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15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense [THE FINAL DEBUNKING]
Scientific American ^ | 17 June 2002 | John Rennie

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.


TOPICS: General Discusssion
KEYWORDS: crevolist
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To: PatrickHenry
Hell, having read that all evolutionary evidence and mechanisms are simply a coverup and a conspiracy for the umpteenth dozenth time, I agree.
1,781 posted on 06/25/2002 2:21:46 AM PDT by Junior
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To: PatrickHenry
Though I must admit, reading about how he's personally and ultimately refuted the life work of 150 years of biologists is both amusing (like listening to a teenager expound upon the meaning of existence) and pathetic (like listening to a teenager expound upon the meaning of existence).
1,782 posted on 06/25/2002 2:27:00 AM PDT by Junior
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To: RightWingNilla
Some of the best geneticists in the world can't predict......I am supposed to believe you?

Haven't you figured out by now that God made Little Boy Blue the final arbiter of all things scientific and religious?

1,783 posted on 06/25/2002 2:32:38 AM PDT by Junior
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To: Junior
Though I must admit, reading about how he's personally and ultimately refuted the life work of 150 years of biologists is both amusing (like listening to a teenager expound upon the meaning of existence) and pathetic (like listening to a teenager expound upon the meaning of existence).

Amusing. Pathetic. Both of those. Also, every now and then a bit of the old g3k peeps out of all the pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo:

You may think you are making points with your strawmen and your nonsense but you are not. All you are showing is that you have become a buffoon of evolution. Sad.
1760 posted on 6/24/02 9:49 PM Eastern by gore3000

You evolutionists are so dishonest. Andrew gave you proof from your own friends and you ignore it. Not only that, you act like he posted nothing. Why don't you refute post#1641? Don't you guys get tired of lying?
1768 posted on 6/24/02 11:08 PM Eastern by gore3000

Yup, you and your evo friends are so wrong that you cannot even attempt to refute your opponents - and heaven forbid that you should read what your opponents say, might shake your faith in evolution. Nothing like a closed mind to keep the truth from entering.
1769 posted on 6/24/02 11:14 PM Eastern by gore3000

But I miss the old g3k, when he was calling everyone a liar, slimer, Clintonion slimer, etc. Back then I would read his posts for their entertainment value. Now there's really nothing there at all.
1,784 posted on 06/25/2002 3:50:39 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
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To: RightWingNilla
Check the date in this review article. Eukaryotic promoters have been studied for over thirty years. The lac operon in bacteria was discovered over forty years ago! Long before any genome was sequenced Gore. No one ever classified cis-acting promoter elements with junk DNA.

I am quite aware that many legitimate scientists were aware that there was more going on in the DNA than genes, I have said so a few times. However, evolutionist phonies have denied - and continue to deny that non-coding DNA is useful:

Most of your DNA is "junk". We call it that because the DNA sequence inside a "junk" region is never used to form a protein. The junk isn't after a Start codon, or else is right after a Stop codon, so the gene expression mechanisms simply never look at the junk. They skip over it. There is also "junk" which is inside a gene, but which is ignored when the gene is used. The details are complicated, but if you are interested, see Section Two of this Talk.Origins FAQ.
From: Junk DNA

Note the sources - the phoney Lyndsay to which Vade constantly refers to, using the just as phoney TalkOrigins as a source! This is still up on the web, they shamelessly continue the lie after it has been disproven.

Here is a link you provided with regards to junk DNA last week. Note in the middle of this report:

What the scientist believes the evidence he discovered means is irrelevant. The evidence speaks for itself. Also note that it is a reporter saying those words, the reporters on most of these mainstream magazines call everything evolution. As I showed, the evidence supports intelligent design, what others think or say is irrelevant. When Galileo was arguing that the earth went around the sun, the geocentrists had the same evidence as he and argued strongly against it due to their ingrained prejudices. The evidence belongs to the world, not to he who discovers it.

1,785 posted on 06/25/2002 5:45:47 AM PDT by gore3000
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To: RightWingNilla
That is not what I said. You surmised that because it did not kill that the change was okay. I said the effects may not be obvious. -me-

Gore, you in fact did say that "small changes" would have "disasterous effects" at the bottom of #1754. How else am I supposed to interpret that?

