Right, so today I stood at the green counter and decided life was rather boring. Perhaps it was merely in my perspective that life was boring -- it could in fact have been very exciting and I just missed out today -- or it could be that I still feel focused very strongly on a certain issue, and even though deep in my gut I know there is no end to this argument (unless of course, I agree with those who disagree with me)... there seems to be an endless fountain of thoughts on the subject. It's on me mind. It's boring me, but it's on me mind. So it's welling up within me. No beliefs shall be altered. Might as well drive this into the dust, eh? What have I got to lose!
First of all, I'd like to thank those of my customers who have graciously visited my blog. You know how much I treasure and value your opinions - that is why I divulge some of your deep thoughts here. It's really fascinating - how much you can learn from passing conversations, passing witty thoughts, and even different infectious ways of saying 'hello' and 'goodbye'. Anyways, that was totally free.
Evolutionists. Very knowledgable people, I must say. But I wonder if they are really all that comfortable skirting around the issues they don't know, and spouting off about the issues they do know. (Regardless, they certainly deal with alot of issues).
In fact, as interesting as the perspective of the theory Evolution has been for me, Evolution is NOT Science. The literal meaning of 'Science' is 'knowledge'. Evolution is merely a way of LOOKING at knowledge - discoveries - new information - scientific processes.
Everyone is biased - duh. I have never read a work that was notpbaised, and if I ever did, I probably wouldn't finish it because it would be boring! So a 'bias', or 'leaning of beliefs' is inescapable for any religion (be it Evolution, Creation, or any other nut job out there).
One of my customers had a very good, simple way of describing this bias. If having a bias is like wearing a pair of glasses, then no matter what you study 'scientifically', you will be seeing it all through your choice of glasses (i.e. your bias).
For Creationists, it is fascinating to discover new things, because it does not have to 'disprove Science' or 'disprove facts'. No, when a Creationist Scientist studies and observes science, he sees added detail to Intelligent Design. Creatinist Scientists see a Detrimental or Neutral Mutation, and because of their bias, think 'That proves it. Only God could create a Beneficial Mutation'. Studying science through the shades of Creation, therefore strengthens the faith of the Creationist. This is not scientifically 'incorrect', it is merely a different way of interpreting the data. (As for new 'religions' poppin up all over the place, which give atheists cause to challenge 'which is the true god?' - I submit that the true god is the oldest God - the one God - the only God of the Bible. If a new god is being discovered in 2008, that is one pathetic and unpowerful god. Let's stick with the God you've always fought against, no?).
Evolutionists cannot create Beneficial Mutations - but through their bias, it is only logical for them to say triumphantly, "But that makes sense! Only billions of years could bring about something so complex."
Both ways of evaluating, are in fact in pursuit of "Science"/"Knowledge".
Because the concept of Creationism has been around for so long, many modern scientists find it too 'simple', 'unchanging', and quite possibly 'too-God-oriented'. This is unfortunate.
Evolutionists like to come across as "more complex", "more scientific", and "more accurate". When in fact, their technical terms are a pretty way to dress up what they DO know, and CAN prove (thinks that could in fact, have more than one way to look at it). Naturally, they quickly forgive the GAPS in their theories, look no deeper, and call it Evolution/Science. Indeed, Evolutionists are perched behind pileds of knowledge, but they see it all through a glass darkly.
Many children that are taught the theory of Creation all of their growing up years - go on to a secular college, and are immediately retaught all that 'science' entails. Do you suppose if a Scientist who has been trained all of his academic years to support the theory of Evolution were to find a contradiction to the theory of Evolution - he would actually deliver it up to the public or print it in textbooks? Most would scorn the idea - and like BLT said - would never believe regardless of conflicting evidence. No, my friends. They would automatically set about to disprove it... This is only natural, because they are strongly biased. Logically, they would call it an 'exception', and would quickly shelve it. This is merely a stipulation, of course, but it does give cause for ponder.
A Creationist, looks at the layers of our earth, and say "Yes, it is odd how each of those layers seems to represent billions of years'. And yet - a Creationist is willing to look deeper - NATURALLY - because he is willing to prove his bias. What a Creationist might find, is an uprooted tree - petrified straight up through those layers. Now he can ask - "Did the tree stand there and wait for billions of years of layers to build up around it? Or is the account of the Biblical flood possible?"
In response to all of the questions directed against me, I would honestly love to stay on and google 24/7, and alternate between debating every comment that contradicts my beliefs, but - in fact - I have a life. A boring one at times, albeit a very "full-of-potential and things to do" life. Ture - it is good to know what other's think and say - but in the end, few care to hear once again what 'others think'. They want you to speak for yourself.
For this reason, I find it cute that many of the evolutionists seem to have a 'Book of Links Promoting Evolution' on hand. Ask them a question, and they raise their hands eagerly... to pull down the 'Link Book'. Theny they, the master's of copy and paste, copy the approved Link in answer to any of their problems (with the exception of David. I appreciate your thorough insight, sir).
Truly, I tell my fellow skeptics (which literally means: thoughtful, inquiring), that the theory of Evolution is very smooth, it is very complex, and it has become - over the last only 150 or so years - the generally accepted modern answer to 'life'. But Evolution is just a way of looking at Science. Evolution is NOT Science.
Many years ago, the geocentric theory was FACT. Spontaneous generation (the concept that organisms come to life from non-living substances) was accepted until the mide-1800's. During the Middle Ages, it was believed that frogs and fish were formed during raisntorms. So, of course 'Science' (man's limited knowledge) is constantly changing!
To some, logical reasoning is truth. They feel it is true, if everything makes sense and is figured out. Mathematics is logical. 2 + 2 = 4. But, in fact - we are dealing with 2 + x = 5. You tell me what the answer is. (that's rhetorical, don't get defensive).
So, is it logical to come from nothing? I realize there are alot of technical terms for it all, but strip away the formalities and talk human. Is it logical for matter (which can be neither created nor destroyed, only altered) to create/evolve more matter through un-inspired mutations? Is it possible that modern Science has become skewed - quite popularly - so that man is told not to question - never to question (only ask for more knowledge 'humbly' - as I was instructed to try) - only absorb. And it is an untruth to accuse me of "not questioning" my beliefs and my upbringing and my God. I've questioned God on alot of things, and I've been searching for answers. He has never failed to show me that, while the world may constantly change and alter in so many ways, it is TRUTH that remains the same foundation.
The belief in God, as Supreme Designer of this world, however, is the only Simplicity about the theory of 'Creation'. Many mature evolutionists have mocked 'Godidit' - as though that is the answer for every scientific phenomenon that Creation Scientists discover. But, it is obvious that the life God created on Earth is VERY complex - something no man could ever duplicate, improve on, or seek to alter. Hoenstly. Think about it. Even if someone went about the process of putting an organism completely together, they could not make the organism function or even proces life.
Evolution is based on DEATH - each less superior animal or organism had to die off to give way to a new, better, improved organism.
Creation is based on LIFE - God made a mature world, and He made good on His perfect Creation right from the start. What does God need with evolution? If He can create something as complex as the DNA Double Helix (which Evolutionists cannot possibly credit to the theory of Evolution), He can certainly create man how he should be from the start - instead of evolving the first poor creature into some better version of Adam!
Another thing - while I'm at it - are these words by Darwin rejected by Evolutionists?
---"Long before the reader has arrived at this part of my work, a crowd of difficulties will have occurred to him. Some of them are so serious that to this day, I can hardly reflect on them without being in some degree staggered…"--- Darwin also said: "Not one change of species into another is on record…we cannot prove that a single species has changed (into another )".
While we're pulling for 'Link Books', here are some links you might like to check out and disprove for me.
http://www.creator-creation.com/evolution.htm
http://www.allaboutscience.org/dNA-double-helix.htm
www.icr.org
http://www.creationstudies.org/
and then, once you're exhausted from those (or comforted by completely ignoring them),
here's a happy familiar pro-evolution one you guys gave me. I send it right back atcha for your assurance in time of need.
www.talkorigins.org
27 comments:
Hhhhmmmm, the only god is the god of the bible? What about all of the gods who came before that one, all ancient civilisations have their own gods.
Evolution is not science but creationism is? Hhhhmmm. Paleontologists, biologists etc. etc. are the scientists who research the data, the facts. What are creationist scientists doing? Where is their research?
BTW the links which we scientists use for our answers have references to empirical data, which has been peer reviewed. It can be simpler to go to a one stop shop than (as you rightly point out) spend hours on boring web searches. Where do the answers from the creationist sites you link to come from? What research has gone into those answers. Have a think.
I have to say, Andi, I do like the name of your blog. And I certainly know the feeling of being stuck on an argument/discussion in one's head while life keeps insisting you pay attention to all sorts of other things! Right now life is insisting that I get to bed, but
" But, in fact - we are dealing with 2 + x = 5. You tell me what the answer is.
Well, x= 3 - I'm pretty obviously missing the point here. Is the idea that God is x? {scratches head confusedly}
" Evolution is NOT Science. The literal meaning of 'Science' is 'knowledge'. Evolution is merely a way of LOOKING at knowledge - discoveries - new information - scientific processes.
Gravity/Germ Theory/Heliocentrism/the Big Bang/Plate Tectonics/ [are] NOT Science . . . [These are] merely a way of LOOKING at knowledge (etc.)
- agree? disagree?
"For Creationists, it is fascinating to discover new things, because it does not have to 'disprove Science' or 'disprove facts'. "
I don't know how creationists feel about discovering new things. I do know that scientists find it extremely fascinating to discover new things - indeed, that tends to be a major reason why they go into science. While I don't agree with everything he says, you might be interested in Dawkins' book Unweaving the Rainbow.
"Evolutionists cannot create Beneficial Mutations"
What is a beneficial mutation? Why do you think evolution (indeed, even evolutionists) can't create one?
"Because the concept of Creationism has been around for so long, many modern scientists find it too 'simple', 'unchanging', and quite possibly 'too-God-oriented'. "
Honestly, it's not that it's old, it's that it doesn't do a good job of explaining observations in a useful way. This goes all the way back to Darwin and Wallace in the 19th Century: creationist natural theology simply didn't work to explain the patterns people were finding.
I should add that recognizing that modern evolutionary biology is the best explanation we have - and a remarkably good one at that - for biodiversity doesn't mean rejecting God. (Although I also should note that I don't have belief in any such entity, to avoid unintentionally giving the wrong impression). It would be great if you read Ken Miller's book Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common Ground Between God and Evolution.
" Evolutionists like to come across as "more complex", "more scientific", and "more accurate"."
Well, that's science for you. {shrugs}
"Naturally, they quickly forgive the GAPS in their theories"
Actually, they tend to poke at them like a tongue at a loose tooth. Seriously - science is all about filling in the gaps. No gaps, nothing to do, time to pack it in and go home.
"a Creationist is willing to look deeper - NATURALLY - because he is willing to prove his bias."
I agree that creationists are constantly willing to prove their bias.
" What a Creationist might find, is an uprooted tree - petrified straight up through those layers. Now he can ask - "Did the tree stand there and wait for billions of years of layers to build up around it? Or is the account of the Biblical flood possible?""
Can you think of any other possible explanations besides these two, given anything you know about things on earth? Are there predictions we might make based on any of these explanations? -Is there any way we can test any of these explanations?
"but strip away the formalities and talk human."
In a way, that's one of the problems.
" Is it logical for matter (which can be neither created nor destroyed, only altered) to create/evolve more matter through un-inspired mutations? "
OK. I mean, why not? We see tomatoes and tabbies make copies of themselves, but not identical ones - sometimes more than usually different ones. Are these changes un- or inspired? Science can't say they aren't. Science can't say they are. Science can't talk about divine inspiration, anymore than weatherman - as meteorologists, at least - can talk about divine intervention in relation to the weather. Do you remember that horrible tsunami, and how there were some people in different places around the world who said it was God's punishment for various things? Geologists and oceanographers and other scientists had another explanation for what had happened. They can't say that God didn't get really pissed at people living around the Indian Ocean (or any other supernatural explanation). Nor can they say that God did. There's no way to test such explanations: they can explain nothing and everything at the same time. So the scientists don't talk about God (at least as scientists). Instead, they study and talk about natural phenomena that follow natural laws. One result is that we have systems that might help to save many lives the next time something like that happens - although that depends a lot on people.
"it is TRUTH that remains the same foundation."
I agree.
"The belief in God, as Supreme Designer of this world, however, is the only Simplicity about the theory of 'Creation'."
One of the things people are talking about is that this doesn't tell us anything about how God would have created - and it's a complete dead end: we can't go anywhere from there, because God wouldn't be bound by nature. Now, if that was the kind of testimony we found in rocks and bones and genes, well, that would have to be enough. But it's not. And for many religious people, what astronomy and geology and evolutionary biology and (etc.) testify to is how God created - indeed, they're almost a form of worship and praise. Now, I don't believe that, but that's because I don't believe in God, so it wouldn't make sense. Your mileage may vary.
"Evolution is based on DEATH - each less superior animal or organism had to die off to give way to a new, better, improved organism.
What does "less superior", "new, better, improved" and "had to" mean in this context? If something is, does that mean it's morally good, or could it merely be - that is, morally neutral, not knowing morality. If we dislike something, does that mean it's false? If we like something, does that mean it's true?
Another thing - while I'm at it - are these words by Darwin rejected by Evolutionists?"
Where did you find these words? If not in the original work, did you look to see what exactly was being said, and in what context? Do you know why he was saying it, and what came next?
(And Andi, you left out the bit about the eye! How could you leave out the bit about the eye? You can't get your creationist merit badge until you quotemine the bit about the eye!!)
"here's a happy familiar pro-evolution one you guys gave me."
Awww, good old talkorigins. Thanks! Here, let me give you another site: Understanding Evolution. It's pretty cool, and not quite as . . . overwhelming as TO.
Also, something very, very neat that just opened up: The Encyclopedia of Life - although it seems to keep going down due to millions of hits, so I can't promise it's going to very exciting right at the moment . . . .
OK, I have to get up in . . . .well, three hours, so good night and enjoy.
- Oh, but one more thing:
"so that man is told not to question - never to question"
No no no. No! Always question.
Well, Andi, I got my completely inadequate 2.5 hours of sleep, and I need to go catch my train (but I'm fooling myself into thinking I have time to type, thus setting up the little daily drama of noticing the time, yelling "Oh, crap!", grabbing my stuff and running out the door in a frantic attempt to make the train)
but I just found this link I wanted to show you:
An article/speech by Ken Miller on Finding Darwin's God. It speaks to a lot of what you're saying, including " What does God need with evolution? . . . He can certainly create man how he should be from the start - instead of evolving the first poor creature into some better version of Adam!"
