Posted on 03/13/2002 4:47:26 AM PST by JediGirl
Pseudoscience is a scientific-sounding argument which in fact has no scientific validity whatsoever. This type of argument is based on the fact that the average layperson knows so little about science that he or she is liable to judge a scientific argument solely on its style and presentation (eg- "does it sound scientific?", or "does it incorporate scientific-sounding terms?") for lack of any other method of judging its validity.
Suggested Tactics
This type of creationist argument is difficult for most people to defend against, unless they are fairly knowledgeable about science (that's why it's so popular with creationists- they may not know anything about science, but they're gambling that you don't either). In my case, I simply call upon my knowledge of certain basic scientific principles that I learned in university, but I can't instruct everyone to do this, since not everyone has a technical background.
Therefore, it's difficult for me to recommand tactics for laypeople to counteract this sort of argument, but we should keep in mind that creationist pseudoscience arguments are almost never generated out of the mind of the creationist himself. They all tend to come from the same widely distributed pool of creationist literature, which is one of the reasons that creationists all over the world tend to spout the same pseudoscience arguments. I can offer the following suggestions:
Remember that if your opponent has no direct knowledge of the science involved, and is merely claiming truth because "I read it somewhere", this constitutes a fallacious appeal to authority. Point this out to him. One should always be able to explain the logic and science behind one's argument rather than simply making vague reference to an anonymous source.
Since these arguments are actually second hand arguments, demand to see the original source for his claim. When you see the source, check the credentials of the author. If they aren't fraudulent, check up on the university where the author got his degree. Odds are that the degree is either honorary, or it comes from a cheap diploma mill (or worse yet, one of the many church-run schools set up expressly for the purpose of handing out degrees to creationists). If you don't have the resources to check up on universities, try looking up the Talk.Origins website at www.talkorigins.org, which maintains a list of discredited creationist "experts" and their bogus credentials.
Examples follow:
"Occam's Razor is a scientific principle which says that when faced with two theories, we should always choose the simplest theory. Evolution theory requires billions of years of chemical reactions, environmental effects, and genetic mutations. Creation theory simply says "God did it". Creation theory is obviously simpler, therefore Occam's Razor demands that we must select Creation theory on scientific grounds."
This is perhaps the single most moronic creationist idea I've ever heard (it's also been used to "prove" the existence of God, by arguing that the concept of God is much simpler than the study of science). It's a classic example of creationist pseudoscience. They learn the term "Occam's Razor" and they learn just enough about its definition to abuse it, but they make no effort whatsoever to learn its true meaning.
"Choose the simplest theory" is an oversimplification of the concept of Occam's Razor. The term is named after the 14th century philosopher and theologian William of Occam. It might strike some as strange that a scientific principle might have come from a theologian, but good scientists do not practice appeals to authority or ad hominem attacks. If an idea makes sense, it doesn't matter who it came from, and the universal acceptance of Occam's Razor is a perfect example of that philosophy.
In any case, he argued that we should never "multiply entities unnecessarily". In other words, cut out extraneous terms from an equation. He used that principle (which is really just an argument against redundancy) to show that it was impossible to deduce God's existence through reason alone, so one would have to take it purely on faith. The irony is that a theologian realized that there was no logical basis for God's existence more than 600 years ago but modern fundamentalists still can't figure it out, and actually use his name to "prove" the exact opposite of what he himself argued!
For those who cannot appreciate the simplicity of Occam's Razor in its original form, Isaac Newton restated it thusly: "We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances." In plain English, when faced with two scientific theories which make the same predictions, choose the simpler theory. Or, as Stephen Hawking put it: "Cut out all the features of the theory which cannot be observed." (taken from A Brief History of Time).
Like all scientific principles, Occam's Razor is accepted not because William of Occam said it, but because it makes sense. You don't need to appeal to authority or take its validity on faith. If you are faced with two competing theories between which you have no other method of deciding, is it not obvious that the theory containing extra or unverifiable terms must therefore contain redundancies? The fact that the simpler theory can accomplish the same descriptive and predictive feats while utilizing fewer terms and not relying on unverifiable or unobservable phenomena is evidence of superiority.