Yes I did, and I was referring there to the program (and note that the scientists themselves call it a program) that controls development. If you go around randomly changing that program you will create big problems and the article showed some of them.

You seem to think that any genetic engineering by scientists refutes my contention that the organism was intelligently designed. That is a ridiculous position. Scientists are intelligent designers themselves and they do not go around willy-nilly making these genetic changes. They know what they are doing. What you also refuse to acknowledge is that because a change does not result in death does not mean that it is not unfavorable. The examples you have given and continue to give are unsourced, unexplained, and give no specifics. You want to discuss them, don't play games, give the facts, and say how those facts support your views.

1,786 posted on 06/25/2002 6:03:18 AM PDT by gore3000
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To: Junior
reading about how he's personally and ultimately refuted the life work of 150 years of biologists is both amusing

It is not I who has refuted evolution. As I have been saying 150 years of science has refuted evolution - and I have shown with references that it has. You and your yokels of evolution cannot deny a word I have said so you must insult.

1,787 posted on 06/25/2002 6:08:14 AM PDT by gore3000
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To: PatrickHenry; Junior
Now there's really nothing there at all.

As if your posts are founts of relevant information instead of the refuse of Ad Hominem they are. You are giving bountiful evidence of your desiccated mind.

1,788 posted on 06/25/2002 6:10:11 AM PDT by AndrewC
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To: AndrewC
You continue to bring in irrelevant comments. You stated jennyp's result incorrectly. That's the point I was making. If you misstate one person's result, why should I pay any attention to other comments of yours?
1,789 posted on 06/25/2002 6:12:16 AM PDT by Doctor Stochastic
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To: PatrickHenry
Amusing. Pathetic. Both of those. Also, every now and then a bit of the old g3k peeps out of all the pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo:

Yes Patrick, it is totally pathetic that you continue to spout insults and ad hominems because you cannot refute the evidence. You and your friends do not have a leg to stand on in defending your faith in evolution. You have refused and continue to refuse to back up your statements with anything besides the opinion of a person who posts nothing relevant to this discussion.

1,790 posted on 06/25/2002 6:13:58 AM PDT by gore3000
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To: All
A small, but representative compendium (since #1784):
You [Junior] and your yokels of evolution cannot deny a word I have said so you must insult.
1787 posted on 6/25/02 9:08 AM Eastern by gore3000

You [addressed to both PH and Junior, but anchored to a PH posting] are giving bountiful evidence of your desiccated mind.
1788 posted on 6/25/02 9:10 AM Eastern by AndrewC

Yes Patrick, it is totally pathetic that you continue to spout insults and ad hominems because you cannot refute the evidence. You and your friends do not have a leg to stand on in defending your faith in evolution.
1790 posted on 6/25/02 9:13 AM Eastern by gore3000


1,791 posted on 06/25/2002 6:35:16 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
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To: PatrickHenry
Patrick, re your #1791, do you know the meaning of ad hominem? That is, it appears you would rather try to discredit posters than stay with the subject.

The subject is a pathetic article that has drawn 1,800 posts. My theory is that this is so because the article is pathetic.

Begin with a supposed science magazine that bashes Creationists -- that's politics, atheist leftist politics. We don't have to look far for confirmaton -- the following from very early in the article:

...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.

This is just a series of bold and blatant lies. The evidence is missing, not massing. Failure of public imagination? Hardly. The public's got it right. The failure is with decades of evolutionist propaganda in our public schools. The biggest lie, though, is "truth beyond a reasonable doubt". Evolution would fail in any court of law in the land. It has not made its case.

The article, Patrick, is just garbage, and it will remain garbage whether it draws 1,800 posts or 180,000.

1,792 posted on 06/25/2002 7:06:44 AM PDT by Phaedrus
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To: PatrickHenry
Insight Into A Garbage Article
1,793 posted on 06/25/2002 9:14:03 AM PDT by Phaedrus
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To: Doctor Stochastic
You continue to bring in irrelevant comments. You stated jennyp's result incorrectly. That's the point I was making. If you misstate one person's result, why should I pay any attention to other comments of yours?

