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'm following the discussion; you obviously aren't. The article cites computer studies simulating very long term histories of mutations. Neutral mutations do have a tendency to disappear over time (but new ones occur, so that at any given time you do have a bunch of neutral mutations floating around in a population).
You apparently support jennyp's argument that a neutral duplication will inevitably be fixed.
You apparently support gore's argument that jennyp's analysis is flawed. Perhaps you'd like to bolster him a little more directly by showing where he got it right.
That is the one contraindicated.
Actually, jennyp's arguments refer to gore's point that neutral mutations, being alone in the world, have practically no way to be propagated at all. In fact, it's a miracle if a favorable mutation gets propagated in gore's model.
I get very discouraged at the kinds of basic things I have to explain to you, Andrew.
As to the random are you now disavowing the Darwinian random mutation foundation?
Natural selection is not mutation. Again, I don't get the feeling I should have to tell you these things. It looks bad to me.
I don't know if I can but I'll try. As I said you can't squeese 4 bits of data into 1 bit. Some data is very compressible and some is not. Graphics are very compressable. If a child draws a smiley face on a piece of paper and you scan it and generate a 1 MB file, you will have a very compressible file, maybe 100 to 1. If you have a tightly written piece of assembly language code for an embedded system, you will not be able to compress it very much at all. Quite possibly not at all.
So when you start considering all the different structures in a single cell, then all the different kinds of cells in the body and all the different systems in the body you start to realize that it can't be done. DNA is often discribed as having lots of wasted space, even human DNA. It's job seems to have more to do with how to build proteins than with how to design a body. Consider the almost infinite possible number of configurations of the trillions of cells that make up a body and you can quickly realize 750MB is not enough.
Welcome to Twist and Shout, with your Big Blue host, AndrewC!
I left it years ago. Kind of like not believing in the Easter rabbit any more...
Any 4 bit sequence can be squeezed into 1 bit if you have a restoring algorithm that works - it's a trivial case.
In general, graphics are notoriously incompressible without allowing for loss of data (i.e., the JPEG format).
Sure, for some tightly written assembly language code (i.e., optimized) attempts at compression are probably pointless. Is that how you would describe the DNA "code"?
With respect to your remarks about cell functions, I do not think that your conclusions are justified by your arguments.
I don't believe you're serious but I try again. I have a 15 gallon gas tank and I want to know how much gas is in it with 1 gallon resolution and all you get is 1 bit to tell me. It works great if it's full or empty but how do you tell me I have 5 gallons? What kind of decompression algorithm is going to take 1 bit and tell me that? I'm biting my tongue here.
"anarchist evolutionary capitalism"...'science' too---a 'little' oxymoronishtic---don't you think!
One bit has two states and could represent either of two four-bit sequences for an algorithm set to produce both. Mathematically, that's about as trivial as it gets.
I have a 15 gallon gas tank and I want to know how much gas is in it with 1 gallon resolution and all you get is 1 bit to tell me. It works great if it's full or empty but how do you tell me I have 5 gallons? What kind of decompression algorithm is going to take 1 bit and tell me that?
That's not even the same question at all - perhaps that explains your non-comprehension. Data compression is a technique of representing a set of information ( a given length of data bits is a simple example) with a smaller length of bits using a specified coding/decoding algorithm (or an embedded decoding algorithm).
If you need to distinguish between 16 arbitrary states of a variable (gallons in your gas tank), it takes four bits. The point is that those states can be 1 bit of information or 100 GB's since their definition doesn't matter to the coding/decoding algorithm.
For arbitrary length strings of a fixed set of states (say gallons of gas in the tanks of cars that drive by on a highway or ASCII bytes), you can use a different class of coding/decoding algorithms based on random statistics for brute force techniques or tuned to known past samples and, perhaps, even self refining. There's plenty of elementary discussion about this on the web although most cases assume the case of large enough states to be useful (such 7- or 8-bit words).
I'm biting my tongue here.
You should be.
If that tells you anything.
This sentence tells me you do not understand evolutionary theory. There is no long term "future" plan. The rest of your post is the same old tired creationist Irreducible Complexity argument which I am sure has been debated ad nauseum here.
by the time another 10,000 generations rolled around and you evolved the second such reature, the first, having been disfunctional/antifunctional all the while, would have DE-EVOLVED and either disappeared altogether or become vestigial.
No youre wrong. All those traits should still be under selective pressure. ProtoBirds (TM) which have longer arms or feather-like extentions will flutter around even better with mutations which cause the skeleton to be lighter. It is all about cumulative selection. One hundreth of the the function of an eye is better than no function at all. Small adaptations for movement are better than none at all.
But the sky holds no wild chickens
What a shame. That would be cool.
Yes.
That's not even the same question at all.
If you need to distinguish between 16 arbitrary states of a variable (gallons in your gas tank), it takes four bits.
That's what I've been saying, you can't squeeze 4 bits worth of data into 1 bit. Nice try. If a 1 state means read the bible and a 0 state means read the Satanic Bible, the bit is still only a bit. You somehow believe you have stored the two books in the bit.
The Big Daddy is absolutely hilarious. Gotta love that uptight professor!
You can. I just showed you how. It can 4 bits or 16 bits or 100 kilobytes.
You just can't store 4-bits of arbitrary data in 1 bit.
Can't you see the difference between those two statements?
Nice try.
Read it again and think about it. Or look it up for yourself.
If a 1 state means read the bible and a 0 state means read the Satanic Bible, the bit is still only a bit. You somehow believe you have stored the two books in the bit.
No, you have stored the information in that bit AND the decoding algorithm. The statement would be equally true if your states were 0) the complete text of the Bible or 1) the complete text of the Bhagavadgîtâ.
I think the Taliban use the same "educational" techniques.
I'm sorry for the tone that made you so defensive. I was hoping you'd gently mention to your co-creationist that his argument was bad. We evos have all known his arguments were generally bad for some time now, and our respect for you would probably have gone up a notch if you'd come out and point out gore3000's blatant & painfully obvious error and the embarrassing way he doggedly tries to defend it. You do disagree with his "50%" argument, don't you?
But hey, if instead you choose to refuse to comment on gore3000's "50%" argument, then so be it.
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