Mailbag: Rebuttal
Subject: Evolution
I ran across your comments relative to my article, **** and I can assure you that I am quite familiar with both evolution and science. Since your article differentiates between evolution and science, I assume you agree with me that evolution is certainly not a science, and can only be called quackery.
This is interesting - of all the times I have commented on various articles written by evangelical and conservative Christians, this was the first time any wrote to me about it. I won't use his name just for the sake of politeness - I will, after all, be commenting on material in his email that was even more nonsensical than what he originally wrote. To start with, it isn't true that I made any differentiation between evolution and science - sometimes I talk about one and sometimes I talk about the other, but only a very tortured reading of my material can lead one to conclude that, therefore, I don't regard evolution as a science. Clearly, whatever this writer have read on the topics of evolution and science, he misread as poorly as he misread my own writings - and my writings are quite a bit easier than introductory biology.
Real science applies physical laws to observations found in nature or in the laboratory.
Curiously, this is exactly what we find in evolutionary biology. But real science is also much more than that - it also involves using past observations and mathematical models to make predictions about possible future observations. By these standards, evolution is easily a science.
For example, by applying natural physical laws, quantum mechanics can be employed by cosmologists to seriously project an evolving universe from a moment after the "Big Bang" until the present and beyond.
Quantum mechanics involves a great deal of esoteric mathematics which is done quite independent of observations made in nature or the laboratory. If I remember correctly, quantum theory has produced some ten different physical models that are consistent with physical observations.
In the case of evolution, biologists are, figuratively speaking, operating in an area equivalent to that prior to the Big Bang. They have no science that tells them how life could spring from inanimate matter and self-replicate;
If this author understood evolution, as he claimed, he'd understand that evolutionary theory has nothing to do with how life originated. The idea that life developed from inanimate matter is known as abiogenesis, a separate field of study. True, the two are related insofar as they both deal with biology, but the fact remains that they are separate. Evolutionary theory assumes the existence of life and then proceeds to describe how and why it develops. How and why life originally got there is not a part of the theory.
they have no science that tells them how a primitive organism could develop into a complex specie; they have no science that tells them how one specie could evolve into another; and they have no evidence--either in the lab or in the field--that these processes ever actually took place.
Actually, biologists do have explanations for how species evolve and change, they also have evidence for speciation occurring in both the lab and the field. It doesn't take much time or investigation to come across such information, so what we have here is an author who writes about evolution without, apparently, ever having done much investigation of the matter (except, perhaps, in creationist literature).
Evolutionists cannot even agree among themselves about the process of evolution. Classical Darwinism has been called "impossible" by scientists like the late Stephen Jay Gould, who favored his "punctuated equilibrium" theory. His colleague at Harvard, biological evolutionist Ernst Mayr, described Gould's hopeful monster concept as "total rot," "a lead balloon," and "a red herring."
As in every scientific field, there are disagreements over some details on how things might or could have occurred - but not disagreements on the basics. Creationists dishonestly twist the minor disagreements into major ones in the hopes of misleading people who are unfamiliar with the debates. Gould's ideas, for example, aren't really a major change in evolutionary theory - they are mostly about the speed at which evolution might occur. He thinks it can occur quickly, others don't.
I was amused to discover that although you profess atheism and disdain for the supernatural, your web site boldly advertises such additional items of quackery as reincarnation, the daily horoscope, and astrology.
I find it amusing, too. I'm sure that this author has no more control the ads that might appear online next to his writings than I do. The choice of ads belongs with About.com, not me. I'm would have thought that the concept of separating editorial choices from advertising choices was familiar to this author, but apparently that isn't the case. Normally such separation is considered a sign of journalistic integrity.
More selections from the Agnosticism / Atheism Mailbag...
Comments
I can’t help but wonder if this poor guy based his writings on the Watchtower Society’s “Creation Book” (Life-How did it get here?…). It’s notoriously inaccurate. A complete essay debunking it was written shortly after it was published and can be found at http://www.freeminds.org/science/science.htm. About midway down the page, you’ll find “The WTS View of Creation and Evolution”.
I can’t help but wonder where his site is so I can see his writings for myself, but understand why Austin didn’t post the link.
