Posted on 06/17/2002 3:10:50 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
Opponents of evolution want to make a place for creationism by tearing down real science, but their arguments don't hold up
When Charles Darwin introduced the theory of evolution through natural selection 143 years ago, the scientists of the day argued over it fiercely, but the massing evidence from paleontology, genetics, zoology, molecular biology and other fields gradually established evolution's truth beyond reasonable doubt. Today that battle has been won everywhere--except in the public imagination.
Embarrassingly, in the 21st century, in the most scientifically advanced nation the world has ever known, creationists can still persuade politicians, judges and ordinary citizens that evolution is a flawed, poorly supported fantasy. They lobby for creationist ideas such as "intelligent design" to be taught as alternatives to evolution in science classrooms. As this article goes to press, the Ohio Board of Education is debating whether to mandate such a change. Some antievolutionists, such as Philip E. Johnson, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley and author of Darwin on Trial, admit that they intend for intelligent-design theory to serve as a "wedge" for reopening science classrooms to discussions of God.
Besieged teachers and others may increasingly find themselves on the spot to defend evolution and refute creationism. The arguments that creationists use are typically specious and based on misunderstandings of (or outright lies about) evolution, but the number and diversity of the objections can put even well-informed people at a disadvantage.
To help with answering them, the following list rebuts some of the most common "scientific" arguments raised against evolution. It also directs readers to further sources for information and explains why creation science has no place in the classroom.
1. Evolution is only a theory. It is not a fact or a scientific law. [Rebuttal omitted to save space. See the original article.]
2. Natural selection is based on circular reasoning: the fittest are those who survive, and those who survive are deemed fittest. [Rebuttal omitted to save space. See the original article.]
3. Evolution is unscientific, because it is not testable or falsifiable. It makes claims about events that were not observed and can never be re-created. [Rebuttal omitted to save space. See the original article.]
4. Increasingly, scientists doubt the truth of evolution. [Rebuttal omitted to save space. See the original article.]
5. The disagreements among even evolutionary biologists show how little solid science supports evolution. [Rebuttal omitted to save space. See the original article.]
6. If humans descended from monkeys, why are there still monkeys? [Rebuttal omitted to save space. See the original article.]
7. Evolution cannot explain how life first appeared on earth. [Rebuttal omitted to save space. See the original article.]
8. Mathematically, it is inconceivable that anything as complex as a protein, let alone a living cell or a human, could spring up by chance. [Rebuttal omitted to save space. See the original article.]
9. The Second Law of Thermodynamics says that systems must become more disordered over time. Living cells therefore could not have evolved from inanimate chemicals, and multicellular life could not have evolved from protozoa. [Rebuttal omitted to save space. See the original article.]
10. Mutations are essential to evolution theory, but mutations can only eliminate traits. They cannot produce new features. [Rebuttal omitted to save space. See the original article.]
11. Natural selection might explain microevolution, but it cannot explain the origin of new species and higher orders of life. [Rebuttal omitted to save space. See the original article.]
12. Nobody has ever seen a new species evolve. [Rebuttal omitted to save space. See the original article.]
13. Evolutionists cannot point to any transitional fossils--creatures that are half reptile and half bird, for instance. [Rebuttal omitted to save space. See the original article.]
14. Living things have fantastically intricate features--at the anatomical, cellular and molecular levels--that could not function if they were any less complex or sophisticated. The only prudent conclusion is that they are the products of intelligent design, not evolution. [Rebuttal omitted to save space. See the original article.]
15. Recent discoveries prove that even at the microscopic level, life has a quality of complexity that could not have come about through evolution. [Rebuttal omitted to save space. See the original article.]
CONCLUSION
"Creation science" is a contradiction in terms. A central tenet of modern science is methodological naturalism--it seeks to explain the universe purely in terms of observed or testable natural mechanisms. Thus, physics describes the atomic nucleus with specific concepts governing matter and energy, and it tests those descriptions experimentally. Physicists introduce new particles, such as quarks, to flesh out their theories only when data show that the previous descriptions cannot adequately explain observed phenomena. The new particles do not have arbitrary properties, moreover--their definitions are tightly constrained, because the new particles must fit within the existing framework of physics.
In contrast, intelligent-design theorists invoke shadowy entities that conveniently have whatever unconstrained abilities are needed to solve the mystery at hand. Rather than expanding scientific inquiry, such answers shut it down. (How does one disprove the existence of omnipotent intelligences?)
Intelligent design offers few answers. For instance, when and how did a designing intelligence intervene in life's history? By creating the first DNA? The first cell? The first human? Was every species designed, or just a few early ones? Proponents of intelligent-design theory frequently decline to be pinned down on these points. They do not even make real attempts to reconcile their disparate ideas about intelligent design. Instead they pursue argument by exclusion--that is, they belittle evolutionary explanations as far-fetched or incomplete and then imply that only design-based alternatives remain.
Logically, this is misleading: even if one naturalistic explanation is flawed, it does not mean that all are. Moreover, it does not make one intelligent-design theory more reasonable than another. Listeners are essentially left to fill in the blanks for themselves, and some will undoubtedly do so by substituting their religious beliefs for scientific ideas.
Time and again, science has shown that methodological naturalism can push back ignorance, finding increasingly detailed and informative answers to mysteries that once seemed impenetrable: the nature of light, the causes of disease, how the brain works. Evolution is doing the same with the riddle of how the living world took shape. Creationism, by any name, adds nothing of intellectual value to the effort.
The Author(s):
John Rennie is editor in chief of Scientific American.
