Posted on 11/21/2009 9:59:49 AM PST by GodGunsGuts
Scientists have watched as a new species is “born”—or is that “evolved”?—on one of the Galapagos Islands, home of Darwin’s famous finches...
(Excerpt) Read more at answersingenesis.org ...
What do you mean “address”? Certainly, the ToE is about evolution, not the beginning of life. That does not, however, prevent certain aspects reputed to evolution from arousing speculations, and even conclusions, about the origin of life. As you well know (since I’ve pointed this out to you previously), many eminent scientists and scientific institutions seem convinced that the ToE not only informs us of the conditions in which life most likely first existed, but generally the very manner of its origin. Historically, it seems evident that Darwin’s Theory was an event which so greatly excited Marx because he saw in the theory the clinching argument justifying his declaration that God does not exist, and that it was equally the driving force behind Hitler’s foray into eugenics.
We cannot hold Darwin hostage to the philosophical orgasms of Marx or the murderous fantasies of Hitler (or to the various modern adaptations of these two madmen), but we can certainly call into question the accuracy of Darwin’s assertion you quote in your post #48. For that statement to hold up, you will need to convince a large number of Darwin’s most devoted acolytes that the application of any conclusion about the origin of life to his famous theory is nothing but a mere strawman. You will need to first set them straight before you can hope to make any headway with the Christians you set out daily to slander and scorn. Why should they set any stock in what you say when they hear precisely the opposite from scientists far more eminent than you?
Indeed, we can devise a definition of Evolution entirely the antithesis of what you claim, yet made up solely of the statements and writings of some of Evolution’s most ardent and prestigious defenders:
Evolution n a scientific theory dealing with ‘the origin of life,’ which serves as a ‘universal acid’ that ‘dissolves all traditional religious and moral beliefs,’ and establishes that 1) No gods worth having exist; 2) no life after death exists; 3) no ultimate foundation for ethics exists; 4) no ultimate meaning in life exists; and 5) human free will is nonexistent.
From whom comes such a loathsome and wicked obscenity, you demand to know, indignant at such an affront as the above? Why, from no less than the following:
Steven Weinberg, Nobel laureate in Physics from the University of Texas at Austin, in remarks at the Freedom From Religion Association, “I personally feel that the teaching of modern science is corrosive to religious belief, and I’m all for that. If science helps bring about the end of religion,” he concluded, “it would be the most important contribution science could make”.
Tufts philosopher and professor of evolutionary biology and cognitive science, Daniel Dennett, in Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, states that Darwinian evolution is “a universal acid” that dissolves all traditional religious and moral beliefs.
Richard Dawkins: “The question of whether there exists a supernatural creator, a God, is one of the most important that we have to answer. I think that it is a scientific question. My answer is no.”
William B. Provine, Professor of Biological Sciences, Cornell University, in a 1998 Darwin Day Keynote Address entitled “Evolution: Free will and punishment and meaning in life,” to the enthusiastic acclaim of a large gathering of colleagues and students, saw fit to deliver himself of the opinion that “Naturalistic evolution has clear consequences that Charles Darwin understood perfectly.” He then went on to enumerate them; 1) No gods worth having exist; 2) no life after death exists; 3) no ultimate foundation for ethics exists; 4) no ultimate meaning in life exists; and 5) human free will is nonexistent.
So it would seem that not merely Evolution, but all of Science itself, is to be enlisted in the campaign to kill the idea of God and to banish forever Judeo-Christian belief
If you find yourself deeply offended by such grotesque declarations and definitions (and you should), take it up with the worthies mentioned above rather than berating the knuckle-dragging Christian morons you so relish defaming. While you’re at it, you might address the same rebuke to any number of other, equally distinguished, colleagues of yours. Such as, Steven Pinker, Stephen J. Gould, Peter Sanger, Michael Tooley, Richard Lewontin, Marc Hauser, Victor Stenger, and Carl Sagan (who may be difficult to contact now that he is consigned to a self-imposed eternal oblivion, but whose writings still exist and are oft reverently referenced much as though they were of Biblical origin).
Seems to me that I’ve had many evos tell me that science is neutral on the subject of God and can’t be used against Him.
I guess they’re out of the loop on that aspect of science, as well.
Good job, BTW.
Your comment fits in so well with YHAOS’.
The FRevos seem to be a bit than more confused about what they think science is, what it addresses, and how it’s being used.
Textbook example of reductio ad absurdum.
