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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The Earth just is not a solar sail. The Earth is actually highly reflective, but most of the reflectivity is in the atmosphere, mostly clouds. The energy it is eating is not transmitted as kinetic energy to the surface at all. Ice cover is also very reflective, the so-called albedo effect. At any given time, however, most of the Earth's ice is near one or the other of the poles. These areas are icy precisely because they are very inefficiently irradiated. Again, the momentum transfer of photon to water molecule will not be transmitted without loss down through the lithosphere. The loss will in fact be something like 100 percent. It's all friction, all heat and no large-scale mechanical motion. That's where the energy goes and if it goes there, it can't push the Earth around.
If solar sail effects could push planets around, we would have spotted it in the orbit of Mercury. Mercury is very much closer to the Sun. It also has no atmosphere or oceans. Being far less massive than Earth, it has a more favorable surface/mass ratio and thus simply easier to move with a tiny but relentless push. Whether or not its as reflective, it should be a far better solar sail with all of the preceding going for it.
Doesn't happen. The day side gets spectacularly hot. It's still all heat loss. There is no notable acceleration out of its current orbit. There's a funny precession from other causes of the long axis about the Sun, but no net outward drift.
Stupid model. Period.
And no, science has not been able to "track" the micromutations that actually cause the complex evolution we see in nature. Micromutations occur, my wife unfortunately has a nasty one in her breast right now, but science has not demonstrated that RANDOM micromutations and natural se;ection fueled evolution. It is a theory and one which has neber yielded sufficient results.
I'm not anti-science. But if you think science is the work of advanced amoebas explain it to me. Why can't scientists take the amoeba and engineer an elephant? Both creatures contain the same elements.
And both lead and gold contain the same sorts of subatomic particles. Do scientists have to be able to transmute lead into gold before you'll take the periodic table seriously? (And you say you're 'not anti-science'?)
Exactly.
I cannot be neutral about my Christian faith. I'm going to give God the benefit of the doubt every time.
However, I do recognize when my interpretation of something is weak and that I need to re-engage what I take to be the facts. Not to do so would be to suggest that I believe in blind, unthinking "faith." Such faith is really no faith at all. Jesus told us to love God with our whole heart, soul, MIND, and STRENGTH. He doesn't want me to be a dummy.
Likewise, if someone acts toward Evolution in a "blind faith" manner, I can only assume they're one of the priests or priestesses of a "new age fossil cult."
Dumazz
If I'd seen this brilliant rejoinder before, I wouldn't have bothered posting to you. No need to reply.
Rats! You hadda go spoil the amateur hour catfight with some real professional doing the real number-crunching!
Yes, I'm cool with it. But you don't tear down mainstream science by insisting on reinventing the wheel for yourself and making a botch of it.
Your alternate is that "new life" might be springing up every day all the time and we just don't notice it because the first life of one billion years ago is just like what we have around today. So for some reason, this randomly created new life is identical to one billion years ago, yet you see no pattern or plan in the rules of nature which is more than "random."
Now who's clutching at straws to answer things they can't answer. Neither of your scenarios are scientifically proven, or reproducable in a laboratory or anywhere else by scientists.
I'm not a creationist, but those of you who are stone cold scientific materialists remind me of me about 30 years ago. You are sadly ignorant of the deep rift between science and religion which has left neither with the ability to answer all questions.
I was thinking that guy(?) on SNL.....
No, but scientists don't claim that lead transmutes into gold in nature. If they did or thought it did, they would attempt to repeat it in experiments.
What is the origin of life? I believe in Natural Selection occurring within a species for adaptation. But where did the species come from? Simple question that a smart lawyer like you should be able to answer. I know that I'm just a simple engineer but I have never witnessed a circuit designing itself. I can put boxes and boxes of components in a vat of mud and salt water and repeatedly hit it with high voltage and never get the simplist circuit to evolve. Yet I am to believe that the entire universe just happened?
Who's the bumpkin here? If you have to chase an ambulance and don't have time to answer, I understand.
Too late I answered. Hey look down the street a lady just spilled hot coffee in her lap and rammed a parked car!
You seem to have a problem with considering alternatives.
I don't.
Give me a while and I'll come up with a few more.
None of which have even the slightest impact on evolution theory, which, as everyone has been told repeatedly, has to do with the differentiation of species, not the origin of life.
Let's hope this guy doesn't do anything technical for a living. I would hate to have him do a safety estimate or work on mass-transit design or do a medical experiments.
However, I predict that no creationists will criticize the obvious math mistakes.
And THIS is why you CANNOT fling Jello from a catapult!
The model he used was for a small speck of dust. The Earth is a much larger speck of dust.
The model he used was for a small speck of dust. The Earth is a much larger speck of dust.
Didn't I address this????
Who you gonna believe?
That goofy Jesus dude who got himself killed, or a whole world of wisemen who say religion is bunk?
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