Posted on 01/27/2007 4:40:50 PM PST by balch3
One of my favorite early Steve Martin routines went something like this: "Would you like to make a million dollars and pay no taxes? OK. First, make a million dollars. Now, just don't pay any taxes; and if somebody from the IRS asks you about it, just say … 'I forgot!'"
Nonsense? Sure. But funny, especially as Steve delivered it? You bet.
But there's some absurd nonsense, not especially funny, being taught our school kids every day, in almost every school in America.
Darwin's theory of evolution.
(Column continues below)
"But it's science," you say. No, not really. Certainly, not yet, if it ever will be. It's a theory, an extremely farfetched, unproven theory and – at its base, its fundamental core – terribly unscientific!
To me (and I'll explain, so stay with me) this theory is exactly like Steve Martin's joke. It starts with a wish, a desire, proceeds through a ludicrous construction or process, and leads to a preposterous conclusion.
But this unfunny joke has been taken very seriously by a host of scientists, and now most educators, and it has been universally accepted as "fact" by most universities and school systems. And woe to the teacher, from grade school through college, who dares to question this improbable, unproven theory. If he or she dares to suggest or present the alternative theory of Intelligent Design – the vastly more plausible notion that this incredible universe and all living things point logically to a Creator with an intelligence far beyond our feeble comprehension (no matter how many Ph.D. degrees we might have among us) – lawsuits and intimidation will surely follow that teacher.
In one of his many excellent and substantive mailings, D. James Kennedy drew my attention to Tom DeRosa, who grew up Catholic in Brooklyn and spent his high-school years at a Catholic seminary. He was voted "Best Seminarian" in 1964, but one year later, instead of taking vows to enter the priesthood, he became an atheist.
His encounter with Darwin in college led to that decision. "There was a point where I became so rebellious that I yelled out, 'No God!' I remember saying, 'I'm free, I'm liberated,'" DeRosa recalled. "I can do what I want to do; man is in charge! It was pure, exhilarating rebellion!"
That rebellion soured after a while, and after 13 years as a respected public-school science teacher, he experienced a spiritual awakening that completely changed his perception of existence – and science. He's now founder and president of the Creation Studies Institute and author of "Evidence for Creation: Intelligent Answers for Open Minds."
Did his IQ leak out his ears? Did he cease being a scientist? Far from it; he became a real scientist, an honest seeker after truth who could look at facts without a predisposed belief and actually see the obvious all around us.
As a real scientist, he looked again at what he'd gullibly accepted in college. And, examining the prevalent claim that life "evolved" from molecule to man by a series of biological baby steps, tiny mutations over millions of years, he realized there is no historical evidence for that claim. He writes, "Millions upon millions of fossils have been collected to date, but there is no evidence of transition fossils, that is, fossils of organisms in an intermediate stage of development between steps on the evolutionary ladder."
Had you thought about that? If all life on this planet were actually in a process of "evolution," would every species evolve in lock step, regardless of different environments? Or wouldn't there be all the intermediate steps still in evidence, at various places around the globe? Wouldn't there be plenty of evolving apes, tending toward homo sapiens, in the jungles and rain forests, possibly developing verbal skills and capable of elementary math and reasoning?
None such. Ever. Nada. Apes have always been apes, and humans always human (though some of us less so than others).
I wonder if any science teachers today ever share with their students that Charles Darwin acknowledged "the extreme difficulty or rather impossibility of conceiving this immense and wonderful universe … as the result of blind chance or necessity." If the originator of the theory of evolution and the author of "The Origin of Species" (the book which later students eagerly used as an excuse to leave a Creator out of the picture) couldn't imagine everything we see and know happening without some design and purpose – why should any of us?
Why indeed?
Could it be that this whole evolution idea has grown out of a deep desire to escape the implications that necessarily accompany the concept of an infinite Intelligence, a Creator? If humans want to prove some theory, no matter how farfetched and self-serving, they will inevitably find some "evidence" that they can wedge into their theory.