Consider the analogy of two mechanical devices for making widgets. Both perform exactly the same function. In repeated, exhaustive tests, both are shown to produce exactly the same quality of widget, at the same rate, with the same raw materials. Both produce the same amount of waste. Both consume the same amount of electrical power. They cost the same. In other words, their performance is identical in every measurable way. The only noticeable difference is that device #1 is much simpler than device #2. It contains fewer components and mechanisms, and its operating principle is therefore simpler. Which one would you choose?
Suppose the salesman for device #2 is quite upset that you are leaning toward device #1, and he promises to do better. The next day, he returns with a new device (we'll call it device #3) which is completely sealed in black plastic (the classic "black box"). He says it's the latest, most advanced widget-making machine in the world. You feed it electricity and raw materials, and it spits out widgets. Its performance is no different from device #1 and device #2, but it is not user servicable. You can't see inside to figure out how it works, and the salesman refuses to let you see diagrams or schematics, ostensibly because the operation of the machine is beyond both your intellectual capacity and his. The salesman argues that device #3 is actually simpler than both device #1 and #2 because it has just one component: the black box. Does this make sense to you? Again, which device would you choose?
Occam's Razor is merely a name given to a logical and intuitively obvious thought process of eliminating redundancies. It cannot be used to choose between competing theories whose predictions are vastly different, any more than the simplicity of a drill press can be used to prove that it's superior to a fighter plane. Now that we are equipped with an understanding of the reasoning behind Occam's Razor, we can list some of the reasons that it cannot be used to support either creationism or the existence of God:
The use of Occam's Razor to "prove" the existence of God or the validity of Biblical literalism is a classic example of creationist pseudoscience, because it is so emblematic of their method: take a real principle and grossly misinterpret it to mean the exact opposite of what it truly means.
"The second law of thermodynamics makes evolution impossible. It states that complexity cannot be spontaneously created, so it is impossible for natural processes to create a complex organism from a simple organism!"
This is one of the oldest, and most popular creationist pseudoscience arguments. It's been kicking around for more than a century, thanks to general public ignorance of thermodynamics. In fact, it's wrong on so many levels that it's hard to know where to start! Perhaps we should start at the beginning, with the definition of the second law of thermodynamics. According to my engineering thermodynamics textbook, the second law of thermodynamics has two basic postulates:
That's a lot different from "complexity cannot be spontaneously created", isn't it? Big surprise- creationists don't know anything about thermodynamics. Now that we've established their bizarre misconception about the second law of thermodynamics, we should try to understand what strange mental contortions were necessary to go from "the entropy of a closed system cannot decrease" to "complexity cannot be spontaneously created."
Upon further questioning, creationists invariably reveal the following beliefs about the second law:
These three beliefs are all completely wrong, and they all indicate a frightening ignorance of scientific principles. Let us examine each belief separately:
This argument has been so thoroughly disproven, so many times in so many ways, that it's almost comical when people keep bringing it up. They might as well just tattoo their foreheads with the words "scientific ignoramus."
"By taking a random mixture of elements and analysing the probability of elements randomly forming into the correct combinations and orientations to make a simple amino acid, I can show that it is probabilistically impossible for the simplest amino acid to form, never mind the first living cell. Therefore, a Creator must have formed the first organisms, if not all of them."
This argument is invalid for the following reasons:
I should also note that this argument is generally coupled with the fallacious reasoning that "anything we don't understand is proof of divine intervention." Poorly understood phenomena are not invalidations of science- they are opportunities for scientific investigation. If we treat every gap in our understanding as proof of divine intervention, we would be no better than the tribal primitives who attributed divine intervention to everything from solar eclipses to rain. Visit the Probability page if you want to know more.
"Some older species fossils can be found on top of newer fossils. This inconsistency in your so-called 'progressionism' proves that creation theory is correct, since it means that all species were created at the same time."
