Teaching Alternative To Evolution Backed

Washinton Post ^ | Wednesday, May 29, 2002 | Michael A. Fletcher

[Gladwin]

Two House Republicans are citing landmark education reform legislation in pressing for the adoption of a school science curriculum in their home state of Ohio that includes the teaching of an alternative to evolution.

In what both sides of the debate say is the first attempt of its kind, Reps. John A. Boehner and Steve Chabot have urged the Ohio Board of Education to consider the language in a conference report that accompanied the major education law enacted earlier this year.....

[Condorman]

Typo... TYPO you fool!!

Okay, that one WAS unintentional...

Doh!

[PatrickHenry]

Lurking Smirking, ever smirking ...

[GSHastings]

But none of what you posted-- not one thing-- has anything to do with the validity of the theory of evolution.....

I guess not-- providing you are willing to cling to a theory that has zero chance of being true.

But since the subject was what is being taught in school; Wouldn't it be a good idea to teach children something that has overwhelmingly proven to have very positive affects on peoples lives.

You would like to see the children in our country taught something which has a demonstrably negetive affect on their mental, emotional, and spiritual well being. And I think it is wrong

I would like to see the children of our country taught things which have a demonstably positive affect on their mental, emotional, and spiritual well being. And you think it is wrong.

And so I guess the best solution to this, is for you to have your way, and for me to pay my taxes to support it, and also for me to pay for the private (and home) schooling of my own children.

I must be missing something. I fail to see the logic, nor the justice, of that plan.

[AndrewC]

I certainly hope people know what "suggests" means. Here's a little more for them to chew on.

I certainly know people know what class notes are and that they are not primary sources. Further people can tell that April 2002 is newer than May 1999. These are your 2 sources

http://www.geo.utep.edu/class_notes/3102_Miller/Lectures/Lecture_14.html

http://www.uoregon.edu/~dogsci/dorsey/geo103/lect6.html

At least one(the other does not come up) say the same thing as that which you've been brandishing, that there was no free oxygen. That has always been beside the point, as oxidizing has more meaning than the presence of oxygen. You have continually ignored the difference. Your ignorance of that point does not make it go away. My original point, embodied by the neutral oxidizing atmosphere mentioned in the Duke link, is yet unchallenged. It does not require the presence of free oxygen in the atmosphere, Pyrite and Uraninite notwithstanding.

Now, experts in BIF blew away your contention that BIFs could not form in the atmosphere described in the Duke link and you agreed with that, but bringing up the red herring of Wells and trying to bring in free oxygen as a counter to the atmosphere which does not require it. It won't work. The latest evidence, despite your attempt to make the word suggest mean nothing, indicates an atmosphere containing the oxygen which your class notes seem to deny. I take primary evidence over "hearsay"(secondary and beyond sources).

Finally, your sidestep to describing the formation of the "impossible" minerals is revealing. You have no idea of the meaning of the links you post. Pyrite(fools gold) is found everywhere in an atmosphere that is 20% oxygen.

From Pyrite

• Associated Minerals are quartz, calcite, gold, sphalerite, galena, fluorite and many other minerals. Pyrite is so common it may be quicker to name the unassociated minerals.
• Notable Occurrences include Illinois and Missouri, USA; Peru; Germany; Russia; Spain; and South Africa among many others.

Your "secondary" uraninite information is also out of date

Constraints On The Oxygen Level Of The Archean Atmosphere Based On New Data On Dissolution Rates Of Uraninite

Uraninite (UO₂) is thermodynamically unstable under an oxygenated environment.  Therefore, the presence of detrital uraninite in some quartz-pebble conglomerates of ~2.9 to ~2.2 Ga has been used by many geochemists as important evidence for an anoxic atmosphere prior to ~2.2 Ga (e.g., Holland, 1994). Based on the results of series of experiments, Grandstaff (1976) suggests that the rate of uraninite dissolution is first order with respect to [H+], [O₂] and [total CO₂]; the rate also depends on the impurity of uraninite. Using the Grandstaff’s rate equation, Holland (1984) estimates the pO₂ level of the Archean atmosphere was less than 0.1 % of the present atmospheric level (PAL) for the survival of a uraninite.  Additional assumptions used in the computation were that the atmospheric pCO₂ was 100 – 1000 PAL (Kasting, 1993), and that the duration for exposure of the uraninite to the aerated water during weathering, transportation, and deposition was between 1,000 and 10,000 years.

