Scientist: Evolution debate will soon be history

San Francisco Chronicle ^ | May 26, 2012 | FRANK ELTMAN

[eekitsagreek]

Richard Leakey predicts skepticism over evolution will soon be history.

Not that the avowed atheist has any doubts himself.

Sometime in the next 15 to 30 years, the Kenyan-born paleoanthropologist expects scientific discoveries will have accelerated to the point that "even the skeptics can accept it."

"If you get to the stage where you can persuade people on the evidence, that it's solid, that we are all African, that color is superficial, that stages of development of culture are all interactive," Leakey says, "then I think we have a chance of a world that will respond better to global challenges."

[exDemMom]

So you know Behe is a charlatan but you aren't familiar enough with his work to have a clue what I am talking about in reference to his work?

For anyone who is well-trained in science, recognizing a charlatan is as easy as recognizing a non-native speaker of English. The fact is that Behe has published very little in the way of genuine scientific articles, and the little he has published is narrowly focused on chemical reactions. Well, there was a letter to the Genetics journal where he tried to criticize some evolutionary mathematics, but it was rebutted immediately. He has limited his career by excluding any topic that requires evolutionary considerations--which includes most topics in the life sciences. His background does not mark him as an expert in evolutionary biology, nor does it suggest that he knows anything about the subject. He is the perfect example of a scientist who clings to dogmatic belief despite all evidence, and ends up not accomplishing much as a result.

I am unclear, are you attacking personal profit, or Behe's charge?

It is Behe and his ilk that I am attacking. I have nothing against someone earning a profit honestly.

I am not talking about research, I am talking about "The God Delusion", for example. Of course I would rather judge the ideas in a book, as opposed to its specific publishing arrangement with the author.

Is "The God Delusion" a book explaining someone's opinion? I had not heard of it before; I googled it just now. Since the existence of God is neither scientifically provable nor disprovable, no book on that subject can be a scientific book. For a scientist to make money from writing pro-evolution pieces, they would have to be able to publish writing based solely on science, and get paid for it. Some scientists have successfully marketed science to the lay public; if they make money from doing so, it has the virtue of being honestly earned.

So anyone who disagrees with you is an immoral anti-scientist out for profit? To you this is a scientific argument?

There are a number of anti-science efforts out there, and they are all immoral. This has nothing to do with whether someone agrees with me or not. I detest country music; I don't think country music fans are immoral. But people who lie about science as a means of separating people from their money are thoroughly immoral. People die because of anti-science; I can't think of a single redeeming aspect to it.

[Freedom_Is_Not_Free]

I figured that neither you nor anybody else could fill the massive holes in the theory of evolution that cause educated people like myself to doubt it.

That is some theory that can’t connect the dots between some 55 million year old ancestor of a horse and the predecessor fish that supposedly came from the primordial swamp.

Where you see an ironclad theory because you want to, I see massive assumptions that have to be made to believe this theory. It is definitely plausible, but goodness sake, you can drive a truck through any part of it, there is so much you have to simply take on faith.

To that extent, it is nearly like the theory of man made global warming. That you can’t trace a known fossil lineage of any animal on the planet makes the theory very weak. It takes a massive leap of faith to assume that because we know the horse evolved over the past 55 million years, than it must have evolved over the preceding 500 million years.

I’m just asking you to provide some evidence and you can’t. I didn’t expect you to. There isn’t any evidence. Nor for the tiger nor for the wolf. That’s my point.

So in the end, if you want to believe in the theory of evolution, which again it may be plausible, there is so much needed evidence missing, you can only believe it with a massive leap of faith on the scale that is needed to believe in man made global warming.

Sorry, but that is the fact of it. I’m not asking you to not believe it. I’m saying that the supporting evidence is extremely weak, so don’t tell me to accept it as fact when there is 500 million years of evidence we need to find before we can even hope to treat the theory seriously. Until then, we just don’t know what happened in that intervening 500 million years from fish to ancestor of horse do we?

I’ll be shocked if you can admit the fact that we can’t know what happened during this interval and that the theory of evolution could be completely wrong in explaining the rise of modern animals.

