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.
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Could be that many organisms started in different environments all over the globe. Not just one.
No offense taken.
Do you ever wonder about the rules which regulate and sustain the matter. Or the mechanics that enable planetary bodies to gravitational form solar systems. Or the way nuclear chemistry results in an energy source that provides the impetus for life.
Sir Isaac Newton was thoroughly convinced that the laws of physics are a clear demonstration of a benevolent Creator. The universes potential is realized to the most staggeringly minute degrees to sustain life on our planet. We can test the unusuality of these tolerances to exist in our universe.
I give more credence to that anthropomorphic Creator thingy.
And i asked why this randomly created incredibly simple cell, existing in a world with absolutely nothing else alive in it, didn't just perish? Why would inanimate chemical processes produce living organisms that can reproduce and in fact evolve into complex living organisms? That first pathetically simple cell could have just died, or it could have just never existed.
You do realize that for some reason scientists have never been able to create life. The bottom line is science ignores the why of everything around us. science's "religion" is that there is no why. Yet strangely they are driven by a desire to know things. I'm sure that's just because in order to survive it became important for an animal to know what was behind the next rock. So this led man to randomly want to know what goes on inside an atom and around a black hole.
There is something more than pure inanimate randomness at work. Scientists don't want to know what it is. That nihilism is their religion.
But using science to validate Religious Mythology is just SILLY!
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Psssssst.... Islamofascists evolved from fruit flies !!! ;-))
As I am in Europe it is getting late and I must sign off, but I will reply to your remarks tomorrow.
Williams: Your latest posting, addressed to Dirtboy, may seem to be in response to me. Anyhow I plan to reply.
As of now, your second latest posting.
IF the scientists are right to fight against the notion of any purpose, they should all reasonably go home and do whatever the Hell they want. But for some reason tehy are driven to find things out and to pass that information on to the next generation.
Even if they are randomly created, they seem to be trying to give purpose to their own lives. that, and the mere fact we are having this conversation, demonstrates that something deeper is going on here.
The speciation examples I have read about don't seem compelling: two sets of creatures originally from the same population...after geographic separation for a period of time...their descendants can't produce offspring when reintroduced. Since the definition of different species is "can't reproduce" then this is speciation.
However, in my non-expert opinion, this seems a stretch to extrapolate a mechanism that results in inability to reproduce to account for the multitudes of the worlds species
A more compelling example would be a some obvious change along one of the dramatic evolution paths
It seems to me that in all recorded history, given the amount of trial and error that would be required to randomly produce complex structures found in nature (eye, wings, organs, metamorphosis, etc) mankind would have observed some changes, even though it's "only" been several thousand years
Never heard of coral?
In engineering terms, it takes multiple levels of inter-operating mechanisms to make a coral creating critter. More levels of sophistication than a modern silicon chip manufacturing facility.
Break it down!
Sure I wonder (not in those exact words though) But I reconcile those thoughts by coming to the conclusion that it was always that way. Gravity, matter, energy, cycles (the whole shabang) has always been there (here/everywhere). If I believed the laws of physics only existed, as we know them, at the whim of a higher being then I would have to believe they could be changed by the same whim. That would require a leap of faith that I, as of yet, have not been blessed with.
I would have to see evidence (for example) that all of the sudden an action no longer has an equal but opposite reaction anymore in order to believe what you do. And if that happened, boy would I believe. You betcha.
And yet, last time I looked The Sharks are losing
Oh. That is in reference to an insult to bloggers.
You guys are still arguing this stuff?
Get Drunk or something! I am...
How did you all get in my room anyway?
You are making the logical error of seein a result and automatically assuming that BECAUSE OF the result you observe, then the assumption you made in the first place MUST be true. Correlation does not mean causation. The fact that everyone born in 1800 is dead does not mean that air is poisonous to humans after prolonged exposure.
The chances of 200 amino acids just happening to get together in a way that could be considered life is 1 in 200! (read 200 factoral) and is calculated by multiplying 1 times 2 times 3 ... times 199 times 200. Yse your Windows calculator to verify the result. It is 1 chance in 7.886578e+374 (374 zeros after the decimal). And we know that to form even the most simple lifeform requires a much longer chain of amino acids and protiens. Any mathmetician will tell you that this chance is the equivalent of zero.
It's a clonal body you ignorant fool.
LOL Thanks. I needed a good laugh today. I tried to register my car which is with my daughter out of state, without an echeck.
Talk about superstitious nonsense. That echeck does nothing to clean the air, just cleans our pockets.
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