 Recently several investigators have conducted new experiments on the kinetics of dissolution of uraninite (e.g. Bruno et al., 1991; Gray and Wilson, 1995; Torrero et al., 1996; de Pablo et al., 1999). They showed that the initial dissolution rate was much faster than true value for most experiments, and it took about a month to obtain true steady state dissolution rate. However, the duration of some experiments, including those of Grandstaff, was too short to obtain the true rates. The well-controlled experiments give the dissolution rates of –11.5 to –9.5 (log(rate) in mol /m²/s) at the present atmospheric condition. These rates are 1 to 2 orders of magnitude slower than those obtained by Grandstaff. The dependence of the dissolution rate on [H+] and [total CO₂] obtained by the recent investigators are also much less than that suggested by Gandstaff. 

Using the rate equation of Torrero et al. (1996), we calculate that 0.1 mm size uraninite grains survives under the present atmospheric condition if the total duration of weathering, transportation and deposition is less than ~10,000 years. This explains the occurrence of detrital uraninites in modern aluvial sediments in the Upper Indus River.  The detrital uraninites in the pre-2.2 Ga conglomerates would have survived even if the pO₂ was 1 PAL and pCO₂ 100 PAL as long as the exposure time to the aerated water was less than ~5,000 years.  Such a short duration is consistent with the nature of host sediments. The abundance of pre-2.2 Ga placer uraninite deposits may only reflect the abundance of uraninite-rich source rocks rather than the atmospheric evolution.

You'll jump all over the "may" but that won't diminish the devastating effect on the alleged impossibility of uraninite surviving oxygenated conditions. This is especially noted by --- This explains the occurrence of detrital uraninites in modern aluvial sediments in the Upper Indus River

But even if the atmosphere contained no free oxygen, that would not help produce a reducing atmosphere from a neutral oxidizing one.

[Snidely Whiplash]

What I'm saying is that science -- scientists, actually -- have simply defined God out of the problem. This assumption explicitly precludes the development of such a test as you're demanding, rejecting a hypothesis before it can even be proposed. Not really. You're imputing a bit too much, uh, motivation to science and/or scientists. It's not that God's existence has been discarded out of hand. Let me elucidate a bit here:

Let's call it given that a Creator God exists, as described in the literal view of Genesis (which is pretty much all that creationism and ID have to work from - a acknowledgment of the use of metaphor would pretty much obviate the argument).

Now...look at all the discoveries that have been made over the past few centuries concerning How Things Work (tm) - physics, cosmology, astronomy, chemistry, biology. There has certainly been a great deal of order found in the way things work. But, from a scientific standpoint, one doesn't say,

"Hey, the way things are set up is internally consistent and stable - someone or something musta thought it up!"

That simply isn't the way science works, at all.

And again, how would you design a scientific experiment to test for the existence of a Creator? The test would have to give different results depending on whether things were Created or not, and those results must be predicted before the fact, not pointed to afterward as evidence. In other words, you have to come up with an empirical test as such:

If a Creator God (note the specific type of God) exists, then Condition X will apply.

If Condition Y applies, then a Creator God cannot be shown to exist.

Man, I hate all this HTML...bleah. Anyway, the big question is, what is Condition X? How do you figure out what would be a sufficiently definitive test?

[I'm quoting out of order here, for flow-of-thought reasons]

God cannot have a role, because you've already assumed that God cannot have a role. This is why I call it an ideological position: you've already decided on your answer, because your assumptions are not to be questioned.

Au contraire. Let me be brutally clear here - God may or may not exist. Science just doesn't care. The Universe looks and acts like it came into existence 13 billion+ years ago, and science treats it as such, because that's where the evidence as we currently understand it points. To say that this denies the existence of God...well, it beggars the imagination. There is no evidence to suggest God is not a guiding force behind evolution. OTOH, there is no positive evidence for it either. The idea has been neither included or excluded - it's just kinda floating out there.

As for assumptions not being subject to revision - that is certainly a misrepresentation. All science is subject to constant review and revision, and discardment if need be. If a theory were posited that could explain in a consistent manner how life on Earth came to be, and could also explain how and why the previous explanation (evolution through natural selection)is incorrect, then that theory would be accepted. Even if that theory included a Designer. Intelligent Design fails to do that.

The origin of DNA-based life is potentially one such area, given that the probabilities of it randomly occurring are so very small.