[Ha Ha Thats Very Logical]

In theory, phylogenetic trees can be constructed to include every organism from single cells up to modern multicellular organisms, but in practice, such a tree would contain so much information and have so many branches that it would be unreadable.

These people tried. It's a PDF, so you can zoom in and in and in--the fuzz you start to see around the edge after a few zooms is actually the names of species.

http://www.geog.ox.ac.uk/staff/rgrenyer-supertree.pdf

[Ha Ha Thats Very Logical]

"....Yet another hadrosaur has been described by UK scientists as "absolutely gobsmacking."8 Its tissues were "extremely well preserved" and contained "soft-tissue replacement structures and associated organic compounds."9...."

Just a tip: don't rely on Brian Thomas for your scientific facts. For example, in that story, he says "soft, squishy tissues have been discovered inside fossilized dinosaur bones." No, they haven't. They may be soft (in the sense of flexible), but they're nothing like "squishy." And the story he quotes doesn't say the tissues were well preserved, it says the dinosaur was well preserved, which could just mean the bones were mostly intact. And what was "gobsmacking" was that "You're looking at cell-like structures." "Cell-like structures"--does that sound like soft tissue to you?

Thomas is a propagandist and, yes, an anti-science charlatan. I call him that not because he disagrees with me, but because even though he has (or claims to have) a science degree, he distorts facts and quote mines to intentionally give people the wrong impression.

[SoFloFreeper]

Since Africa is the richest continent in terms of resources, why aren’t they the most developed?

Bush's fault.

[MD Expat in PA]

"....Yet another hadrosaur has been described by UK scientists as "absolutely gobsmacking."8 Its tissues were "extremely well preserved" and contained "soft-tissue replacement structures and associated organic compounds."9...."

Just a tip: don't rely on Brian Thomas for your scientific facts. For example, in that story, he says "soft, squishy tissues have been discovered inside fossilized dinosaur bones." No, they haven't. They may be soft (in the sense of flexible), but they're nothing like "squishy." And the story he quotes doesn't say the tissues were well preserved, it says the dinosaur was well preserved, which could just mean the bones were mostly intact. And what was "gobsmacking" was that "You're looking at cell-like structures." "Cell-like structures"--does that sound like soft tissue to you?

It should also be mentioned that the very tiny tissue fragments appear to resemble collagen rather than “red juicy squishy meat”; that may or may not be even be dinosaur tissues (to date no DNA has been found that could confirm or refute) and could be modern biofilms that recently invaded the fossilized bone as some scientists believe and which have already been confirmed are found in some fossilized bone, were extracted from deep inside fossilized bone after being soaked in acids. It is not, contrary to what young earth creationists like Brian Thomas claim or attempt to infer by quote mining and distorting actual scientific papers, as if the dinosaur fossils were dug up with red meat still clinging to the bones as if they had died just last week or a few thousand years ago.

And it should also be noted that Dr. Mary Schweitzer who first made the claim that she had found remnants of dinosaur tissues after having dissolved fossilized bones in acids, herself being an evangelical Christian, is not a young earth creationist and believes that the dinos lived and went extinct some 65 million years ago not in the last couple of thousand years ago. She’s horrified that some Christians accuse her of hiding the true meaning of her data. “They treat you really bad,” she says. “They twist your words and they manipulate your data.”

Thomas is a propagandist and, yes, an anti-science charlatan. I call him that not because he disagrees with me, but because even though he has (or claims to have) a science degree, he distorts facts and quote mines to intentionally give people the wrong impression.

