[Atheist Biologist] Dawkins: Evangelist an 'idiot' on evolution

CNN ^ | November 25, 2009 | Peter Wilkinson

[elcid1970]

Heh, heh!

Well, in grade school I heard it as,

“As I was going up the stair....I wish, I wish he’d stay away!”

Anyway, there’s always that Newdow character to laugh at as well, trying to remove “under God” and “In God We Trust” from public view.

But what’s not funny is the attempt to obliterate that Cross in the desert, the memorial to our war dead. JMHO, most ACLU types are atheists.

Actually, Dawkins & Co. are antitheists, railing at those who challenge their own nihilic `religion’ merely by acknowledging the Almighty. Even here in Clarksville, TN, a local village atheist sicced the ACLU on our Nativity display. It stayed, but on private ground near the city square. So we still got semi-grinched. Hey, if you’re attacked by the ACLU, you must be doing something right.

Me, I’m enjoying the twelve days of Christmas.

;^)

[wendy1946]

About 90% of Americans believe in a God. 70% of Americans consider themselves to be Christians. There is nothing barring Christians from becoming biologists.

A person can claim to believe any combination of things.

Here's the real question: Can a person who claims to believe in Western logic (as for example compared to Indian logic in which a proposition can be both true and false at the same time) claim to be a Christian and to believe in evolution, and hope to be taken seriously?

I claim the answer to that one is no. Ideas have consequences and the consequences of people believing in evolution have been bad enough that no Christian should want any part of the deal. An evolutionist has no logical basis for morality, as Jeffrey Dahmer noted:

‘If a person doesn’t think there is a God to be accountable to, then—then what’s the point of trying to modify your behaviour to keep it within acceptable ranges? That’s how I thought anyway. I always believed the theory of evolution as truth, that we all just came from the slime. When we, when we died, you know, that was it, there is nothing…’

Jeffrey Dahmer, in an interview with Stone Phillips, Dateline NBC, Nov. 29, 1994.

That's before you even get started with communism and naziism, for both of which evolution was the most major philosophical cornerstone.

Huge events like world wars have many causes; not the least amongst the causes of WW-II in particular and of the ideologies which it was fought over, was the idea of viewing ones neighbor as a meat byproduct of random events rather than as a fellow child of God, which had previously been the case.

Nonetheless for all the noise we hear about evolution, the way that "natural selection" is actually supposed to work remains a mystery to most people. A clear understanding of this idea of "genetic death" goes a certain way towards explaining some of the nazi-era thinking about racial policies. The idea is found mainly in treatises on population genetics, particularly in the works of J.B.S. Haldane and the question of the "Haldane Dilemma". This is the supposed mathematical basis of the theory of evolution.

There are two things conspicuously missing in the evolutionites picture.

One is the missing intermediate fossils; two is the missing intermediate "people".

In other words, aside from the fact that Darwinism demands that the vast bulk of ALL fossils be intermediate types and none have ever been found, there is the question of why, if apes or "ape-like creatures(TM)" evolved into humans, we do not see creatures of every stage of such a process walking around today.

The basic answer, according to evolutionite dogma, is that natural selection kills off the old stock at every stage of such a process as one "beneficial mutation" after another after another is substituted into the herd.

You can picture this as a pipeline or tunnel of sorts, with apes walking in at one end and humans walking out the other, and picture the pipeline made in ten-foot segments, with some sort of a meat-grinder at the junction of each pair of segments. The old stock does not get past the meat grinder at any one stage of the process.

The thing has to work this way because the vast bulk of all mutations are harmful or fatal, and that means you'd be being exceedingly generous to admit that one mutation in every 10,000 or so might be "beneficial". In fact the normal English term for 'mutation' is "birth defect" and you might have noticed that the women going door to door for the Mothers' March of Dimes are ALWAYS collecting for research to PREVENT mutations and not to CAUSE them...

Nonetheless the claim which evolutionites make is that evolution is driven by a combination of chance mutations and "natural selection". Now, this also means that you cannot have multiple mutations spreading through the herd at one time in the process; the bulk of the mutations spreading around would be harmful/fatal and wipe out the herd.