And - hang on, is that the time? Oh, crap - !
- you might also be interested in "Mainstream Baptist"'s post"On Evolution and Religion over at Talk2Action.
First of all, I'd like to thank those of my customers who have graciously visited my blog. You know how much I treasure and value your opinions - that is why I divulge some of your deep thoughts here. It's really fascinating - how much you can learn from passing conversations, passing witty thoughts, and even different infectious ways of saying 'hello' and 'goodbye'. Anyways, that was totally free.
Thank you.
Now, if you'd be so kind as to follow the links we have given you... :-)
Evolutionists. Very knowledgable people, I must say. But I wonder if they are really all that comfortable skirting around the issues they don't know
Such as?
In fact, as interesting as the perspective of the theory Evolution has been for me, Evolution is NOT Science. The literal meaning of 'Science' is 'knowledge'.
No.
It's true that the word "science" is derived from the Latin word for "knowledge". But that's just because it had to come from somewhere, and because it was a totally new concept when it was invented/discovered, so no language had a word for it.
I can make pretty different arguments from etymology about "science". Yours works for the Romance languages and English, but that's it. Other Germanic languages have a word that literally means "knowledgeship" ("-ship" as in "craftsmanship", not as in "boat") -- much more abstract than just knowledge: German Wissenschaft, Dutch Wetenschap, Norwegian Vedenskap. Chinese (kèxué) doesn't mention knowledge at all, but instead mentions learning (xué). And so on.
You see, the argument from etymology is a logical fallacy. Read what The Christian Cynic has to say about this.
So what does "science" mean?
I have already told you that several times, so I think it's strange that you have neither understood that nor mention it. But I can try again:
As long as you can answer the question "if I were wrong, how would I know?", you are doing science.
That's it.
Therefore, the theory of evolution is science, because it makes falsifiable predictions. For example, based on our knowledge of the fossil record it predicts that there were no rabbits in the Silurian. Find a single rabbit skeleton, or just a single rabbit tooth, in Silurian rock, and the theory of evolution is wrong, in anything similar to its present form at least.
Everyone is biased - duh.
Indeed. The trick about science is that it makes people recognize these biases and go to great lengths to circumvent them. For example, if you want to publish a paper that says something has increased over time, you are expected to show in the same paper that the increase you claim to have observed is statistically significant. If you don't, the peer-reviewers will recommend against publication, and the editor will send your manuscript back to you requiring that you add this statistical demonstration if you still want the manuscript to be published.
Also, you must publish the data, not just the conclusions. This is so that everyone can take your data, repeat your analyses (perhaps with different methods), and check if they, too, get your results.
any religion (be it Evolution, Creation, or any other nut job out there)
How is the theory of evolution a religion? Where are the sacred texts, the rituals, the dogmata, the priests/shamans/whatever? Please explain.
If having a bias is like wearing a pair of glasses, then no matter what you study 'scientifically', you will be seeing it all through your choice of glasses (i.e. your bias).
Yes, but reality is that which does not go away if you stop believing in it. See above.
Creatinist Scientists
There is no such thing, because creationism isn't science. How would we know if it were wrong? We wouldn't, because God works in mysterious ways, doesn't He?
"Scientific" and "true" aren't necessarily the same thing, and neither are "unscientific" and "false". The only difference is that if a scientific idea is false, we can find that out.
see a Detrimental or Neutral Mutation, and because of their bias, think 'That proves it. Only God could create a Beneficial Mutation'.
That's not enough. They must also show that a beneficial mutation couldn't arise in any other way. Just saying it is not enough.
(In this particular example, that's going to be difficult. I already gave you the examples of sickle cell anemia, inability to make vitamin C, and lactose tolerance. Have you completely failed to read my comments?)
I submit that the true god is the oldest God - the one God - the only God of the Bible.
What makes you think the oldest god is the one in the Bible? Even the oldest parts of the Bible were written after 1000 BC. A few minutes in Wikipedia show that the Sumerian king Lugal-Zage-Si ascribed his conquests to the Sumerian god Enlil around 2350 BC. What does it even mean to be "the oldest god"?
Because the concept of Creationism has been around for so long, many modern scientists find it too 'simple', 'unchanging', and quite possibly 'too-God-oriented'.
No. Where it makes specific predictions, they have turned out to be wrong; where it doesn't, it isn't falsifiable. That's what we don't like about it.
Evolutionists like to come across as "more complex", "more scientific", and "more accurate". When in fact, their technical terms are a pretty way to dress up what they DO know, and CAN prove
For perhaps the fifth time, science cannot prove anything ever!
Why don't you read the comments you allow to be published!?!
Naturally, they quickly forgive the GAPS in their theories
Such as? Tell me one. Just saying that there are gaps is not an argument.
Do you suppose if a Scientist who has been trained all of his academic years to support the theory of Evolution were to find a contradiction to the theory of Evolution - he would actually deliver it up to the public or print it in textbooks?
As I told you, yes!!! Because it would boost his career! He'd get the Nobel Prize in Physiology Or Medicine, for crying out loud! Keep in mind that this isn't just about 15 minutes of fame -- Nobel Prizes mean you get real money.
Once more: science isn't about proof, it's about disproof. That's why disproof is rewarded. It's the only kind of progress science can make.
Logically, they would call it an 'exception', and would quickly shelve it.
This is simply an insult. Show such an unscientific act has ever been done, or retract this outrageous claim.
And yet - a Creationist is willing to look deeper - NATURALLY - because he is willing to prove his bias.
If he's naive enough to believe he can prove anything, he doesn't know how science works.
What a Creationist might find, is an uprooted tree - petrified straight up through those layers.
If he were a scientist, he would not stop there, because he would know that the easiest person to fool for you is yourself. If he were a scientist, he would try to find out how old those layers are. Suppose their ages come out as indistinguishable...
In fact, this is what has happened in all such cases so far. Annual flash floods will deposit several layers around a single tree, for example, and because radiometric dating isn't that precise, the ages of all those layers will come out as indistinguishable -- which is precisely what we find. Never has a tree been found that passes through layers of distinguishable ages. (Let alone ones billions of years apart as you blithely imply.) So where is the problem?
Don't assume that everyone knows as little as you yourself do.
In response to all of the questions directed against me, I would honestly love to stay on and google 24/7, and alternate between debating every comment that contradicts my beliefs, but - in fact - I have a life.
Then why do you blog as if you had googled 24/7? That's what I don't get. Read a few things -- we gave you links, you don't even need to google immediately -- and then come back. You have to first learn what you're talking about and then talk about it. Isn't that logical?
Theny they, the master's of copy and paste, copy the approved Link in answer to any of their problems
LOL! That's projection. You did that with Hovind's questions!
(with the exception of David. I appreciate your thorough insight, sir).
Thanks, but why then do you act as if you hadn't read most of my comments? I'd have expected you to mention the parts you disagree with and explain why you disagree -- perhaps not every single detail, but certainly such basic issues as the meanings of "science" and "evolution"! But no, you just gloss over them... and then suddenly praise me out of the blue. Does not compute. You are praising me for completely wrong reasons :-)
the theory of Evolution is very smooth, it is very complex
No, it's extremely simple, as I have explained. See? That's another such case. I explain something, you disagree, you don't even try to explain why you disagree but keep disagreeing nevertheless, and then praise my "thorough insight".
Many years ago, the geocentric theory was FACT.
No, it never was a fact. Theories cannot become facts, nor vice versa. That's explained in the very first link I gave you! Facts are what theories try to explain. In this case, the fact is that it looks like the sun moves across the sky. That's a completely indisputable fact. The geocentric theory tried to explain this fact by postulating that the sun orbits the earth. The heliocentric theory tries to explain this fact by postulating that the Earth rotates. The geocentric theory failed to explain things like why a heavy body should orbit a light one, and its explanations for the observed motions of the planets (which sometimes seem to go backwards -- that's another fact) were much more convoluted than the heliocentric explanations. That's why it was dropped. That's how science works.
Spontaneous generation (the concept that organisms come to life from non-living substances) was accepted until the mide-1800's.
Yes, but again, it was never a fact. It had never been observed to occur under controlled circumstances, that is, under circumstances where no living being could come in and lay eggs or the like.
So, of course 'Science' (man's limited knowledge) is constantly changing!
Yes, because new observations keep being made that disprove hypotheses.
Is it logical for matter (which can be neither created nor destroyed, only altered) to create/evolve more matter through un-inspired mutations?
What do you mean by "create/evolve more matter"? Please be precise.
Evolution is based on DEATH - each less superior animal or organism had to die off to give way to a new, better, improved organism.
Not quite. Those whose mutations happen to give them an advantage under the present environmental conditions have more surviving offspring. Therefore, more of the next generation than of the present one will have those mutations. That's all. It's also an observed fact. Death is common, but not strictly necessary.
Creation is based on LIFE -
Be careful not to make an argument from consequences, because that would be a logical fallacy. "If creationism were wrong, that would mean horrible things. I don't want horrible things. Anything I don't want doesn't happen. Therefore creationism must be true."
What does God need with evolution?
Perhaps He just works in mysterious ways.
No, seriously. That's how hundreds of millions of Christians reconcile their acceptance of science with their religious beliefs.
If He can create something as complex as the DNA Double Helix (which Evolutionists cannot possibly credit to the theory of Evolution)
Be careful about "possibly". Just because you haven't figured out how it might be possible doesn't mean nobody has. Firstly, the double helix itself is simply inevitable: put two complementary DNA strands together in water at a not too high temperature, and they'll form a double helix simply because of their electrostatic attractions and because of the attractions of the water molecules around them. Secondly, do you know what RNA is? All organisms produce deoxyribose from ribose, so the problem reduces to explaining how the enzyme that does that evolved.
He can certainly create man how he should be from the start - instead of evolving the first poor creature into some better version of Adam!
Sure, but that doesn't mean it necessarily happened that way.
Another thing - while I'm at it - are these words by Darwin rejected by Evolutionists?
---"Long before the reader has arrived at this part of my work, a crowd of difficulties will have occurred to him. Some of them are so serious that to this day, I can hardly reflect on them without being in some degree staggered…"
So what? Not everything has to be easy. If everything were easy, science would already be finished. And certainly, much in science is staggering -- astonishing. Fascinating outright.
Besides, those three dots at the end... do you know what Darwin went on to say? I'm thinking of the quote-mine so beloved by so many creationists, the place where Darwin says it's at first glance so difficult to imagine how an eye might evolve, and then goes on for a few pages to explain, step by step, how it can have happened nevertheless.
--- Darwin also said: "Not one change of species into another is on record…we cannot prove that a single species has changed (into another )".
That was true when he wrote it. It is wrong today. Among the living, may I introduce the London Underground mosquito, Culex molestans. It's a new species that is less than 100 years old -- it didn't exist yet when Darwin wrote his books! Sometimes it goes fast. In the fossil record, let me mention this review paper which is online in its entirety. Most notably, it shows in a nice figure how the diatom species Rhizosolenia praebergonii (a misnomer, as you'll see) branched off from R. bergonii.
Except for the "prove" bit; that part still stands. After all, how do we really know that anything we observe isn't a deception by the devil? Or how do I really know anything other than my mind exists at all?
While we're pulling for 'Link Books', here are some links you might like to check out and disprove for me.
Later. Maybe on the weekend. I should have quit the university half an hour ago... :-)
I can't help but feel a mixture of hope and regret from your last posts. Hope because I know you are an extremely intelligent person. Regret because I can see all the difficulties you face and the internal struggle that lies under your arguments and questions. We've all been through it, when the beliefs we've been taught to hold come under fire. It is challenging, because you are taught, and these posters reinforce, that to accept evolutionary science is to reject all belief in God.
To those who study in the field and see evolution at work every day, it's a ridiculous statement that could be compared to "to accept gravity is to reject God" or "to accept modern plumbing is to reject God," which is silly.
Yet actually, despite what creationist propoganda says (and it is propoganda - places like the discovery institute are backed by a whole load of church money, and no real science) evolutionary theory is much like modern plumbing. It's the plumbing of organisms, how they reproduce, develop, interact, respond to environments.
In the same way that a plumber knows how to fix a faulty toilet, so can evolutionary theory produce meaningful results. Common example of course being viruses- we can watch how they evolve, and we can "evolve" "cures"
One thing that is rarely brought up is the amazing predictive powers of evolutionary theory. So intrinsically linked to geology and paleontology, scientists can look at an area of ground or rock, and recognise the layers and their ages, and predict which fossil types will be found in which layers, and PRECISELY their order from top to bottom. If geologists ever found ANY of those predictions wrong - if we found a modern human mixed with trilobites, then evolution would be disproved in a flash.
It's hard to realise without fully appreciating the amount of research and questioning that has already gone into the theory. All your questions have been thought before, by people with stronger faith than you even, who seek to "disprove" evolution. None have succeeded. Scientists know EXACTLY what would be needed to be discovered to disprove evolutionary theory, and believe me that time has already been spent. The theory has been refined and improved so it is more and more precise. People exactly what sort of fossils we'd expect to find, and exactly which fossils ought to be found if evolution hadn't happened as the theory predicts. The theory holds up.
That's not even starting on genetics. A whole new field, discovered well after Darwin cobbled together his theory, he could see it but could not explain HOW it might happen.
When genetics were discovered, when DNA revealed and decided, any one of the steps along the way would have been an opportunity for evolution to be disproved. From looking at bones and fossils, the theory predicted that certain animals would be related, some closely, some distantly. Analysing DNA COULD have told us a different story, could have shown us definatively that humans and apes share nothing in common. But it didn't. It showed amazingly powerfully and clearly our common descent. Able to trace our generic lineage through clear generic markers left by the inexorable process of evolution. It's absolutely amazing.
It's also got to be one of the most fascinating fields of research around particularly at this time, which is where my sense of regret comes from. You have a gifted intelligent young mind. Why not become a genetecist instead of working in a coffee shop?
That may sound so patronizing and I apologise, but part of me wants to scream that intelligence is left to waste by policies of people shackled in ignorance by their religion.
But you must know that the two are not mutually exclusive. I know geneticists who are Christian. They take awe in what they see as God's amazing processed in evolution, and take great pride in using their God-given intelligence to learn more about that process and how it can benefit humankind, to do their part in the Christian duty to eliminate/alleviate the suffering of others.
I may not see it that way myself, but I know that religion is well and truly flexible enough to accomodate any viewpoint so I accept it.
The literal meaning of the word science is DERIVED from is knowledge. The word science itself refers to the painstaking process of accumulating and testing knowledge systematically.
You say scientists hide information that is "an exception". Couldn't be further from the truth. For years, the skeleton of piltdown man was incorporated into the theory of human evolution. It was found to be a hoax not by some creationist wanting to disprove evololution, but by scientists. The scientific community immediately said "thankyou" and then went about revising their entire theory of human evolution. That's not people being afraid of opposition.