Hoo boy. Absolutely not true. The only areas in science that are invalidated by my argument, are those areas wherein ID has to be invalid. To my knowledge, the only area of science claiming this is evolutionism. Everywhere else, the art is advanced by designing experiments to test hypotheses - their very nature not only assumes, but demands ID. If not so, then the results would be useless.I don't understand your point. You claimed that any experiment that was intelligently designed could not rule out ID, therefore only experiments that were not designed could rule out ID. You claim that the very fact that an experiment exhibits design makes it unable to detect the cause (or rule out a certain cause) for a natural phenomenon. It's like saying "this experiment cannot apply to phenomena that exist in Japan, because none of the test equipment was made in Japan." It's a non-sequitur.
It just so happens there's a similar controversy in meteorology: Godless materialistic meteorologists claim that there's ice in the winter because the temperature drops to below freezing. But a loud, very small but well-funded minority claims in the popular press that there is an Intelligent Ice Fairy who only comes out in the winter who produces ice.
So let's try this experiment:
A. There is ice in the winter because the temperature drops below 32oF.
B. The experiment & apparatus were intelligently designed, therefore it cannot rule out the Intelligent Ice Fairy who only comes out in the winter.
Well! Now it becomes clear just what the IIF'ers are really saying: No amount of materialistic explanations will prove IIF theory wrong because there's always the possibility of a really sneaky Intelligent Ice Fairy out there (cousin, no doubt, to the cobbler's elves) who diabolically changes the environment in exactly the way needed to perfectly cover His tracks.
Don't you see? This would be the only reason why an experiment would never rule out IIF (or ID). And the fact that the experiment itself was "intelligently designed" is irrelevant! I'll bet you can't even describe to me a "non-designed" version of the above experiment.
"I believe...in homicide..."
This code cannot naturally be added to. And lower life forms do not have the code to move on.
In order for evolution to occure, there has to be a way to create, then patch in additional code to advance. It hasn't happened and it isn't going happen.
Evolution, in part, was invented to evolve communism.
And there is no correlation (at least not a linear one--we just don't know yet) between number of genes and organismal complexity.
There certainly seems to be enough space to fit 3 billion bits on a 670 billion bit hard drive. His issue is probably the mechanism for changing the bits. My issue is the convent of the data. A polypeptide is a double bit word so 3 billion polypeptides = 6 billion bits of data or 750 Megabytes. Would you agree?
And you read this where?
But where does this take us? We have duplicates and so on but these additions add nothing that was not already there informationally. We have quantity, not quality.
But extra code is not always necessary to create a radically different creature.
Unless I am mistaken, this is speculation.
The number of genes in a man or a mouse are not so very different.
Yes, and this is indeed amazing given that the qualitative differences are at least so seemingly vast, which to me asks more questions than it answers.
The genes a simple animal has are enough to produce a gigantically large number of wildly different species, if exploited to their full potential.
Perhaps, but nature, the environment, is essentially passive. What is the active agent or mechanism that moves any species or a new species toward "their full potential"? What is "full potential"? Fair questions, I think.
And finally, there do exist "genetic toolkits" in nature that are capable of making highly complex, coordinated changes to a large number of genes at a single throw.
Well, granting that the tools are available, who or what agency moves such changes in a purposive direction? Amorphous "natural selection", I would suggest, is none such. It is a chimera, and slippery. Chance and randomness beget more of the same, and I believe you would agree with this. I have a terrible problem with "chance" as an argument.
(I recommend The Wisdom of the Genes by Christopher Wills for a description of some examples of this.)
Worth looking into and so I will (hope it's not math-intensive).
The ability to evolve does itself evolve.
Reaching, I think.
Physicist, my quarrel with Evolution is that while it is nice and linear and cause-and-effect in its overall flavor, it not only has not come up with the evidence but has been responsible for a lot of chicanery over the years or, to be more direct, the "profession" has again and again perpetrated frauds upon the public. The rhetoric in its support continues to be replete with sophistry and sophistry is dishonest. You are not dishonest.
I have great respect for your abilities, for your brilliance, as you know. Nonetheless I can't "get there from here" because getting there must be based upon the evidence. We have, at best, speculation, and I know you know the difference between the two. Now this is not a personal attack, just candor, and respectful candor at that.
Evolution attempts to take us into the realm of metaphysics when it has no prayer of getting even the physics right. Why should we listen?
Well, there are more objections but I'm sure you've heard them all. What you will never hear from me is condemnation OR concurrence based upon some authority alone, whether it be the authority of religion OR science.
Thanks for "listening" and thanks for the earlier physics education (to the extent I'm educable!). Whatever our differences, I think all may agree that it's a pretty amazing Universe out there.
Okay, that's the opening of your rebuttal; now you've got to add the meat.
That is silly. Our omnipotent God used evolution to create the universe as it is exists today.
Men of limited imagination and faith like you try to limit God's abilities to something they contain in their small minds.
But you have more space now. This newly created space in the DNA can change over time and voilà, new information.
Not necessarily. DNA is mostly used for making proteins; maybe the amoeba requires a greater variety of proteins to function than does a man.
And such would quickly find themselves ostracized by the rest of the community. Humans are social critters; we need other people. If it means giving a little bit to the community in order to have that community's support, it does not require the coersion of man nor God to facilitate that giving.
medved uses that tactic on those who disagree with him all the time and no one's ever banned him. Must've been something else...
Why not? There are numerous manners in which extra code can be added, from the assimilation of viruses to duplications during replication.
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