Posted on 03/09/2005 1:46:32 PM PST by metacognative
Opinions
There are valid criticisms of evolution
BY DAVID BERLINSKI
"If scientists do not oppose anti-evolutionism," said Eugenie Scott, the executive director of the National Council on Science Education, "it will reach more people with the mistaken idea that evolution is scientifically weak."
Scott's understanding of "opposition" had nothing to do with reasoned discussion. It had nothing to do with reason at all. Discussing the issue was out of the question. Her advice to her colleagues was considerably more to the point: "Avoid debates."
Everyone else had better shut up.
In this country, at least, no one is ever going to shut up, the more so since the case against Darwin's theory retains an almost lunatic vitality. Consider:
• The suggestion that Darwin's theory of evolution is like theories in the serious sciences -- quantum electrodynamics, say -- is grotesque. Quantum electrodynamics is accurate to 13 unyielding decimal places. Darwin's theory makes no tight quantitative predictions at all.
• Field studies attempting to measure natural selection inevitably report weak-to-nonexistent selection effects.
• Darwin's theory is open at one end, because there is no plausible account for the origins of life.
• The astonishing and irreducible complexity of various cellular structures has not yet successfully been described, let alone explained.
• A great many species enter the fossil record trailing no obvious ancestors, and depart leaving no obvious descendants.
• Where attempts to replicate Darwinian evolution on the computer have been successful, they have not used classical Darwinian principles, and where they have used such principles, they have not been successful.
• Tens of thousands of fruit flies have come and gone in laboratory experiments, and every last one of them has remained a fruit fly to the end, all efforts to see the miracle of speciation unavailing.
• The remarkable similarity in the genome of a great many organisms suggests that there is at bottom only one living system; but how then to account for the astonishing differences between human beings and their near relatives -- differences that remain obvious to anyone who has visited a zoo?
If the differences between organisms are scientifically more interesting than their genomic similarities, of what use is Darwin's theory, since its otherwise mysterious operations take place by genetic variations?
These are hardly trivial questions. Each suggests a dozen others. These are hardly circumstances that do much to support the view that there are "no valid criticisms of Darwin's theory," as so many recent editorials have suggested.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gandalf to you!
P.S. The LOTR always tilts when you get your ball in the Balrog cave!
"I will answer your question with a question.
Where did matter come from?"
Not being a scientist I can't say. I majored in Art History for the vast and lucrative post-graduate career prospects.
But I THINK it must come from the same place socks GO when you lose em in the dryer...
That's just a theory mind you.
There is no such thing as faith without an object. Nor can there be faith without facts and propositions. "Blind" faith is another matter. As far as I know everyone puts their faith in many things from moment to moment, day to day.
Blind faith says, "the earth is billions of years old" when there is no experience or testing to back it up. Ordinary faith believes the earth and natural laws will behave with the same consistency tomorrow as they did yesterday.
Faith with itself as an object is empty and absurd.
The mud then is lithified. Buried by sand dunes, which are lithified into sandstone. Then seas encroach and a barrier reef grows over it.
Then the whole shebang is lifted up to form a mountain range. The mud becomes slate and the sandstone becomes quartzite and the limestone becomes marble. And more formations erode from that range and form deltaic formations tens of thousands of feet thick. Then there is another mountain building cycle and another delta formed. And then another mountain building cycle as the ocean closes and three contintents are rammed together, rifting oceanic formations such as serpentine onto land.
Then the continents rift apart and long lakes form like in the Rift Valley of Africa. Redbeds are deposited, as well as diabase dikes in the existing formations. Then the mountains erode down to nearly level, followed by emplacement of batholiths as the continent drifts over two hot spots, which also cause a regional uplift.
And that's just the East Coast of North America, over a fragment of geologic time. The mountains of Colorado have undergone at least three mountain building cycles. Those processes take time. Lots of time.
First of all, humans have not evolved from fish. You seem to picture the tree of life as a sort of ladder with humans on the top, sharks farther down, et cetera down to bacteria. It is nothing of the kind.
Anyway, the evolution of complex organisms is a fine example of what is called a 'random walk.' Think about it: the initial life forms were necessarily simple and could not evolve to be simpler. But a subset could evolve to be more complex, so it did. With time there arose niches for more complex forms that were not there initially. For instance, certain unicellular organisms (prokaryotes) would band together into multicellular ones (eukaryotes), trading off independent reproduction for other benefits. In brief, the scope of complexity started out at rock bottom and could only increase by random changes as time went one.
