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.
Easy for you to say since you are not a bacteria! If you went to Las Vegas and they told you they would give you $100,000 to play with. That if you won you could keep it, but if you lost you would die. Would you play? Would you call such a game playing with house money?
More seriously though, there are some things you do not consider such as: would not natural selection try to prevent so many deaths?
I used your lottery metaphor to point out that even if something has a low probability, given enough chances you will eventually hit it. So after many years and generations of bacteria, eventually you are going to get a mutation which confers an advantage, even if the odds are 1,000,000 to 1 for that hit.
Well evolutionists make that argument all the time so I am used to it. It is a false argument though. They seem to think that there are just about an infinite number of chances to achieve a transformation from one species to another, obviously that is not the case. Best way to show that is with an example. Let's take the case of humans and apes. Science says that we differ from apes by somewhere between 1 and 2%. Since I want to keep the math simple and to give you the most favorable benefit of the doubt, we will say they differ only by 1%. Evolutionists say that man and apes diverged between 5 and 10 million years ago. However to make it as favorable as possible for evolution let's go wild and say 20 million years ago. The population of men is some 6 billion now and we know it was only a billion in 1900. However, we want to be as favorable as possible to evolutionists so we will say there were 10 billion individuals from day one to evolve. The last variable we need to see how many chances there were for man and ape to evolve from a common ancestor is age of reproduction. Again we will make it easy and say ten years although on average it is certainly higher. So now we can compute how many chances there were for man and ape to achieve that 1% difference. 20 million years divide by 10 gives us two million generations. Multiply that by 10 billion and you have 20,000,000,000,000,000 chances. That's a lot! Now, let's see how many chances it would take to make an average size gene at random. Since there are 20 amino acids that can be coded for by DNA and an average 300 amino acids in an average gene the math to achieve one at random is 20^300 power. Guess that the 2 with 16 zeros does not look so big anymore eh? And that is just for one gene! Since humans have some 30,000 genes the 1% difference would require at a minimum 300 new genes. Of course, this only deals with point#5 in post#1605. You still need the time to go through the rest of the 6 steps.
Wrong, wrong wrong wrong wrong! (*ripping hair out*)
Can't you get this straight? You get essentially a LIMITLESS number of chances. Every species of every animal, plant, fungi, protist, and prokaryote is continuously reproducing and propagating themselves. If you "lose" ii doesnt matter in the grand scheme of things - you are just one member of MANY. Eventually someone will WIN even if it takes 100,000 individuals. THIS is the point I am trying to make. Is this so hard to comprehend or are you just trying to give me agita?
Nonsense, you already admitted you do not read minds, so you have no factual basis for that statement. Also kindly note that all the references I have given are from so called mainstream scientists. Not a single one from anywhere that can be considered a den of anti-evolutionism. So your statement is wrong and just smoke blown out of total desperation. If the evidence supported evolution you would be able to find tons of evidence to refute my statements. You cannot, so you are pulling the last desperate attempt at saving your silly little theory. Science is about evidence, I have given evidence, consistent evidence supporting my viewpoint. You have been unable to refute it or to give evidence in support of your position. You lose. As I have been saying for a long time, science has disproved evolution.
You never learn do you? You were engaging in abusive behavior. You were engaging in behavior you had been previously warned about. He only cut you off for an hour as a warning and to rein you in. If you had continued in the same mode you might have gotten banned permanently. You should thank him instead of insulting him.
We are down to insults. That means you lost. If you look at RWN's post he was talking about chances over time. Typical of an evolutionist to turn the question around when they are proven wrong and argue against something else. Sad.
You should have simply told the guy the truth, i.e. that Chick's stuff isn't any worse than half to 90% of the stuff which IS "peer-reviewed(TM)". I mean, only having to answer to your own peers and not ever to outsiders is a pretty good deal for a lot of folks who wouldn't mnake it on the outside...
A normal person wishing to understand what has become of academia in recent years, has several starting points, including of course DeSouza's "Illiberal Education", Bloom's "Closing of the American Mind", and a far more intense and all-encompassing book in the Quirck/Bridwell book "Abandoned: The Betrayal of the American Middle Class Since WW-II".
Martin Anderson's "Imposters in the Temple" is another item to add to that little list.
The basic job of colleges and universities should be teaching. There still are schools at which that holds true, but they are an exception at present. Anderson describes the trivial pursuits which have replaced teaching as the major objective of many if not most professors, in many if not most schools:
"For most professors, the surest route to scholarly fame (and some fortune) is to publish in the distinguished academic journals of their field. Not books, or treatises, for these are rare indeed, but short, densely packed articles of a dozen pages or so.Anderson, of course, is describing a sort of a ritualized and formalized version of what college frats sometimes refer to as a "circle jerk"."The successful professor's resume will be littered with citations of short, scholarly articles, their value rising with the prestige of the journal. These studious articles are the coin of the realm in the academic world. They are the professor's ticker to promotion, higher salary, generous research grants, lower teaching loads, and even more opulent office space.
"...These are supposed to be scholarly pieces, at the cutting edge of new knowledge.
"But now I must confess something. Many years ago when I read these articles regularly as part of my academic training and during my early years as a professor, I was bothered by the fact that I often failed to find the point of these articles, even after wading through the web of jargon, mathematical equations, and turgid English. Perhaps when I get older and wiser I will appreciate them more, I thought. Well, I am now fifty-five years old, and the significance of most academic writing continues to elude me."
"In recent years, I have conducted an informal survey. Whenever the opportunity presents itself, I ask scholars about their academic journal reading habits. For example, I recently asked a colleague, a man with a solid reputation as a scholar, what he considered to be the most important academic journal in his field of study. An economist, he immediately replied "The American Economic Review".