It must also be mentioned that the side you defend, the creationists and Intelligent Design people, are HUGELY dishonest. I can save that for another post, but know that you are also, inadvertently I know as you just want to defend your faith, understandably, you are also defending a network of people who consistently lie, stifle debate and opposition, make things up, and behave deceitfully.
It should beg the question in an intelligent person like you -why do these people need to LIE? Does God need to be lied for to defend him?
Anyway, enough of my ramble must sleep.
keep thinking!
oh and if you haven't already - youtube.com/potholer54 watch his vids, 1-9. Shouldn't take much more than an hour. Forgive the sarky tone, and soak up the fact and reason!
Hi, just wanted to apologise again for the rather condescending "why are you serving coffee and not a geneticist" line. Late nights and rambling. I sometimes wish I'd studied genetics, but hey, i'm a musician, too late now! But I have always been interested in science and always read popular science mags like New Scientist etc.
I guess I wanted to reinforce my point that, despite what some of these guys may imply, your faith and a respect for the power and knowledge of science CAN co-exist. So, although all our comments often challenge your belief in god directly, in fact, that is not PRIMARILY what concerns us.
You came onto pharyngula attempting to defend the actions of a woman who tried to stop school science classes teaching science. Imagine if people tried to prevent religious teachers from using the bible! Imagine a maths teacher breing told, yes, by all means teach that 2+2=4, but you must also teach that 2+2=5 because there are people that believe it to be true.
So my hope is not that we've somehow turned you into an atheist - much as some would like to try - but that at the least you have been educated as to why scientists take offence at their profession being attacked.
Like it or not, and plenty of scientists don't "like" it on religious grounds, the theory of evolution stands high amongst all the theories scientists have accumulated to explain the world that is observable. People who have started with NO bias, said "let me put my particular religions explanations for things aside for one moment and look at what is actually there" and followed strict rules, building on accumulated knowledge. The theory of evolution is only one "result" of this process, and the facts observed and the answers obtained have been inescapable for all, whether they liked it or not. Religious scientists have accepted it - whether grudgingly, or in awe at the intricacy of god's plan. The minority that don't are in fact an astonishingly small minority only comprised of those so bound to their faith that they simply refuse to accept the evidence. That's faith, not science, and I don't consider it noble.
Once again, to teach creation or intelligent design is not science, it is against the very definition of the subject, which David so brilliantly encapsulates in "how would I know if I were wrong..."
That's the debate you entered into, and to put it totally bluntly, that's the point we want you to concede. It's all very well that you feel evolution is a "faith" issue, and that is somehow confronting for you, but that is really your problem. Whilst you have demonstrated willingness to think and pontificate, you haven't yet demonstrated any willingness to think critically. You clearly haven't bothered to follow up in any detail yet any of the links or arguments David has so eloquently put to you. He's invested a huge amount of time in answering your questions, and arguing critically with you, to which you've responded with another list of creationist propoganda websites, the first glance at the first link gives me two out of context Darwin quotes that are deliberately misrepresenting what Darwin was saying - and note the deliberateness. Only creationists invest so much time in deliberately manipulating and misrepresenting people out of context. There's a classic video of Richard dawkins which was deliberately reedited to make it look like dawkins couldn't answer a question, when nothing could be further from the truth. In the public domain, creationists post the video, but censor any comments that point out its hoax nature.
That all may seem a little petty, and in fact its incredibly petty. But its symptomstic of creationism and ID at large, and things scientists in the US in particular have to put up with seemingly every day.. The only way "creation science" can survive is through dishonesty. When you no doubt soon have "expelled" the movie thrust at you through your local church, be aware that its surely the only movie to have requested journalists to sign a "non-disclosure agreement" at preview screenings, and to stage press conferences where the only people allowed to ask questions are handpicked Christian yes-men.
the "industry" around ID / creation science is astonishingly deceitful, and censorious and closed. And negative - while real science daily achieves breakthroughs in the lab, creation science has achieved absolutely nothing. Zip. Nada. Except to fill their pockets with money from gullible churches.
Enough of my rambling again, I'm becoming more disillusioned as a type. Who knows if you read any of test posts, let alone try to comprehend them. No wonder the question keeps nagging at you - its because there's a part of your brain called reason that is trying to digest all you've been Reading, and part of your brain called religion that is fighting.
Perhaps we should be done with the whole evolution thing: if you're going to try and poke holes in evolutionary theory when you don't even know anything about it, perhaps I should start pointing out some of the major obvious flaws in religion and Christianity, at least I do know something about that! There are plenty if things you're not taught at Sunday school, kiddo.
Yours, in good faith
voltare44, I appreciate your good faith in my unwillingness to become an atheist- but it really is not necessary. I fear I could never be that cynical. You are right - my eyes have been opened to looking for evidence - not just hope.
You said "But I have always been interested in science and always read popular science mags like New Scientist etc." Do you think it's possible that you, too, are getting one side of the view of Science? Like I said I still believe Evolution is just a WAY of looking AT Science. I recently heard an awesome quote at work, "It is better to dig for facts, than come to conclusions." That one hit home hard, because alot of us have the tendency to come to conclusions based on the general beliefs surrounding us. I still believe in God - yes, and I believe the earth didn't need billions of years to evolve -- a few thousand years is more accurate.
Dan, you referred me to that Talk2Action site. I think that's a play on the 'Faith2 Action' program, no? I found the man's opinion very interesting, but it seems in his article that he is reasoning with himself -- trying to find a grand medium between 'religion' and the theory of evolution. He says that his upbringing 'limited God'. Clearly, his opinion seems to be that God is limited by people who think he CAN'T have used evolution to bring about this world. But I think it limits God much more to say that he CAN'T create the earth in 10,000 some years. I'd love to find out who wrote that article and discuss this with him -- it seemed to have been produced by the website, not a particular person.
Mike, you said 'the only god is the god of the bible? What about all of the gods who came before that one, all ancient civilisations have their own gods.' Please be more specific. What gods do you referr to? Perhaps the ancient superstitions of African tribes, or the Egyptians belief in many gods like the sun god? It has been my experience that many who use the word 'religion' referr to a wide spread of faiths. I submit that everybody wants to have faith in SOMETHING - whether it is in a god, a faith, an ideal, people, or science. The specific differences between the God of the Bible, and the god of the Koran, could be debated heatedly. And even then, if we decided the God of the Bible was the one true God, there are many forms of faith centered around him. Lutheran, Methodist, Catholic, Baptist, Southern Baptist... Which way of serving God is correct? And even then, it is so sad when people use God's name for a personal endeavor. Minister's fall into horrible scandals, and the atheists post the stories with delight. It is all so petty. I do not associate myself with 'religion', but I believe there are definitely ways to PROVE with the scientific EVIDENCE before us, that a Creation story and an intelligent design is not only plausible - but probable. Voltare44, I too am a musician and not a geneticist. But I am not willing to passively let the google facts of this world define science. I am a skeptic - I stick to that. I look at things suspiciously, and I'd much rather set about to prove something wrong than to prove it right.
Dan, you wrote in response to:
" But, in fact - we are dealing with 2 + x = 5. You tell me what the answer is. "
"Well, x= 3 - I'm pretty obviously missing the point here. Is the idea that God is x? {scratches head confusedly}"
I submit that 'x' is the unknown. Scientists can stipulate and expiriment and evaluate -- but they still do not KNOW how man came to be. But I like your thought on 'God' being 'x'. With God all things are possible, so its certainly possible that God could be the unknown factor that man and science simply cannot evaluate. Still, I believe intelligent design will point to its' Designer.
DAN, you also said...
"Gravity/Germ Theory/Heliocentrism/the Big Bang/Plate Tectonics/ [are] NOT Science . . . [These are] merely a way of LOOKING at knowledge (etc.)
- agree? disagree?"
I'm not sure if this is a trick question. Gravity is certainly observable by science. The Germ theory - I'm not seeing how this applies. According to Wikipedia, "The ancient historical view was that disease was spontaneously generated instead of being created by microrganisms which grow by reproduction." In fact the Germ Theory does not seem to support evolution.
Dan I've never tried to answer as many questions as I am for you, so that must make you lucky or something -- either that or it means we think on the same level... human, possibly. You also said,
"I should add that recognizing that modern evolutionary biology is the best explanation we have - and a remarkably good one at that - for biodiversity doesn't mean rejecting God."
You are right that evolution is modern and it indeed has good explanations. But what's with the 'biodiversity' comment? There are three types of biodiversity. Genetic, Species, and Ecosystem Diversity. According to my good friend 'Wikipedia', Biodiversity is "variation of life at all levels of biological organization". This seems to be saying -- in laymans terms -- that alot of the studyable material around us is full of variation. This, in fact, is obvious. And for scientists that say that the genetic code of organisms is 'similar in design', I find this fascinating. It seems obvious to me that a simlar design would point to a common Designer.
Back to the scientists,
I noticed nobody challenged the 'DNA Double Helix' phenomenon. Think on that, Mike.
One more thing, Mike. You wanted to know of any Creationist Scientists? My deepest apologies that I only present a small number of them here. I wish I could collect them and all of their data for you and spread them at your feet. But truly, you must admit - not every scientist is happily atheist like you. Some believe that Creation is far more plausible. Things as complex as you, after all, could not have been happened on by chance.
Dr. Paul Ackerman, Psychologist
Dr. E. Theo Agard, Medical Physics
Dr. James Allan, Geneticist
Dr. Steve Austin, Geologist
Dr. S.E. Aw, Biochemist
Dr. Thomas Barnes, Physicist
Dr. Geoff Barnard, Immunologist
Dr. Don Batten, Plant physiologist, tropical fruit expert
Dr. John Baumgardner, Electrical Engineering, Space Physicist, Geophysicist, expert in supercomputer modeling of plate tectonics
Dr. Jerry Bergman, Psychologist
Dr. Kimberly Berrine, Microbiology & Immunology
Prof. Vladimir Betina, Microbiology, Biochemistry & Biology
Dr. Raymond G. Bohlin, Biologist
Dr. Andrew Bosanquet, Biology, Microbiology
Edward A. Boudreaux, Theoretical Chemistry
Dr. David R. Boylan, Chemical Engineer
Prof. Linn E. Carothers, Associate Professor of Statistics
Dr. David Catchpoole, Plant Physiologist (read his testimony)
Prof. Sung-Do Cha, Physics
Dr. Eugene F. Chaffin, Professor of Physics
Dr. Choong-Kuk Chang, Genetic Engineering
Prof. Jeun-Sik Chang, Aeronautical Engineering
Dr. Donald Chittick, Physical Chemist (interview)
Prof. Chung-Il Cho, Biology Education
Dr. John M. Cimbala, Mechanical Engineering
Dr. Harold Coffin, Palaeontologist
Dr. Bob Compton, DVM
Dr. Ken Cumming, Biologist
Dr. Jack W. Cuozzo, Dentist
Dr. William M. Curtis III, Th.D., Th.M., M.S., Aeronautics & Nuclear Physics
Dr. Malcolm Cutchins, Aerospace Engineering
Dr. Lionel Dahmer, Analytical Chemist
Dr. Raymond V. Damadian, M.D., Pioneer of magnetic resonance imaging
Dr. Chris Darnbrough, Biochemist
Dr. Nancy M. Darrall, Botany
Dr. Bryan Dawson, Mathematics
Dr. Douglas Dean, Biological Chemistry
Prof. Stephen W. Deckard, Assistant Professor of Education
Dr. David A. DeWitt, Biology, Biochemistry, Neuroscience
Dr. Don DeYoung, Astronomy, atmospheric physics, M.Div
Dr. David Down, Field Archaeologist
Dr. Geoff Downes, Creationist Plant Physiologist
Dr. Ted Driggers, Operations research
Robert H. Eckel, Medical Research
Dr. André Eggen, Geneticist
Dr. Dudley Eirich, Molecular Biologist
Prof. Dennis L. Englin, Professor of Geophysics
Prof. Danny Faulkner, Astronomy
Prof. Carl B. Fliermans, Professor of Biology
Prof. Dwain L. Ford, Organic Chemistry
Prof. Robert H. Franks, Associate Professor of Biology
Dr. Alan Galbraith, Watershed Science
Dr. Paul Giem, Medical Research
Dr. Maciej Giertych, Geneticist
Dr. Duane Gish, Biochemist
Dr. Werner Gitt, Information Scientist
Dr. Warwick Glover, General Surgeon
Dr. D.B. Gower, Biochemistry
Dr. Robin Greer, Chemist, History
Dr. Dianne Grocott, Psychiatrist
Dr. Stephen Grocott, Industrial Chemist
Dr. Donald Hamann, Food Scientist
Dr. Barry Harker, Philosopher
Dr. Charles W. Harrison, Applied Physicist, Electromagnetics
Dr. John Hartnett, Physicist and Cosmologist
Dr. Mark Harwood, Satellite Communications
Dr. George Hawke, Environmental Scientist
Dr. Margaret Helder, Science Editor, Botanist
Dr. Harold R. Henry, Engineer
Dr. Jonathan Henry, Astronomy
Dr. Joseph Henson, Entomologist
Dr. Robert A. Herrmann, Professor of Mathematics, US Naval Academy
Dr. Andrew Hodge, Head of the Cardiothoracic Surgical Service
Dr. Kelly Hollowell, Molecular and Cellular Pharmacologist
Dr. Ed Holroyd, III, Atmospheric Science
Dr. Bob Hosken, Biochemistry
Dr. George F. Howe, Botany
Dr. Neil Huber, Physical Anthropologist
Dr. Russell Humphreys, Physicist
Dr. James A. Huggins, Professor and Chair, Department of Biology
Evan Jamieson, Hydrometallurgy
George T. Javor, Biochemistry
Dr. Pierre Jerlström, Creationist Molecular Biologist
Dr. Arthur Jones, Biology
Dr. Jonathan W. Jones, Plastic Surgeon
Dr. Raymond Jones, Agricultural Scientist
Prof. Leonid Korochkin, Molecular Biology
Dr. Valery Karpounin, Mathematical Sciences, Logics, Formal Logics
Dr. Dean Kenyon, Biologist
Prof. Gi-Tai Kim, Biology
Prof. Harriet Kim, Biochemistry
Prof. Jong-Bai Kim, Biochemistry
Prof. Jung-Han Kim, Biochemistry
Prof. Jung-Wook Kim, Environmental Science
Prof. Kyoung-Rai Kim, Analytical Chemistry
Prof. Kyoung-Tai Kim, Genetic Engineering
Prof. Young-Gil Kim, Materials Science
Prof. Young In Kim, Engineering
Dr. John W. Klotz, Biologist
Dr. Vladimir F. Kondalenko, Cytology/Cell Pathology
Dr. Leonid Korochkin, M.D., Genetics, Molecular Biology, Neurobiology
Dr. John K.G. Kramer, Biochemistry
Prof. Jin-Hyouk Kwon, Physics
Prof. Myung-Sang Kwon, Immunology
Dr. John Leslie, Biochemist
Dr. Jason Lisle, Astrophysicist
Dr. Alan Love, Chemist
Dr. Ian Macreadie, molecular biologist and microbiologist:
Dr. John Marcus, Molecular Biologist
Dr. George Marshall, Eye Disease Researcher
Dr. Ralph Matthews, Radiation Chemist
Dr. John McEwan, Chemist
Prof. Andy McIntosh, Combustion theory, aerodynamics
Dr. David Menton, Anatomist
Dr. Angela Meyer, Creationist Plant Physiologist
Dr. John Meyer, Physiologist
Dr. Albert Mills, Animal Embryologist/Reproductive Physiologist
Colin W. Mitchell, Geography
Dr. Tommy Mitchell, Physician
Dr. John N. Moore, Science Educator
Dr. John W. Moreland, Mechanical engineer and Dentist
Dr. Henry M. Morris (1918–2006), founder of the Institute for Creation Research.