This quote shows the fallacy of your argument
“I am a religious person and I believe in God. I find the militant atheism of some evolutionary biologists ill-reasoned and childish, and most importantly unscientific — crucially, faith should not be subject to scientific justification. But the converse also holds true — science should not need to be validated by the narrow dogma of faith. As such, I regard the opinions of the Discovery Institute as regressive, repressive, divisive, sectarian and probably unrepresentative of views held by people of faith generally. In addition, the use by creationists of selective, unauthorized quotations, possibly with intent to mislead the public undermines their position as self-appointed guardians of public values and morals.” ~ Henry Gee.
I find the hypocrisy of you using that quote quite interesting.
Please explain
Here you go.
• Variations.
1. Variations exist with in all populations.
2. Some of that variation is heritable
3. Base pair sequences are encoded in a set of self-replicating molecules that form templates for making proteins.
4. Combinations of genes that did not previously exist may arise via “Crossing over” During meiosis, which alters the sequence of base pair on a chromosome.
5. Copying errors (mutations) can also arise; because the self-replication process is of imperfect (although high) fidelity; these mutations also increase the range of combinations of alleles in a gene pool.
6. These recombination’s and errors produce a tendency for successfully increasing genetic divergence radiating outward from the initial state of the population.
Selection
7. Some of the heritable variations have an influence on the number of offspring able to reproduce in turn, including traits that affect mating opportunities or survival prospects for either individuals or close relatives.
8. Characteristics which tend to increase the number of an organisms offspring that are able to reproduce in turn; tend to become more common over generations and diffuse through a population; those that tend to decrease such prospects tend to become rarer.
9. Unrepresentative samplings which alters the relative frequency of the various alleles can occur in populations for reasons other than survival / reproduction advantages, a process known as” genetic drift”.
10. Migration of individuals from one population to another can lead to changes in the relative frequencies of alleles in the “recipient” population.
Speciation
11. Populations of a single species that live in different environments are exposed to different conditions that can “favor” different traits. These environmental differences can cause two populations to accumulate divergent suites of characteristics.
12. A new species develops (often initiated by temporary environmental factors such as a period of geographic isolation) when sub-population acquires characteristics, which promote or guarantee reproductive isolation from the alternative population, limiting the diffusion of variations thereafter.
Sufficiency
13. The combination of these effects tends to increase diversity of initially similar life forms over time.
14. Over the time frame from the late Hadean to the present, this becomes sufficient to explain both the diversity within and similarities between the forms of life observed on earth, including both living forms directly observed in the present, and extinct form indirectly observed from the fossil record.
That’s what Evolution IS! If you have a problem with Evolution you have a problem with one or more of these fourteen points. Which one is it? Provide any evidence of any of the points that are incorrect.
While the origins of life are a question of interest to evolutionary biologist and frequently studied in conjunction with researchers from other fields such as geochemistry and organic chemistry, the core of evolutionary theory itself does not rest on a foundation that requires any knowledge about the origins of life on earth. It is primarily concerned with the change and diversification of life after the origins of the earliest living things – although there is not yet a consensus as to how to distinguish “living” from “non-living”
Evolution does NOT indicate that all variations are explained this way; that there are no other mechanisms by which variations may arise, be passed, or become prevalent; or that there is no other way life diversifies. Any and all of these may be valid topics for conjecture…but without evidence, they aren’t science.
Other peoples opinions presented in the form of quotes are not evidence against the theory of evolution. They are merely opinions, and all people have opinions, which turn out to be false. So lets stick to the facts.
You’re posting critical quotes of someone criticizing others of posting critical quotes.
I regard the opinions of the Henry Gee as regressive, repressive, divisive, sectarian and probably unrepresentative of views held by people of faith generally.
Yeah. Sure. Evos are always paragons of virtue and integrity.
They never make any mistakes, do anything dishonest, never have an agenda, know all, and are morally superior to religious people of any flavor.
They are perfect.
How blessed we are to be graced with their benign and gracious presence on these threads, as you bestow on us the wealth of wisdom and knowledge they have amassed over the years.
You mean this pack of lies and distortion?
Conclusion — Jonathan Wells’s book: Science or Myth?
This concludes the tour of Jonathan Wells’s Icons of Evolution. At the end of Icons, Wells includes an Appendix where he “grades” ten recent biology textbooks, giving most of them an F (Campbell et al.’s Biology — probably the most popular college biology text, by the way — comes out on top with a D+). Wells then includes “warning labels”, which look suspiciously like cigarette warning labels, which Wells thinks should be put in textbooks.
