Replies

Darwin recanted on his deathbed.

He didn't, and the first person who made it up was likely lying. But those who cite it here are probably not. Anyway, rather than calling them liars why not just correct them by linking them to this AIG site?

Darwin is often quote mined here saying that he can't explain the eye and it gives him chills, when he goes on to say how evolution solves this *problem*. He is quite often quoted like that; take a rhetorical question/problem he raises and neglect to show how he actually answered it, trying to make it look like Darwin had no answer.

Quote mining is not necessarily lying. Of course TalkOrigins is another matter.

Here's what T.O. says about the Darwin and the eye:

Charles Darwin acknowledged the inadequacy of evolution when he wrote, To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree. (Darwin 1872)

Source:

Huse, Scott. 1996. The Collapse of Evolution. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, p. 73.

Response:

The quote is taken out of context. Darwin answered the seeming problem he introduced. The paragraph continues,

Yet reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a perfect and complex eye to one very imperfect and simple, each grade being useful to its possessor, can be shown to exist; if further, the eye does vary ever so slightly, and the variations be inherited, which is certainly the case; and if any variation or modification in the organ be ever useful to an animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, can hardly be considered real. How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light, hardly concerns us more than how life itself first originated; but I may remark that several facts make me suspect that any sensitive nerve may be rendered sensitive to light, and likewise to those coarser vibrations of the air which produce sound. (Darwin 1872, 143-144)

Darwin continues with three more pages describing a sequence of plausible intermediate stages between eyelessness and human eyes, giving examples from existing organisms to show that the intermediates are viable.

Now here's some of what they left out in the next "three pages". I won't post it all but I'll link to it to avoid the charge of "quote mining". The next paragraph:

In looking for the gradations by which an organ in any species has been perfected, we ought to look exclusively to its lineal ancestors; (CAN'T DO THAT) but this is scarcely ever possible, and we are forced in each case to look to species of the same group, that is to the collateral descendants from the same original parent-form, in order to see what gradations are possible, and for the chance of some gradations having been transmitted from the earlier stages of descent, in an unaltered or little altered condition. (CAN'T DO THAT) Amongst existing Vertebrata, we find but a small amount of gradation in the structure of the eye, and from fossil species we can learn nothing on this head. (In this great class we should probably have to descend far beneath the lowest known fossiliferous stratum to discover the earlier stages, by which the eye has been perfected.

THE NEXT PARAGRAPH -- The eyes of the Articulata.

THE NEXT PARAGRAPH -- He who will go thus far, if he find on finishing this treatise that large bodies of facts, otherwise inexplicable . . .(sorry quote mining :-)

THE NEXT PARAGRAPH -- It is scarcely possible to avoid comparing the eye to a telescope. We know that this instrument has been perfected by the long-continued efforts of the highest human intellects; and we naturally infer that the eye has been formed by a somewhat analogous process. But may not this inference be presumptuous? Have we any right to assume that the Creator works by intellectual powers like those of man? , , ,

When all else fails say God did it :-) Anyway Darwin had no good answer concerning the eye. I mean "Further we must suppose that there is a power always intently watching each slight accidental alteration in the transparent layers" is not real definitive.

The allegation that early evolutionists latched on to evolution not because of the evidence but because of it's ramifications for sexual morality. They usually quote Julian or Aldous Huxley, though neither said anything like that

Can't say I've seen that one.

Claiming that there is no evidence for evolution.

Evolution is a word sometimes ill-defined in the debate. If one says one does not believe in common descent, and cites the lack of transitionals prior to the Cambrian Explosion, one is not necessarily lying. And if you say there were transitionals yet one should reject what you claim them to be, one is not necessarily lying either.

Your refusal to even look at the dozens of lies regarding quotations chronicled at TalkOrigins attests to your unwillingness to face the facts.

I often look at TalkOrigins. They are blinded by a bias far more unreasoning that anything at ICR, AIG or even DU.

" When all else fails say God did it :-) Anyway Darwin had no good answer concerning the eye."

Yes he did. And creationists who should know better lie and say that Darwin had no answer.

"But those who cite it here are probably not. Anyway, rather than calling them liars why not just correct them by linking them to this AIG site?"

I've done that. I was told I was reading his mind and that I just didn't want to accept that Darwin recanted. Never mind the absurdity of him recanting to a stranger and not telling his wife who would have been overjoyed to hear he had regained his faith.

"Now here's some of what they left out in the next "three pages". I won't post it all but I'll link to it to avoid the charge of "quote mining". The next paragraph:"

Yes, Darwin further explains how natural selection can account for the eye, despite the common claim by creationists that he had no answer and was troubled by the eye. You additions (Can't Do That!) are nice examples of the kind of deceit that is common with anti-evos; Darwin didn;t say that nor did he imply that.

The next paragraphs are lame attempts at humor.

" When all else fails say God did it :-) "

Nothing he said even implied this. Again, another example of creationist *creative editing*.

"Anyway Darwin had no good answer concerning the eye."

Sure he did. Besides, the accusation was that he had NO argument at all; that he was puzzled and troubled by the eye. This is horse manure.

" Evolution is a word sometimes ill-defined in the debate."

I said that creationists say there is no evidence. This is a lie.

" I often look at TalkOrigins. They are blinded by a bias far more unreasoning that anything at ICR, AIG or even DU."

And you are too blinded by your biases and and your fears to dare look at the links I gave you. Because they show top creationists in shameful lying. The claim is made that if people accept evolution, they will act like animals and reject all morality. Anti-evos like the ones listed have no business lecturing anybody about morality.