been re-arranged?

What is the history of KNM-ER 3733? how many fragments is it made up of, over how large of an area were the fragments obtained from, and how much time did it take to get the fragments.

When fellows draw these certain conclusions from such evidence, they are reaching way beyond science to do so.

[antiRepublicrat]

Hitler believed that the human gene pool could be improved by using selective breeding similar to how farmers breed superior cattle strains.

Yet according to Darwin's theory, what Hitler did in order to get this superior race would make his society get selected against. Hitler operated on a 180-degree opposite misunderstanding of Darwin, and thus lost to more fit societies exactly as predicted by Darwin.

[dr_lew]

Do we have to run through the entire spiel every time a thread shows up.

I was gonna, but I was a little too slow on the draw.

[LiteKeeper]

Baloney!

[LiteKeeper]

Peppered moths in England
Haeckel's Embryos
Darwin's Finches

[Coyoteman]

Peppered moths in England
Haeckel's Embryos
Darwin's Finches

I dealt with the first two already upthread.

The extensive work on Darwin's finches done by the Grants shows in some detail how microevolution works, including details of transmutation and the power of natural selection (Weiner 1994). In the years that the Grants have been studying the finches, we would not expect to see macroevolution.

Darwin's finches show a pattern of morphological differences that indicate that they all derived from a common ancestor. The difference between the woodpecker finch and the large ground finch are about as great as those within the whole finch family. Darwin's finches do not show macroevolution occurring, but they are evidence that it has occurred. Source

None of these show evidence of being "fakes" -- when it was claimed that there were thousands of such examples of fakes.

For all of the claimed "fakes" out there, I am the only one that named any -- Piltdown and Archaeoraptor.

Looks like "fakes" aren't as common as it was claimed, eh?

[Oztrich Boy]

A Christian will see everything through the lens of the Scriptures.

Can I get an "amen!?"

You can have an "IshAllah", much the same thing

[antiRepublicrat]

Baloney? That Dover school board didn’t do anything until the Discovery Institute advised them and the Thomas More Law Center offered to represent them in the inevitable lawsuit. It was a setup. Unfortunately for them, they had already shown their religious agenda, so the Discovery Institute pulled out because it didn’t want to be involved in a negative test case. Too late.

And don’t forget, your guys perjured themselves under oath to God during the trial.

[LetTruthBeTold]

3rd Java man: Initially discovered by Dutchman Eugene Dubois in 1891, all that was found of this claimed originator of humans was a skullcap, three teeth and a femur. The femur was found 50 feet away from the original skullcap a full year later. For almost 30 years Dubois downplayed the Wadjak skulls (two undoubtedly human skulls found very close to his "missing link"). (source: Hank Hanegraaff, The Face That Demonstrates The Farce Of Evolution, [Word Publishing, Nashville, 1998], pp.50-52)

4th The theory of embryonic recapitulation asserts that the human fetus goes through various stages of its evolutionary history as it develops. Ernst Haeckel proposed this theory in the late 1860’s, promoting Darwin’s theory of evolution in Germany. He made detailed drawings of the embryonic development of eight different embryos in three stages of development, to bolster his claim. His work was hailed as a great development in the understanding of human evolution. A few years later his drawings were shown to have been fabricated, and the data manufactured. He blamed the artist for the discrepancies, without admitting that he was the artist. (source: Russell Grigg, "Fraud Rediscovered", Creation, Vol. 20, No. 2, pp.49-51)

5th The most recent and perhaps the most infamous evolution frauds was committed in China and published in 1999 in the journal National Geographic 196:98-107, November 1999. Dinosaur bones were put together with the bones of a newer species of bird and they tried to pass it off as a very important new evolutionary intermediate. "Feathers For T-Rex?", Christopher P. Sloan, National Geographic Magazine, Vol. 196, No. 5, November, 1999, pp.99,100,105 Interesting Quote - "National Geographic has reached an all-time low for engaging in sensationalistic, unsubstantiated, tabloid journalism" Storrs L. Olson, Smithsonian Institution http://www.nwcreation.net/evolutionfraud.html

[Oztrich Boy]

3rd Java man: Initially discovered by Dutchman Eugene Dubois in 1891, all that was found of this claimed originator of humans was a skullcap

Which matches perfectly on the skull of the "Turkana Boy" one of the most complete skeletons of early man ever discovered, some 90 years later.

Yet Creationists see one as a hoax, the other as fully human

"Java man in Asia. However, in time it was realized that these two fossils are not reliable......"Turkana Boy," which was found near Lake Turkana in Kenya. It is confirmed that the fossil was that of a 12-year-old boy, who would have been 1.83 meters tall in adolescence. The upright skeletal structure of the fossil is no different from that of modern man. The American paleoanthropologist Alan Walker said that he doubted that "the average pathologist could tell the difference between the fossil skeleton and that of a modern human." http://www.darwinismrefuted.com/origin_of_man_05.html

[Coyoteman]

Java Man: Here is a good discussion of the subject. I see no "fake" there. Creationist Arguments: Java Man

Haeckel's drawings: already discussed in a previous post. Not a fake.