That means that the only way this process can work at all is for one new trait (beneficial mutation) to get passed entirely through the herd, and then the next, and the next, and the next; thus the idea of a pipeline in ten foot segments, which does not allow the old stock past the gate at any one segment.

According to the theory, "genetic death" is the agency of all this. A "genetic death" occurs when somebody dies without heirs, i.e. takes himself out of the gene pool. The theory of evolution requires that there be a "cost" of substituting a genetic change into the herd and that this cost be in terms of genetic death. J.B.S. Haldane came up with a figure of 30 genetic deaths per substitution which was as favorable to evolution as he could get, and that means that for either you or me to get the good "beneficial mutation" AND THE WHOLE PIPELINE SCHEME WORK, 30 people have to die without heirs.

This dying out without heirs is supposedly CAUSED by the supposed advantage and selection pressure of the "beneficial mutation" involved at each step; this is the thing which weeds out all those not having the beneficial mutation at each step. In other words, the introduction of each new "beneficial mutation" causes all of those not having it to die out from jealousy and/or the inability to compete with those having it.

If that sounds stupid, it's probably because it IS stupid; nonetheless that's the way the theory supposedly works.

Haldane also figured that historically, when you include every sort of gentic death which the human birth rate has to compensate for, our species has had an excess birth rate capacity of something like ten percent, meaning that it would take 300 generations on average for each 30 turnovers of the population involved in substituting a single genetic change through the whole ape===>human evolving population.

Nobody had ever tried to quantify the whole thing before. The basic result indicates that it would take quadrillions of years to evolve from ape to man. That is the so-called "Haldane Dilemma".

This basic pipeline/genetic-death scheme is also the thing which Hitler and the other nazis were seeing in evolutionism. They were simply taking Charles Darwin at his word and, granted they were a a collection of major-league villains and were guilty of all manner of criminality, they were NOT guilty of any sort of a breakdown in basic logic. They were assuming that if the rise of a new and supposedly better racial stock GUARANTEED the extinction of the old stock, then they were not doing the members of the old stock any favors by prolonging the agony. Similarly, when asked about the firebombing raids over Japan, Curtis LeMay replied that you're not doing a dog with a cancerous tail any favors by cutting the tail off in slices.

Hitler and other nazi bosses were assuming that Jews, gypsies, and others were not going to make the cut one way or another for this pass through the evolution meatgrinder, and that they were not doing them any favors leaving them around to a slow and unpleasant group demise.

[john in springfield]

If this were an election, evolution would have lost in a landslide...

This is simply and objectively not true.

You manipulate the statistics to favor your position, which is one of special creation.

The truth is shown in the actual chart.

39% believe in evolution.

25% disbelieve evolution.

37% have no opinion or (rarely) didn't answer.

So the real comparison is between my position (at 39%) and your position (at 25%).

It is YOUR position that has "lost in a landslide".

It's a FOURTEEN-POINT loss.

Or to put it another way, FIFTY-SIX PERCENT MORE PEOPLE ACCEPT MY POSITION THAN ACCEPT YOURS.

And the numbers go WAY up among the young - which means that as the years go by, the above chart is only going to get more and more skewed. Because an awful lot of the people who accept your position are above age 60, and they simply won't be here in 20 years. They are being replaced by people who consider evolution to be proven, many of whom see no conflict between evolution and faith.

This, in fact, is extremely illustrative of the complete and total denial of reality of people like yourself (and wendy) who keep insisting that evolution is "disproven" when in fact it is YOUR position that is generally regarded as disproven.

And we can see what's coming, and what's coming is that your position is only going to keep sliding off the cliff.

You are Don Quixotes, fighting windmills. You're black knights, fighting on and on because you're somehow able to deny the evident truth - that you've already irretrievably lost this particular battle and most other people (incidentally including a large number of Christians) have already moved on.

[john in springfield]

Can a person who claims to believe in Western logic (as for example compared to Indian logic in which a proposition can be both true and false at the same time) claim to be a Christian and to believe in evolution, and hope to be taken seriously?

I claim the answer to that one is no.

In the whole scheme of things, your personal opinion simply doesn't matter. In fact, I don't know why I'm letting you waste my time. This is going to be my final post to you.

