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.
Hypnotism--witchcraft ideology--politics--religion--BRAINWASHING--superstition--BIAS---EVOLUTION... FAKE---imitation---HOAX... all liberalism--evolution insanity/revisionism!OOBFOO
1492 posted on 6/20/02 6:07 PM Eastern by f.Christian
No problem. I consider it an honor to be distinguished for precision. And I must be accurate, because the attack is on the precision. ---All War supposes human weakness, and against that it is directed. ----- General Carl von Clausewitz
Don't think only about the easy money. There's also women. The first three get all they can handle. The biologist, on the other hand, probably suffers from charisma deficiency. And I never heard of a biology groupie.
To: jennyp
Alert--whammy...
jennyp spin/flip...
In Economics, this is called "Communism". Remember Communists? They were always railing against the "anarchy of the marketplace" in favor of rational design of industries & economies by highly trained soviets armed with 5-year plans. They were convinced that this ID approach would create lasting prosperity the likes of which... anarchistic, evolutionary Capitalism---could never hope to approach.
12 posted on 6/7/02 12:24 PM Pacific by jennyp
my comments/interpretation--translation...
Capitalism/science/history via evolution!
Looney logic...history---political science too via evolution!
740 posted on 6/17/02 6:42 PM Pacific by f.Christian
CC777 #641: Macroevolution has not been proven nor does it meet the Scientific Method. [ Richard B. Goldschmidt quote] Micro and/or breeds within a family species. Such as with a German Shepard and a Poodle, both are dogs and will not evolve into eagles.
CC777 to VR #652: I was not aware that anyone was still using the old Horse/Zebra line to debate in earnest
The reason I harp on this example is that it emphasises what I consider a big problem with the enti-E crowd: imprecise definitions. G3k and medved have claimed that all the equids are the same species; g3k said that when he first saw a zebra it was a "horse of a different color". Alright, if that's the case, what is the term for animals that can breed, but can't produce fertile offspring? It isn't breeds or races.
Another thing. Horses occasionally have a birth defect, namely being born with toes. Gould used this in the title of one of his books. Why are toe genes present in a hooved animal? When we get to the fossil record, there are horse-like skeletons, except with one or more toes. These animals are all extinct now.
It really doesn't seem like a huge leap in logic to figure that the skeletons are ancestral equids, and that horses, donkeys, et al, are related. But once you admit the possibility of related, but distinct species, the "no macro evolution" claim has been shown false.
No problem. They just won't admit it. And they'll claim the evidence is faked. And they'll say you're on the take. And they'll play Clintonian word games. What they will never do is look at the evidence and draw the obvious conclusions. This is not a problem with evolution; we're dealing with abnormal psychology here.
Good question.
Here is a recent paper from a group at Yale:
http://bioinfo.mbb.yale.edu/~nick/reprints/human_pseudogenes.pdf
It says in the abstract that the estimated number of processed pseudogenes is over 10,000 in the human genome. These buggers are normal genes that at some point transcribed and were processed into mRNA via the usual mechanisms and then "accidentally" (trying to use a non-pejorative description here) reverse transcribed back into DNA. This cDNA "copy" then apparently randomly inserted itself back into the genome and what you are left with is the sequence for just the coding region of a protein (this is why it is called processed) sitting there in the genome silently (since there are no upstream promoter elements to drive its transcription). A genetic "mistake".....and there are 10,000 of them in the human genome. Nebullis points out that this is a small fraction of the non-coding DNA and he is correct, yet this number looks large compared to the 30,000 real functional coding genes (which makes up only 3% of the total genome). In addition these are just processed pseudogenes, there are other examples of genetic mistakes and mishaps I am not discussing here since I dont have the data readily available (yet).
Now the punchline (for purposes of evolution) is that many of these processed pseudogenes are shared by humans and close relatives of the primate family. Yet not only are they shared, but they are found in the same position in their respective genomes. Strong evidence for common ancestry.
If the human body is composed of trillions of cells, most of which are fooling around with the DNA and quite often and if these big mistakes occur. Why is it that the DNA from different cells remains so close. Or am I wrong in that conclusion.
The DNA repair machinery in humans is quite good, so the mutation rate is low. Mistakes certainly do occur in individual cells however and if enough of them are in the "right" places it can lead to uncontrolled proliferation and abnormal behavior (cancer). We arent talking about these type of mistakes here though. The psuedogene discussion concerns mistakes at the level of entire species and animal families. These are mistakes common to me, you and possibly everyone on the planet (as well as chimps and gorillas in the case of shared pseudogenes).
This is an aside, but I see it coming up again and again in this thread and I find it insulting. People who believe in evolution are not by definition atheists. For the record I am Catholic and I believe in God. Many people I know in the scientific community are also religious and believe in evolution. Evolution is just a mechanism (and an elegant one at that). I turn to science for the HOW , and to church for the WHY.
Is this a case of co-option?
I sense resistance!
And then there's bar-moving. If you can show all the horses are related, then it's not macroevolution. Any evolution you can show promptly becomes microevolution.
I don't have a source in front of me, but I remember reading that Linneaus (a creationist) came to disbelive in the immutability of species as his knowledge grew.
G'night all
There's also selective associative guilt. Hitler? Clearly the product of "Darwinism". The Inquisition's torture and imprisonment of Galileo? Those guys weren't real scriptural literalists.
Speciation.
. . . if you're not willing to use genus and species in the standard Linnean way?
Oh, you mean if you're a creationist! "Nothing to see here, folks!"
How long would such a creature last in the wild? A day? Two days??
In real life, natural selection is a mechanism of stasis and not a mechanism of change. Natural selection weeds out horses born with toes the same way it would weed out any animal making the first step towards evolving into some other kind of animal. By a new kind of animal, of course, I mean an animal with different kinds of organs and a different basic plan for existence. Evolutionists can call that whatever they want to, but that's the thing which can't happen other than via intelligent processes. No combination of mutations and natural selection over any amount of time will ever produce a major change like that.
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