Two problems here. One, your use of the word "randomly." While chance does play a major part in evolution, the subprocesses (i.e. natural selection, the laws of physics and chemistry) that drive evolution are anything but random. It's a serious misrepresentation to say that evolution is a random process. Secondly, your use of the probability argument. While the probability of a particular sort of life (i.e. humans) evolving may be small, the chance of some form of life developing is much greater. Frankly, too, tons of things that happen and continue to happen are highly improbable.

Given our current laws of physics, the chances of a universe matching the description of ours (sounds like an Most Wanted poster, don't it?) are far more remote than the chances of Life As We Know It evolving on Earth. Yet here we are. The very beginning of life is of no real consequence to evolution. Evolutionary theory could be likened to a roadmap for an odd sort of Zen one-way traveler - nothing about the city you're coming from, and precious little about where you're headed to, but lots about the Interstates, rest stops, tourist attractions and towns between the two places.

But you are simply rejecting the idea out of hand, because it doesn't fit your definition of what's "natural."

Or, indeed, anyone's. God is a supernatural entity by any reasonable definition. If God is a natural being, then He would at the very least not be God Christians believe in, and would be irrelevant to this particular debate.

My take is this - evolution is true and factual, and the Earth and Universe are very very old. I do not read Genesis 1 literally, and thus have no trouble reconciling the foregoing notions with faith in God.

The problem I have with the argument you present is that it basically boils down to an argument from incredulity - you can't get your head around the notion that life evolved from very basic forms, and thus don't believe it. The idea of a Creator God taken from a literal reading of Genesis 1 is comforting and sensible, and so you stick with it. I have no problem with that. I do have a problem presenting that idea (or a thinly cloaked version of it) as something that should be taught in schools as a competing scientific theory.

Regards,
Snidely

[gore3000]

So God could commit any atrocity and because it's way beyond our "pay grade" (limitations you place only on yourself, might I add), it should remain unchalleneged, lest we commit blaspemy against your god?

It is curious to see an atheist say the above. If you do not believe there is a God, how can you blame Him?

As to the limitations I place only on myself - I do not see how anyone looking at the universe cannot be humbled. I don't know how anyone could think themselves bigger than its Maker. And BTW - He is also your God, whether you believe in Him or not.

Humans certainly have pretty great limitations. We cannot for example understand the concept of infinity. We know that time is infinite, but we cannot understand such a thing. So yes, we need to be a bit humble and admit there are things we cannot and perhaps never in our lifetimes will understand.

[gore3000]

Everyone he ever argues with accuses him of being dodgy, shifty, and lawyerly. He's apparently very unlucky. Everyone who contradicts you, you insult.

[Terriergal]

Hey if we can teach an alternative to abstinence....

[gore3000]

Lots of Luddites do that, which makes it easy to point out that they can and do weave all kind of silly false pictures with their selective editing of reality.

No they do not. In the Origin of the Species Darwin argued that evolution was the result of natural selection. A decade later in the Descent of Man, he argued that it was due to sexual selection. It took only ten years for him to need to patch holes in his theory. Practically everything he ever said has been refuted by science and has even been abandoned by his own followers.

[VadeRetro]

That has always been beside the point, as oxidizing has more meaning than the presence of oxygen.

So you're punting on the oxygen. You have a long-winded way of saying it, but still forgot to attack the pyrite. I'll ignore further evidence for anoxic conditions and concentrate on the reducing-neutral-oxidizing question.

You're still proclaiming the Miller experiments as discredited. Your problem is that, if the atmosphere was even slightly reducing, Miller-style reactions still happen. Since the atmposphere being slightly reducing is by no means excluded, at very best you're premature.

Abiotic Production of Organic Molecules

The classic experiment demonstrating the mechanisms by which inorganic elements could combine to form the precursors of organic chemicals was the 1950 experiment by Stanley Miller. He undertook experiments designed to find out how lightning--reproduced by repeated electric discharges--might have affected the primitive earth atmosphere. He discharged an electric spark into a mixture thought to resemble the primordial composition of the atmosphere. In a water receptacle, designed to model an ancient ocean, amino acids appeared. Amino acids are widely regarded as the building blocks of life. Although the primitive atmosphere is no longer believed to be as rich in hydrogen as once thought, the discovery that the Murchison meteorite contains the same amino acids obtained by Miller, and even in the same relative proportions, suggests strongly that his results are relevant. The Beginnings of Life on Earth

Others have made similar experiments. A group at the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of California, San Diego, exposed sulfur-bearing molecules like those thought to have been present before the Earth formed to low levels of light. The presence of the light was enough to generate organic compounds - molecules containing carbon, which form the chemical basis of life as we know it. Meteorite Reveals Life Not Difficult to Make

The new compounds had a distinct isotopic (atomic makeup) signature, not normally found on Earth. In fact, the peculiar part is that these isotopes have only been found one other time, in compounds removed from the Murchison meteorite.