More bad science, since this only occurs with animal remains that are on the surface. What happens is that severe erosion or a geological upheaval can occasionally expose strata bearing fossils, and of course, when Skippy the Dog runs away and dies near these old fossils, the "Young Earth Creationist" crowd immediately interprets this as disproof of the entire fossil record, the entire field of geology, the age of the Earth, etc.
As usual, their argument is based on ignorance of proper scientific method. This evidence would be disproof of the fossil record if it was impossible to rationalize its existence with that record. However, that is simply not the case. Geologists can examine patterns in the rock to determine whether a region is old or new, cross-cut, the result of upheaval, etc. It is the creationists who will look at a region, assume its age without using proper methodology, and then use fossil findings in that region to "disprove" geology and evolution theory.
"Evolution can explain changes in a species, but where does a whole new species come from? Speciation is the downfall of Evolution Theory!"
This is another case of creationists projecting their own pseudoscientific attitudes onto evolution theory. In this case, they are predisposed to believe that the creation of a species is a sudden, dramatic event at some fixed moment in time. One moment there's species A, and then the next moment there's species B. Much as God created Man from dust, and Eve from Adam's rib, they imagine that "evolutionists" describe evolution creating a man directly from an ape. But evolution theory does not work that way.
Speciation is not a sudden, miraculous transformation from one species to another. The way creationists envision evolution theory, a pregnant female ape went into labour one day and a human being popped out! It is a gross understatement to say that this is a misrepresentation of the truth. In reality, evolution theory merely proposes that a great many small changes eventually caused an animal population to become intersterile with its ancestors.
Of course, this would mean that there should be fossil evidence of various intermediate stages between successful species, and there is. Naturally, creationists explain all of the evidence away by pointing the finger at their favourite whipping boy: the global conspiracy of evil scientists, who work tirelessly to cover up the truth and fabricate false evidence. These people watch "X-Files" too damned much.
"I know we've observed micro-evolution, but what about macro-evolution? There is no evidence for macro-evolution!"
The creationist invention of the terms "macroevolution" and "microevolution" is a good example of how they try to mutilate the terms of science to their own advantage. Biologists do not differentiate between micro-evolution and macro-evolution, any more than mathematicians differentiate between micro-addition and macro-addition.
Their argument that there is no evidence for "macroevolution" is ridiculous because "macroevolution" is simply the result of adding a lot of "microevolution" together, and "microevolution" is, by their own admission, completely supported by various forms of evidence.
The other problem for this argument is that there actually is evidence to directly support what they describe as "macroevolution", and it's called "the fossil record". It's evidence because it is consistent with prediction. Of course, that's not enough for the creationists- they demand direct observation of massive evolutionary change in living animals, even though they know that we would have to observe living animals for millions of years in order to obtain the evidence they seek. Can you see the problem with this demand? It's pretty obvious- they are deliberately asking for a form of evidence which is impossible to obtain (millions of years of direct observation), and ignoring a form of evidence (the fossil record) which is relatively easy to obtain.
The universe operates on tiny processes, affecting tiny particles, which add up in tremendous numbers to cause large changes. If someone is going to claim that a slow, steady process cannot create large-scale changes given sufficient time, he had better provide some evidence and reasoning, rather than simply stating it as a fact and demanding impossible forms of evidence to disprove it. Are we to assume that all gradual processes eventually hit "brick walls" and stop, for mysterious and unknown reasons?
Do we question tectonic plate theory on the basis that we've observed small-scale tectonic plate movement but not large-scale tectonic plate movement? Do we insist that no one should believe in tectonic plate theory until we've been able to observe it for millions of years, so we can see long-distance movements firsthand? Do we deny the possibility of large-scale rock erosion because we've only seen small scale rock erosion? Why would a gradual process like tectonic plate movement, rock erosion, or evolution suddenly stop after an arbitrary length of time? What would make it stop? Why make this ridiculous distinction between "micro-evolution" and "macro-evolution?" Where is the line drawn between the two? What causes the barrier? These are questions that the creationists don't attempt to ask or answer, because like O.J. Simpson's defense lawyers, they're not serious about uncovering the truth. They just want to create "reasonable doubt" in the minds of a gullible audience.