Chinese find/National Geographic: That is Archaeoraptor which I mentioned in my first post. Remember, I asked for five examples of fakes, and spotted you Piltdown and Archaeoraptor.

Nobody else has come up with a true fake on this thread.

Not as easy as it looks, eh? And certainly does not justify the claim of a previous poster of a fake exposed almost every day.

[Caramelgal]

If anything is subject to ridicule, it is the answer that the world’s leading proponent and defender of Darwinian dogma, Richard Dawkins, gave to Ben Stein when Stein asked him about the origin of life.

A lot of folks are claiming this is the great “gotcha” moment of the movie Expelled - silly atheist scientist exposed – he actually believes in space aliens!

But that’s not exactly what Dawkins said:

Toward the end of his interview with me, Stein asked whether I could think of any circumstances whatsoever under which intelligent design might have occurred. It's the kind of challenge I relish, and I set myself the task of imagining the most plausible scenario I could...

Like Michael Ruse (as I surmise) I still hadn't rumbled Stein, and I was charitable enough to think he was an honestly stupid man, sincerely seeking enlightenment from a scientist.

I patiently explained to him that life could conceivably have been seeded on Earth by an alien intelligence from another planet (Francis Crick and Leslie Orgel suggested something similar — semi tongue-in-cheek). The conclusion I was heading towards was that, even in the highly unlikely event that some such 'Directed Panspermia' was responsible for designing life on this planet, the alien beings would THEMSELVES have to have evolved, if not by Darwinian selection, by some equivalent 'crane' (to quote Dan Dennett). My point here was that design can never be an ULTIMATE explanation for organized complexity...

Of course Dawkins’ full comments were left on the cutting room floor because they did not serve the purpose of the film. I think Expelled would have been a much more interesting and important movie if Stein and the producers would have offered a more open and honest dialogue between creationists (ID’ers) and evolutionary scientists and not interviewed the scientists like Dawkins and PZ Myers under false pretenses and used Fahrenheit 9-11 – Michael Moore style “documentary” techniques mixed with a bit of Borat style lame attempts at humor. It might have also been more interesting to hear from evolutionary biologists who are not ardent atheists, like Francisco J. Ayala who wrote the book “Darwin's Gift: to Science and Religion” – “Ayala points out that science and religion perform different roles in human understanding: science offers a way of knowing the material world, but matters of value and meaning—the core of religion—are outside of the scope of scientific investigation”.

As far as attempts to link evolution and Darwin with genocide, anti-Semitism, abortion and homosexuality, I would point out that all these existed long before Darwin was born.

[Ethan Clive Osgoode]

How about Hagel’s embryos and the gray moths in England, quickly to add a couple?

A better question is what isn't fake science in Darwinism? We had Biometry, a fake science. Eugenics, a pseudo-science pushed by Darwinians through their eugenical societies (and the immense damage to society because of it.) Anti-Mendelism on the part of famous Darwinians. Fraudulent ape-man "restorations" by McGregor (and many others). The Rockefeller-funded Peking man BS. The same dog-eat-dog patently false Malthusian-Darwinian philosophy in textbooks from the 1900's to the 1960's to 2001 to today. And, one of the supposedly greatest work of Darwinian science - Fisher's Genetical Theory of Natural Selection - is a pile of nonsense - you should read it just to see for yourself. Especially amusing are the parts where Fisher tries to explain why genetically unfit bums have more kids than the genetically fit upperclass british twits. And, by no means least of all, we have their endless ravings about religion, the Bible, and philosophy permeating through so many of their books. Even Moody gets into it in his 1962 textbook on Evolution. Talk about retardation of science.

You can download a lot of that stuff here: Inbred Science

Oh yeah, concerning moths and mimicry and all that. Poulton did a lot of early work on that. He served as a vice president of the Eugenics Society along side another vice president, which you may know, Alfred Ploetz. Yes, Alfred Ploetz served on the board of the Eugenics Society when Leonard Darwin was president.

[Ethan Clive Osgoode]

Fossil: KNM-ER 3733

How many pieces did it come in?

[Ethan Clive Osgoode]

5th The most recent and perhaps the most infamous evolution frauds

Bathybus Haeckelii was an interesting Darwinian scientific fraud, with quite a bit of repercussion at that time. If you go to my FR page, you can download the masterpiece of fake science, Men of the Old Stone Age by Henry Osborn (think horse evolution, Nebraska Man, Piltdown Man). I'm looking at a page right now, featuring a glorious "restoration" of what looks to be a human man's body with an ape-head stuck on top. Also, check out this 1932 article Missing Links by the famous Darwinian John R. Baker and enjoy the fake science show.