Dr. Arlton C. Murray, Paleontologist
Dr. John D. Morris, Geologist
Dr. Len Morris, Physiologist
Dr. Graeme Mortimer, Geologist
Dr. Terry Mortenson, History of Geology
Stanley A. Mumma, Architectural Engineering
Prof. Hee-Choon No, Nuclear Engineering
Dr. Eric Norman, Biomedical researcher
Dr. David Oderberg, Philosopher
Prof. John Oller, Linguistics
Prof. Chris D. Osborne, Assistant Professor of Biology
Dr. John Osgood, Medical Practitioner
Dr. Charles Pallaghy, Botanist
Dr. Gary E. Parker, Biologist, Cognate in Geology (Paleontology)
Dr. David Pennington, Plastic Surgeon
Prof. Richard Porter
Dr. Georgia Purdom, Molecular Genetics
Dr. John Rankin, Cosmologist
Dr. A.S. Reece, M.D.
Prof. J. Rendle-Short, Pediatrics
Dr. Jung-Goo Roe, Biology
Dr. David Rosevear, Chemist
Dr. Ariel A. Roth, Biology
Dr. Jonathan D. Sarfati, Physical chemist / spectroscopist
Dr. Joachim Scheven Palaeontologist:
Dr. Ian Scott, Educator
Dr. Saami Shaibani, Forensic physicist
Dr. Young-Gi Shim, Chemistry
Prof. Hyun-Kil Shin, Food Science
Dr. Mikhail Shulgin, Physics
Dr. Emil Silvestru, Geologist/karstologist
Dr. Roger Simpson, Engineer
Dr. Harold Slusher, Geophysicist
Dr. E. Norbert Smith, Zoologist
Arthur E. Wilder-Smith (1915–1995) Three science doctorates; a creation science pioneer
Dr. Andrew Snelling, Geologist
Prof. Man-Suk Song, Computer Science
Dr. Timothy G. Standish, Biology
Prof. James Stark, Assistant Professor of Science Education
Prof. Brian Stone, Engineer
Dr. Esther Su, Biochemistry
Dr. Charles Taylor, Linguistics
Dr. Stephen Taylor, Electrical Engineering
Dr. Ker C. Thomson, Geophysics
Dr. Michael Todhunter, Forest Genetics
Dr. Lyudmila Tonkonog, Chemistry/Biochemistry
Dr. Royal Truman, Organic Chemist:
Dr. Larry Vardiman, Atmospheric Science
Prof. Walter Veith, Zoologist
Dr. Joachim Vetter, Biologist
Sir Cecil P. G. Wakeley (1892–1979) Surgeon
Dr. Tas Walker, Mechanical Engineer and Geologist
Dr. Jeremy Walter, Mechanical Engineer
Dr. Keith Wanser, Physicist
Dr. Noel Weeks, Ancient Historian (also has B.Sc. in Zoology)
Dr. A.J. Monty White, Chemistry/Gas Kinetics
Dr. John Whitmore, Geologist/Paleontologist
Dr. Carl Wieland, Medical doctor
Dr. Lara Wieland, Medical doctor
Dr. Clifford Wilson, Psycholinguist and archaeologist
Dr. Kurt Wise, Palaeontologist
Prof. Verna Wright, Rheumatologist (deceased 1997)
Prof. Seoung-Hoon Yang, Physics
Dr. Thomas (Tong Y.) Yi, Ph.D., Creationist Aerospace & Mechanical Engineering
Dr. Ick-Dong Yoo, Genetics
Dr. Sung-Hee Yoon, Biology
Dr. Patrick Young, Chemist and Materials Scientist
Prof. Keun Bae Yu, Geography
Dr. Henry Zuill, Biology
argh, David. I wish I had more time! You bring up some very interesting things. It's a bit late though, and tomorrow I have a few time-consuming plans. I shall try to squeeze in time to read, evaluate, and rip apart your words bit by bit then. ;)
Andi,
At last, you're responding which means you're thinking and thats great, well done :-)
OK you've responded to some of my points so we can debate. I have noticed that you condemn some of us for providing links to web sites. Yet you have no compunction about doing the same thing, for example the huge list of questions you posted were cut 'n paste from Kent hovind (who is currently serving a prison sentence for fraud). The list of evolution scientists you posted is lifted directly from this site http://www.lifetothefullchurch.com/Unlocking%20the%20Mystery%20Of%20Life%20promotion.html.
That list links to those scientists 'discoveries' and 'proofs' etc. but when you drill down into what they say you find no evidence, no facts, no peer reviewed published papers. What they state is their personal difficulties in accepting the facts of evolution, standard creationist arguments from incredulity. You state that there is science being done by creationists but you regret you cannot lay it at my feet (other than that list of scientists from a christian website). Also interesting is that not many of those scientists are biologists or paleantologists etc. Have you heard of Project Steve? http://www.natcenscied.org/resources/articles/3541_project_steve_2_16_2003.asp The list of creation scientists you produced was part of a list of scientists that were against evolution and the argument went that the whole scientific community was in uproar about the ToE (this was the creationists argument, to understand why creationists use these tactics you need to read about the Wedge http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wedge_strategy). Project Steve was a list of scientists (in the many thousands now) who declare evolution to be correct and who's first name is Steve. 23 other letters in the alphabet so many many more thousands of scientists :-)
Are you familiar with the dover trial? Here is a link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitzmiller_v._Dover_Area_School_District This trial brought creationism firmly into the spotlight and evidence, peer reviewed papers for creationism science, was asked for by the court. Do you know what was found, bearing in mind this trial was only 2 1/2 years ago? Nothing, no papers, no evidence. Whereas the evidence for evolution runs to thousands upon thousands of papers. Additionally some of the favourite hobby horse scientific 'facts' of the intelligent design/creationist lobby were proven, in a court of law, to be wrong. The bacterium flagellum Dr Behe would have had us believe was so complex it could only have been designed. That was shown to be wrong and the court was offered factual, peer revied, evidence that it could and did evolve. Yet there are many creationist websites out there which still state Behe's publicly disproven 'designed' flagellum as proof of design. You have to ask yourself why.
You ask do I believe that something so complex as myself (I assume you mean the human body) could happen by chance. Wow! Shades of The Blind Watchmaker here :-)http://www.simonyi.ox.ac.uk/dawkins/WorldOfDawkins-archive/Dawkins/Work/Books/blind.shtml No I don't believe my body happened by chance, nor was it intelligently designed ;-) I know, because of the facts and the evidence which is easily found on the internet (again I'm talking about scientific facts published in peer reviewed papers) that my body is a product of hundreds of thousands of years of evolution. That, in fact, all life on earth evolved. As others have told you, you can see evolution happening today, new species have appeared, bugs become resistant to antibiotics because they evolve, they change. Head lice which could be chemically treated have now evolved resistance to 5 different chemicals manufactured specifically to kill them. Etc. etc.
Oh and my body (and yours) is not very well designed. I mean the prostate, why is it in such a stupid place? Why are my eyes so badly designed when the squid has a really cool eye with no blind spots! Why do we get cancer and diseases? Lucky science has managed to find cures for some things huh? ;-)
You ask which gods I refer to. Hhhmmm there have been thousands so lets take a few examples from various cultures. Odin and Thor for the Nordic countries. Tezcatlipoca and huitzilopochtli for the Aztecs. Amun and Sekhmet for the egyptians and so the list goes on. All worshipped like the current christian god (even sacrifices made). So your god isn't the only one nor the oldest one, just one of many. Who can say that yours is the correct one to worship? What if you've got it wrong and when you die (if you believe in such things as heaven and hell) and go to heavan that the god you find is one of the others and you're caste out for not worshipping him (or her!)? Personally I see a big problem here with all the various religions worshipping in different ways to different gods. They can't all be correct ;-) Also all the religions you mention (apart from buddists cause they don't believe in gods and are generally peaceful) have caused tremendous friction over thousands of years. So many wars and deaths in the name of religion because, of course, there can only be one true religion and its always yours so the other people must be converted or DIE INFIDELS!
I do see the point of belief for some people. Its very conforting to be believe that when you die its not the end, you'll go on to a 'better' place. Or that you can pray to make things better. Unfortunately I have a major problem with that sort of belief and faith, I couldn't shut down the reasoning part of my brain.
As to why so many people have believed in gods and have faith well there are a LOT of books out there (you know how to google) on this very subject. My personal view is that in yea olde days people needed some explanation of why the sun rose, why things happened. Believing there were mysterious forces in nature controlling everything made sense then. Now we have the explanation for many things and none of them require a supernatural or superstitious explanation.
I'm not a scientist as you think. By profession I'm an Air Traffic Controller although I gave up my licence 8 years ago to work on ATC systems, improving the tools controllers use to make their job easier (so they can handle more aircraft). Also I'm not interested in 'converting' you or making you into an aethist. Why should I care? What I do care about is to try and show you that some of the stuff you throw out onto your blog (and other blogs) is not just not true but is lies. And you're are actually holding back the development of the human race by trying to foist these things on people and regress them back to the stone ages.
Wake up and smell the coffee (then you'll think you're at work ;-))
Keep thinking, keep questioning, keep coming back to us for more 'cause we've seen everything you've thrown out so far many many times.
Oh and David has answered your question on the double helix.
Mike
Sorry can't resist a final thought. If the earth is only a few thousand years old yet all the evidence around shows thats its billions and that god made the evidence appear old why did he do that? Is he a bit of a prankster that likes a practical joke and wants to screw with our heads? "ooohhh lets place this archaeopteryx fossil in the dirt here, that'll really mess their heads up!" ;-)
Hi andi,
Thanks for responding, but I think you're missing the point.
You ask: "Do you think it's possible that you, too, are getting one side of the view of science?"
Doesn't make sense. There aren't "sides" in science. I have throughout my life been told an "alternate" view of science, that a creator created everything. I once believed it. I've been exposed to that "view of science" many many times. The simple fact is that, we have two hypothesese: one, that a God created the world and us in seven days, and two that the world is old and we are part of a process of evolution. Both are great hypotheses, and the simple fact is that people have put those hypothese to the test, looking at all the evidence in the world around them, and the evidence confirms the second hypothesis and disproves the first. It's as simple as that.
Flood-theory is brilliant. Some people still believe in Noah's flood to explain fossils. People once were very happy to think that old dug up bones were remnants of the Great Flood, because that's what they'd been taught. But as soon as people started actually looking at the information that can gleaned from the bones, from the fossils, from the stratas, from the dates, from the locations, from the geological maps, the evidence all directly contradicts the story of a worldwide flood a few thousand years ago. Not to mention the astonishing impossibility of the ark story. The world as it is simply does not show any evidence of a worldwide, species destroying flood. More, we're intelligent enough to be able to say, "well, what would we see if there WERE a giant worldwide flood as described in the bible? What would that much water do, what sediment would be deposited, how would the fossils be layed down around the world?" What we see around the world is nothing to support a flood story. Flood "scientists" have nothing but crazy stories to try and fit it in, they are a load of absolute nonsense.
It's a good story. It's a great story, it's a great moral story for something-or-another, but it's JUST a story. No doubt based in fact in part, in that there's nothing unusual about big floods in the mesopotamic region, but that's about it.
You can only defend believing in a god-created young earth and in god-created species if you accept the word of the bible literally.
But how do you do that? Instantly, which version of the genesis story do you accept? Genesis 1, or Genesis 2? Things happen in different orders. Man and woman are created together in one. Woman is created from man's rib in another. Garden of Eden is only in one of them. So which is true? It's a simple question. The word of God is either literal, or it is not.
They both can't be true. Instantly, in the first books of the bible, in the very section that claims to inform you in your knowledge that god created the earth in seven days. You HAVE to make a judgement that says: well, ok, one is clearly another version of the same story, written later; or, they are metaphorical. But which bits are metaphorical? How do you decide? Who decides for you? Is there a line? If we decide that the genesis stories are metaphorical, then it immediately brings into question which of the other books of the bible are also metaphorical stories. Noahs Ark? If we decide that the genesis stories are literal: Then, explain to me how the creation is literally laid out for all to see, when there are two different versions. What is the sequence of events, from God waking up and deciding to create the earth, to seven days later? If it is literal, that sequence should be clear. It is not.
You saw an awesome quote: "It is better to dig for facts, than come to conclusions." And you immediately follow with "a lot of us have the tendency to come to conclusions based on the general beliefs surrounding us. I still believe in God - yes, and i believe the earth didn't need billions of years to evolve -- a few thousand years is more accurate."
Don't you think it's possible that you have come to conclusions based on the beliefs surrounding you? The religion you've been brought up in? If you had been brought up as a Chinese Taoist, you would believe in a cosmic egg and ying and yang. As an indian sikh you would believe something simiilar, but an egg assembled by god himself, that actually resembles the big bang theory, with all elements moving away from the point of bursting. Pre-Judaic religion in Babylon believed variously in a corpse of a God being divided into heaven and hell, Egyptian Ennead stories, from which the God Atum arose from primordial waters and masturbated to relieve his lonliness, his semen and breath becoming moisture and dryness.
The Islamic Qu'ran tells of 6 long spans of time, rather than 6 days - same God as yours, same story, different details. Inuits from Alaska/Canada/Greenland have a story of a raven piercing the land with it's beak.
