If you said "a whale", you're wrong! The correct answer is "the existing dots do not have the required granularity to support any interpretation of the big picture"...
Posted on 12/13/2004 7:42:25 AM PST by Gritty
Destroying the unqualified and unjustified myth that "only religious fanatics oppose Darwinism", Dr. William Dembski's collection of essays presents a powerful and convincing case that exposes the many flaws and problems of Darwinism. Rather than having an agenda, the intellectuals that contributed to Uncommon Dissent exemplify the objective, rational, and scholarly manner in which they have both examined the various evolutionary theories and exposed these theories' many inconsistencies, oversights, and errors. The eloquence and thoroughness with which these essays critically analyze the Darwinian dogmas reveal that fanatical devotions to unproven theories are prevalent mainly in the mainstream secular scientific community - not among the many scholars and scientists who dare question the veracity and universality of various evolutionary models.
One of Dembski's key objections to the assertion that random changes created the vast complexity of life is a fitting summary of the structural problem of evolutionary thought. Dembski notes that "this blind process, when coupled with another blind process, is supposed to produce designs that exceed the capacities of any designers in our experience." This theoretical and chaotic process has been proposed and promoted by Darwinists as fact without the required scientific evidence to back it up. Furthermore, the intolerance shown to dissenting voices that question evolutionary theories reveals a dangerous pattern of repression and censorship within the scientific establishment.
The missing fossil data needed to support evolution is a crucial argument expressed by many of the book's contributors. If Darwin was correct, then scores of transitional animal forms must exist in the geological record. However, as Phillip E. Johnson points out:
The fossil evidence is very difficult to reconcile with the Darwinist scenario. If all living species descended from common ancestors by an accumulation of tiny steps, then there once must have existed a veritable universe of transitional intermediate forms liking the vastly different organisms of today… with their hypothetical common ancestors.
Such evidence simply does not exist. According to Cornelius G. Hunter:
The observed fossil pattern is invariably not compatible with a gradualistic evolutionary process. The fossil record does not reveal a pattern of accumulated small-change.... New species appear fully formed, as though planted there, and they remain unchanged for eons.
In the face of such convincing evidence, one would expect evolutionary scientists to acknowledge some serious flaws in their theories. After all, science should be about searching for the truth. Unfortunately, Johnson notes:
When the fossil record does not provide the evidence that naturalism would like to see, it is the fossil record, and not the naturalistic explanation, that is judged to be inadequate.
Instead of admitting the problems and allowing for criticism, the Darwinist establishment ignores the data and muzzles the dissenters, choosing to discredit the messengers rather than face reality. As Dembski observes:
Darwinism has achieved the status of inviolable science, combining the dogmatism of religion with the entitlement of science.
Michael J. Behe's "irreducibly complex" organisms present yet another stumbling block for Darwinists. He observes that most organisms are "irreducibly complex, meaning they need several parts working together in order to function." According to Behe, this creates "headaches for Darwinian theory because they are resistant to being produced in the gradual, step-by-step manner that Darwin envisioned." For evolution to work, all the complex biochemical systems needed for an organism to live must "evolve" simultaneously and in perfect synchronization so this new creature can eat, remove waste, move, and survive. Since evolutionists maintain this must all happen by chance, only an enormous miracle (or an intelligent designer) can explain these countless chaotic processes instantly coming into existence -- with just the right fine-tuning and harmonization -- to allow even the simplest organisms to stay alive. Darwinism's gradual steps and trial and error explanations simply do not suffice.
Uncommon Dissent promises to not only "detail the weaknesses of Darwinian evolutionary theory," but to also show that "the preponderance of evidence goes against Darwinism." In both respects, the essays meet and exceed these expectations. Given Dembski's own impressive academic credentials and the solid intellectual qualifications of his contributors, this book provides a strong dissenting voice to challenge the many half-truths, obfuscations, and mistakes of mainstream evolutionary thinking.
The central weakness or "fatal flaw" of Darwinism is its inability to explain the existence of both rational thought and the origins of the inherent complexity of life evident in the huge variety of organisms and their immensely intricate DNA code. The very existence of such a "code" implies that a rational force was needed to encode it. Creationists like to call this God, while Darwinists call it chaos.