Has Wells succeeded in making the case which would justify his harsh judgements? Let us recall what Wells’s argument was supposed to be:
“Some biologists are aware of difficulties with a particular icon because it distorts the evidence in their own field. When they read the scientific literature in their specialty, they can see that the icon is misleading or downright false. But they may feel that this is just an isolated problem, especially when they are assured that Darwin’s theory is supported by overwhelming evidence from other fields. If they believe in the fundamental correctness of Darwinian evolution, they may set aside their misgivings about the particular icon they know something about.” (Icons, pp. 7-8)
But as we have seen, in every single case, the actual biological experts in their specific fields of expertise in fact agree that the actual evidence in their field supports modern evolutionary theory. Furthermore, many of these scientists have felt sufficiently strongly about this that they have published critiques of creationist misinterpretations of their work. Many of these scientists have felt sufficiently victimized by Wells to write specific rebuttals of him.
Wells might try to argue that he was talking about the “icons” rather than the general evidence in the field, but still his argument fails. In the cases of the Miller-Urey experiment, Darwin’s tree of life, vertebrate limb homology, Archaeopteryx, peppered moths, and Darwin’s finches, a fair investigation of the literature has revealed that Wells has no case, and that these “Icons” are fully deserving of inclusion in biology textbooks. In the cases of the four-winged fruit fly, fossil horses, and fossil hominids, we discover that Wells has not even included these cases in his textbook “evaluation” criteria — perhaps inclusion of these in the criteria would have raised the textbook grades too much. In any case it is evident that Wells’s problems with the four-winged fruit fly, fossil horses, and fossil hominids are not really with textbooks, but with extraneous issues — the real issues in these cases are Wells’s bizarre views about the relationship between genes and development, and his paranoia that biology textbooks are pushing the view that life is meaningless and purposeless. I will have a few final words on this subject in a moment, as it is an oft-recurring theme in antievolutionist writings.
The single “icon” where Wells has some success is with Haeckel’s embryos: the fraction of textbooks that use Haeckel’s drawings should replace them with photographs or more accurate drawings. But even here, the very authority that Wells cites against Haeckel’s embryos, namely M.K. Richardson, has clearly stated that the actual. facts of embryology do indeed support evolutionary theory, contradicting Wells’s interpretation. As Wells’s argument is explicitly based on the views of the experts in their fields, then Wells, to be self-consistent, would have to concede that he has only scored a point against certain textbooks, and not against the theory of evolution.
However, let us be generous and grant Wells a full point for the Haeckel’s embryos case. On the other nine “icons,” though, Wells has come up empty-handed. So Wells has earned a 1 out of 10. Even a generous curve would not save Wells from a flunking grade. One would think that a guy with a Ph.D. from Berkeley would have done better.
The only thing more discouraging than Wells’s grade are the rave reviews that Wells got from his peers at his current workplace, the Discovery Institute. Wells’ fellows at the Discovery Institute’s Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture lavished praise on Icons of Evolution, with nary a word of criticism or even mild questioning. Sure, we might expect antievolutionist demagogues to do their usual braying; for example, in his typically balanced style Phil Johnson writes of Icons, “This is one of the most important books ever written about the evolution controversy. It shows how devotion to the ideology of Darwinism has led to textbooks which are full of misinformation.” But even Michael Behe, who does know some biology and really should have known better, has apparently become radicalized enough to write, “Jonathan Wells demonstrates with stunning clarity that the textbook examples Darwinists themselves chose as the pillars of their theory are all false or misleading. What does this imply about their scientific standards? Why should anyone now believe any of their other examples?” This is the same Behe, you will recall, who accepted the evidence for common descent — i.e. the tree of life — as recently as 1996. What is the intellectual status of a movement like Intelligent Design that cannot bring itself to question even the most outrageous of Jonathan Wells’s distortions? (for the above reviews and others, see this URL: http://www.iconsofevolution.net/reviews/)
I have only had time to refute the major arguments that Wells raises in Icons; unfortunately this only scratches the surface. A truly thorough refutation would take a full book, and one rather longer than Icons at that. I fear that I have not given readers a sufficient impression of just how deceptive and devious a writer Jonathan Wells is. Through most of the book, virtually every sentence contains some sort of illegitimate slant, whether quoting a scientist out of context, or leaving out crucial pieces of information, or presenting a nonexpert opinion as an authoritative one, or simply spewing out unsupported exclamations of doubt, derision, and “dogmatic Darwinism!” Icons is an impressive bit of propaganda, and frankly, Jonathan Wells is probably the slickest operator that the antievolution movement has ever produced. His book, packed with quotes and authoritative declarations, mangling topic after topic in rapid succession, is a calculated attempt to overwhelm the reader by sheer diversity of material; even the biologically educated reader is not likely to have the necessary background to spot all of Wells’s tricks. Writing this review required a substantial amount of research and help from numerous veteran creationism/ID debaters (see Acknowledgements).