The Origins of Life, by those Satanists at NASA.

Together with the subsequent discovery of organic material in molecular clouds in space, this showed that many organic molecules can be formed in space, and raised the possibility that such extraterrestrial material might have a role in the Origin of Life. In the 1950s the Miller-Urey experiment carried out by Stanley Miller and Harold Urey had shown that amino acids were produced by passing electric discharges through a mixture of methane, ammonia and water, a process which could have occurred in thunderstorms in the earth's early atmosphere. The mix of amino acids found in the Murchison meteorite was found to be very similar to that produced in Miller-Urey type experiments, including many amino acids unknown from terrestrial biological sources. The Murchison results thus demonstrate that such abiotic production of amino acids does occur in nature.

The Murchison Meteorite.

Discredited?

Fortunately, Urey was so adamant at the time about methane that I didn't explore alternate gas mixtures. Now we know that any old reducing gases will do. CO₂/hydrogen and nitrogen will do the trick, although not as well.

There was some serendipity in how we handled the water. If we hadn't boiled it and run it for a week, we wouldn't have gotten such good yields of amino acids. We knew right away that something happened rather quickly because you could see a color change after a couple of days.

The fact that the experiment is so simple that a high school student can almost reproduce it is not a negative at all. That fact that it works and is so simple is what is so great about it. If you have to use very special conditions with a very complicated apparatus there is a question of whether it can be a geological process.

An Interview with Stanley Miller.

Note that Miller isn't big on space sources of organics. Nevertheless, that hypothesis still thrives.

The survival of a large fraction of the amino acids and their polymerization during the collision makes the idea of an extraterrestrial origin of organic compounds a strong contender against Miller-Urey style theories, Blank said.

"About one comet per year arriving in a low-angle impact would bring in the equivalent of all the organics produced in a year in an oxidizing atmosphere by the Miller-Urey electric discharge mechanism," Blank estimated. "An advantage is you get all of it together in a puddle of water rather than diluted in the oceans."

Was Johnny Appleseed A Comet?.

Are these hypotheses so disconnected? The early earth was newly condensed from the interstellar medium and was recieving heavy bombardments of more of the same even as it cooled. It may have been pretty soupy pretty early.

The primitive prebiotic atmosphere

The early atmosphere of the Earth was a reducing atmosphere (with little or no oxygen). When oxygen reacts with carbon CO₂ will form. Instead of this, organic molecules with C,H and N can form naturally if carbon experiences reduction instead of oxidation. The primitive atmosphere probably contained simple molecules from the ISM: Water H₂O, Ammonia NH₃, Methane CH₄, Hydrogen cyanide HCN. When the carbon is reduced more complex organic molecules will form.
This was experimentally proved by Stanley L. Miller in 1953. [19] (se also [15], p. 78). The experiment produced amino acids from a mixture of the gasses methane, ammonia, water and hydrogen when these were exposed to a continous electrical discharge equivalent to "lightning" in the early atmosphere:

CH₄ + NH₃ + H₂O + H₂

After one weeks run the total production of several amino acids: glycine, - and -alanine and others, was in the milligram range. Later experiments by J. Oró in 1961 showed that amino acids could be produced with a mix of gasses hydrogen-cyanide and ammonia hydrolysed with water:

HCN + NH₃ + H₂O

In some cases the most abundant complex molecule produced was Adenine. Adenine is one of the four bases in RNA and DNA and a component of the important energy-providing molecule ATP (adenosine triphosphate). Adenine, one of the most important molecules in biochemistry, was naturally produced in an atmosphere containing three simple gasses which were also present in the interstellar medium.

On the Origin of Life in the Solar System.

Discredited?

[Condorman]

Me: But none of what you posted-- not one thing-- has anything to do with the validity of the theory of evolution.....