While Darwin's theory seems to explain how small-scale evolutionary changes or limited natural selection processes could operate within certain species, it fails miserably to describe, as Robert Koons observes, how such functional forms and processes "came to be there in the first place" and, as Edward Sisson notes, it "tells us nothing about when and how the genes we see today first came into existence." The cavernous gap that exists in the scientific evidence purporting to prove how one-celled organisms "evolved" into man remains an immense and significant problem for Darwinists. As James Barham so eloquently notes:
Epic poems and Boeing 747s do not come into existence by themselves, no matter how much time is available - and neither do cells, or even proteins.
Darwinists demand a bigger miracle than any creationist could ever claim, as they assert that "only matter in mindless motion" gave birth to intelligent life and consciousness. Indeed, the faith required to believe that chaos allowed inanimate matter to become alive and to eventually develop into rational beings is far greater than the faith needed to acknowledge that an intelligent Creator designed it all from the beginning. Dembski is quite correct when he concludes, "Getting design without a designer is a good trick indeed."
Chris Banescu is an attorney, entrepreneurial businessman, and university professor. He manages the conservative site OrthodoxNet.com, writes articles, and has given talks and conducted seminars on a variety of business and religious topics.
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A philosophy based on Darwinian evolution can lead to excellence, as the best prosper (i.e. Darwinism = capitalism and entepreneurship), while Creationism leads to full blown Fascism and Communism (i.e. you were Created the way you are, and efforts to change that are affronts to God).
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Boy, do you need to read up on your history. Darwinism was the driving philosophy of Nietzsche, and Mein Kampf was a foundational tenet of Fascism.
You see, unlike your supposition that Darwinism promotes the prospering of the best, what it actually teaches is that the inferior do not deserve to LIVE. Darwinism is about the purpose of LIFE, not material gain. If you are not superior, you don't get to live. Hitler's Final Solution was a direct result of Darwinistic thought.
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I love that analogy.
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Too bad you aren't applying it correctly. The actual fossil record, if you were to make the analogy would be the equivalent of a movie of three frames. In the first frame the horse is standing. In the second frame the horse is air-borne, legs curled under the body. In the third frame the horse is standing again.
From these three frames, you then conclude that horses can fly.
I like how you hang two completely unrelated propositions together like this - that comma covers a multitude of sins, so to speak.
Well, at least you get the point, even if you think the entire set of evolutionary fossil evidence consists of three specimens.
You really think many people are going to believe that?
I've got this bridge .......
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Well, at least you get the point, even if you think the entire set of evolutionary fossil evidence consists of three specimens.
You really think many people are going to believe that?
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The point is that the fossil record does not demonstrate the granularity your analogy calls for. To use some physics terminology, the quanta represented in the fossil record is too large to support the speciation declared by evoultion.
Evolution is currently divided into two camps: gradual change and punctuated equilibrium. The fossil record does not support gradual change; the fossils are too discrete. This is why punctuated equilibrium was proposed in the first place. However, punctuated equilibrium has even more serious problems (a satisfactory mechanism to accomplish it).
There are other problems as well. The effects of genetic drag from negative mutations predict that evolution of the current biosphere would take 40 to 400 billion years.
If evolution is a constant gradual process, we should be able to observe various speciations occurring by taking a statistical sampling of the current biosphere.
Irreducibly complex systems cannot be explained by gradual minute changes in an organism, and several biological systems for which we have developed a very good understanding (human blood clotting for example) appear to be irreducibly complex.
Evolution cannot explain the origins of life and therefore is, at best, an incomplete theory.
I'm not a creationist in the sense that is normally attacked on these threads, but I am extremely discouraged by the evolutionary community refusing to even acknowledge that these obvious problems with the theory exist. That's an indication of a dogma at work, not a science.
If you said "a whale", you're wrong! The correct answer is "the existing dots do not have the required granularity to support any interpretation of the big picture"...
Thanks for the ping!
This statement is in apparent contradiction to empirical evidence, for example the posting after yours, about the popularity of books such as Chariots of the Gods and The Bermuda Triangle.
Perhaps a better way to say it would be "does not enhance your credibility among those given to careful thought, carefully worded statements, and checking their facts."
E.g. many of the better posters on Free Republic :-)
And then they have the nerve to look surprised when someone more knowledgable than them corrects them.
OTOH, this can happen even among "specialists" : I once read (possible urban legend, here...) that one of the most famous Physicists of the 20th century was tasked (at the age of 19 or so) of writing a 200-page encyclopedia article on relativity. Some of his misunderstandings, thus ensconced in an 'unimpeachable' source (at least to the lay person), propagated for quite a long time before they were corrected.