IsaacJ
15 misconceptions about evolution
#15 is also a pet peeve: “Evolution is a theory about the origin of life” is presented as false. It is not. I know many people like to recite the mantra that “abiogenesis is not evolution,” but it’s a cop-out. Evolution is about a plurality of natural mechanisms that generate diversity. It includes molecular biases towards certain solutions and chance events that set up potential change as well as selection that refines existing variation. Abiogenesis research proposes similar principles that led to early chemical evolution. Tossing that work into a special-case ghetto that exempts you from explaining it is cheating, and ignores the fact that life is chemistry. That creationists don’t understand that either is not a reason for us to avoid it.
PZ is correct that some of the mechanisms behind evolution should also be behind abiogenesis, but that doesn’t change the fact that evolution and abiogenesis are separate issues. Some of the mechanisms behind evolution are also behind many parts of biochemistry - life is chemistry - but once again, they remain separate fields.
It is also true that the borders between those fields aren’t always perfectly sharp and clear - where abiogenesis ends and evolution begins, for example might be hard to determine even if you were sitting there watching it happen. The lack of perfectly clear boundaries, however, doesn’t mean that abiogenesis suddenly becomes part of evolutionary theory.
It’s not “cheating” to point that out as a fact. It’s also not cheating to not want abiogenesis introduced as a distraction when the topic of conversation is evolutionary theory. If a person wants to talk about abiogenesis instead, then fine. Otherwise, stick to the subject at hand. Creationists love to bring up related but separate issues in order to divert attention from the central questions - questions which they can’t answer.
One of *my* pet peeves is how people allow themselves to be easily distracted by diversions and minutia when there are much more fundamental issues that need to be resolved.
I wonder why the Jehovah’s Witnesses felt compelled to come up with their own special version of creationism.
Austin, thanks for your comments. I agree that creationists bring up abiogenesis in order to discredit evolution. The physical similarities between species lends a certain amount of common sense to the understanding of evolution. It’s easier for them to attack abiogenesis.
Wow. I wonder if this person knows just what goes into scientific research before it can even be considered a theory.
Quantum mechanics involves a great deal of esoteric mathematics which is done quite independent of observations made in nature or the laboratory. If I remember correctly, quantum theory has produced some ten different physical models that are consistent with physical observations.
You remember incorrectly. Quantum mechanics is quite unified in the form of relativistic Schroedinger mechanics and the Standard Model. You’re thinking of the various Grand Unification Theories, which, by the proper scientific definition are not actual theories yet.
Indeed, I once heard someone blame the entirety of the evolution controversy on theoretical physicists, only half-jokingly, saying, “This is what happens when you call an untestable mathematical model a ‘theory!’” The model referenced, of course, is string theory.
“They have no science that tells them how a primitive organism could develop into a complex specie; they have no science that tells them how one specie (sic) could evolve into another; and they have no evidence–either in the lab or in the field–that these processes ever actually took place.”
To paraphrase Hank Hill: Just when I thought I’d heard the stupidest thing I’d ever heard, you had to keep talkin’…
The value of a scientific theory is that it can conceivably be disproven or drastically modified. Religious fables and myths cannot be disproven because they are not based on testable facts or propositions.
100 hundred million fossils have been examined and not so much as one record of a progression into a different species are to be found. Instead, what has been found and widely known as the Cambrian Explosion (of nearly every species) shows life forms showing up, all at once!. It isn’t called an explosion because it happened slowly. It is astonishingly instantaneous; almost like a rapid creation event.
Cellular mutation is not an improvement of the organism. As cells age, it is like the original copy of the cell has a copy made of itself. Then, this copy is copied. That copy is likewise copied, until it becomes much less like the original and has lost much of it’s original cellular integrity. It is not mutating, it is decaying. Entropic change moves into a more disorderly, chaotic state, not an improved one. Simply put, it is a dispersal of it’s mechanical energy, not a reorganizing or improving of the specie’s cellular integrity from one type into another, superior specie. It is a smoothing out process, not a building up process. Darwin realized there was not sufficient fossil evidence in his day to prove his theory of gradual progression, that is from one species into another. And even his own colleagues noted flaws in his naturalistic speculation. He predicted they would eventually be found. They have not.