As for "Haldane's Dilemma" (stemming from a 1957 paper), it's been dealt with pretty extensively by others. It's like every other single creationist "stumper" I've ever seen. It's already been answered, but the creationist keeps presenting it as if it hasn't been. They have no answer for the refutation, but they don't refute the refutation, they just keep peddling the same disproven arguments again and again, with the added bluster that evolution has been "disproven." It's all snake oil and yes, the true believers and those who are more concerned with hearing comforting words than the actual truth will continue to eat it up, because most people will believe what they want to believe, and then look for justification of their beliefs, and cling to those beliefs no matter how disproven they may be.

Which brings me to a final question.

Answer honestly.

Which came first: Your position, or the things you quote?

Or, to put it another way: Did you start out believing in evolution and then become convinced by the evidence that evolution is so flawed that it cannot possibly be true, that instead life must inescapably have been created by some intelligent being?

Are you an ex-evolutionist? If so, what are your credentials?

Even if you can honestly answer this question in the affirmative (and you almost certainly can't), you would be one of very, very few.

On the other hand, there are MILLIONS of people like myself - no, TENS of millions, in this country alone, who started out believing in creationism, because that was what we were taught from infancy, who gradually and against our will became convinced that evolution was an accurate representation of reality.

Creationism once held an absolute sway over the minds of Americans. And historically speaking, that wasn't very long ago. Five short generations. Less than FOUR generations, if you count a generation to be forty years.

In 4 to 5 generations, we've gone from absolute sway, to only 25% of Americans who don't believe in evolution. And as pointed out above, while it's already over the abyss, that number still continues to drop steadily.

Your point was that evolution had been "disproven."

There are millions like myself who, honestly, would prefer to believe you. But we don't. Why? Because every single time you come up with a "proof" that evolution "can't be true" (and I've been through the song and dance a BUNCH of times by now, believe me), EVERY single time, if you really investigate the supposed disproof of evolution, it falls apart.

So if you really believe the choice is between evolution and Christianity, and if you want to promote that view, then what you are really doing is forcing people into a position where their only alternative is to reject Christianity.

Personally, I don't think that way. I used to, but I don't any more.

Anyway, I'm done talking with you. I have much more important things to do with my time.

I will stand aside and let you and Stingray have the last word, since I know you'll take it anyway.

By the way, I do wish well to you both, and especially, I wish you a happy and prosperous 2010.

[wendy1946]

As for "Haldane's Dilemma" (stemming from a 1957 paper), it's been dealt with pretty extensively by others.

The so-called debunkings of the Haldane dilemma have been debunked for whatever it's worth. For my own purposes I don't see a reason why that's necessary or why anybody should even need to read beyond Walter Remine's simplistic explanation of the problem. The ONLY real problem with the Haldane dilemma is the built in assumption that there could possibly be such a thing as a "beneficial mutation", which I personally do not believe.

The Haldane dilemma is one slice of bread on what I call the evolutionist time sandwich, the other being the recent findings of dinosaur soft tissue and known dinosaur types in Amerind petroglyphs. In other words, evolution needs quadrillions of years and only has a few thousand to work with in real life.

[wendy1946]

That is, evolution needs quadrillions of years ASSUMING it’s possible at all. I don’t really buy that assumption.

[wendy1946]

I should have pinged/included you two on post 122. That to the best of my understanding is the most basic answer to people claiming to be Christians who believe in evolution. If you’re going to get into debates with these people, there are a handful of such things which are good to know and understand.

[Stingray]

Do you have a problem with basic reading comprehension??? Here is what I wrote and it remains true:

“39% say they believe in evolution, 61% either do not or have no opinion one way or the other.”

Again, for the comprehension-challenged: when the mainstream media, public & private schools, and the government spend billions teaching and promoting ONLY ONE SIDE OF THE ISSUE, 39% IS THE BEST YOUR SIDE CAN DO!!! Got it??? Get it??? GOOD!

“This, in fact, is extremely illustrative of the complete and total denial of reality of people like yourself (and wendy) who keep insisting that evolution is “disproven” when in fact it is YOUR position that is generally regarded as disproven.”