Etc Etc Etc. Creation myths are fascinating, amazingly varied, and just that - myths, grown out of peoples desire to explain things. We now have a new way of explaining things: science. Which does EXACTLY what you so admire: throws out pre-existing conclusions, and digs up facts, very often literally digging. It is a long and continuing process, and a process that has been performed by thousands and thousands of Christians over centuries, who have never the less recognised the facts in the face of what they had been brought up to believe. YOU have your conclusion: the particular version of a Christian God of a fairly literal branch of the faith, and you seek only evidence that confirms your belief. If you had happened to be born in Afghanistan instead of the USA, you wouldn't even be asking these questions, as as a woman you would be being subdued and humiliated by your religion, as a man you would be abusive and mysoginystic on account of the religion you would have happened to be brought up in.
You say that everyone wants to have faith in SOMETHING: absolutely true. People do, and that's why there's creation myths and religion all over the world. That doesn't mean it's right, or true. A good clue as to whether religion is right or true is in the huge variety of religions around the world: why does jesus not appear to sikhs?
A REALLY interesting read on Wikipedia is Cargo Cults - search for it, it's something I never new existed until fairly recently. Documented formation of religion. Demonstrates exactly how humans are naturally tempted to believe in superstition and supernatural and Gods, but how those superstitions can arise out of perfectly natural occurances (such as the visit of Prince Philip to an island in Vanuatu in 1974. Wikipedia: "Prince Philip Movement") Religions that are held and as firmly believed as you now believe in your version of the Christian God. Interesting reading. Of course, from a scientific point of view, it doesn't PROVE the christian God as false; but it does go some way to opening for research alternate explanations for how a religion like christianity or any religion can arise so easily. It shows that there CAN be another explanation for Christianity, there IS a possible non-supernatural explanation. Mull it over!
You say you are a skeptic. A true skeptic is agnostic. Not christian, not atheist. A true skeptic wont believe anything unless they see CONCLUSIVE evidence. A true skeptic would not take the bible on faith, because they would recognise that there is more than enough evidence against it to question it's authority. A true skeptic would probably accept evolution though: because, the theory has been formulated over a long period of time BY other skeptics, and makes predictions that are testable and verifiable, and has not yet had anywhere near sufficient evidence to disprove it - in fact, no evidence.
So you are not a skeptic.
A skeptic would be agnostic.
Many atheists are in fact agnostic: they are just SO agnostic that they might as well be atheist. They recognise that there is so much overwhelming evidence against a God, that they dismiss it, whilst of course recognising that all it would take is for God to appear in a fiery cloud and hurl a couple of lightning bolts and reattach a severed limb with the power of thought or something; surely within his ascribed power, but we wait in vain it seems.
YOU are an atheist. You don't believe in lots of other primitive superstitions: Thor, Zeus, Ra, Amon, Vishnu. You are an atheist about those gods. Some of us just go one little step further.
By the way, the list of scientists you give is as old an argument as they come.
I'm sure someone will have got there before me, so I'm probably reiterating the major points:
Many not actually biologists, so not actually knowledgeable about evolution. PhD in aerospace engineering doesn't give you much cred in arguing details of evolution.
Search for Project Steve. An enormous list of scientists who happen to be called Steven who support the theory of evolution. A parody of the creation list. If that tiny list is the best they can do, then they really must be struggling!
"Who's got more names on a list" is not how science works. It's a fallacious and very cheap argument: just because lots of people believe something, doesn't mean it's true. Evolution is widely supported because every day people do research that backs it up, and indeed wouldn't work if the principles of evolution weren't true. Simple.
I also understand that, at least at one time, many of the names on that list were not happy about being there: they had been asked about "whether they are open to the possibility of a designing force in the universe" or soemthing equally nebulous and said yes, and were shocked to find their name on a Creationist website advocating a God-created 6000 year old earth. I'm hesitant, because I'm not sure if it's that specific list, or another, or that those people have been removed from the list, or what. Alas, a typical creationist tactic: Again I say, it is an unfortunate fact that creationists deal in dishonesty, supression of criticism, deceit and intellectual dishonesty on a daily basis. You are defending these people - that's all well and good for you, but you have to be aware that's what you're defending.
Hey, science AND religion might one day be proved to be totally wrong about everything, and that we're all actually just virtual imaginings in some giant futuristic virtual reality, an advanced "sim city" or "matrix" played by aliens in another universe. At least we could say that scientists were honest.
Ugh there's no reprieve from you guys, is there? - lol. Okay, here goes, I'll try my best.
Dan, let's start with you:
I said...
"Is it logical for matter (which can be neither created nor destroyed, only altered) to create/evolve more matter through un-inspired mutations? "
And you said...
"OK. I mean, why not? We see tomatoes and tabbies make copies of themselves, but not identical ones - sometimes more than usually different ones. Are these changes un- or inspired? Science can't say they aren't. Science can't say they are. Science can't talk about divine inspiration..."
I'm not quite sure what you mean here. I believe with those tomatoes and tabbies - we are dealing with microevolution, no? Tomotatoes that produce different varieties are producing within their own species. We see this all the time with dogs that produce different breeds. Regardless, the issue is whether two dogs can cross over and create a rodent, or a tomatoe can cross over and produce a squash. That, I believe, is microevolution. Can all species and all matter really be related? If so, why don't we see any such obvious species cross-overs today? (I'm sure I'll be referred to a complicated site for that one, but I couldn't resist).
"... because God wouldn't be bound by nature."
I agree. That is primarily why Creationists and Evolutionists disagree on the fundamentals. Why believe in a God not bound by nature? Why not believe in the evidence of nature bound by the limits of itself. If nature is limitless, why are we still humans -- why aren't we all gods? If nature can create without a directed Force or Supreme Being, then what is keeping it from creating something more intelligent than man?
I said...
"Evolution is based on DEATH - each less superior animal or organism had to die off to give way to a new, better, improved organism.
Dan goes on...
"What does "less superior", "new, better, improved" and "had to" mean in this context? If something is, does that mean it's morally good, or could it merely be - that is, morally neutral, not knowing morality. If we dislike something, does that mean it's false? If we like something, does that mean it's true?"
Less superior... I suppose I could've been more specific. Evolution teaches that kinds produced kinds. This part confuses me, because nobody has been willing to lay it out for me yet. What came first? The amoeba? A cell? What was the process? - A cell became an amoeba and an amoeba became a fish and a fish became a bird...etc? It all sounds so ridiculous to me - perhaps it is very well that there are so many technical ways of saying it - it certainly sounds more convincing. By Less Superior, though, Dan, I am referring to the inferior mutation dieing off and giving way to the superior mutation. "new, better, improved" also describe this superior being that evolutionists say we are becoming. Isn't that the idea? We are constantly 'getting better', not worse. That is why any evidence to man once being greater than man is now would be detrimental to the theory of Evolution. How could evolution be true if man is indeed getting more inferior all the time? "had to" of course referrs again to the necessary rejection of the poor mutation, and the survival of 'the fittest'.
Okay, David... on to you. Evolutionists. Very knowledgable people, I must say. But I wonder if they are really all that comfortable skirting around the issues they don't know
Such as?
I know you guys have heard this over and over again, but what about the GAPS in your theory? Missing links. What about the complexities of the DNA molecule? Todd Strandberg put it this way, "It is reckless for someone to think it is a simple feat to have 3 billion amino acid molecules perfectly link up to form the basic genetic code of life." It is certainly not simple for the amino acid to link merely because it was 'placed in the right envirnment'. Where did the environment come from? How did it become perfect for life to survive within it? These are all highly legitimate questions, don't you agree David?
And, David, in fact - you can interpret the meaning of 'science' any way you want, but it still means 'knowledge'. Science=what you KNOW - which is why theories are theories, not science. A theory is not necessarily based on facts. Science, is.
I said...
"Because the concept of Creationism has been around for so long, many modern scientists find it too 'simple', 'unchanging', and quite possibly 'too-God-oriented'."
And David said...
"No. Where it makes specific predictions, they have turned out to be wrong; where it doesn't, it isn't falsifiable. That's what we don't like about it."
Okay, what are you even talking about? What specific predictions? - you mean predictions in the Bible? - or do you mean predictions of Scientists with a Creation-view? All right, so you're telling me that evolutionists all set out to DISPROVE...what? Science? Knowledge? They set about to disprove evolution? I don't think YOU'VE been reading what I'VE said, David. I didn't say that Creationists couldn't set out to disprove knowledge - you seem to forget that Creationism is only a VIEW of science. (and one that I happen to believe in). Creationist Scientists can still discover, disprove, etc. - but their foundation of belief (how the material they work with came to be) is still the same.
Okay, David, I really find it funny that you say this:
"Only creationists invest so much time in deliberately manipulating and misrepresenting people out of context." If anyone is an example of deliberately misrepresenting people out of context, it is your whole network of Phyrangula scientists. The minute a creationist steps on to your sacred turf, they are not given plausibility or even respect. I understand that evolutionists have had a hard life with creationists being so bloody awful to them and all, but the least you could expect is maturity! If you read back over those old comments, David, you'll see how many comments were ridiculously personal and purposefully looking for words to 'use out of context'.
Regardless, I WILL try to come back and respond to more comments as time persists. I don't mind the ones that disagree with me, that's why I posted them. I just wish I had more time to go through them and defend - not myself - but my beliefs. But I know my beliefs are insignificant at this point. And yet if I take anything from this debate, I will know more what I believe, and I will know how to defend it.
I like what Todd Strandberg says on this point. "After studying this issue for several years, I have concluded that very little can be gained by debating evolution vs. creationism. Two of the biggest obstacles to effective debate on the topic are: 1) the lack of conclusive scientific evidence to forever resolve the issue; and 2) the lack of openmindedness on the part of both camps.
Our limited understanding of the historical record and the workings of the universe makes it difficult for any side to get an advantage over the other. Until the day comes when God supernaturally reveals himself, both sides will still be entangled in this endless battle."
On that note... I am exhausted. Thanks for hanging with me - I've just come from applying for scholarships and taxes and stuff. I know you'll agree that if anything gives a headache - that will. If I took any of it out on you, my deepest and due apologies.
Later.
Andi writes: "Dan I've never tried to answer as many questions as I am for you, so that must make you lucky or something"
: ) I'm honored. I'd really like to discuss the points you've raised, but I've been slowly typing out the monster of a comment below since Friday, so I hope you don't mind if I post (or whatever the proper term for hitting publish/submit for a comment is) it first. I'll try to go on from there later tonight or tomorrow, maybe? Anyway, I hope you keep thinking and questioning and looking for answers - these are wonderful things.
------
Andi, you really are getting some excellent responses - I do hope you're reading David and Voltare44.
There are a bunch of things I'd like to say, but right now I want to focus one in particular. Voltare44 stresses how creationists are hugely dishonest - a claim you may well feel is unsupported, exaggerated, or mere attack rhetoric. You also offered a number of links "to check out and disprove for [you]." I'd like to use the first one on the list to bring lithic-mediated selection pressure to bear on avian flocking behavior (that is, kill two birds with one stone): to both fulfill your request and try to show what Voltare44 means.
So: http://www.creator-creation.com/evolution.htm presents a list of quotes supposedly from "well-qualified and competent scientists who hold views against the theory and who give scientific reasoning in support of their views. Here we will quote some well-known scientists who do not accept the theory of evolution.." The implication is that these are current (or at least relatively recent) scientists who are indeed "well-qualified and competent" to discuss modern evolutionary biology. Now, there are many problems with this list, but I want to single out two:
1) Quote mining, which both David and I have already mentioned. This is the practice of using quotes taken out of context (or otherwise distorted) to give a false or misleading impression of what is being said. For example, if a movie was promoted with a quote from a famous reviewer: "This is a wonderful move . . . Go see it!" - except that it turns out that in context the actual review says: "This is a wonderful movie. That is, if you have no taste, an IQ of 16, the moral sense of a rabid jackal, and partial deafness in both ears. For everyone else, if you want to lose all faith in humanity, and possibly the will to live, and can only say one thing: Go see it!". Thing is, the term doesn't come from movie PR (even though one can find real examples there that are only a little less extreme). It seems to have been invented in the 90s to describe a very common creationist practice, one that's at least several decades old. There are entire pages dedicated to cataloging and correcting quotemined quotes (Which makes my task here a lot quicker! - I'm mostly linking to these rather than to the original works, but you're welcome to search those out as well: many are online and free at places like www.gutenberg.org) Not all of these have been tracked down, nor can be easily found online, though - in these cases, I've tried to find some basic information about the speaker and their work, which gets us into:
2) Misrepresenting the context of the quote (and quoted person) - Many of these quotes are decades old, some over a century - not contemporary scientists by any stretch of the imagination. In some cases, the speaker isn't actually a scientist at all, or appears to lack any relevant expertise (would you get a software engineer to build a bridge?). You may have noticed that the quotes on this site lack almost any kind of bibliographic detail - title, date, page #, etc. - which makes it extremely difficult to track them down and evaluate (at least, without the internet and some really obsessed, I mean dedicated people), or even tell if they predate tv, radio, and the automobile. That's not a great sign.
So, onward! And downwards.
Darwin quote #1:"’: "Long before the reader has arrived at this part of my work, a crowd of difficulties will have occurred to him. Some of them are so serious that to this day, I can hardly reflect on them without being in some degree staggered…" "
Of course, this comes from the 1860s or 70s. The idea that Darwin was in some degree staggered" over a century ago is - right off the bat - of very questionable relevance. Think of what the world was like in 1870! Science has advanced enormously since then - evolution has had almost 15 decades of continuous testing, revision, expansion, with entire new fields added on and some ideas discarded. When Darwin wrote this, for example, no one in the entire world - besides a certain Austrian monk with a fondness for gardening - had any clue how heredity worked, and the role of DNA wouldn't be discovered for almost a century more. That Darwin was "staggered" would be by itself meaningless - what would matter is if modern evolutionary biologists shared (or should be sharing) his staggerdom.)
But it's actually far worse than that. The full quote: "Long before having arrived at this part of my work, a crowd of difficulties will have occurred to the reader. Some of them are so grave that to this day I can never reflect on them without being staggered; but, to the best of my judgment, the greater number are only apparent, and those that are real are not, I think, fatal to my theory..
and he goes on to argue why this is so.
Darwin quote #2: ""Not one change of species into another is on record…we cannot prove that a single species has changed (into another )".
It appears that this is in part made up, and in part distorted. The first part doesn't actually seem to exist. The second part (from 1863) is misquoted. (And as Mark notes, scientists in the 14+ decades since Darwin wrote this have in fact done such things).
Thomas Huxley, "evolution was not an established theory but a tentative hypothesis, an extremely valuable and even probable hypothesis but an hypothesis nonetheless. It is not universally accepted."".