Sir Arthur Keith, a noted anthropologist and devout evolutionist, admits that ”Evolution is unproved and un-provable. We [evolutionists] believe it because the only alternative is special creation, and that is unthinkable?“. Hundreds of millions of fossils have been studied, categorized and yet not one transitional set of fossils, of even one species has ever been found.
Another consideration is that it is impossible for matter to create itself, spontaneously, out of nothing. Evolutional theory is of no help: it doesn’t explain how matter was formed and thus by extension, it can not explain the origin of life. In fact over time, cells do not gain additional DNA
(which, in evolution, must be present for transitional stages), they lose DNA integrity. Each cell is like a carbon copy of the original. With each passing day, the cells are making copies of each other
and becoming a little less like the original. The cells are not evolving, they are aging. I’ve got more wrinkles today than ten years ago. Natural Selection produces extinction of the species, not a proliferation of it. Cells do not improve or become superior over time, but in fact do just the opposite. The Law of Entropy says that cells break down or smooth out over time and lose their cellular integrity. It is the polar opposite of a theoretical, evolutional process.
The general approach for those who don’t believe in a Creator, the argument or theory is an equation: Space + Time + Chance = Everything. How can, in what in reality is, 0 + 0 + 0 = everything!? The space did not cause matter to come into existence, nor did time. Neither can chance influence or create events. Can being come from non-being… spontaneous generation of matter from nothing? Can chance actually do anything or cause something to happen? No. Chance is only the likelihood of something occurring. There must first come “cause” before an effect can occur. An a cause logically demand a Causer…and a Creator. Chance is powerless. It can not make something happen or create something from nothing. It is a non-being.
How did everything, including life, come into existence? Abiogenisis? This can not even be proven. Was it merely by chance that everything in the universe, including all life forms came into existence. The only other option is that everything that exists, materialized out of nothing. Immanuel Kant versus the Princes of Serendip: Does Science Evolve through Blind Chance or by Intelligent Design? attempts to answer this question. Kant‘s response is: “Accidental observations, made in obedience to no previously thought-out plan, can never be made to yield a necessary law, which reason alone is concerned to discover… Reason must not approach nature in the character of a pupil who listens to everything the teacher has to say, but as an appointed judge who compels the witness to answer questions that he himself has formulated“.
Scientists must not remain under the dominance of experience. We should neither heed the accidental observation nor listen to Nature as if we were naive pupils. We should strive to seek the objective truth in facts. For example, the glaring lack of evidence is what has kept evolution as a theory for a hundred and fifty years. Evolution remains hypothetical…unproven. Here’s why.
Evolutionists and anthropologists claim that the Stone Age lasted for at least 100,000 years, during which time the world population of Neanderthal and Cro-magnon men was roughly constant, between one and 10 million. All that time they were burying their dead with artifacts. By this scenario, they would have buried at least four billion bodies. If the evolutionary time-scale is correct, buried human bones should be able to last for much longer than 100,000 years. Like the dinosaurs presumably have, there should have been uncountable fossils.
By their time-scale, it is supposed that there should have been four billion Stone Age skeletons, and certainly countless buried artifacts. There should be multiple millions of them in fact, given the enormous time-frame they claim, yet only a few thousand bones and fragments have ever been found and these are far too few to fit the Stone Age theory and the thousands of years it was supposed to have taken place. Why worry about a “missing link” when the entire chain is missing!? In fact, not even one single set of transitional fossils (like reptiles becoming birds) has ever been found in all of human history. They can not find what has never existed.
An accidental world, with chance as a mechanism for life forms, must fall upward against science’s axiom that out of nothing comes nothing. Cause and effect demands some Causer prior to nothingness. Chance, to Emanuel Kant, is an excuse for ignorance. Chance is not even a noun, it can do nothing of itself, it has no power to effect, it is not an x-factor, as many are convinced. And chance is not composed of physical matter. Regardless of those facts, to those who believe in evolution or carry a disbelief in Creationism or Intelligent Design, chance was the x-factor in everything coming into existence. Otherwise, they must admit that they don’t know how matter, and thus life, came into existence. They simply don’t know and can only placate theories (subjective). We should expect science to deal only with facts (objective), approaching things rationally and logically. They have not. Evolution remains in the textbooks. Believing in something does not make it true. Humanity once believed the earth was flat, however their belief in that did nothing to change the fact that it was spherical.