The "microevolution vs macroevolution" argument is an example of creationists projecting their own mentality onto evolution, and then attacking the resulting strawman, ironically, for the very aspects that come from creationism. Creationism describes separate and distinct species: "each according to its kind". Creationists therefore make the same assumption: species are separate, indivisible, and disconnected. When they project this mentality onto evolution, they run into an obvious problem: there is no way for the process of evolution to "jump" over the invisible "barrier" between species. The problem is that they are assuming that this barrier exists! The terms "microevolution" and "macroevolution" are not found in biology; they are creationist inventions. Gradual changes eventually add up, and can turn one species into two, or they can cause a species to change so much that it becomes a distinct species from its predecessors.
As a thought experiment, consider human beings. It is generally assumed that any male/female pair of healthy human beings can produce children. But biological reproduction is a complex process, and it requires great genetic commonality. We know that two modern human beings can produce children, but what about a modern woman and a man from ten thousand years ago? What about a modern woman and a man from fifty thousand years ago? Is there still enough genetic commonality? Species are not delineated by distinct, clear boundaries. Rather, they are defined by intersterility and overt physical characteristics, and there is no "barrier" between species for the process of evolution to hurdle. |
Fair argument Kyrie, and something we must remember.
However, it is simply impossible for each individual to conduct the original scientific research. Providing credible sources is still allowed.
"I agree. They'll go with insane. After all, how could anyone in their right mind do this? At least, that will be the thinking."
Truth is absolute and it will be revealed when the trial is over.
Fair enough. Here you go.
Yes. Yes I can.
That's BS. In order to have a meaningful dialectic between evolution and religion, you would need a religion which operated on an intellectual level similar to that of evolution, and the only two possible candidates would be Rastifari and Voodoo. The debate would be between the evolutionists, and the voodoo doctors: Dick Dawkins vs Jr. Doc Duvalier.
The real dialectic is between evolution and mathematics. Professing belief in evolution at this juncture amounts to the same thing as claiming not to believe in modern mathematics, probability theory, and logic. It's basically ignorant.
Evolution has been so thoroughly discredited at this point that you assume nobody is defending it because they believe in it anymore, and that they are defending it because they do not like the prospects of having to defend or explain some expect of their lifestyles to God, St. Peter, Muhammed...
To these people I say, you've still got a problem. The problem is that evolution, as a doctrine, is so overwhelmingly STUPID that, faced with a choice of wearing a sweatshirt with a scarlet letter A for Adulteror, F for Fornicator or some such traditional design, or or a big scarlet letter I for IDIOT, you'd actually be better off sticking with one of the traditional choices because, as Clint Eastwood noted in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly:
God hates IDIOTS, too!
The best illustration of how stupid evolutionism really is involves trying to become some totally new animal with new organs, a new basic plan for existence, and new requirements for integration between both old and new organs.
Take flying birds for example; suppose you aren't one, and you want to become one. You'll need a baker's dozen highly specialized systems, including wings, flight feathers, a specialized light bone structure, specialized flow-through design heart and lungs, specialized tail, specialized general balance parameters etc.
For starters, every one of these things would be antifunctional until the day on which the whole thing came together, so that the chances of evolving any of these things by any process resembling evolution (mutations plus selection) would amount to an infinitessimal, i.e. one divided by some gigantic number.
In probability theory, to compute the probability of two things happening at once, you multiply the probabilities together. That says that the likelihood of all these things ever happening, best case, is ten or twelve such infinitessimals multiplied together, i.e. a tenth or twelth-order infinitessimal. The whole history of the universe isn't long enough for that to happen once.
All of that was the best case. In real life, it's even worse than that. In real life, natural selection could not plausibly select for hoped-for functionality, which is what would be required in order to evolve flight feathers on something which could not fly apriori. In real life, all you'd ever get would some sort of a random walk around some starting point, rather than the unidircetional march towards a future requirement which evolution requires.