But Wells’s cleverest move of all was to attack textbooks rather than taking on the science directly. The all too common response, even from biologists, has been along the lines of “Well, sure, textbooks have problems, but this doesn’t affect the theory of evolution.” This is falling into Wells’s trap. This review has shown that the topics discussed actually do belong in textbooks, and do constitute good evidence for evolution, according to the evidence and according to the experts that Wells claims for support. The book Icons of Evolution is the real scientific travesty.
What is Icons really about?
The central irony of Icons of Evolution is that, while biologists no longer accept and indeed actively debunk the “March From Ape-to-Man” image on the cover, it appears to be closer to something that Wells believes. He apparently does not deny common ancestry of humans with animals; on page 223 (in the middle of six pages of selective quoting about the subjectivity and disagreements in paleontology) Wells admits, “Obviously, the human species has a history. Many fossils have been found that appear to be genuine, and many of them have some features that are ape-like and some that are human-like.” It seems like Wells’s next sentence ought to be “Sorry for all the trouble, folks, I guess I got a little carried away with this book...”, but of course it isn’t. As far as anyone can tell, Wells has the idea that “the human species was planned before life began, and that the history of life is the record of how this plan was implemented” (see his essay “Evolution and Design,” online here: http://www.tparents.org/Library/Unification/Talks/Wells/0-Toc.htm). In other words, to Wells, evolution (with some unspecified touch of ID) was marching towards a goal of humans, just like the Apes-to-Man icon on the cover of Icons of Evolution! It seems likely that the insertion of this metaphysical idea into science education, as science, is Wells’s real goal.
But is it really necessary to force theology into science? As we saw in the fossil horses chapter, Wells imputes far more metaphysical significance to words such as “random” and “undirected” than they actually have scientifically. Scientifically, evolution is described as “random” and “undirected” in the same way that the weather, earthquakes, and numerous other natural processes are described as “random” and “undirected.” (For that matter, evolution is also predictable in a way similar to weather and earthquakes.) Does describing the weather, or evolution, as somewhat “random” really have the offensive metaphysical implications that Wells thinks?
For an alternative model, we should investigate the central quote of Wells’s last chapter. Wells is severely offended by Dobzhansky’s statement “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution” and decries all of the evil materialist-naturalist metaphysics he sees in it. But Wells, as usual, fails to give his reader crucial information: Wells fails to say anything about Dobzhansky’s actual metaphysics: Dobzhansky was a life-long Russian orthodox Christian. Here are some more quotes from the very same article by Dobzhansky (1973), which is available online at http://www.2think.org/dobzhansky.shtml.
“It is wrong to hold creation and evolution as mutual exclusive alternatives. I am a creationist and an evolutionist. Evolution is God’s, or Nature’s, method of creation. Creation is not an event that happened in 4004 B.C.; it is a process that began some 10 billion years ago and is still under way.”
“Does the evolutionary doctrine clash with religious faith? It does not. It is a blunder to mistake the Holy Scriptures for elementary textbooks of astronomy, geology, biology, and anthropology. Only if symbols are construed to mean what they are not intended to mean can there arise imaginary, insoluble conflicts. As pointed out above, the blunder leads to blasphemy; the Creator is accused of systematic deceitfulness.”
(Dobzhansky T., 1973, “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution”, American Biology Teacher 35:125-9)
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/wells/iconob.html
I never claimed any of those things.
Not in so many words, but the condescending, holier-than-thou, attitude comes through loud and clear.
There are precious few evos who don’t tout themselves as brilliant geniuses compared to those *creatarded creationists* and of course, any time morals come up, we’re reminded of stats about how may atheists are in jails compared to religious people.
And we’re always being lectured about personal attacks, which the evos, never (of course) engage in either.
While I don’t know much about college textbooks, you’re on pretty weak ground with high school level ones.
Public school textbooks are notorious for being highly inaccurate in virtually every subject they touch on and science, including evolution, is no exception.
I can’t believe that that many textbooks could be so wrong on so much excepting evolution. There’s no way they get only that right no matter what else they get wrong.
And that’s not even touching the issue of the qualifications of the teachers.
Do you have any examples of me engaging in any personal attacks?
Someone is. Thanks for the support.
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