You know, I could swear I read this (in context) a few weeks ago, but now I simply cannot find it. Anyway, it's an entirely plausible quote (although the past tense "was" seems a bit odd - it may be a partial paraphrase). As his wikipedia page points out, while Huxley was "Darwin's Bulldog," he definitely wasn't his poodle {groan from the crowd}. He felt that Darwin's work was the best explanation yet offered, but also remained skeptical (in the best sense) about gradualistic natural selection, and wanted to see more evidence.
The main issue here is that Huxley died in 1895, so at best this quote is 'just' a little more than 11 decades old. In the late 19th Century, this was an entirely reasonable statement. Now, over a century of astonishing discoveries later, not so much. Remember, among other things, Darwin couldn't explain how variation and heredity worked: his attempt to do so (pangenesis) was met with a kind of collective 'meh' and is now merely a historical curiosity.
Indeed - and David touched on this - in the early part of the 20th century, while evolution was widely accepted, Darwin's specific theory of gradual descent with modification via natural selection was only one explanation among many, and not a particularly flourishing one. It wasn't until the '30s and '40s that Darwin's insights were combined with the new science of genetics and work in other fields to form the modern evolutionary synthesis, which pretty much knocked all the other contenders out of the ring (this is a horrible summary - read the link for a better idea). I'd also guess that the quote in context is almost surely talking about Darwin's specific explanation of how evolution worked, not the fact of evolution itself, which Huxley viewed, I think, as quite dependable.
Professor Theodosius [D]obzhansky, ""it would be wrong to say that the biological theory of evolution has gained universal acceptance among biologists or even among geneticists"."
Dobzhansky - who is indeed a very major figure in evolutionary biology - lived from 1900 to 1975. Knowing when this quote, if real, was said is obviously important, since it talks about the state of the field, which was very different in, say, 1928 than 2008. It's also kind of misleading because the list supposedly shows " well-known scientists who do not accept the theory of evolution.": the latter bit, in the case of Dobzhansky is simply and utterly wrong. Feel free to read his 1973 essay on how Nothing in Biology Makes Sense
Except in the Light of Evolution (a far more famous quote). [Let me note that Dobzhansky was certainly not an atheist: rather, he was an (Eastern) Orthodox Christian].
Dr. Austin H. Clark
- (1880 - 1954), worked at the Smithsonian from 1908 'til his death, and was Curator of Echinoderms (and sole employee of that department) from 1920 - 1950. This quote may come from a 1928 article on "Animal Evolution", or some similar work of his. I don't want to really discuss the substance of his quote here (assuming it's not badly out of context), but let me just say that he was speaking before DNA, and before many other discoveries which provided - in many cases - just what he was asking for.
Professor J. Doyle " "since we cannot prove the evolution of a single organism, it is intellectual presumption to talk of the universe in a thousand million years.""
I think this refers to Joseph Doyle (1891 - 1974),, Professor of Botany at University College Dubin until his retirement in 1961. Again, this quote (if accurate) is decades old, possibly quite a few decades. (It quite possibly dates from before the development of radiometric dating, but that's another matter).
"Dr. D’Arcy Thompson says . . ."
Said. The - rather fascinating, let me say - scientist/scholar D'Archy Thompson lived from 1860 - 1948 (the '80 years' reference within the quote suggests it's from around 1939 or so). Things were different then - we've come very far since, and his statement, pehaps accurate then, is not so today. (Strictly speaking, 'all the quote says is, hey we don't know this yet, that's weird' - he indeed thought evolution was overrated, but this quote doesn't say what it's being asked to say.
Professor G.A. Kerkut, "…there is the theory that all living forms in the world have arisen from a single source which itself came from an inorganic form. This theory can be called the ‘General theory of evolution’ and the evidence that supports it is not sufficiently strong to allow us to consider it as anything more than a working hypothesis."
Gerald Kerkut (1927 - 2004) actually made it into the 21st century. "His book" probably refers to the 1960 Implications of Evolution. Looking at another quote mine taken from this work, it becomes pretty clear what the quote itself suggests - he's not talking about what he's meant to be talking about. The basic question he was asking here: does all life has a common origin, or did some kinds of modern organisms - like bacteria - arise independently? In the 1960s this may have been an open question. Nowadays - while we certainly don't have the whole picture! - modern DNA analysis seems to confirm
that all known living creatures do indeed share a common ancestor.
(See for example Carl Zimmer's post about the Tree of Life, c. 2006, which is great because it discusses in more-or-less understandable English what the scientists did, the actual problems and questions involved in doing so, and how such findings might impact genuine debates among actual scientists. For a slightly earlier version - not as up-to-date, but easier-to-read and linkable, see here).
"Professor Albert Fleishman,: "the theory of evolution suffers from grave defects, which are becoming more and more apparent as time advances. It can no longer square with practical scientific knowledge, nor does it suffice for our theoretical grasp of the facts. The Darwinian theory of decent has not a single fact to confirm it in the realm of nature. It is not the result of scientific re-search, but purely the product of imagination."
Nobody has managed to find the original yet, but there's a trail. Fleischmann was a biologist at the University of Erlangen, and did indeed reject evolution completely (not just Darwin's work). He also happened to live from 1862 to 1942. This particular quote - which is probably a paraphrase - appears to date from 1911 or earlier, though Fleischmann was still penning anti-evolution material in 1933.
"The late Sir William Dawsaon, Canada’s great geologist, said of evolution: "it is one of the strangest phenomena of humanity; yet it is utterly destitute of proof "."
Very late, indeed. Sir John William Dawson, who was indeed a great Canadian geologist, lived from 1820 - 1899. Whether or not this quote is at all in context, wikipedia does point out that he disputed the evolution of humans - something which there was indeed relatively little evidence for a century ago: it's not clear how he felt about evolution in general, or Darwin's explanation in particular.
"Dr. Robert A. Millikan, famous physicist and Nobel prize-winner, said in an address, a few years ago . . ."
A few years ago indeed!! This quote comes from 1925! The list also correctly identifies him as a Nobel Prize winning physicist, but doesn't make clear that this doesn't in itself make his opinion about evolution any more worthwhile than anybody else living in 1925. Would you go to a rocket scientist for brain surgery? (Hint: bad idea. Trust me. You just end up with a brain that can land on the moon, and nobody wants that.)
Loren Eisley -
Eisley, a wonderful writer, lived from 1907 to 1977. I can't track this quote down - yet, at least. Since Eisley didn't, in fact, oppose evolutionary biology, I suspect that when found it will, like many of these other quotes, turn out not to be saying what we're being told it says.
Dr. D.M.S. Watson: "…the theory of evolution itself is a theory universally accepted not because it can be proved by logically coherent evidence to be true but because the only alternative is "special creation", which is clearly incredible."
David Meredith Seares Watson, a paleontologist, lived from 1886 to 1973. This particular quote, however, dates from 1929. A detailed discussion can be found here. Not surprisingly, other parts of the article aren't quoted - for example:
"Evolution itself is accepted by zoologists not because it has been observed to occur or is supported by logically coherent arguments, but because it does fit all the facts of taxonomy, of palæontology, and geographical distribution, and because no alternative explanation is credible.
Whilst the fact of evolution is accepted by every biologist, the mode in which it has occurred and the mechanism by which it has been brought about are still disputable….
. . . Thus the present position of zoology is unsatisfactory. We know as surely as we shall that evolution has occurred ; but we do not know how this evolution has been brought about. The data which we have accumulated are inadequate, not in quantity but in their character, to allow us to determine which, if any, of the proposed explanations is a vera causa. But it appears that the experimental method rightly used will in the end give us, if not the solution of our problem, at least the power of analysing it and isolating the various factors which enter into it."
Again, this was in 1929, almost 80 years ago - and as I've mentioned, a period in which, as Watson writes, evolution was widely accepted, but "mode and mechanism" was quite uncertain and highly debated. This would change within the next few decades. Today we have much of the evidence Watson wanted - although again, we do not have the whole picture by far; there is fascinating research going on, new questions to ask, and without question wonders and surprises ahead. And go click that link to see why the specific quotemined bit is quite out of context. A more basic issue is why science doesn't involve supernatural explanations - something I'll write about later, perhaps.
Dr. W.R. Thompson: "As we know, there is a great divergence of opinion among biologists, not only about the cause of evolution but even about the actual process. This divergence exists because the evidence is unsatisfactory. It is therefore right and proper to draw the attention of the non-scientific public to the disagreements about evolution. But some recent remarks of evolutionists show that they think this unreasonable. This situation, where men rally to the defence of a doctrine they are unable to define scientifically, much less demonstrate with scientific rigor, attempting to maintain its credit with the public by the suppression of criticism and the elimination of difficulties, is abnormal and undesirable in science".
W.R. Thompson was born in 1887. This is actually one of the few quotes where the list provides a source, however poorly: "the foreword to the new edition of Darwin’s origin of the species." This "new edition" refers to one released in 1956, and that foreword contains Thompson's opinions as to the state of affairs at that time. Note that the quote itself points out that "As we know, there is a great divergence of opinion among biologists, not only about the cause of evolution but even about the actual process" - the cause and process: how exactly evolution happens, not whether it does. One of the richest seams creationist quoteminers work is that of detailed disagreements between scientists - part of how science makes progress - which they proceed to misrepresent. If this list had been updated in the last few decades, it would contain all sorts of quotes from the debate over Gould and Eldridge's idea of punctuated equilibrium, in which a debate over obscure distinctions and minute details of how exactly evolution works, of almost no interest to the general public, was presented as evidence that evolution was a 'theory in crisis'.
"Dr. George Wald, a noble prize winner, chooses to believe in evolution even though he regards it as a scientific impossibility. He says, "The only alternative to a spontaneous generation is a belief in supernatural creation…""
George Wald (1906 - 1997) was in fact a Nobel Prize winner, for his rather cool work on photopigments (how the eye works, kinda) - something which turns out to have some interesting connections to evolution - later, maybe. This is both misquoted and taken badly out of context: for details, see here. He also wrote a marvelous 1970 essay on The Origin of Death (remarkably lively, given the subject!), which may be of interest given some of the issues we're discussing - although I have a slightly different take on it.
George Wald #2: "He has also said, "I am convinced that the only way to prevent the total chaos that we are headed for and probably within the next ten years, is to return to God". Many others also believe in evolution for the same reasons."
I don't regard this as worth checking up on - it may or may not be accurately quoted; I don't really care, since this has nothing to do with science. The real question is: what on earth was the list-maker was trying to say here? Is it that "many others" believe in evolution as the only chance to avoid "the chaos that we are headed for"? That's certainly not why modern evolutionary biology has the same status in science as the idea that many diseases are caused by germs, or that matter is made up of atoms (which are in turn made up of littler things). The other possibility is that we're supposed to think the world's scientific community accepts modern evolutionary biology as the best explanation for biodiversity because they want to head straight on into total chaos, and are doing their best to ensure this horrible descent partly by undermining belief in God. On one level the image of the world's biologists, geneticists, paleontologists and etc. as some sort of evil nihilistic biker gang is utterly hilarious. On another, though, it's incredibly offensive, and I would hope that's not what's intended.
Sir Ambrose Fleming: "Evolution is baseless and quite incredible"
Sir John Ambrose Fleming lived from 1849 to 1945, and was an electrical engineer/physicist. He did some quite important work in electronics, and also seems like a generally cool guy (mountain-climbing, watercolors, and donating his estate to charity!). So we know that this quote is from not later than '45, but beyond that, I don't know - perhaps it's in his 1938 book on Evolution or Creation? Anyway, even if it's misquoted, I'm sure he would have endorsed it, as he was one of the founding members of the creationist Evolution Protest Movement in 1932, and in fact president from 1932-1941. (II haven't yet found anything to suggest that he was actually president of the BA, as the list claims, although he did give a lecture to that organization). Now, if he was saying this today, we would still want to ask, ok, is there any reason we should assume, ahead of time, that the opinion of an electrical engineer - however expert in his field - is at all relevant to matters of evolutionary biology? If we don't have anything more to go on besides that quote, then there's no reason to make that assumption. Would you assume an electrical engineer is a relevant authority on, say, the treatment of a particular medical condition? (This doesn't mean one might not be, whether from independent research or some insight based in their field, but they'd have to make the case for that).
Anyway, the fact is that Fleming wasn't writing in the early 21st century, but over sixty years ago. If other quotes I've seen attributed to him are accurate, some of his complaints have been resolved by over half-a-century of scientific progress (for example, our current - though still incomplete - understanding of genetics).
"Nicholas Berdyaev, one of our great modern thinkers, wrote . . ."
That may or may be correct - it's certainly very high praise - but nevertheless, Berdyaev (1874 - 1948) was a "religious and political philosopher," not a scientist in any field, let alone a relevant one. I don't know where this quote is from, or if it's representative. But again, there's no reason to assume ahead of time that a random quote from someone whose field is religious and political philosophy has anything meaningful to say on this issue. Would you ask a political philosopher about what causes volcanoes and earthquakes? There would be no specific reason to assume they have a clue if they suddenly started going off on how the 'the naturalistic view of earthquakes and volcanoes as a product of plate tectonics in the world's interior is the feeblest of all geological theories.' We'd have to hear what they say to figure out whether they were worth listening to at all.
Now, this goes for geologists, too - science isn't based on authority (I'm a geologist, so what I say about rocks is true), but evidence (plate tectonics is a good explanation for earthquakes and volcanoes because . . .), but we at least assume that geologists have some understanding of the field, unless shown otherwise. It's like how we presume a doctor probably knows something about their particular area, so we'd want to hear what they say and take it from there, to the best of our (or a second opinion's) ability, but don't assume off the bat that a lawyer would have anything useful to say about that weird rash/worrying headache/little human head growing out of our shoulder/etc.
(He does sound like a very interesting thinker, though, deeply concerned with issues of freedom and creativity.)
Additionally, " "The naturalistic view of man as a product of evolution in the animal world is the feeblest of all anthropological theories…"" seems to be taking aim at a very specific target - we can't be certain, without knowing more, if Berdyaev was opposed to evoution in general or perhaps just human evolution - or even just an strictly naturalistic account of human evolution (that's the Catholic position, sortakinda). Again, not that we know if his 60-year-old opinion about evolutionary biology is based on anything, but as we've been seeing, many of these quotes misrepresent their speakers' views, however (un)informed these views are.
Arthur I. Brown
- (1875 - 1947), was a M.D., radio preacher (apparently?) and creationist in the first half of the 20th Century who wrote a number of anti-evolutionist works mainly in the 1930s and 40s. I'm sure Brown at least said things like this. {shrug}. An creationist from our grandparents' time thought evolution was a big ol' con job. What a shock! This tells us - what, exactly? (Again, I'm not trying to lay out here all the evidence of why he was wrong, but just focusing on whether these quotes are on fact current/recent scientists in relevant fields who are saying what it's being claimed they're saying)
Professor Leander S. Keyser: "To my mind, there are enough counts against the theory of evolution to make it impossible to accept it as a scientific truth or even as a reasonable hypothesis."