The only proof you’ve offered (which I have refuted several times, even using your own “we’ve got the numbers” metric) is that there is a “consensus.” That’s it. Big deal. Most of the German people believed Hitler would raise Germany to greatness, too. Repeated appeals to the authority of the majority only prove Goebbels was right: “tell a big enough lie long enough and people will believe it.”

Evolution, like AGW, is about the biggest lie to come down the pike, and gullible people - like you - swallow it whole.

Mmmmm...tasty.

[bert]

unexpurgated drivel

[Stingray]

Witty AND insightful! My, you’re a freaking literary genius!

/sarcasm

[ColdWater]

The use of handwashing and the drinking of running water were proposed in the Bible

That is because they didn't used eating utensils.

[Stultis]

The so-called debunkings of the Haldane dilemma have been debunked for whatever it's worth.

No they haven't. Every reference I've seen regarding the supposedly antievolutionary implications of "Haldane's Delimma" rely on the same source:

ReMine, Walter J., 1993. The Biotic Message, St. Paul Science, Inc.

Creationists using ReMine never address the errors in his argument. Including, for instance, that the computer simulation he used (apparently without his realizing it because he didn't understand the variables correctly) assumed a maximum population size of two!!!

For unanswered refutations of ReMine's claims, and the creationist assertions based on them, see (in order of increasing detail) here, here and here.

To witness ReMine personally arguing his case, and having it systematically eviscerated to a remnant of zilch, read this sci.bio.evolution thread (running approx Dec '97 thru June '98).

[Stultis]

I'll do just a few of your quotes. Only for fun, as they are the usual crap.

"Despite the bright promise that paleontology provides a means of 'seeing' evolution, it has presented some nasty difficulties for evolutionists, the most notorious of which is the presence of 'gaps' in the fossil record. Evolution requires intermediate forms between species and paleontology does not provide them ..."

David B. Kitts, PhD (Zoology)
Head Curator, Dept of Geology, Stoval Museum
Evolution, vol 28, Sep 1974, p 467

Irrelevant. Note that Kitts is talking about "intermediate forms between species" (emphasis added). Yet not even antievolutionary creationists deny that speciation can occur -- and has occurred. Therefore the great rarity (not, btw, complete absence) of interspecies intermediates is as much of a problem, if it is a problem, for creationists.

In fact the truth is that it is much, much more of a problem for a creationist like you, wendy1946/medved, since you believe the entire fossil record represents mere thousands of years, whereas conventional science holds that it represents hundreds of millions of years. Therefore, on your view, the resolution of the fossil record must be much, much higher (by multiple orders of magnitude in fact) than it would be for conventional geology. That level of resolution should be good enough to commonly preserve interspecies transitions.

Evolutionists would only expect very rare preservation of interspecies transitions, when they are just lucky enough to find a sequence which locally preserves a high level of resolution, and happens to represent a place where a speciation event occurred.

OTOH, the fossil record, as resolved in accordance with conventional geology, is good enough to record transitions linking every level of higher taxa, excepting the phyla were we again often lack clear transitional forms. IOW we do find clear transitional series linking related Genera, Families, Orders and so on.

Bluntly: the transitionals are absent (or nearly so) exactly were creationists think they should exist -- linking closely related species of the same "kind" -- but are abundant exactly where creationists think they should not exist -- linking higher taxa, including those that go beyond "kinds".

"The curious thing is that there is a consistency about the fossil gaps; the fossils are missing in all the important places."

Francis Hitching
The Neck of the Giraffe or Where Darwin Went Wrong
Penguin Books, 1982, p.19

False advertising. You introduced your series of quotes claiming they would represent the findings of "real scientists" examining the case for evolution.

Hitching is neither a "real" scientist, nor a scientist of any description. He has no credentials, period. Although he has sometimes tried to imply otherwise. From the Talk Origins faq page on Hitching:

Hitching is basically a sensational TV script writer and has no scientific credentials. In The Neck of the Giraffe he claimed to be a member of the Royal Archaeological Institute, but an inquiry to that institute said he was not. He implied in the "Acknowledgements" of The Neck of the Giraffe that paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould had helped in the writing of the book, but upon inquiry Gould said he did not know him and had no information about him. Hitching also implied that his book had been endorsed by Richard Dawkins, but upon inquiry Dawkins stated: "I know nothing at all about Francis Hitching. If you are uncovering the fact that he is a charlatan, good for you. His book, The Neck of the Giraffe, is one of the silliest and most ignorant I have read for years."

