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.
Show me the flies(with more legs). Here is a rebuttal from Wells and others
Shrimp and Fruit Fly Cocktails
| So the UCSD researchers did not produce a mutant shrimp. Apparently, they didn’t even produce a mutant fruit fly - they merely showed that a shrimp protein enabled a fruit fly embryo to form leg rudiments where they would have formed normally. The results are interesting, but they fall far short of demonstrating how an aquatic crustacean might have evolved into a terrestrial insect. |
Where do you get that? There are several known mechanisms by which new genes are created.
Wells is deliberately lawyering in this statement. They produced mutant fruit flies with suppressed limb development where limbs would have developed normally. As people would read it he's wrong, and you, knowing the material presented are wrong in perpetuating this misrepresentation. (Twice on this thread. You're on a roll!)
| Wells is deliberately lawyering in this statement. They produced mutant fruit flies with suppressed limb development where limbs would have developed normally. As people would read it he's wrong, and you, knowing the material presented are wrong in perpetuating this misrepresentation. (Twice on this thread. You're on a roll!) |
Thanks for the Ad Hominem. I tend to give people credit for using their minds.
ru·di·ment Pronunciation Key (r  d -mnt)n.
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I wonder where you get the impression that lawyering is a logical fallacy? If anything the charge itself is Ad Hominem.
He's wrong. They did produce a mutant fly.
I suppose it's not the mutant Wells wanted which may have been a fly that tastes like shrimp. Apparently, it's also not the mutant you wanted: "Show me the flies(with more legs)."
With all due respect to an "interesting" thread, what's to "rebut"??
Must everyone to cheer for science's mammoth discovery that animals change colors to reflect their environment? No it's more than that. They wanted to kick things up a notch or two and try and float some pseudo-scientific theories about the beginning of life itself, but bit off more than they cold chew.
Having been accused of "Swiss-Cheese Logic, the Evolutionists' dog and pony show has back-peddled and re-tooled for a new strategy. The author now plays witch-hunt victim while attempting to chastise the Creationist for ridiculing EACH AND EVERY lame theory the Evolutionist can cook up and deservedly so.
It wasn't long ago when the reverse was true, but now that Johnson, Behe and others can't live with fantasyland of Darwinism any longer, the house of cards is tumbling down. It's much easier to do the math...
Like Pakicetus?
</AndrewC_mode>
Or their skulls
| He's wrong. They did produce a mutant fly. |
If you do not allow people to state things in their own way, yes, he's wrong. But I think people can communicate the message in more ways than you allow. So he can state
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unless you show me the flies with wings and malformed legs. Embryos were mentioned. I don't remember flies. |
This kind of thing gets really dumb. It's the creationist's Desperation Last Defense. Anything a human does in the area of research can be argued to be designed. Pointing that out doesn't overthrow the result of the research. Too bad.
420 posted on 6/17/02 11:09 AM Pacific by PatrickHenry
Evolution, being the opposite of science, requires no faith---intelligence at all, just fabrication--observation of non-existant data and the application of made up/rationalization-reason.
Which actually helps you about as much as pointing out that this University of California Museum of Paleontology exhibit is a replica. (But that didn't stop you then, either. If you don't have evidence, make noise!)
As for the bludgeoning of evolutionists' sledgehammers upon the rest of us with junk food scientific theories, they are as you say -- "quasi" in nature, but yet ironically enough, religious in their fervor to "convince" the rest of us...
If lawyering isn't a fallacy, it should be.
How do you define the perfection that you believe has been created?
Yes, but the question is how did all those things arise from your mathematical God?
| Which actually helps you about as much as pointing out that this University of California Museum of Paleontology exhibit is a replica. (But that didn't stop you then, either. If you don't have evidence, make noise!) |
As if Ad Hominem helps your argument. You are the one making mistakes. Evidence has been posted, you ignore it. So what. It won't go away. Evidence is what caused you to change from mesonychus to pakicetus. Pakicetus is hanging on by a thread. When they find the Hippo/whale link you can kiss him goodbye as a whale. What will they call him then? Pakihoaxus?
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