BTW - Brian Thomas does have a BS in Biology 1989-1993 and an MS in Biotechnology 1997-1999 from Stephen F. Austin State University Nacogdoches, Texas, (a real Texas state school although a school that specializes in being a teacher’s college and agricultural school and what would be basically on par with a community college), but seems to have spent his pre and post grad career after obtaining a Texas State Teaching License in Secondary Biology from the Creation Research Graduate School, Dallas, Texas, in 1994, teaching at a various small Christian primary and secondary schools such as spending one year as a 7th Grade Teacher at the small Angelina Christian School, Lufkin, Texas and teaching at Dallas Baptist University, a school who’s Mission Statement in biology states: “The biology program at Dallas Baptist University is designed to produce knowledgeable individuals who have an understanding of the basic biological tenets of God's creation. The academic information is presented in a Christian context to enhance the students' ability to become responsible, caring citizens in society.” From 2008 on his full time job has been writing blogs and distorting the findings of real scientists for the Institute for Creation Research.

Citing Brian Thomas as a “boneified” and unbiased expert in paleontology and in advanced biology and field research (and one should also note that with his CC teaching degree and experience as a school teacher in Biology, he also claims to be an expert in the fields of Astronomy, Physics and Geology in his ICR blog posts) is akin to citing Paul Krugman and the NYT as an unbiased expert in the workings of free market economies. ; ),

[exDemMom]

Wow, that phylogenetic tree is truly amazing, although it looks like it includes only mammals. It’s also a little much for my poor computer to handle. :(

[exDemMom]

I figured that neither you nor anybody else could fill the massive holes in the theory of evolution that cause educated people like myself to doubt it.

By your criteria, it appears that there is no legitimate science. No matter what scientific discipline you choose, the gaps where knowledge is unknown and probably unknowable are far greater than the known and documented facts. Should we throw out medicine, because of the double whammy against it--not only do we still not know most of what could be known about the human body, but what we *do* know was discovered by biological investigation informed by the theory of evolution.

A theory is not meant to be an all-encompassing encyclopedia. It is meant to be a framework that coherently links all of the known facts, and gives the ability to predict where and how more facts may be discovered. Theories can be revised as necessary to refine their ability to encompass all of the known facts and predict new facts. Science is an iterative process.

Just because we can't pick a horse at random and trace its family tree, individual by individual, back to the original multicellular organism that gave rise to all mammals does not mean we can't deduce the most likely chain of events that led from there to here. Just like if you were to tell me that you drove across the US on I-80, I wouldn't need to specifically know which gas stations where you bought gas to deduce that you did stop and buy gas along the way. Even if there wasn't a single gas receipt in your car, and you paid cash every time so there was no paper record of those purchases, I would *still* be 100% sure that you bought gas. That is because there is no other plausible explanation for your ability to drive 3,000 miles.

I suppose you could claim that Hyracotherium, Orohippus, Hipparion, Plesippus, etc., were all more-or-less horselike animals created by God 6,000 years ago, and that Noah only brought horses, zebras, and donkeys aboard the ark and let the rest of them drown... there just isn't any scientific evidence to support such a belief. The scientific evidence supports an evolutionary process tying these animals together.

[mo]

Evolution is a bizarre self-entertainment.

[varmintman]

They've found proteins in some of the trex remains and those proteins are all but identical to those found in chickens, i.e. the trex was basically a big chicken with sharp teeth. Nobody has come up with an explanation as to how trex remains in Montana were "contaminated" by chickens...

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/health/12iht-web0412-dino.5261850.html

[varmintman]

BBC take on the hadrasaur with intact skin cells (non ICR source):

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8124098.stm

" You slice through this and you're looking at the cell structure of dinosaur skin. That is absolutely gobsmacking..."

Phil Manning, University of Manchester

This was all over the news when it happened, I simply posted the first reference which turned up yesterday. A Google search on 'hadrosaur' and 'skin cells' will turn up no shortage of articles, including no shortage of articles which do not involve evangelical Christians for the benefit of those here who view anything which Christians ever touch as fatally contaminated/tainted. I personally view anything which evolosers touch as tainted, but that's just me...

[central_va]

Liberal atheists believe the universe and all life happend spontaneously, and evolved on it’s own. But suddenly, NOW, every living thing, up to and including Earth, must be micromanaged for the betterment of all.

Wow.

[central_va]

People eventually will (and mostly have) accepted evolution, the way they accepted the heliocentric view of the solar system, or the Galilean version of gravity.