You: I guess not-- providing you are willing to cling to a theory that has zero chance of being true.

I was hoping tht the entire rest of the thread would somehow eliminate the necessity of a point-by-point rebuttal of your inital post. But since this somehow seems to have escaped your notice, here goes:

That the world is so full of living things that after a few thousand years those highly trained and dedicated multitudes have been unable to count them all.

True. And irrelevant to the theory of evolution. Why? Because the validity of the theory of evolution does not depend on our ability to count.

And that even the simplest of these living things is so staggeringly complex that all of our own wonderful intelligence has not come anywhere close to being able to understand it, let alone duplicate it.

True. And irrelevant to the theory of evolution. Why? Because there is no requirement anywhere that I am aware of that necessitates a process must be duplicated before it is described. I would say it's rather the other way 'round. Your incredulty is not a valid objection to evolution. You also seem to have confused abiogenisis (the origin of life) and evolution (what happened next).

I'd also like to point out that while "our wonderful intelligence" is top-dog on this planet, on a universal scale, we fly the short space rockets. Our intelligence has been around for a few thousand years, give or take. And we don't know a heck of a lot. We've done pretty well for ourselves so far, and maybe we'll discover something else that will cause us to replace or modify evolution. But until then the theory of evolution is a pretty fair wag at how things work, and right now it's the ONLY card on the table.

And, that the odds of such an inconceivably large number of unimaginably complex things having occured due to random processes is so far out of the bounds of probability, [big big number snip].

True. And irrelevant to the theory of evolution. Why? Because the theory of evolution is predicated on non-random phenomenon. Mutations and sexual recombinations of genes are, to a degree, random. But once those combinations have formed, chance goes out the window. It an organism is born unable to forage, feed, escape or avoid predators and evenutally reproduce (assuming the embryo was viable to begin with), that organism will not live to pass on what are obviously faulty genes. No organsim is has the same chance of survival as every other organism. The combination of mutation and survival pressure, the odds of survival, if you will (yeah, I know it's sloppy, live with it), are non-random phenomenon.

And, that the number of people who have personally experienced the truth of a Creator in there own lives number in the Billions, and spans many thousands of years. [people have done good, scientists can be religious, religion gives hope snip]

Re: the theory of evolution: So what? The "Whys" are the domain of religion and philosophy. It's always been that way. No one is arguing otherwise. But leave the "Hows" to science.

[gore3000]

Your problem is that you are too arrogant and think you know what God's purpose is. It's way beyond your pay grade. posted on 5/31/02 5:52 AM Pacific by Freeper "X" (an anti-evolutionist)

Not only do you delete my handle from the post, but you even send the post with no name on it. Willfully circumventing the FR system. If you wish to say something to me, you should direct at me instead of responding in such a cowardly and insulting way.

YOu may consider the post above an insult, but it is not. It is a statement of fact which cannot be denied, so you need to insult. The arrogance of the materialist/atheist supporters of evolution is undeniable. They all think themselves greater than God, they all think themselves better than God. However, none of them can accomplish bumpkins compared to Him.

[Condorman]

Re: post 611:

Hey! You! Out of my head!

[gore3000]

it's not too difficult to simply call it "origin of all natural laws", at least until we have more evidence for whatever that origin might have been or what properties it posesses.

Well the problem which atheists have is that their beliefs are self contradictory. What is the source of the natural laws which we observe in the universe? Who enforces them? Why are they enforced at all?

[gore3000]

Why would showing a monkey turning into a man disprove ID?

Because the position of Intelligent Design states that complex systems cannot arise at random without a designer. Since mutations are random and supposedly the basis of evolutionary descent, showing the above would indeed constitute a refutation of ID. However, while evolutionists have been seeking an example of such macro-evolution for some 150 years, they are unable to do so. The reason for it is that evolution is false and there are living proofs that it is: the platypus and euglena.

[Condorman]

If you wish to say something to me, you should direct at me

There was nothing that I wished to say to you. Therefore it was not directed to you. I juxtaposed two of your conflicting statements and posted them to the thread. I did not post your name, because you were not the issue. The inherant contradiction in the posts, not the poster, was the issue. That you lay claim to them is your perogative.

Might I also suggest that you do not have the ability to know what JediGirl, or me, or anyone else but you is thinking, and that her relationship (or not) with any form of deity lies exactly and fully outside of your jurisdiction.

