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.
I forgot to include the mitochondrial DNA.
What else am I leaving out?
http://home.pacbell.net/s-max/scott/weasel.html
Cummulative selection is our friend.
Make that Cumulative. My words are undergoing a high mutation rate today.
Infinite Improbability Drive
The Infinite Improbability Drive is a wonderful new method of crossing vast interstellar distances in a mere nothing of a second, without all that tedious mucking about in hyperspace. It was discovered bya lucky chance, and then developed into a governable form of propulsion by the Galactic Government's research team on Damogran.
This, briefly, is the story of its discovery.
The principle of generating small amounts of finite improbability by simply hooking the logic circuits of a Bambleweeny 57 Sub-Meson Brain to an atomic vector plotter suspended in a strong Brownian Motion producer (say a nice hot cup of tea) was of course well understood - and such generators were often used to break the ice at parties by making all the molecules in the hostess's undergarments leap simultaneously one foot to the left, in accordance with the Theory of Indeterminacy. Many respectable physicists said that they weren't going to stand for this - partly because it was a debasement of science, but mostly because they didn't get invited to those sort of parties.
Another thing they couldn't stand was the perpetual failure they encountered in trying to construct a machine which could generate the infinite improbability needed to flip a spaceship across the mind-paralysing distances between the furthest stars, and in the end they grumpily announced that such a machine was virtually impossible.
Then, one day, a student who had been left to sweep up the lab after a particularly unsuccessful party found himself reasoning this way: If, he thought to himself, such a machine is a virtual impossibility, then it must logically be a finite improbability. So all I have to do in order to make one is to work out exactly how improbable it is, feed that figure into the finite improbability generator, give it a fresh cup of really hot tea ... and turn it on!
He did this, and was rather startled to discover that he had managed to create the long sought after golden Infinite Improbability generator out of thin air.
It startled him even more when just after he was awarded the Galactic Institute's Prize for Extreme Cleverness he got lynched by a rampaging mob of respectable physicists who had finally realized that the one thing they really couldn't stand was a smartass.
Nope. Most of the pictures look like plausible fossils to me. (Is there some reason "branching" is prohibited? Do trees know this?)
Before I shuffle off, mumbling: I take it some of the pictures are solidly known to be non-fossil?
We are definitely going to need a lot more data. We need enough data to build the cell, then all the thousands if not millions of other kinds of cells, then a skeletal structure and organs and....
You really think God, Herself, couldn't pack all the needed information into a finite, self organizing, DNA code of finite length?
Finger? --- nope! Finger? --- nope! Finger? --- nope! Finger? --- nope! ... Finger? --- yep! next finger Finger? --- nope! Finger? --- nope! Finger? --- nope! Finger? --- nope! ... Finger? --- yep! next finger Finger? --- nope! Finger? --- nope! Finger? --- nope! Finger? --- nope! ... Finger? --- yep! next finger Finger? --- nope! Finger? --- nope! Finger? --- nope! Finger? --- nope! ... Finger? --- yep! next finger Finger? --- nope! Finger? --- nope! Finger? --- nope! Finger? --- nope! ... Finger? --- yep! Forearm? --- nope! Forearm? --- nope! Forearm? --- nope! Forearm? --- nope! ... Forearm? --- yep! Elbow? --- nope! Elbow? --- nope! Elbow? --- nope! Elbow? --- nope! ... Elbow? --- Finger! what the hey! gotta throw it away! Elbow? --- nope! etc etcWhat a joke! That program proves or illustrates nothing but a foolish waste of time.
Why is DNA needed at all? Do the angels have DNA?
Technically, pseudorandom idle time.
Why is DNA needed at all? Do the angels have DNA?
Ha! Okay that's one better! Maybe two.
I'm glad that was your time and not mine! It has to be a joke. jennyp has to know it's a joke as well.
Shermer is one of the turkeys in charge of "Skeptic Magazine".
It's one thing to claim to have a "skeptical attitude", to be from Missouri, to be generally skeptical etc. etc.
It's quite another thing to claim to be some sort of a masterdebunker, the saviour of the white race and Western civilization from every kind of "crank science" or false doctrine which ever arises in the world. The claim which Shermer at. al. make is similar to a claim of omniscience, i.e. they're claiming to actually have the talent and the time in life to sort through every new idea which ever comes down the road and separate the wheat from the chaff in each and every case.
Not only does it strike me as obvious that nobody has the talent and the time to do that, but, as I see it, there is also evidence that Shermer and his pals at Skeptic are more interested in advancing some sort of a quasi-religious agenda than they are in discerning truth or anything like that.
The problem I have with Shermer arises from his sending LeRoy Ellenberger as his representative/reporter to the Kronia conference in Portland Oregon in 1994 AFTER being informed that Ellenberger was persona-non-grata at the conference and would not be allowed in. That struck me as a case of making a statement while ignoring the possibility of actually getting any real reporting in.
I was not at the conferences at which Ellenberger achievied his persona-non-gratahood and have no opinions on the rectitude or non-rectitude of that decision on the part of the people in charge of Kronia. My problem is with Shermer, Lippard et. al at Skeptic. It seems to me that they had a clear fiduciary responsibility to the people who shell out the $30/yr or whatever for subscriptions to their rag, presumably for information on unusual scientific theories, to try to provide some information on the unusual scientific theories which were under discussion in Portland in 94, and they chose to make an ideological fashion statement instead.
Were they trying to CREATE skeptics by violating fiduciary responsibilities?
Kind of like the guy who kicks the ladder out while his son is doing inventory on the top two rows of shelves and says "That's your first lesson in business, son: don't ever trust ANY son of a bitch, not even your father" ?
It took all of 1 second. The letters stand out like sore thumbs. He didn't even try to hide the data.
Doing ANYTHING with a joke language like that would be a task of hurculean proportions. Nobody with brains or talent has ever written anything looking like that since Algol was invented, and that was way the hell before 1980.
I saw that after I posted. Pretty obvious when you look at it from more than 4 inches away.
Right. Artificial graphite filaments, for instance.
Is there some reason "branching" is prohibited?
I'm not sure about the evolution of branching filaments in prokaryotes, but the article was written at a time when Schopf was still claiming the fossils to be of cyanobacteria which form non-branching filaments. Branching filaments aren't common and as a large issue is made of this in this heated debate, my guess is that branching is associated with later evolved organisms.
http://gnn.tigr.org/articles/02_01/Landscape_genome.shtml
"Genes are the pay dirt of the genome, yet the new sequence shows that they occupy just slightly more than one percent of the entire DNA sequence. However, genes are modular in design, allowing them to be spread over huge distances; exons, short segments that code for a protein are separated by stretches of non-coding regions, called introns, which occupy 24 percent of the genome. It is not known whether introns are important for gene function."
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