Reverend Leander S. Keyser was a Lutheran theologian and antievolutionist who lived from 1856 to 1937. This quote may come from his book The Problem of Origins (1926). It's not clear to me if he ever had any formal scientific training, although he did write a number of books about birds around the turn of the (20th) century. There's a little New York Times piece he wrote in 1900 about The Pranks of Some of Our Feathered Friends [pdf] online if anyone's interested. Good writer, interesting observations.
Herbert lee williams [sic]
- is a more recent figure; he was around in the 1990s, though it seems he's now deceased. The list describes him as "chairman of the department of journalism" (at Memphis State). A journalist is not a scientist, even through their job titles do both end in "-ist". I don't see any point to trying to dig up the quote from wherever it may come from. (And again, I'm not dwelling too much on the contents of the quotes (except when they're clearly being misrepresented), but the quote as given is badly wrong - we can go into this if you'd like.)
Von Braun, quote #1 ""There are those who argue that universe evolved out of a random process, but what random process could produce the brain of a man or the system of the human eye?"
Wernher von Braun (1912 - 1977) literally was a rocket scientist, with some quite impressive achievements to his name. How he felt about the use of concentration camp prisoners to build the V-2 rocket he had designed (maybe even quite bad, it's always hard to be sure about these things) has no relevance to this quote (which comes from a 1972 letter to the California State Board of Education urging the teaching of a kind of proto-intelligent design creationism). Again, he was a rocket scientist, not a biologist, and probably wasn't aware of the explanation of how evolution could produce something like an eye. (This is a very old issue indeed - Darwin addressed it in the The Origin of Species, and there has been over a century of work since supporting it (including some interesting things that come out of Wald's research) - we can get into that, if you'd like).
Fred John Meldau wrote"
Who cares? Meldau is (was?) a creationist; I can't find any reference to him having any sort of scientific background. Remember, the list is trying to show recent or current scientists "who do not accept the theory of evolution".
Dr. Etheride, [or Etheridge] " "In all this great museum there is not a particle of evidence of transmutation of species.""
- as discussed here, no one knows for certain who this Dr . Etheride or Etheridge actually was, or what he said. However, the best guess:
" When curious parties in the 1920s inquired about the identity of Etheridge, the director of the British Museum surmised that the man in question was “Robert Etheridge, Junr., who was Assistant Keeper of Geology in this Museum from 1881 to 1891,” at which time he left for Australia, where he died in 1920. The director hastened to add that “Mr. Etheridge’s opinion on this subject should not be considered as in any way representing scientific opinion in this Museum.”"
Professor T.H. Morgan: "within the period of human history we do not know of a single instance of the transformation of one species into another."
Thomas Hunt Morgan (1866 - 1945) was an extremely important geneticist, - indeed, as wikipedia points out, he was the first person to win the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for genetics research. You know how they famously use fruit flies (Drosophila) for genetics research? He's largely the reason. This is the guy who "was able to demonstrate that genes are carried on chromosomes and are the mechanical basis of heredity . . . the basis of the modern science of genetics.". Pretty cool.
This quotemine comes from his 1903 book Evolution and Adaptation. That's over a century ago - even before Morgan did his groundbreaking research. On top of that, it is taken entirely out of context. The full quote, from page 43 (of the 1908 reprint):
"Within the period of human history we do not know of a single instance of the transformation of one species into another one, if we apply the most rigid and extreme tests used to distinguish wild species from each other. It may be claimed that the theory of descent is lacking, therefore, in the most essential feature that it needs to place the theory on a scientific basis. This must be admitted. On the other hand, the absence of direct observation is not fatal to the hypothesis, for several reasons."
which he goes on to detail.
This quote comes after a brief discussion of fossil evidence for the "transformation" of species into each other - for example, "That the birds arose as an offshoot from reptile-like forms is not only probable on anatomical grounds, but the geological record has furnished us with forms like archaeopteryx, which in many ways appears to stand midway between the reptiles and birds", along with the famous horses.
The rest of the chapter discusses many of Fleischmann's (see above) criticisms of evolution, which Morgan shoots down one after the other, concluding "On the whole, Fleischmann's attack cannot be regarded as having seriously weakened the theory of evolution.. Morgan adds, though, that
"He has done, nevertheless, good service in recalling the fact that, however probable the theory may appear, the evidence is indirect and exact proof is still wanting. Moreover, as I shall attempt to point out in the next chapter, we are far from having arrived at a satisfactory idea of how the process has really taken place."
And indeed, that was quite arguably true, a century ago. It's not the case now (which is not to say that we understand it all yet - far from it - but we have a much better idea. It's also completely obvious that Morgan - far from "not accept[ing] the theory of evolution," in fact was working to figure out how evolution happened, like countless other scientists at that time, although he found Darwin's specific explanation fairly iffy. Wikipedia even points out that "Morgan dismissed both [Lamarckism and Darwinism] and and was actually seeking to prove Hugo De Vries' mutation theory with his experimental heredity work. He was initially quite skeptical of Mendel's laws of heredity . . .which were being considered as a possible basis for natural selection."
Richard Goldschmidt: "Geographic variation as a model of species formation will not stand under thorough scientific investigation. Darwin’s theory of natural selection has never had any proof... yet it has been universally accepted. Here may be wide diversification within the species… but the gap (between species) cannot be bridged… sub-species do not merge into the species either actually or ideally. Nowhere have the limits of any Species been transgressed, and these limits are separated from the limits of the next good species by the unbridged gap, which also includes sterility."
Richard Goldschmidt (1878 - 1958) was an important geneticist, and the quote appears to come from his 1940 book The Material Basis of Evolution. I am honestly too tired to check on whether/how badly this quote was mangled (all those ellipses ( . . . ) are a worrying sign, and more honest creationist work notes that this supposedly single quote in fact covers four different pages between p. 138 and p. 211 (and it's possible that p. 211 is from another book) but regardless, it's being badly misrepresented here. This is one part of a disgustingly complex and long-running debate (within actual science, that is), but the brutally simplified and probably rather bad version is that Goldschmidt by no means "did not accept" evolution - instead, he disagreed with Darwin's specific explanation involving gradualistic change, (and related ideas) as a explanation for how evolution formed new species. He argued that this occured via macromutations (see the wikipedia entry on the Hopeful Monster, which despite its name is not a Sesame Street character, though I kinda wish it was).
Again, we have creationists taking disagreements and debates within evolutionary biology and presenting them as evidence and arguments against evolutionary biology. Goldschmidt would have grown a couple extra limbs and stuff and smacked them upside the head. (Ok, he wouldn't, but his offspring would have. Or not.) If you'd be interested to see an actual science-related post by PZ (at Pharyngula), he discusses this idea over here. Let me add that evo-devo, which he mentions (that is, evolutionary developmental biology) is a really fascinating recent thing, which may - or may not - end up forming part of a grand new modern evolutionary synthesis.
We'll see. I hope you'll come and look with us.
Austin H. Clark . . .
- We've already encountered our friend, the early 20th century Curator of Echinoderms, now described as " one of the world’s greatest biologists. This quote almost certainly does come from that 1928 article mentioned above, and is no longer accurate.
OK. {Enormous sigh of weary relief}. We're done! Done going through a single little list. I was going to write a proper conclusion, but to be honest - having been researching/working on this on and off since Friday afternoon (now Sunday evening - with breaks for actual life in between, thankfully) - I am bored beyond tears with it. (In fact, if you've actually read to the end, I'm both impressed and kind of touched). Indeed, towards the end I started slamming my head into the desk repeatedly in an attempt to make it go away, with the result that while I feel much better, the resulting frontal lobe trauma makes planning and carrying out goal-oriented tasks kinda tricky (obviously kidding here).
So, let me just say: we've gone through this list, and have found: almost all the quotes having had any proper citation info stripped away, quotes taken out of context and badly misrepresented, people working in the 19th or early 20th century presented as current or recent scientists, work from the 19th or early 20th century presented as recent/current research, journalists and bird-watching Lutheran theologians presented in a list supposedly of scientists, electrical engineers and rocket scientists being quoted as meaningful authorities on evolution, and etc.
The thing is, we can't be certain the person/people who created this version of this list and put it online (and they probably aren't the same) were intentionally being dishonest, intentionally attempting to mislead. An alternate hypothesis is that they were simply too ignorant of science (and scholarship in general) to understand what they were doing. And of course, both hypotheses could be partially correct.
Either way, is that what you want to associate yourself with? And what does it say when all they have to offer (in this case) is quotes from decades and decades ago, with not all of them even from actual scientists (or scientists working in any relevant field), and many of them out of context and badly misrepresented?
To find out more about this sort of thing, feel free to read the - yes - Talk Origins page about Quotations and Misquotations. Of course, the reason they have such a page, and a whole Quote Mine Project, and why there are lots of other pages online tracking down quotemines, and why the very term seems to have come about specifically to describe something creationists do is that it's incredibly common - something they do all the time, and have been doing for quite a while. To what degree it's ignorance, and to what degree intentional dishonesty - well, again, neither is particularly appealing.
And dishonestly, certainly, is something we've found again and again among creationists. Just a few years ago, in the 2005 Dover trial (which happened in my state), we got to see creationist school board members revealed to be lying to the judge's face (in one instance by local tv footage) - and ID superstar Michael Behe - also from my state, lucky me! - revealed to be lying about the state of the literature (in a marvelous bit of courtroom theater).
You've written about you much you value the truth. Again, is this the kind of thing you want to associate yourself with?
______
One last thing: One problems with this kind of writing, and with (for example) a lot of the Talk Origins pages, is that it has to spend so much time showing that creationists claims are wrong, that there's not much left for showing how cool evolution is. As a bit of a counter to that, I hope you'll read this magazine article by Neil Shubin on how our evolutionary history can help explain hiccups, hernias, and hemorrhoids (oh my!). and how understanding evolutionary biology has shed light on a disease that kills babies - which might one day help us find a cure.
Take care -
Dan S.
"On that note... I am exhausted. Thanks for hanging with me - I've just come from applying for scholarships and taxes and stuff."
Ick. Ack. Good luck.
The captcha comment-verification thing is currently "mckgzind". I think I may adopt that as my nom de internet - Dan McKgzind.
Awesome.
Dan's comments weren't up yet, so sorry for the repetitions...!
Ugh there's no reprieve from you guys, is there? - lol.
Of course not! :-) When n ideas contradict each other, it follows logically that at least (!) n-1 of them are wrong. Our job and passion as scientists is to find out which are wrong, and why. We never give up before we've tested all n of them against the evidence, provided they are all testable ( = respond to evidence at all).
I don't have time to post another lengthy comment today, so I'll just give you this link to a Pharyngula post that explains the interesting findings in the genome of the choanoflagellate whose genome has now been sequenced (it's the first one). Choanoflagellates and animals are each other's closest relatives or nearly so, but the choanoflagellates are single-celled. Animals have cell-cell/cell-extracellular matrix adhesion proteins and signaling proteins; choanoflagellates also have adhesion proteins, and while they lack signaling proteins (single free-living cells don't need to talk to each other much), all the parts of those proteins are present and fulfill other functions. It's a great read.
Although, I do have time to mention...
For years, the skeleton of piltdown man was incorporated into the theory of human evolution. It was found to be a hoax not by some creationist wanting to disprove evololution, but by scientists. The scientific community immediately said "thankyou" and then went about revising their entire theory of human evolution.
To be fair, that's not quite true. Instead, when more and more discoveries were made after Piltdown Man was "discovered", it became more and more clear that the combination of features shown by Piltdown Man didn't easily fit into the human family tree. I've seen such trees from, I think, the 1930s, anyway from shortly before the hoax was exposed: they have Piltdown Man at the end of its own long, long branch that comes out directly of the root of the tree, separate from all other humans and near-humans -- it was already clear that Piltdown Man was not one of our direct ancestors. Thus, the discovery of the hoax came as less of a surprise than it could have been.
While I already am at it, let me mention that Darwin -- knowing, of course, neither DNA nor even Mendel's laws of inheritance -- had come up with his own theory of inheritance. When it was found to be completely wrong, it was also found to be completely unnecessary for the theory of evolution, so it was simply dropped with nary a hiccup, and it isn't mentioned anywhere except in detailed works on the history of science (just like Tycho Brahe's theory of the partly heliocentric universe isn't mentioned much in ordinary history books). There is no hero-worship in science. When the greatest geniuses make mistakes, they make mistakes, and those mistakes are openly recognized as such. When religious leaders make mistakes, many of their followers tend to try to make excuses or defend the mistakes outright as correct...
Hey, you've switched off moderation! Great :-)
Andi - I'm sure you're pretty busy (me too), and I feel bad about dumping that long, mindnumbingly boring comment on you, but one quick-ish point. When you say things like:
"What came first? The amoeba? A cell? What was the process? - A cell became an amoeba and an amoeba became a fish and a fish became a bird...etc? It all sounds so ridiculous to me -"
- well, that does sound pretty ridiculous. The reason is that (as presented) it's a crude parody of evolutionary bio, with only the faintest resemblance to what the evidence actually shows, and what scientists actually claim. Or
" Regardless, the issue is whether two dogs can cross over and create a rodent, or a [tomato]] can cross over and produce a squash. "
- 'cause that isn't what the modern theory of evolution would predict - indeed, dogs giving birth to rodents, or tomato seeds growing into squash - that's more like magic (or progressive creationism) than science.
The theory built around Darwin's work (and let me stress that it's been much modified and expanded over the last 150 years) tends to stress small, and relatively gradual changes. (There was a lot of excitement a little while back over the idea of punctuated equilibrium - that evolution maybe tends to happen in rapid bursts - but what not everybody *cough* creationists *cough* understood was that "rapid" meant "rapid in terms of geological time" - that is, over, like, ten thousand years or more.). (I'm oversimplifying everything, but hey . . )
Forget dogs and rats, just think of dogs and cats, which are even closer. Evolution isn't about a cat suddenly giving birth to puppies, which is the creationist parody one sometime hears (or raccoons, oddly enough). Rather, evidence suggests that cats and dogs, along with the rest of the Carnivora, share a common ancestor very, very long ago - I've seen an estimated date of ~ 40 million years ago, but I don't know how well that represents current research. What happened back then was the ancestral carnivore population started diverging - and just that start perhaps happened over who knows how many 10s of thousands or millions of years, and ended up splitting into two main branches that over millions and millions of years would give rise to cats big and little and civets and mongooses and hyenas and other things most people have never heard of on one side, and another that over millions and millions of years would give rise to dogs and bears and pandas and red pandas and raccoons and skunks and badgers and weasels and otters and seals and sea lions on the other.