"Let me ask you a question", I said. "Take, say, all of the issues of the last five years. What is your favorite article?"
"...Sure enough, he answered like all the rest. There was a silence of a few seconds, and then he cleared his throat a bit and, looking somewhat guilty and embarassed, said "Well, I haven't been reading it much lately." When pressed, he admitted that he could not name a single article which he had read during the last five years which he found memorable. In fact, he probably had not read any articles, but was loath to admit it.
"...There are exceptions of course, a handful of men and women in every field who do read these articles and try to comprehend any glimmers of meaning or significance they might contain. But, as a general rule, nobody reads the articles in academic journals anymore.
"...There is a mystery here. For while these academic publications pile up, largely unread, on the shelves of university libraries, their importance to a professor's career continues unabated. Scarcely anyone questions these proofs of erudition on a resume.
"...One reason why these research articles are automatically accepted as significant and important is that they have survived the criticism of "peer review" before being published.
"...Some of the manuscript reviews are done 'blind', with the author's name stripped off, while others are not and the reviwer knows exactly whom he or she is evaluating. Given what is at stake in peer reviewing... it would not be unreasonable to worry a little about corruption sneaking in.
"But these questions are not explored. The fact that some fields of study are small enough that the intellectuals involved in them are all known to eachother, or that friends review friends, or that reviewers repay those who reviewed their own writings favorably in the past -- all these potential problems are ignored...
Let's take it one step at a time. Correct me if I am wrong, but your statement is a bit of a departure from your previous assertions that NO change is possible. Am I reading you correctly now? Just answer the question - can the genome handle change - "yes" or "no"?, don't respond with a blue essay.
Are you following this thread? I am saying that no additional genetic information can come to fruition in a random evolutionary way because of the problems with evolution which I stated in post#1605. I have been very specific as to why I say that. I have given reasons which you have been unable to refute. It takes an intelligent designer to transform one species into a more complex one with more traits, more abilities, more complexity. If you disagree with that, then perhaps you can answer my question of how you can change a program and make it better and more complex by random changes.
You never learn do you? You were engaging in abusive behavior. You were engaging in behavior you had been previously warned about. He only cut you off for an hour as a warning and to rein you in. If you had continued in the same mode you might have gotten banned permanently. You should thank him instead of insulting him.
Doesn't really sound like the guy learned anything there, does it?
I never admitted I can't read minds. Maybe I can read yours right now.
If the evidence supported evolution you would be able to find tons of evidence to refute my statements.
There is a ton of evidence. So much evidence it is mind boggling to consider there are people who still do not accept it. The problem isnt evidence Gore. The problem is your complete misunderstanding of basic biological concepts and your apparrent inability to learn them.
I have given evidence, consistent evidence supporting my viewpoint.
You have given me nothing but a headache. What hard "evidence" have you provided?
You have been unable to refute it or to give evidence in support of your position. You lose. As I have been saying for a long time, science has disproved evolution.
I must say Gore, you come across as a whiny little kid here. I assumed you were an adult throughout this conversation. Maybe I should have picked up on this sooner.
What about the xylose metabolising bacteria?
It takes an intelligent designer
Why would an intelligent designer put unexpressed pseudogenes in there? I can actually think of a reason now after all of this. Maybe that designer is reading this ridiculous non-debate and getting a good laugh out of it.
Nature is a pretty good designer. Dont underestimate her.
"Speaking" of "The Jerk". Occasionally, I am reminded of this quote from the movie when attacked by the opposition who, having no real answer, uses Ad Hominem.
[Outside, at the side of a barn]
(there is a large pile of shit on the ground)
Father Son, now that you're going out into the world, there's something you should know. You see that?
Navin Yeah.
Father That's shit. And this: shinola.
Navin Shit, shinola.
You are being very dishonest. In the post you answered I gave you a blow by blow explanation of why the chances are not limitless at all. I realize that you silly theory of evolution needs an infinity * infinity ^ infinity to be true so you have no choice but to deny and ignore what I posted in post#1841. However, we all know that you do never get that many chances. Wishing does not make things true. What you are showing is that you wish that evolution were true and refuse to acknowledge that it is not even when it has been demonstrated to you in a clear and incontrovertible manner. What you are showing is that your belief in evolution is based on faith, not on science and that is why even after you have been shown that all science shows that your theory is false, you desperately continue to insist on its truth.
Would it make you feel any better if I said 1,000,000,000,000 chances instead? There you have a finite number. How many individual life forms do you think have existed on Earth in its 4 billion year history?
and that is why even after you have been shown that all science shows that your theory is false
Only in your fever-ridden dreams. What evidence have you shown me? Your naive interpretations do not suffice as evidence.
You have given me nothing but a headache. What hard "evidence" have you provided?
The discussion has gone on for dozens of posts. Seems to me you had plenty of chances to refute it and were unable to. Seems to me that is pretty conclusive evidence.
Now of course, after denial come the insults:
I must say Gore, you come across as a whiny little kid here.
That's the best laugh I have had today! Keep up with your "refutations", I can use a few more!
What evidence? Refresh my memory Ive had a long day.
Now of course, after denial come the insults:
I am not trying to insult you Gore. Comments like this make you sound pretty immature. Honestly.
I am glad someone is getting something out of this.
Seriously Gore, Read that paper on pseudogenes and the article about the xylose bacteria, and get back to me.
Nature is a pretty good designer. Dont underestimate her.
So you say, but you have given no evidence for that statement. I have given plenty of evidence for mine. Again I ask - how can you make a program more complex by random means? You are bleating nonsense which has already been discussed and answered, but I ask you a single question and you evade it. You have been evading it for the last half dozen posts.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.