It is hilarious that you would including a Hitching quote, just second in your list of quotes supposedly not only from "real scientists," but also those with "a real claim to brains."

In fact, Hitchings is a fluff headed, new age nutter who believes anything uncritically: Astrology, dowsing, Atlantis, "psychic" powers, pyramidology, and on and on.

Truly he is an apt and appropriate authority for a creationist like yourself to appeal to. (Although, as the t.o. page also points out, Hitchings heavily plagiarized creationists in his book.)

"The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualistic accounts of evolution."

Stephen Jay Gould, Prof of Geology and
Paleontology, Harvard University
"Is a new general theory of evolution emerging?"
Paleobiology, vol 6, January 1980, p. 127

For this one I can't really improve on the Talk Origins treatment thereof, so I'll just cut and paste:

This is a rather unspectacularly predictable mined quote, as everyone who has had a few hours exposure to Gould's writings on evolution can instantly see that he's arguing against gradualism and probably in favor of punctuated equilibrium, a theory that he co-originated with Eldredge in 1972. Contrary to possible first impressions of the uninformed, Gould is presenting a problem FOR gradualist evolution, and countering WITH solutions to this apparent "problem" later in the paragraph.

And, in typical quote-mining style, this sentence has been taken out of its natural ecosystem. In this section of the paper, Gould is outlining the challenge to gradualist models of macroevolution in three loosely united themes. He is not challenging evolution itself nor is he discounting the vast wealth of fossil data that already exists.

Therefore, someone unfamiliar with Gould who would read the quote alone, above, who does not understand Gould's argument in the paper nor his scientific history will not realize he's just questioning gradualism as a theory of evolutionary change, and not realize he's simultaneously proposing a better idea of evolutionary change to fit the observed data.

As far as the paper goes, the quote above is actually from point #2 in his argument, and you'll have to see the full context to see where it's been selectively snipped. Here's the full context, starting with his point #2 but not encompassing the entire section #2 (which goes on in the same vein a while longer).

" 2. The saltational initiation of major transitions: The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary states between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualistic accounts of evolution. St. George Mivart (1871), Darwin's most cogent critic, referred to it as the dilemma of "the incipient stages of useful structures" -- of what possible benefit to a reptile is two percent of a wing? The dilemma has two potential solutions. The first, preferred by Darwinians because it preserves both gradualism and adaptation, is the principle of preadaptation: the intermediate stages functioned in another way but were, by good fortune in retrospect, pre-adapted to a new role they could play only after greater elaboration. Thus, if feathers first functioned "for" insulation and later "for" the trapping of insect prey (Ostrom 1979) a proto-wing might be built without any reference to flight.

I do not doubt the supreme importance of preadaptation, but the other alternative, treated with caution, reluctance, disdain or even fear by the modern synthesis, now deserves a rehearing in the light of renewed interest in development: perhaps, in many cases, the intermediates never existed. I do not refer to the saltational origin of entire new designs, complete in all their complex and integrated features -- a fantasy that would be truly anti-Darwinian in denying any creativity to selection and relegating it to the role of eliminating new models. Instead, I envisage a potential saltational origin for the essential features of key adaptations. Why may we not imagine that gill arch bones of an ancestral agnathan moved forward in one step to surround the mouth and form proto-jaws? Such a change would scarcely establish the Bauplan of the gnathostomes. So much more must be altered in the reconstruction of agnathan design -- the building of a true shoulder girdle with bony, paired appendages, to say the least. But the discontinuous origin of a proto-jaw might set up new regimes of development and selection that would quickly lead to other, coordinated modifications." (Gould, Stephen J., 'Is a new and general theory of evolution emerging?' Paleobiology, vol 6(1), January 1980, pp. 126-127)

Gould then goes on to show that Darwin conflated gradualism with natural selection, and then talks more in point #2 about future work in the field of evolutionary development that yields testable hypothesis for small changes in developmental pathways (corresponding to small evolutionary changes) yielding large changes in adult body plans. Gould states that this is the kind of approach that will give forth real information rather than adaptive stories or hypothetical intermediates. Gould was probably not exactly a 'visionary' for proposing this in print, but evolutionary developmental biology seems to be giving plenty of support to the theory of evolution these days.