If you're actually interested in this topic, please please please read the actual arguments for it, what actual scientists say, not the crude parodies made up by people who hate it out of a misguided fear that it will lead their children to despair and damnation (or the society to drug abuse and divorce).
Again, here's one little site that's not a bad place to start - there are some good books I could recommend, but maybe when you have more time . .
You clearly haven't bothered to follow up in any detail yet any of the links or arguments David has so eloquently put to you. He's invested a huge amount of time in answering your questions, and arguing critically with you
Actually, just a few hours... maybe a day in total so far. Working for a scientific article takes much longer! :-)
voltare44, I appreciate your good faith in my unwillingness to become an atheist- but it really is not necessary. I fear I could never be that cynical.
You mean it's cynical to be an atheist?
Like I said I still believe Evolution is just a WAY of looking AT Science.
I tried to explain that this isn't true. I tried to explain that the theory of evolution is science. Several times.
You haven't even tried to answer.
What's up? Are you afraid of something?
I believe the earth didn't need billions of years to evolve -- a few thousand years is more accurate.
So you are saying God is a liar.
I repeat: You are saying God is a liar. You are saying God has planted evidence all over the universe in order to deliberately mislead us.
Isn't that an inconsistency in your story? Surely you aren't a dystheist like Dr Behe? Surely you are horrified at the thought that anyone would believe God is a liar? Especially considering the fact that this same God's standard of morals supposedly include "thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour"?
What gods do you referr to? Perhaps the ancient superstitions of African tribes, or the Egyptians belief in many gods like the sun god?
This is where the atheists come in and say "See? You are an atheist about all gods except one. I just go one god farther. Why don't you?"
I believe there are definitely ways to PROVE with the scientific EVIDENCE before us
Stop right here. Several times now, starting on the Pharyngula thread, I have explained why this is wrong -- why science cannot prove, only disprove.
You haven't even tried to answer.
What's up? Are you afraid of something?
But I am not willing to passively let the google facts of this world define science.
"A collection of facts is not science any more than a heap of bricks is a house." Science is a method. As I have explained several times.
Scientists can stipulate and expiriment and evaluate -- but they still do not KNOW how man came to be.
Of course not! Scientists do, however, KNOW how man did not come to be. That's because science can disprove.
Still, I believe intelligent design will point to its' Designer.
So you're being dystheistic again? :-)
Of course not. You simply haven't thought it through.
The "design" of life is in many cases outright stupid. If there was a Designer, he was either completely incompetent or had a very disagreeable sense of humor. That's why I say even Old-Earth Creationism is blasphemy -- or at least I would say that if I were religious enough.
Have you ever compared your vertebrate eyes to a squid's? Ours are inside-out: light passes through a layer of blood vessels and nerves, then through the light-sensitive cells, and is absorbed at the far end of the light-sensitive cells. Why not the other way around? Furthermore, the blood vessels and nerves that are inside the eyeball need a connection to the outside; that's the blind spot. Does it need to be that way? No: squids, cuttlefish & octopuses have eyes that are built the right way around.
Or consider the fact that the pathways for air and food cross in your neck. Or think about your kidneys -- first they let everything water-soluble pass, and then they expend lots of energy fishing the valuable stuff out of the primary urine. Or think about how human feet aren't good for anything except playing soccer, and even that's dangerous.
Or consider the mammalian, especially human, reproductive system. Why does the baby have to pass through a bony ring? Why can't it just come out straight through the belly wall?
Even at the molecular level, it's stupidity upon stupidity. An important component of the cytoskeleton is tubulin. For no good reason, each tubulin unit is a pair composed of an alpha-tubulin and a beta-tubulin molecule. Beta-tubulin contains a GTP molecule that is cut apart when the microtubules (the stiff tubes composed of tubulin) are disassembled, because this changes the shape of the tubulin unit so that the microtubule falls apart; this makes sense. Alpha-tubulin also contains a GTP molecule -- but that one just sits there and does nothing. Why is that? Making GTP requires energy that could be put to better use.
Or consider pseudogenes. I mentioned our gene for an enzyme that makes vitamin C is broken. Although broken, it is still there, even though it can't lead to a protein (because a stop codon sits near the beginning, for example). Why do pseudogenes exist at all? Worse yet, 19 % of all pseudogenes still transcribed into RNA that is either destroyed -- that's quite a waste of energy! -- or translated into a useless protein fragment that is then shredded in the proteasome -- an even greater waste of energy. Why is that?
Forget pseudogenes. Why does over half of your genome consist of retrovirus corpses in all stages of decay?
Even more basic features of life are Stupid Design. As I have mentioned before (and you didn't comment), DNA falls apart when stored in water. We do exactly that, so we are forced to spend lots of energy day & night to constantly repair it. This doesn't always work -- voilà, mutations.
Or why are large stretches of DNA on each side of a gene transcribed into RNA along with the gene? Of course, part of these regions contain regulatory sequences, but most of it doesn't. Why all this waste?
I could go on for hours.
Now the funny thing. The theory of evolution predicts all of this "stupidity". Evolution can only build on what is there; almost nothing is ever genuinely new. Everything that works is retained, no matter what a stupid kludge it is. If you want details, tell me; I'll have to go soon.
And for scientists that say that the genetic code of organisms is 'similar in design', I find this fascinating. It seems obvious to me that a simlar design would point to a common Designer.
But why should that be? Why wouldn't an intelligent designer make tailored solutions? Why is it the same all over?
You wanted to know of any Creationist Scientists? My deepest apologies that I only present a small number of them here. I wish I could collect them and all of their data for you and spread them at your feet. But truly, you must admit - not every scientist is happily atheist like you. Some believe that Creation is far more plausible. Things as complex as you, after all, could not have been happened on by chance.
Wow. This passage contains more misconceptions than correct words.
- The oh so long list is in fact tiny. A list of those who accept evolution instead of denying it would be several hundred times longer, at least.
- Most in your list aren't biologists and may never have heard about evolution since highschool, if at all.
- Once more you act as if "Christian" and "creationist" were synonyms.
- What people believe doesn't matter. What the evidence says matters.
- The theory of evolution starts from the very premise that random chance is not enough to explain biodiversity! Mutation is random -- selection is not. Selection is determined by the environment.
This latter point is especially surprising. I, and several others, have repeatedly explained it to you, and you just ignore it? Is that a discussion for you?
I've seen an estimated date of ~ 40 million years ago, but I don't know how well that represents current research.
AFAIK it still holds, though those animals aren't my specialty.
BTW, this ancestor must have looked much like a marten or a civet. (If you don't know what a civet is, Google knows it.)
So, I have to go. More later.
In the meantime, Andria, please spend a few hours reading -- either that, or stop talking about things that you don't know anything about. Just because you haven't seen evidence or an argument doesn't mean they don't exist. Isn't it obvious that you can't discuss things you don't understand? Isn't it obvious that I simply can't talk about the group theory of mathematics? If I want to talk about it, I have to learn about it first.
Three quick things:
On the "science = knowledge" bit -
wikipedia on the etymological fallacy. My salary isn't paid in (or specifically for) salt, if something's disastrous, that doesn't mean it involves a bad star, and if I call someone silly, that's not generally considered a compliment nowadays, even though it once seems to have meant happy, then blessed, then pious, then innocent . . . (nor is every man a groom, and someone who went around calling servants "knights" would be looked at kinda funny).
I wonder if the repetition of "science = knowledge" comes from skimming the first sentence or two of the wikipedia entry on science? If so, two things:
1) wikipedia's a pretty cool and convenient place to start finding out about something, but it's not always the best place to stop.
2) You might want to read a little further. The same thing (if indeed that's the case) seems to have happened when you looked at the entry on the germ theory of disease - you seem to have skimmed the first sentence under "History" and ignored the rest. As a result, you confusedly replied:
" The Germ theory - I'm not seeing how this applies. According to Wikipedia, "The ancient historical view was that disease was spontaneously generated instead of being created by microrganisms which grow by reproduction." In fact the Germ Theory does not seem to support evolution."
and missed the entire point, and a chance to learn about stuff. Feel free to read the whole thing!
(Also, the bit where you say " Gravity is certainly observable by science." - well, sure, in a sense, as is evolution.)
To find out more about what science actually is, if you're interesed, you might want to go here.
That site also has some helpful info detailing Misconceptions about Evolution.
There's nothing wrong with not knowing - we all don't know an unspeakably vast amount more than we know (or even think we know), and hey, we're all born knowing almost nothing at all. What's more serious, if it matters to one, is not trying to find out.
You might also want to stop by Evolution 101, or consider some of the evidence for evolution.
"But I think it limits God much more to say that he CAN'T create the earth in 10,000 some years. "
Well, if you believe in God, as that's generally understood, presumably God could have. The thing is, pretty much all of modern science points away from the conclusion of a young earth and mini-Creation based on a literal reading of Genesis.. It might also interest you to know that many of the scientists who laid the foundation for the modern view of the world and its astounding history often were not sneering atheists - instead, many started investigating things like sediments full of gravel in the belief that it was evidence of the Flood (it wasn't) or studying nature in the expectation that it was a happy example of God's directly-designed creation (it wasn't).
Beyond that I'd leave you with the words of Saint Augustine, writing in the early 5th century on The Literal Interpretation of Genesis:
"It not infrequently happens that something about the earth, about the sky, about other elements of this world, about the motion and rotation or even the magnitude and distances of the stars, about definite eclipses of the sun and moon, about the passage of years and seasons, about the nature of animals, of fruits, of stones, and of other such things, may be known with the greatest certainty by reasoning or by experience, even by one who is not a Christian. It is too disgraceful and ruinous, though, and greatly to be avoided, that he [the non-Christian] should hear a Christian speaking so idiotically on these matters, and as if in accord with Christian writings, that he might say that he could scarcely keep from laughing when he saw how totally in error they are. "
_________
Anyway -
Good luck and best wishes to little baby Ben and his family!
Andi - I've realized that my last comment kinda sounds as if I'm using St. Augustine to rather harshly attack you in particular - I apologize; it was not my intention. Rather I was trying to show that such ideas - if a literal readings of scripture is contradicted by basic reason and experience, then presumably one is interpreting scripture incorrectly, (and going on about it makes one's religion look rather silly) - are a very, very old tradition within Christianity. As Augustine said:
"With the scriptures it is a matter of treating about the faith. For that reason, as I have noted repeatedly, if anyone, not understanding the mode of divine eloquence, should find something about these matters [about the physical universe] in our books, or hear of the same from those books, of such a kind that it seems to be at variance with the perceptions of his own rational faculties, let him believe that these other things are in no way necessary to the admonitions or accounts or predictions of the scriptures. In short, it must be said that our authors knew the truth about the nature of the skies, but it was not the intention of the Spirit of God, who spoke through them, to teach men anything that would not be of use to them for their salvation."
_________
More interesting things: Bones Are Not the Only Fossils, from Olivia Judson's NY Times blog.
Also: an adorable 55.8 million-year-old teeny-weeny one-ounce fossil primate from Mississippi - and the genuine, interesting, and (with luck) testable questions it raises - in this week's NY Times Science section. What a wonderful world this is, where over 55 million million years ago tiny primates swung through the subtropical forests of Mississippi.
There's also a paper just out about new discoveries re: the evolution of bats - Giant Fossil Bats Out Of Africa, 35 Million Years Old, to be exact. It really is an amazing world. This comes on the heels of research published last month supporting the idea that bats first evolved flight, and then echolocation. And also the discovery, this last fall, that a "Gene Involved In Human Language Development [is] Also Involved In Bat Echolocation. Wow.
I just came across this which I thought was fascinating, and thought maybe you might find it interesting as you're spending a bit of time reading this stuff too.
http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2007/01/of_cavefish_and_hedgehogs.php
It's by Mr Pharyngula himself, whose board you waded onto, but I found it after reading an short article about Oliver Sacks and his new book Musicophilia which looks like a very interesting read about the way brains and music interact! I'm going to see if I can get it this week. (http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2007/10/the_listener.php in case you're interested in that too. I read The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Sacks a while back, one of the most interesting and strangely moving books I have ever read.
Anyway, the cavefish article is interesting because it demonstrates a few things. Firstly, showing how evolutionary theory now is different to what Darwin proposed; secondly showing what the evidence was that lead scientists to say "this particular bit of our theory doesn't explain this... why not?"; thirdly, the process of hypothesising and why some hypothesese may have seemed ok, but didn't fully explain the phenomena, so they kept thinking and searching; fourth, how new and continuing research in the relatively new field of genetics has shown exactly how such a phenomena can be explained, fully consistent with evolutionary theory and how we know genes to work, and how the pressure of the environment would naturally select for that gene. All up, it's a nice example of how evolutionary theory is contributing to our understanding of nature and development, and how genetics is contributing to the theory of evolution.
There's very little "gobbledegook" thankfully; even if a couple of the genetic terms like expression don't really make sense (I've only recently started to understand what geneticists mean when they talk about gene expression!) the overall article, conclusion and point are clear enough (thanks to PZ Myers' good prose I expect!)
Hope you don't mind me sending this, I've got a bit of time on my hands at the moment as I wait for my next gig to start, so in between preparing for that I'm on here a lot just reading, thought I'd share it with you!
Cheers
Voltare44 - is this last comment the one I didn't see? If so, I apologize from the depth of my soul. I just finished reading through - like all of these 23 comments (as best I could). I really haven't had the time up till now. As long as I get home at a decent hour tomorrow, I am eager to look up all of this information. Regardless, I have this week off work -- I have a weekend on my hands! ;)
So, just curious, Voltare44. What do you think about this new movie 'Expelled' or something that supposed to be coming out. As you may imagine, I'm intrigued to see it. ;) What's your call on it?
Expelled is (unfortunately) propaganda. At least thats the best I can tell from reading what I can about it as there are no reviews. This is because before critics can watch it they must sign a gag order. Seems somewhat bizzarre to me.
Hahaha. Like you know that for sure. Maybe they think the movie will be so startling that they don't too many getting sneak peeks. Still, you're right. It could be propoganda - but you can't blame the producers. There's so few films out about the controversy (and in favor of Creationism of all things!) - that it can't hurt - it can only intrigue. Regardless - I'm getting hyped to see it. ;)
That evolution occurs is undeniable. But does it prove where man came from? No. No proof. Only theory. You need to narrow the discussion to the origin of man. Once again, evolution is undeniable.
Bacteria make major evolutionary shift in the lab
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/life/dn14094-bacteria-make-major-evolutionary-shift-in-the-lab.html
Post a Comment