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.
What is the story then?
This is from Talk Origins
Most neutral alleles are lost soon after they appear. The average time (in generations) until loss of a neutral allele is 2(Ne/N) ln(2N) where N is the effective population size (the number of individuals contributing to the next generation's gene pool) and N is the total population size. Only a small percentage of alleles fix.
If you have no fixation and you do not have what is claimed by T.O. that the neutral allele will be lost(kinda agrees with gore3000 don't you think). What happens? Please provide the link to the information.
One tends to be defensive when responding to "attacks". If his argument is bad then the argument from Talk Origins in my post 1741 is equally bad. Is it flawed?
The typical arrogant attitude of the Darwininian does not allow things to happen that they do not offer. I am performing jury duty so the answers to your erroneous ... whatever is not on your timetable. I suppose you consider Talk Origins as Sh!t. I will agree, but in this case the argument is usable.
Grounds for a mistrial right there.
I would expect that from the shifty defense lawyer you are. You accuse others of the actions you undertake. You accuse me of distraction and you are the one that waves this red herring. Please show where it says either "Evolution does not occur" or "God operates here.
1739 posted on 6/24/02 1:36 PM Pacific by PatrickHenry
Howz your..."search for the Creator going via evolution"---find any god fossils-bones yet?
A duplicated gene will have all of the promoter elements necessary for its expression. - RWN -
This is a big problem, perhaps the biggest problem for evolutionists and a problem which those 'fools' who preceded Darwin were well aware of but did not have the means of proving. Now the proof has been found. -me-
?? -RWN-
We already spoke about how a gene is only the section which is transcribed to make proteins. What you are saying is just the latest excuse by evolutionists for scientific advances which disprove it.
Evolutionists have (and have always had) a very simple minded view of how an organism functions. This view is totally incorrect. It was incorrect in Darwin's time and it is even more incorrect now. One of the reasons I say that evolution has been disproven by science already is that the complexity guessed at before Darwin has received definite proof since then. Just note this: every single scientific discovery in biology has shown that the methods by which organisms operate and function are ever more complex. Mendelian Genetics discovered the dual nature of our genome. The discovery of DNA revealed how complex a gene was, how specific it needed to be to perform its functions, and how many of them there were. Now with the beginning of the unraveling of the genome, we are beginning to see how the deep interconnections between different parts of the body actually work. In other words, evolutionist reductionism has been totally destroyed.
I have spoken of how complex the 'program' by which life turns an organism from a single cell to a full grown one is, let me back up the above with the passage below:
23. Cell Interactions in Development
In Chapter 14, we learned that regionalization along the anteroposterior axis in the early Drosophila embryo is largely determined by gradients of transcription factors generated through translation of spatially restricted maternal mRNAs and subsequent diffusion of the encoded proteins through the common cytoplasm of the syncytial blastoderm. These transcription factors, in turn, control the patterned expression of specific target genes along the anterioposterior axis. In contrast, local interactions between cells, mediated by secreted or cell-surface signaling molecules, determine regionalization along the dorsoventral axis in Drosophila and along both major axes in early vertebrate embryos. Such local interactions also are the primary mechanism regulating the formation of internal organs such as the kidney, lung, and pancreas. Likewise, the vast number of highly specialized cells and their stereotyped arrangement in different tissues is a consequence of locally acting signals.
The importance of cellular interactions in development was demonstrated first in the early part of twentieth century through two complementary experiments. In one, destruction of an optic-vesicle primordium in developing frogs prevented formation of the lens from the overlying ectodermal cells. Conversely, transplantation of an optic-vesicle primordium to a region of ectoderm that normally does not give rise to a lens induced formation of a lens in an abnormal (ectopic) site (Figure 23-1). In modern biology we now use the term induction to refer to any mechanism whereby one cell population influences the development of neighboring cells.
In some cases, induction involves a binary choice. In the presence of a signal the cell is directed down one developmental pathway; in the absence of the signal, the cell assumes a different developmental fate or fails to develop at all. In other cases, signals can induce different responses in cells at different concentrations. For instance, a low concentration of an inductive signal causes a cell to assume fate A, but a higher concentration causes the cell to assume fate B. The concentration at which a signal induces a specific cellular response is called a threshold.
