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.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There are similarities and differences in biology - and those can be measured. A human skull is more similar to a chimpanzee skull than it is to an alligator skull. That is an objective fact that nobody can disagree about. But that doesn't mean there is evidence for design in nature. One person's qualifications for design may not be accepted by another. Maybe there is design, but we can't measure it yet.
Science is becoming the handmaiden of theology again from global warming to gay genes. It's just that the theology is not a Christian one.
Science may have had its greatest moments in the 19th Century when the existence of God and the supremacy of Christian mores weren't being disputed.
So did Harvey Threwittowicz.
Interesting verbage. I would think blueprint is associated with a design.
Chimpanzees are our closest species relative, sharing 98% of our DNA. Can you seriously deny that chimpanzees are closer to us than other species, such as alligators? If you don't deny it, then that would mean speciation somehow took place.
How does the result -- chimpanzees sharing 98% of DNA -- prove anything about the process?
Maybe the Designer made everything from the same DNA toolbox, so things look similar from a DNA standpoint...
Lem'me guess;
It's just not fair?
We didn't get a good start?
It's to confusing?
What about orphans?
It'll never play in Hoboken.
It doesn't explain Bryan Boitano.
Concerning the relatedness of chimps and humans, what else is science go by? How can you deny the significance of the evidence we can see and simultaneously accept design, which has no objective evidence? As far as automobiles go, we have plenty of evidence, a memory and historical record, that we designed them. I don't believe it's a good comparison. Furthermore, automobiles do not transmit genetic information and cannot evolve into more specialized beings. I wish they did. I would be doing my utmost to intelligently design my can into a Ferarri.
"Harvey Threwittowicz"
HIM? He still owes me MONEY!
Get used to it, he still hasn't learned the lesson.
If an intelligently designed, inanimate object cannot accomplish the things of nature due to the limitations of intelligent design, should we think nature can accomplish the transmission of genetic information completely apart from the same?
I only ask that no determinations are pronounced until all sides have been given a full, fair and objective hearing.
Too complex? Or he just couldn't specify things well.
The Weinberg et als.' paper that I cited documents the following direct evidence of speciation observed under controlled conditions: In 1964, Dr. D. J. Reish removed 5 or 6 polychaetes (Nereis acuminata) from Los Angeles/Long Beach Harbor, and grew his sample to a size of thousands. In 1986, four pairs from this group were brought to Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; the population at Woods Hole thus had gone through two bottlenecks, which are supposed to help drive evolution through genetic drift. In 1977-1978, two new cultures of N. acuminata were gathered from nearby Long Beach and Newport Beach, and grown under the same conditions as the Woods Hole sample. The three populations were later crossed, and it was found that the only crosses that would not produce viable offspring were the crosses involving the Woods Hole culture and the two new cultures. This signifies nothing less than speciation, and all in the laboratory as well.
There are literally hundreds of other observed instances of speciation taking place in real-time. See http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html
I have driven across them. I have even seen the remnants of the ancestral Rockies. (Pedernal Hill near Vaugh, NM.) I have also been at the Marathon uplift of the once mighty Texas Ouchita mountains. I have climbed the great Guadalupe ocean reef.
The Sangre de Christo's seem to be rather young; the Jemez even more so. Paracutin is young too.
FYI, the supposition is that human and chimp descended from a common ancestor species which was neither human nor chimp.
Also, you have the logic inverted. Common descent is the hypothesis and similarity the evidence. It is not only morphological similarity, but genetic as well. The hypothesis of common descent could have been disproved by the genetic evidence (unknown when the theory was formulated), but instead was confirmed by it.
That potential falsification is what makes evolution a scientific theory as opposed to ID which makes no predictions, being consistent with all outcomes.
Do you want the nuclear weapons safety computations to be done with the accepted physics of radioactivity? Or with a creationist version?
Those stored new you can be done with the creationist verison of physics if you so wish. I do have one question though: "Do you feel lucky, Punk?"
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.