Anyone who has studied statistics, probability and higher level mathematics, which I have, cannot take the theory of evolution seriously. Most liberals eschew those subjects and fall prey to things like globull warming and evolution. Nobody is saying the natural selection doesn't alter species over time, but that cannot explain the origins of species.

I am always suspicious of Free Republic posters that have their old democratic past in their name. Deep down there is an air of superiority in that " I was a democrat so I was cool once but now I am like you". That bothers me. If I was an ex dem I would hide that fact out of shame.

[usconservative]

Sometime in the next 15 to 30 years, the Kenyan-born paleoanthropologist ....

Stop right there. This makes two Kenyan born idiots we don't need to listen to.

[central_va]

Imagine that the beneficial mutation in question is so good, that all 99,998 other die out immediately (from jealousy), and that the pair with the beneficial mutation has 100,000 kids and thus replenishes the herd.

If evolution theory were true all men would be hung like John Holmes.

But seriously, evolution of mammals seem to be a step function, with a lot of "suddenly appearing" phrases in the evos literature. The evos best trick is to claim the non-evos think the earth is 5000 years old. It is their last card in the deck.

[varmintman]

Anyone who has studied statistics, probability and higher level mathematics, which I have, cannot take the theory of evolution seriously.

---

That's what I've been saying. Evolution/evoloserism is basically not compatible with modern mathematics, probability theory, information theory or anything like that at all.

In fact no real science theory would survive five years worth of the history of disproofs which is involved in the theory of evolution. Evolution survives on pure inertia and quasi-religious belief.

[central_va]

Lets look at this human species graph from a mathematical perspective. At the tail end we have genus homo, showing h.erectus and h.heidlebeurgenus ending and h.neandertal and h.sapiens "suddenly appearing" in a short period of time. I have no problem with this. What I do have a problem with is trying to explain this as being caused by natural selection. No cross over species have been found, it is a step function by their own admission all are independent separate species. This is laughable on face value. Believe me, if any cross over species had been found it would have been MAJOR news.

No probability that a mutation occurred in a few thousand years that changed h.erectus into h.sapiens. No linear progression, are evos blind they will not see?

[trubolotta]

Right on target. I must say it was the study of thermodynamics and quantum mechanics that first raised my suspicions about evolution, but it was probability theory that drove the final nail in the coffin for me and information theory that pitched the last shovel of dirt on the grave. Evolutionists resist any intrusion by the real sciences into their totalitarian fantasy world.

[Sans-Culotte]

Bump for later.

[exDemMom]

Anyone who has studied statistics, probability and higher level mathematics, which I have, cannot take the theory of evolution seriously. Most liberals eschew those subjects and fall prey to things like globull warming and evolution. Nobody is saying the natural selection doesn't alter species over time, but that cannot explain the origins of species.

Really? I've studied statistics, and math up through college calculus. A strong math background was required in order to get an undergraduate degree in biochemistry and molecular biology, and was a prerequisite for applying to graduate school (PhD, same majors). Mathematical and statistical analysis is a requirement for publishing in any scientific journal. How anyone could think that mathematics and statistics are not applicable to the study of evolutionary biology--which encompasses most life sciences disciplines--is beyond me.

Feel free to enlighten me by providing links to the original research reports, and post the statistical analyses which demonstrate that the observations and analyses in the reports are mistaken.

I am always suspicious of Free Republic posters that have their old democratic past in their name. Deep down there is an air of superiority in that " I was a democrat so I was cool once but now I am like you". That bothers me. If I was an ex dem I would hide that fact out of shame.

Why? As a child, I had no choice about the fact that I was being raised in a family of far-left lunatics, and that I was thoroughly steeped in far-left attitudes and ideology. Being able to overcome that by critically thinking about and rejecting the attitudes of entitlement, victimhood, envy and resentment that are taught to poor liberals is a true accomplishment--most people raised that way remain steeped in those losing attitudes and usually never achieve anything. I never would have been able to go to college and eventually earn a PhD had I held on to those liberal beliefs. I'm proud of the fact that I overcame my background.