And the real killer, i.e. the thing which simply kills evolutionism dead, is the following consideration: In real life, assuming you were to somehow miraculously evolve the first feature you'd need to become a flying bird, then by the time another 10,000 generations rolled around and you evolved the second such reature, the first, having been disfunctional/antifunctional all the while, would have DE-EVOLVED and either disappeared altogether or become vestigial.
Now, it would be miraculous if, given all the above, some new kind of complex creature with new organs and a new basic plan for life had ever evolved ONCE.
Evolutionism, however (the Theory of Evolution) requires that this has happened countless billions of times, i.e. an essentially infinite number of absolutely zero probability events.
And, if you were starting to think that nothing could possibly be any stupider than believing in evolution despite all of the above (i.e. that the basic stupidity of evolutionism starting from 1980 or thereabouts could not possibly be improved upon), think again. Because there is zero evidence in the fossil record (despite the BS claims of talk.origins "crew" and others of their ilk) to support any sort of a theory involving macroevolution, and because the original conceptions of evolution are flatly refuted by developments in population genetics since the 1950's, the latest incarnation of this theory, Steve Gould and Niles Eldredge's "Punctuated Equilibrium or punc-eek" attempts to claim that these wholesale violations of probabilistic laws all occurred so suddenly as to never leave evidence in the fossil record, and that they all occurred amongst tiny groups of animals living in "peripheral" areas. That says that some velocirapter who wanted to be a bird got together with fifty of his friends and said:
Guys, we need flight feathers, and wings, and specialized bones, hearts, lungs, and tails, and we need em NOW; not two years from now. Everybody ready, all together now: OOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMMMmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.....
You could devise a new religion by taking the single stupidest doctrine from each of the existing religions, and it would not be as stupid as THAT.
But it gets even stupider.
Again, the original Darwinian vision of gradualistic evolution is flatly refuted by the fossil record (Darwinian evolution demanded that the vast bulk of ALL fossils be intermediates) and by the findings of population genetics, particularly the Haldane dilemma and the impossible time requirements for spreading genetic changes through any sizeable herd of animals.
Consider what Gould and other punk-eekers are saying. Punc-eek amounts to a claim that all meaningful evolutionary change takes place in peripheral areas, amongst tiny groups of animals which develop some genetic advantage, and then move out and overwhelm, outcompete, and replace the larger herds. They are claiming that this eliminates the need to spread genetic change through any sizeable herd of animals and, at the same time, is why we never find intermediate fossils (since there are never enough of these CHANGELINGS to leave fossil evidence).
Obvious problems with punctuated equilibria include, minimally:
1. It is a pure pseudoscience seeking to explain and actually be proved by a lack of evidence rather than by evidence (all the missing intermediate fossils). Similarly, Cotton Mather claimed that the fact that nobody had ever seen or heard a witch was proof they were there (if you could see or hear them, they wouldn't be witches...) That sort of logic is less limiting than the ordinary logic which used to be taught in American schools. For instance, I could claim that the fact that the fact that nobody has ever seen me with Tina Turner was all the evidence anybody could want that I was sleeping with her.....2. PE amounts to a claim that inbreeding is the most major source of genetic advancement in the world. Apparently Steve Gould never saw Deliverance...
3. PE requires these tiny peripheral groups to conquer vastly larger groups of animals millions if not billions of times, which is like requiring Custer to win at the little Big Horn every day, for millions of years.
4. PE requires an eternal victory of animals specifically adapted to localized and parochial conditions over animals which are globally adapted, which never happens in real life.
5. For any number of reasons, you need a minimal population of any animal to be viable. This is before the tiny group even gets started in overwhelming the vast herds. A number of American species such as the heath hen became non-viable when their numbers were reduced to a few thousand; at that point, any stroke of bad luck at all, a hard winter, a skewed sex ratio in one generation, a disease of some sort, and it's all over. The heath hen was fine as long as it was spread out over the East coast of the U.S. The point at which it got penned into one of these "peripheral" areas which Gould and Eldredge see as the salvation for evolutionism, it was all over.