Full Disclosure: I've made some classic boners of my own on Free Republic. This post may be one of them ;-)
Look around friend, and beware of your spelling; someone might stune your beeber. :-)
I thought the Dean Drive ended early in the primaries. YEARRRGH!!!!
Seriously, I never heard of the Dean Drive. Can you point me to a decent explanation?
If it were obvious, more people would accept it at face value.
Please recall that humanity as a whole (well, at least the Western World) finally adopted empiricism over scholasticism sometime in the 1400's - 1600's or so.
And from that point there has been enormous effort to study things systematically, and to communicate these results using standard terminology, with thousands--or millions--of people devoting their entire lives to study.
So "obvious" now is like playing historical Monday-Morning Quarterbacking.
As a further example, please look up various postings on
"The Physics of The Road Runner Cartoons" and compare to Aristotle's De Caelo.
Anyway, Jerry Pournelle has an interesting write-up of his experience with the Dean Drive here.
Your opinion. Many others disagree. For a fact it is always easy to say "there isn't enough evidence" and refuse to be satisfied.
The images of the running horse that show that it was moving have an infinite amount of evidence missing. Take two adjacent frames and demand we acquire the missing frame in the middle, then demand the two missing frames between those three, etc. etc. forever.
You will never be satisfied.
I don't know enough details about the various sub-theories regarding evolution. Punctuated equilibrium, etc. But I have hiked the Grand Canyon and was amazed at the hundreds of feet of nearly identical rock that suddenly changed character completly, signalling a significant change in climatic conditions. The idea that such major changes would open huge holes in eco-systems allowing new niches for species is rather obvious.
Science isn't perfect, and new ideas about evolution are entertained every day. But rolling into school boards and demanding they teach about a supernatural being is just outside bounds of the realistic.
But you do have a point about believing that irreducably complex systems could just come into being on their own. How you plan on explaining where such an irreducably complex being such as God came into existence is beyond me.
Not a good conclusion to jump to on their part--the Bible never mentioned that Jesus ever sneezed, either...
Such people need to remember that, while the Bible has not changed over all these millennia, our necessarily flawed human understanding of it has.
Not a good conclusion to jump to on your part, without further explanation. Some would argue that Biblical prohibitions on adultery and perjury are outmoded, too...
(ahem, Clinton, cough, cough, ahem)
By what rule do you tell what is actually outmoded from what is only falsely claimed to be outmoded? (spell it out in more detail; such technological marvels as the wheel, fire, algebra, and scientific concepts such as atoms and the small size of the Earth compared to the fixed Universe come from long ago, too; yet we have managed to distinguish them from errors such as phlogiston and ether, and a geocentric solar system which are also ancient...)
We used to believe, as recently as 140 years ago, that the Bible said that the owning of another human being in a condition of slavery was acceptable, and some even went so far as to say that the Bible said that this was a desirable condition for both the master and the slave. We no longer believe this.
Don't take this out of context, please; in addition to the misquotation of both Old and New Testament implicit here, you are forgetting that many of the foremost abolitionists (e.g. Wilberforce) were strong Christians. And the Christian world has outlawed slavery, while large portions of the East (think sex slaves) and Mohammedean countries (think the Sudan) practice slavery to this day.
It can be fun to bash Christians; but don't allow yourself to become the counterpart of the stereotype which you attack, please.
Cheers!
??? real-life examples, please???
E.g. Adolf Hitler, that fascist, stated in (more or less) a campaign speech in oh, 1932 or so, that "one is either a German or a Christian, you cannot be both"; and at the funeral of one of the older German Statesmen (IIRC it was Hindenberg), he proclaimed, "Now, enter thou into Valhalla."
Neither of these is indicative of Christianity; his antipathy to Jews is cliched...
But I bet you could easily tie "survival of the fittest" to "the Master Race"...
Full Disclosure: you mentioned fascists, so I gave a counterexample of the archetypical fascist.
Cheers!
Elsie, who designed the Intellegent Designer?
I'm probably just easily peaved- I don't like when people profess that evolution is fact nor do I like when people irresponsibly knock it. I'm sure I've put my foot in my mouth more than a few times, but I at least try not to overstate things for the sake of an arguement. Evolution (I should clarify meaning speciation- not simply the change in allele frequencies across generations (see I'm careful, lol) is a working theory. Sure there are some problems with it, however the more we learn the more we are able to refine it. That is science!
YEC SPOTREP
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