- Deanne (Lilith) Taylor

O.K. Next one, Colin Patterson. So, he's a cladist, and he was a fairly extreme advocate of the method. Since the method (cladism) artifactually cannot identify intermediates, he sounds sometimes as if you can't identify them at all. IOW he gets a bit fanatical about cladism as if it were the "one true method" for classifying organisms. Or maybe not. Maybe he just sound that way. Anyone can look the quote up at the Talk Origins Quote Mine Project and get a more dispassionate analysis.

But, for now at least, I'm bored. Nothing new here. Same old crap.

[Poe White Trash]

This is what the evolution business is all about.

All about what? Hurling childish insults and expressing a complete lack of comprehension/command of over 3000 years of theological thought?

If Dawkins can be thought of as an anti-theist Jihadist, I wonder if there are there a lot of "moderate" anti-theists out there who cringe at his public pronouncements and wish that he would shut his yap.

[wendy1946]

You’re going to have to make up your mind. I’m not going to take the trouble to get into any sort of a debate with somebody who sits here begging the mods to ban me on one day and then pretends to be able to argue science cases with me the next. Which is it going to be?

[Gumlegs]

Whether on grounds of your sneaking back under your various screen names or just plain insanity, you should be banned.

Again.

[Stultis]

You’d have to take that up with metmom. It was her invention that I was “begging the mods” to do anything.

[wendy1946]

seek help...

[Stultis]

One more of your quotes from "real scientists" with "a real claim to brains or talent":

"My attempts to demonstrate evolution by an experiment carried on for more than 40 years have completely failed. ... The fossil material is now so complete that it has been possible to construct new classes, and the lack of transitional series cannot be explained as being due to the scarcity of material. The deficiencies are real, they will never be filled."

Prof N. Heribert Nilsson
Lund University, Sweden
Famous botanist and evolutionist
As quoted in: The Earth Before Man, p. 51

Nilsson (1883-1955) apparently was a botanist at the University of Lund, but he's only "famous" (or even an "evolutionist") on creationist websites. It appears Nilsson was an extreme nutcase, almost putting Francis Hitching (who I discussed upthread) to shame.

He developed an utterly bizarre theory of evolution -- really of anti-evolution -- called "emication". According to Nilsson evolution was impossible under any normal environmental conditions, and only occurred following vast global catastrophes which wiped out all life on earth, "only to have living forms reconstituted by a sudden coming together of organic molecules to form gametes possessing the capability of developing into some highly complex form such as a pine tree, an elephant, or a man."

Get that, medved. This guy says that man was formed not by successive modifications of an ape, but by disaggregated "organic molecules" spontaneously assembling! He considers this more plausible than descent with modification!! And you cite him as an authority, and include him among those with ""a real claim to brains"!!! BWAHAHAHAHA!!!!

Oh, and btw, the RationalWiki page on Nilsson claims Nilsson was an advocate of Hans Hörbiger's "Cosmic Ice" theory ("Welteislehre," or "WEL" for short). This was a demented theory of catastrophism (maybe, but only maybe, too nutty even for you, medved) which later became extremely popular withing the Nazi movement, and was personally promoted by both Himmler and Hitler, and before the Nazis by the racist Houston Stewart Chamberlain.

[Stultis]

Oh, yeah, and (although it doesn't really matter much, considering that he was a lunatic) the Nilsson quote is also out of context. This YouTube video scrolls the full passage, with the quoted material highlighted.

The specific problem is that when Nilsson writes that his "attempts to demonstrate evolution by an experiment carried on for more than 40 years have completely failed," you assume that he was trying to experimentally demonstrate evolution. But he wasn't. He was only trying to "demonstrate" what he (being a demented nutcase) mistakenly thought "evolution" to be.

When you see the full context it turns out he was trying to create a new species by hybridizing two existing species. Of course this is almost exactly the opposite of how evolution is supposed to work: i.e. joining two species to create one, versus splitting a population of one species to make two.