Meanwhile, there is still the outstanding accusation that I misquoted you, misrepresented what you said, and now that I am "very lame," "very despicable," and "very dishonest." Where is my apology?

[gore3000]

Johnson then goes on to note that the phrase so important to the Darwinists "survival of the fittest" is a mere tautology, or circular reasoning.

I might as mention that mathematics is full of tautologies and maybe-tautologies. What's a maybe-tautology? 1 + 1 = 2 is a tautology if you define 2 as 1 + 1.

True, but mathematics is not science. Logic is not science either. Neither logic nor mathematics says anything about the world, science does. Tautologies are the basis of philosophies and ideologies, not science. That is why evolution is not science but an ideology - an ideology as blindly adhered to by some of its followers as Communism ever was.

[VadeRetro]

Pyrite is so common it may be quicker to name the unassociated minerals.

I apologize for missing/forgetting your pyrite reference. It was a hasty read.

I was initially rather puzzled. How could your pyrite source say this

It is so common in the earth's crust that it is found in almost every possible environment, hence it has a vast number of forms and varieties.

and my source say this?

Importantly, iron, sulphur, and uranium in today's world are quickly oxidized if exposed to oxygen and water. For this reason the reduced forms (pyrite, magnetite and uraninite) are very unstable and cannot survive in any significant concentration in modern stream and beach environments. However, these minerals are quite abundant in many ancient sedimentary rocks that are older than about 2 billion years old. This simple observation of ancient sedimtary deposits requires that the ancient streams and beaches where they accumulated existed under anoxic conditions: the atmosphere had no oxygen at that time.

I checked Schopf on the subject. Right after the twice-quoted section on BIFs, in which it is the geographic spread of the BIF deposits which constitutes the evidence for anoxic conditions, he says this:

Oxygen Levels Were Slow to Rise

That the world's environment contained only traces of oxygen up to roughly 2,000 Ma ago is shown also by other geologic indicators. The presence of O₂ strongly affects how some minerals resist weathering. [Are you following that? He's saying that it isn't the presence or absence of the mineral, it's the ability of an intially large deposit to stay put. -- VR] Good examples are uraninite (UO₂, energy source for nuclear power plants) and pyrite (FeS₂, fool's gold), minerals that in today's oxygen-rich surroundings dissolve and weather away quickly. Yet in terrains older than about 2,200 Ma they make up major ore bodies impressively large conglomeratic deposits formed at the mouths of ancient rivers . . .

So then I looked back at my first source. "For this reason the reduced forms (pyrite, magnetite and uraninite) are very unstable and cannot survive in any significant concentration in modern stream and beach environments."

The misinterpretation seems to be mine. In all cases, it is the size of the deposit and not the presence or absence of the mineral at all which is the indicator of atmospheric oxygen. I apologize for a long blind alley, unintentional on my part.

[VadeRetro]

Typos are mine in the Schopf material, fat-fingered in from a hard-copy book.

[gore3000]

When he's actually added something to the store of knowledge, then, maybe, he would deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as Darwin and other great scientists. Until then, he's just a demogogue/lawyer.

Darwin a scientist? You must be kidding. He got just about everything wrong:

1. His racist brachyo-cephalic index for lower species has been shown to be a farce.
2. His numerous statements on apes being the progenitor of man have been shown to be false.
3. His theory that the characteristics of each parent "melded" in the children was proven wrong by Mendellian genetics.
4. The fossil record, 150 years later still does not show gradual evolution.
5. His hero, Malthus, the original chicken little, has been proven wrong by the tenfold increase in humanity while nutrition improved.
6. His method of course was in no way scientific. He just collected data in support of his theory and never did any experimentation or investing himself. He never proved anything, he just used rhetoric as proof as in the followng most famous paragraph on his "proof" of the evolution of the eye:
"He who will go thus far, if he find on finishing this treatise that large bodies of facts, otherwise inexplicable, can be explained by the theory of descent, ought not to hesitate to go further, and to admit that a structure even as perfect as the eye of an eagle might be formed by natural selection, although in this case he does not know any of the transitional grades. His reason ought to conquer his imagination; though I have felt the difficulty far too keenly to be surprised at any degree of hesitation in extending the principle of natural selection to such startling lengths."
Origin of the Species, Chapter 6.

In other words, his proof was that if one has read through some 200 pages of his drivel already, one should be willing to accept the evolution of the eye on faith.