The sort of things noted in items 3 and 5 are generally referred to as the "gambler's problem", in this case, the problem facing the tiny group of "peripheral" animals being similar to that facing a gambler trying to beat the house in blackjack or roulette; the house could lose many hands of cards or rolls of the dice without flinching, and the globally-adapted species spread out over a continent could withstand just about anything short of a continental-scale catastrophe without going extinct, while two or three bad rolls of the dice will bankrupt the gambler, and any combination of two or three strokes of bad luck will wipe out the "peripheral" species. Gould's basic method of handling this problem is to ignore it.
And there's one other thing which should be obvious to anybody attempting to read through Gould and Eldridge's BS:
They are claiming that at certain times, amongst tiny groups of animals living in peripheral areas, a "speciation event(TM)" happens, and THEN the rest of it takes place. In other words, they are saying:
ASSUMING that Abracadabra-Shazaam(TM) happens, then the rest of the business proceeds as we have described in our scholarly discourse above!
Again, Gould and Eldridge require that the Abracadabra-Shazaam(TM) happen not just once, but countless billions of times, i.e. at least once for every kind of complex creature which has ever walked the Earth. They do not specify whether this amounts to the same Abracadabra-Shazaam each time, or a different kind of Abracadabra-Shazaam for each creature.
I ask you: How could anything be stupider or worse than that? What could possibly be worse than professing to believe in such a thing?
Many Experts Quoted on FUBAR State of Evolution
"If a person doesn't think that there is a God to be accountable to, then what's the point of trying to modify your behavior to keep it within acceptable ranges? That's how I thought anyway. I always believed the theory of evolution as truth, that we all came from slime. When we died, you know , that was it, there is nothing..."
Jeffrey Dahmer, noted Evolutionist
Good! Anyone else? Where are all the usual suspects?
So far, Doctor Stochastic is the only one here entitled to use any radiometric dating arguments, if we subscribe to the article above.
P.S.: Any relation to Doctor Science?
Every single day, as I work with my telescopes, your theories of reduced gravity and altered speed of light are always in my mind.
Friend, you keep my mind working in over-drive, just to prove you wrong. But even I have to admit that your arguments can be stimulating.
An agnostic but monotheistic-leaning amen to that statement!
Cool. I'll assume that you understand the information given at the link you provided. Now YOU may make the argument about amino acid chirality. How does that help Jennyp? Didn't she do what the article above was warning us not to accept from Creationists?
Oh, well. At least I had the acquaintance of a cousin of Matt Drudge for a while.
Even with the total absence of oxygen, life would not be able to self-organize. Without oxygen, there would be no ozone layer protecting life from the sun's ultraviolet radiation. This radiation would break down organic compounds soon after they were made. Basically a Catch-22 situation.
Journal of Geophysical Resources, R.T. Brinckmann
Prebiotic Atmospheric Oxygen Levels, J.H. Carver "Nature"
As you point out, it is only their "god" which is threatened by scientific inquiry. The real God (if there is one) is likely unimpressed by genuflection or the sacrificial persecution of evolutionists, and most certainly does not need to be defended by His or Her creations.
Sarah, someone said earlier, "To study science, is to study God." Being a professional scientist, I am not exactly sitting in a cave and grunting. There is no conflict between God and science. He is the very author of every scientific discipline. The more we learn about the natural world, the more we learn about God and His creativity.
The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.
This is usually quoted by the time you get to Post # 15 in a CvE thread, but it is still true.
Russ
You...you mean (gasp!) that religions have had to evolve with scientific discovery? Unthinkable! [/sarcasm]
The God of creation is not being discredited. Creation as biblically told (i mean, it's a great story) is just that--a story. There are a lot of religious Creation stories out there, dear. And all are equally inaccurate because they are based on fairy tale and folklore. Point is, it makes you feel safe and warm to think God specially made you doesn't it? And the "harsh" reality of evolution makes you want to hide under the covers because it's challenging all that you've ever known or at least the core of your beliefs, when, if your beliefs are based that deeply in Creation, I think you should re-evaluate what it is you do believe.
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