Some years ago, Johnny Carson had a lady on his "Tonight Show" who had a large collection of potato chips, each of which she said resembled some famous person. And if you looked at the chip from a certain angle, and maybe squinted just right, you could see what she was referring to. While she bent down to carefully select another chip, Johnny removed one she said looked like George Washington, and replaced it with one he had under his desk. Then, when she had straightened up, he "absentmindedly" picked up the substituted chip and put it in his mouth, crunching loudly. The horror on her face was a huge laugh for the audience, and Johnny quickly relieved her, handing back the George Washington potato chip, intact.
This decades-long scavenger hunt, in which intelligent and educated seekers keep digging up artifacts to "prove" an unprovable and patently unscientific concept, is very much like the potato chip lady on "The Tonight Show": You see what you want to see. Whether it's there or not.
I'm grateful to Joseph Farah and the editors here at WND for letting me take this space each week. This topic, I feel, is so important – and I've got so much to say about it – that I'll pick up here, in this space, next week. I hope you'll stop by.
Related special offers:
"The Case Against Darwin"
"Tornado in A Junkyard: The Relentless Myth of Darwinism"
Pat Boone, descendent of the legendary pioneer Daniel Boone, has been a top-selling recording artist, the star of his own hit TV series, a movie star, a Broadway headliner, and a best-selling author in a career that has spanned half a century. During the classic rock & roll era of the 1950s, he sold more records than any artist except Elvis Presley. To learn more about Pat, please visit his website.
Yes it is. So what? Everything in science is based on theory. What's the problem?
No. The scientific definition of evolution is a change of allele frequencies over time.
Just out of curiosity, can you provide an example of a specie that ever existed that no longer exists in any form--such as reptiles. There is a bit of bait-and-switch in most evolutionary discussions. No one debates whether species vary with environmental conditions. That's called adaptation. What's in question is whether one species can become another one. Can you provide even one example of that with evidence?
Hank
In that respect ID is equal to the theory of evolution.
BTW, has anyone seen the fossil remains of the predecessor of the trilobite,or a photo of same?
Please direct me to a source. My home state, by legislative edict, proclaimed the trilobite its State Fossil, hence my curiosity.
Newton had a Theory of Gravity? Care to share it?
Reptiles aren't a species, Einstein, they're a class of vertebrates. There are many extinct classes of vertebrates. Placoderms and Acanthodines are good examples.
And why are there no examples of ape to human transitions?
http://www.phy6.org/stargaze/Sgravity.htm
Newton's theory of "Universal Gravitation"
Asuch Evolution is a valid theory that has not been falsified. Secondly, science has never proven a thing. It is strucutred to falsify (prove wrong) things. Evolution has never been falsified.
Humans are apes. As for fossilized remains of human ancestors, there have been literally hundreds of threads posted with examples.
Taken at random from your link:
"So here's the summary of the horse sequence. For more info, see the Horse Evolution FAQ. Loxolophus (early Paleocene) -- A primitive condylarth with rather low-crowned molars, probably ancestral to the phenacodontid condylarths.
Tetraclaenodon (mid-Paleocene) -- A more advanced Paleocene condylarth from the phenacodontid family, and almost certainly ancestral to all the perissodactyls (a different order). Long but unspecialized limbs; 5 toes on each foot (#1 and #5 smaller). Slightly more efficient wrist."
Notice the "probably" and "and almost certainly", those take it out of the realm of fact and put it into the realm of theory. Good try but, not in my court.
An Alabama Judge
Sorry, my / sarc did't come through in my post to you.
"Ok if we evolved from apes why are they still here?"
"Or wouldn't there be all the intermediate steps still in evidence, at various places around the globe?"
Pat Boone answered your question for you, inaccurately. Some common primate ancestor diverged into several different ecological niches, gorillas, orangutangs, baboons, chimps and man. If I recall there is about ~98% compatible DNA between chimps and man.