In many cases, an inductive signal induces an entire tissue containing multiple cell types. Two models have been proposed to account for these properties of extracellular signaling molecules. In the gradient model, a signaling molecule induces different fates at different threshold concentrations. A cell’s fate, then, is determined by its distance from the signal source. In the alternative relay model, a signal induces a cascade of induction in which cells close to the signal source are induced to assume specific fates; they, in turn, produce other inductive signals to pattern their neighbors.
Although inductive interactions often are unidirectional, they sometimes are reciprocal. Prominent examples of reciprocal induction include the formation of internal organs such as the kidney, pancreas, and lung. Many inductive interactions occur between non-equivalent cells; that is, the signaling and responding cells are already different. However, interactions between equivalent cells often are crucial in assuring that some cells in a developing tissue assume a specific fate and others do not. An evolutionarily conserved class of ligands and receptors regulates such interactions in C. elegans, Drosophila, and vertebrates.
Another feature that distinguishes various developmental pathways is the nature of the extracellular inductive signals. Many are freely diffusible and hence can act at a distance, whereas some are tethered to the cell surface and are available only to immediate neighboring cells. Still others are highly localized by their tight binding to the extracellular matrix. Early embryologists noted that cells differed in their ability to respond to inducing signals. Cells that can respond to such signals are referred to as competent. Competence may reflect the expression of receptors specific for a given signaling molecule, the ability of the receptors to activate specific intracellular signaling pathways, or the presence of the transcription factors necessary to stimulate expression of the genes required to implement the developmental program induced.
In this chapter, we first describe examples of various types of inductive signals and cellular interactions that regulate cell-type specification in several different developmental systems. Specific extracellular signals also control the migration of certain cells, which occurs during development of some tissues. As an example of this phenomenon, we discuss the role of extracellular signals in the assembly of connections between neurons. Another common feature of developmental programs is the highly regulated death of certain cells. In the final section of this chapter, we examine the conserved pathway leading to cell death and how it is controlled. The examples presented in this chapter were chosen to illustrate key concepts in this rapidly advancing field.
From: Cell Interations in Development
Note how complicated it is. Note that these scientists call it a program. Note that small changes or mistakes lead to disastrous results.
That's very interesting and another evolutionist coverup. Before the promoter DNA was discovered evolutionists were calling all that other stuff 'junk DNA' and swore up and down that it was totally useless and in fact it was the remains of genes discarded by evolution. Now this junk DNA turns out is so essential that they add it to the fairy tale that not just the gene, but the promoter region gets copied. As I said before, a xerox copy of the promoter region would not do the job you assign to it. All it would do, being a xerox copy, is do exactly what the original gene's promoter region did - it would assign the same cells to do the original gene's job and it would assign the original gene to produce as it was doing already. So as I said, this would be a useless gene.
I know exactly what I am talking about. So the scientists turned a gene on continuously. So what? Most genes are not vital, they are not killers. You can play with those genes and not destroy an organism. I already gave you an example of that before. Are you so sure that such playing around with genes has no consequences that you would let them do the same thing to a child of yours? I doubt it. I certainly would not. You may not find the consequences of that playing around right away, but there surely are consequences to it. The scientists, not being a mouse, cannot so easily tell what the consequences really were.
And that is exactly why natural selection does not work as an agent for evolution. It takes too long. Even evolutionists admit that transformation of one species into another takes millions of years. As FDR said 'people do not live in the long run, they have to eat every day' or something close to that. A species, an organism cannot wait millions of years to eat. Environmental changes can occur in the twinkling of an eye. Even the one you mention, took place in a comparatively short time. The freezing of Greenland took only a few centuries, the drying of North Africa at most a millenia. So no, there was no time for evolution, natural selection or whatever, to induce new faculties in a species to make it able to better adapt to the changed conditions.
Great point! Another example of the evolution that did not happen is viruses. Viruses have been studied for over a hundred years in an attempt to find ways to cure people from the harm they do. They have been examined by biologists, by medical doctors, by scientists working for the government, working in universities, working in private companies. Billions upon billions are spent every year throwing everything possible at these viruses trying to make them mutate, destroy them, make them be harmless. These viruses mutate very easily, they can become resistant to previous treatments, to chemicals, medicines, and other things. However, the one thing that has never happened in all those studies is the transformation of a virus into a self replicating bacteria. Never. Even though it is darned close to one, it has never become self replicating, it has always remained dependent on a host for replication.
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