As an analogy, think of companies. The first businesses to arise in a world would probably be one person efforts. In time it might be profitable for some such businesses to fuse and expand. Eventually you would observe a great range of company scales from one to many thousand employees, with the distribution skewed heavily toward the former. Noone would suggest that this development required a grand plan to come about. The increase in complexity happened because it could happen, whereas a decrease in complexity could not.
Survival of the fittest is itself a concept unique to living things. Living things are astoundingly unique as compared to inanimate nature. Why? Scientists don't know, and once again I will tell you they have observed natural selection and evolution, they have never identified its mechanism. Because they don't want it to have a purposeful mechanism. They want the same random mutations that fill jars at a freak show to randomly explain evolution. They don't.
In all areas science runs into a brick wall when it gets down to first causes and ultimate reasons for everything. The universe itself and subatomic quantum behavior get down to a point beyond which science says we can't see. So it doesn't matter what's inside a black hole, what existed prior to the big bang, or where a subatomic particle really is. But it does matter, and for some reason we care. And science has not found why.
Atheism is the cancer produced by Satan, eating away the truth regarding the Creator. The liar at work below.
Gen 3:4 And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:
Eternal torment await those following his paths. Avoidance is simple; look to the Son of God who was lifted up on the cross for all to see.
The editorial at the top of this thread is a decent start. Would you care to address any of its arguments?
Sock heaven.
Nature does not tend toward the complex. All nature is supposedly winding down through entropy to a state of nothing happening in the end. So why does nature bother to create life, which becomes more complex, which becomes conscious, which turns and contemplates nature? According to a purely mechanistic view this is all a bit of a random practical joke, because we are sitting around like foolish little machines and turning the illusion of our intelligence to meaningless questions such as "God" and "evolution." maybe it is all a meanigless random set of events, but there is more mystery to be discovered and for some reason we seem to be very interested in those mysteries. I think there's a reason, one we can't or certainly haven't approached.
I think your description of life and complexity was perfectly logical.
I take it you are arguing that science has not found a mechanism for speciation. It has in fact found several, including geographical isolation and genetic drift (allopatric speciation).
Yeah, I really get that impression from the insulting tone you use against the other side in the debate.
And part of the problem is that the creationists demand we demonstrate speciation within our lifetimes - when even rapid speciation can take thousands of years.
I don't understand what you are saying here. Species not individual organisms evolve (change genetic composition). Sometimes random changes in the direction of more complex organization are selectively retained by the environment, which is natural selection at work.
Nature does not tend toward the complex. All nature is supposedly winding down through entropy to a state of nothing happening in the end. So why does nature bother to create life, which becomes more complex, which becomes conscious, which turns and contemplates nature?
This is just the good old argument from thermodynamics, which is patently invalid. The 2nd Law only applies to closed physical systems, such as the universe as a whole. Earth is by contrast an open system which receives energy from the sun - a process instantiating said 2nd Law, by the way. The 'winding down' of the sun temporarily and locally enables an increased degree of 'organization' here on earth. This is a fascinating yet utterly non-mysterious process.
I think your description of life and complexity was perfectly logical.
Thank you sir. Why don't you accept it then?
Quite so. The confused argument about fruit flies in the article is a case in point. In fact it was doubly idiotic, as the researchers are presumably interested in, hence selecting for, preserving the species as it is, for the very same reason they picked it in the first place.
I don't see any problems believing matter always existed and the space it fills expands and contracts in a never ending cycle.
Of course it would be just as believable that God always existed except I've never seen any proof that God exists but I observe matter almost daily. So I tend to give more credence to the matter thingy.
No offense intended.
Once again, I believe science cannot demonstrate that random genetic mutations get confronted by the natural environment and result in the steady evolutionary progress we observe in nature. Even if nature acts through random mutations, why? Why does nature contain these mechanisms? Surely you realize that this approach results in all existence and all life being totally mechanistic and meanigless. Nature has created birds and bees and trees and you by pure accident, just as wind erodes rock. It's all just a very facinating accident of nature.
The first simple celled organism just happened to get started from some chemical elements and then these random changes just happened to evolve into all sorts of more complex creatutres, including those possessed of intelligence and consciousness. There are explanations and reasons beyond the random and science will not address them.
Genetic drift combined with random mutation leading to evolution is a theory, not a demonstarted mechanism for evolution.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.