I fail to see why the theory of evolution as it stands is incompatible with the idea of a creator. Only the biblical literalists have trouble with this.
Anyway, I'm not getting my science or theology from Pat Boone, thank you very much.
REVIEW OF "The Strange Tale of the Leg on the Whale" by Carl Wieland
( Source: http://www.edwardtbabinski.us/whales/whale-leg.html )
The author of the above article denies that the vestigial pelvic bones in modern day whales (which are also found in other cetaceans like dolphins and porpoises) is a vestigial pelvis. He writes: "They [evolutionists] believe this even though these strips of bone have a known function [to anchor the male reproductive organ], differ in males and females, and are not even attached to the vertebral column." The author apparently does not consider that vestigial organs can also be put to new and different uses which is one of the hallmarks of nature's jury-rigged ways. And the fossil record of early whales includes one with a tiny pelvis and tiny rear legs (Basilosaurus) possibly used to aid in copulation, so the adaptation of the vestigial pelvis bones in modern whales (as an anchor for the penis) seems to have an evolutionary pedigree. The fossil record of whales eventually includes critters with a pelvis that no longer articulates with the vertebral column. So the identification of those small bones in whales / dolphins / porpoises as a "vestigial pelvis" suggests itself rather neatly. (Interestingly, outside of the whale family, snakes have puny vestigial pelvis bones too, where the pelvises of their ancestors used to be.) The author denies that "vestigial femurs" which are found where a femur would normally be located (near, or attached to the whale pelvis and pointing downward on both sides of the pelvis) are "vestigial femurs." He says these are perhaps DNA malfunctions or signs of bone disease. The author includes a section titled, "Myth Tracked Down," concerning the story in a Danish science textbook (E.J.Slijper, Whales) about a bump identified as a "tibia" on a Sperm whale. The author calls the "tibia" identification a "myth." Actually such "myths" have been documented with X-Rays according to A. V. Yablokov, Variability of Mammals (1974) who examined a number of such discoveries personally after they were discovered at whale factories in Russia. There were different varieties of such "bumps" that were found to contain remnants of a femur, remnants of a femur and the metatarsus, and, in some cases even remnants of a femur, metatarsus and phalanges [toe bones]. As for Yablokov's first hand testimony, it is not the only one: "There are many cases where whales have been found with rudimentary hindlimbs in the wild (for reviews see Berzin 1972, pp. 65-67 and Hall 1984, pp. 90-93). Hindlimbs have been found in baleen whales (Sleptsov 1939), humpback whales (Andrews 1921) and in many specimens of sperm whales (Abel 1908; Berzin 1972, p. 66; Nemoto 1963; Ogawa and Kamiya 1957; Zembskii and Berzin 1961). Most of these examples are of whales with femurs, tibia, and fibulae; however, some even include feet with complete digits."
Nor does the author mention whale embryology : "Modern adult whales, dolphins, and porpoises have no hind legs. Even so, hind legs, complete with various leg bones, nerves, and blood vessels, temporarily appear in the cetacean fetus and subsequently degenerate before birth." Amasaki, H., Ishikawa, H., and Daigo, M. (1989) "Developmental changes of the fore-and-hind-limbs in the fetuses of the southern minke whale, Balaenoptera acutorostrata." Anat Anz 169: 145-148. [PubMed]
And people like you are the reason these threads dissolve so rapidly. I am interested in discussion, but you apparently aren't. Take care.
And where is the Theory of Gravity in that page? I see the Laws of Gravity described quite well, but no explanation for the existence of gravity or mechanistically how it come into being. Newton simply derived the equations that predict the observed force, but do not explain the origin of the force. And, technically, Newton was proven wrong by Einstein.
Micro-evolution is indisputable, as otherwise dog breeding wouldn't work. You may be able to punch a few holes in the larger theory, but that doesn't make it not a science. Science is any theory that can be falsified.
Where is evolution taught as a fact rather than a theory?
Another great scientist chimes in.
I bet he read Ann Coulter's book and became an expert.
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.