Your argument is weak and itself is irrelevant. I told you why I posted what I posted. You may ignore any of my posts you desire. You should have ignored the one with which you started this red herring. She either argues for extinction of a neutral mutation or for the fixation of a mutation in relation to my comment to VadeRetro.

1,794 posted on 06/25/2002 9:19:33 AM PDT by AndrewC
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To: PatrickHenry
You [addressed to both PH and Junior, but anchored to a PH posting] are giving bountiful evidence of your desiccated mind.
1788 posted on 6/25/02 9:10 AM Eastern by AndrewC

Absolutely. This is a description of the quality of your posts and the inference thereof.

Here is a nearly complete sampling of your comments within the last several hundred posts.

OOBFOO

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.

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.

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.

What was it that the alien said to the Jodi Foster character in "Contact"?

Please be careful about throwing such phrases around. That one makes my brain ache.

Great post. It reminds me of your long-ago example of card-shuffling, where the cards have velcro strips to simulate the way chemical compounds are formed, so that the required sequence pops up after only a few shuffles.

Why is DNA needed at all? Do the angels have DNA?

I know, I know. But when after maybe a thousand posts, it becomes obvious and totally beyond debate that someone is just not going to respond to evidence and reaason, I lose interest in anything such a person may say. This is my attitude toward both of the blues brothers, the bat man, and the OOBFOO boy. I have no interest in probing the functioning of their minds. It's fun, sometimes, to catalog their blunders, but that's my sole interest in them.

Indeed. Why I No Longer Debate Idiots.

Jenny, you'll have more luck here: TIME CUBE

Placemarker and Slime-free zone.

For that there is Confederate gray. Blue is for utterly hopeless causes.



Don't laugh. Such material is the main source of information for creationists.

More Jack Chick comics on line:

In the Beginning.
Big Daddy (Evolution).
Earthman (Adam & Eve).
I think the Taliban use the same "educational" techniques.

Blue-skipping placemarker.

Yet another blue-skipping placemerker.

Amusing. Pathetic. Both of those. Also, every now and then a bit of the old g3k peeps out of all the pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo:

Truly, informative!!(of PH)

1,795 posted on 06/25/2002 9:42:30 AM PDT by AndrewC
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To: Phaedrus
Patrick, re your #1791, do you know the meaning of ad hominem? That is, it appears you would rather try to discredit posters than stay with the subject.

1791 is indeed a collection of ad hominems, by others on Patrick. Interesting that you would somehow fail to detect that.

1,796 posted on 06/25/2002 9:51:07 AM PDT by VadeRetro
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To: VadeRetro; longshadow
I guess I'm back. Apparently my posting suspension was only for an hour or so. Strange experience. And very instructive.
1,797 posted on 06/25/2002 10:04:11 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
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To: VadeRetro
1791 is indeed a collection of ad hominems, by others on Patrick. Interesting that you would somehow fail to detect that.

As you fail to note that his quotation of mine was an out of context quote.

My original

As if your posts are founts of relevant information instead of the refuse of Ad Hominem they are. You are giving bountiful evidence of your desiccated mind.

His quote

You [addressed to both PH and Junior, but anchored to a PH posting] are giving bountiful evidence of your desiccated mind.

My second statement was as a consequence of my first statement. Without the first, I would not have made the second.

1,798 posted on 06/25/2002 10:13:40 AM PDT by AndrewC
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To: AndrewC
A friendly bit of advice, Andrew -- posting a list of other people's posts is likely to get you in trouble. I speak from personal experience.
1,799 posted on 06/25/2002 10:33:08 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
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To: PatrickHenry
A friendly bit of advice, Andrew -- posting a list of other people's posts is likely to get you in trouble. I speak from personal experience.

Thanks! I take your advice at face value and appreciate it. I withdraw the desiccated mind comment, and apologize.

1,800 posted on 06/25/2002 10:40:40 AM PDT by AndrewC
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