Posted on 03/09/2005 1:46:32 PM PST by metacognative
Opinions
There are valid criticisms of evolution
BY DAVID BERLINSKI
"If scientists do not oppose anti-evolutionism," said Eugenie Scott, the executive director of the National Council on Science Education, "it will reach more people with the mistaken idea that evolution is scientifically weak."
Scott's understanding of "opposition" had nothing to do with reasoned discussion. It had nothing to do with reason at all. Discussing the issue was out of the question. Her advice to her colleagues was considerably more to the point: "Avoid debates."
Everyone else had better shut up.
In this country, at least, no one is ever going to shut up, the more so since the case against Darwin's theory retains an almost lunatic vitality. Consider:
• The suggestion that Darwin's theory of evolution is like theories in the serious sciences -- quantum electrodynamics, say -- is grotesque. Quantum electrodynamics is accurate to 13 unyielding decimal places. Darwin's theory makes no tight quantitative predictions at all.
• Field studies attempting to measure natural selection inevitably report weak-to-nonexistent selection effects.
• Darwin's theory is open at one end, because there is no plausible account for the origins of life.
• The astonishing and irreducible complexity of various cellular structures has not yet successfully been described, let alone explained.
• A great many species enter the fossil record trailing no obvious ancestors, and depart leaving no obvious descendants.
• Where attempts to replicate Darwinian evolution on the computer have been successful, they have not used classical Darwinian principles, and where they have used such principles, they have not been successful.
• Tens of thousands of fruit flies have come and gone in laboratory experiments, and every last one of them has remained a fruit fly to the end, all efforts to see the miracle of speciation unavailing.
• The remarkable similarity in the genome of a great many organisms suggests that there is at bottom only one living system; but how then to account for the astonishing differences between human beings and their near relatives -- differences that remain obvious to anyone who has visited a zoo?
If the differences between organisms are scientifically more interesting than their genomic similarities, of what use is Darwin's theory, since its otherwise mysterious operations take place by genetic variations?
These are hardly trivial questions. Each suggests a dozen others. These are hardly circumstances that do much to support the view that there are "no valid criticisms of Darwin's theory," as so many recent editorials have suggested.
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Great comeback, I am glad you were able to defeat my argument with clear and lucid logic. In fact, I am sure that was the best case you could make. Way to go!
I really don't like arguments of the "Nobody can make me understand how this happens" form. You just don't prove anything this way.
I don't think "majestic" is inconceivable to young earth types, nor do I think anyone can fully appreciate the sheer immensity and history of the marble that resides beneath our feet. It gives me great pleasure to know you've had the opportunity to explore the geologic column in a manner and degree I will never experience. I hope you have not only gained satisfaction from the same, but also hearty sustenance. Way to go.
"yeah so some supernatural agent (a big guy in the sky, presumably) waved a magic wand and made 2 people. He then put em on a planet with he also created, but with rocks that were already a billion years old.
Good alternative theory!"
Did I say that?
I think you have smoked too much lately.
Rule number one for trailer living: don't try to start a basement business. Trailers don't have basements.
Wow. Berlinski adduces quite a nifty list, bondserv. Thanks ever so much for pinging me to this!
"You seem like a nice young man, just try to keep an open mind and learn not to trust everything the media feeds you. They have an agenda too. I was a diehard atheist when I was your age, but over time the Lord softened my heart and eventually I was able to open my eyes and see the Truth."
Gee - at 43 I would hope to be called "young man" more often, but the neighborhood kids call me the "Cranky Old Coot" (Little varmints!).
Honestly, what you did was throw a lot of math at me that I didn't understand and then tell me what it was supposed to mean. I'm used to that from years of listening to NPR (being told what things mean - I love to listen to what the Other Side is thinking). But when it comes to being told lots of science I don't understand I tend to go with the general consensus, which runs against your point.
You should have kept reading...
Rodriguez-Trelles, F., J. R. Weinberg, and F. J. Ayala. 1996. Presumptive rapid speciation after a founder event in a laboratory population of Nereis: Allozyme electrophoretic evidence does not support the hypothesis. Evolution 50(1): 457-461.
Some 15 billion years from our space/time coordinates is equal to roughly a week at the space/time coordinates of the inception (big bang).
How does one measure evidence for design? What are the objective criteria? There aren't any. It's entirely subjective. Therefore, ID cannot be considered part of the scientific realm.
Thanks for your cheap opinion.
anytime.
That is the best you can do? Criticize my simplification without analyzing the problem or answering my question?
Well, Mr. Smarty Pants, assuming that the universe is without bounds, how did entire galaxies move an infinite distance in a finite time without violating Einstein's theory of relativity?
An original "Stump the Dummies" problem! Whee! Don't quit your day job.
I don't see the Sun's output in your calculations. I don't see where you allow for a lack of rigidity in ocean surface and even continental surface. It should be very hard to accelerate the Earth by shooting photons at its water or anything so non-rigid as to absorb the impact by getting warmer. (An increase in very localized molecular motion.) I don't see where you "integrate" the increasing angle of photon impact on the daylight half as one moves away from the area of most direct illumination.
IOW, deliberately deceptive Stump-the-Dummies model. But maybe you can send it in to the ICR/AiG "proofs of a Young Earth" guys. They'll happily put it in the piggy bank with their other bad pennies.
It's mutations. We track them. We count them. They're it. Deal with it.
That's because that is an unscientific statement. Science is never 100% absolutely cannot be wrong.
I repeat. One finds evidence for design.
One cannot measure for the real mechanism proposed by evolution....not natural selection...but natural selection that leads to new species.
There are no observable examples in the process of doing so. Therefore, one compiles evidence.
What kind of evidence would one present to support the notion of "species transitioning natural selection?" Fossils, possible transitions, examples of non-transitional natural selection, etc.
"I don't see the Sun's output in your calculations. I don't see where you allow for a lack of rigidity in ocean surface and even continental surface. It should be very hard to accelerate the Earth by shooting photons at its water or anything so non-rigid as to absorb the impact by getting warmer. (An increase in very localized molecular motion.) I don't see where you "integrate" the increasing angle of photon impact on the daylight half as one moves away from the area of most direct illumination."
YEAH! I was going to say that too but you beat me to it. Forgetting the suns output: bush league!
"Stable and semi-stable sub-assemblies" was part of it. There were other parts of it. But take your time reading the whole thing. There was a link in there to real articles about what people are really saying on the subject now. They're not about amino acids jumping together all at once to make a 200-mer self-replicant.
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