Jack gives us the cliche of “If Science can’t explain it (yet), gods did it!”. We’re well familiar and a bit bored with the god of the gaps.
Evolution makes no attempts at abiogenesis. Stay on topic, or stay away.
Evolution is the best match of theory to evidence. Whereas creationism has 0 evidence.
“Neither can chance influence or create events.”
Grab a history book and start reading. Chance causes all kinds of great and terrible things to happen. And who says evolution has any thing to with chance? Don’t confuse unpredictable with random. Don’t confuse missing information with magic.
Jack Wellman’s comments are nothing more than the regurgitated parroting of time-worn (and completely debunked) creationist mumbo-jumbo spewed by the likes of Kent Hovind and Ken Ham.
Apologists of this ilk deliberately ignore all scientific evidence that contradicts their ideology. It’s amazing that such blind faith in mythology persists in the 21st century.
For those of you who actually do want to see the evidence, check out TalkOrigins for a complete list of creationist claims and the evidence-based rebuttals to those claims.
Every fossil is transitional. Every life form is transitional. I’m the tranisition between my parents and my children. This isn’t rocket science. Only dogma can make people be so stubbornly, and intentionally, stupid enough to say the type of nonsense that Jack Wellman has written above.
Sex as a form of force of fraud is just plain worthless. A natural sexual attraction is just what it is. We are animals.
Jack
What do god-lovers have against chance? Why is it such a scary thing to them?
We’re here. If we weren’t here, we wouldn’t be here to ask why we’re here. That really isn’t complicated. You really don’t need to invent anything else to explain it; there isn’t anything else to explain.
If you are really interested in this subject, why not read some evolutionary biology (I would recommend The Blind Watchmaker, by Richard Dawkins, though I imagine you would be too prejudiced to pick up a volume in the first place). Blind chance PLUS natural selection = evolution. It’s NOT random. Specifically. Random mutations which confer a survival benefit get to reproduce; those which don’t, don’t. There’s no overseeing intelligence - that’s why it’s ‘natural’ selection. If a mutation doesn’t confer an advantage on an organism, it doesn’t stand any greater chance of being passed on to the next generation. If it does (the ability to survive out of water slightly longer; slightly better camoflage, etc), it will be passed on - NATURALLY, because more individuals with that mutation will survive, and any genes associated with that characteristic will be survive into the next generation.
‘Believing in something does not make it true’ - how true. There isn’t a fragment of a shred of proof to suggest Xians’ god exists, so why should I believe in it? There is overwhelming evidence to suggest evolutionary theory is true. (Try this: www.news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7473470.stm - for a ‘missing link’ between fish and reptile, or this: www.technology.newscientist.com/article/mg18625001.900 - for the evolution of dinosaurs (lizards) into birds). From what I’ve seen, creationists objections that ‘there aren’t any missing links’ are simply dishonest, because however many ‘missing links’ are provided, they then simply demand further links, between those links. Every living creature is a ‘missing link’ between the previous creature and the next. Change is gradual - get a sense of scale.
You say ‘Nothing comes from nothing’, which is, IIRC, an Eric Idle song at the end of the Life Of Brian. Brilliant film, brilliant song. NOT an explanation of how we came to be here, however, and specifically not a validation of god. If anything, it was a poignant and deeply satirical affirmation of human mortality. You, I and every(any)one reading this will quite soon be gone, and not long after that, it will be as if we’d never existed. Believing in god may help you deal with that - by denying it, and pretending you have a greater significance. It doesn’t make it true though.
The way I see it, I believe in evolution because I believe in science. Evolution is a “theory” that makes intuitive sense and has evidential support but IS still refutable. As John Hanks says:
“The value of a scientific theory is that it can conceivably be disproven or drastically modified. Religious fables and myths cannot be disproven because they are not based on testable facts or propositions.”
I can listen to a million an one people tell me that evolution hasn’t been proven because..well….it hasnt. BUT, I believe in science, in putting CONDITIONAL faith in the most evidentially supported option while remaining open to it’s disproof. Show me why it’s more likely that dinosaurs are a test, a good alternative explanation for the families we observe in animal and plant taxonomy, why bacteria adapt (i would hazard “evolve”) to survive new threats and frankly, why I look so much like a monkey, and I will be interested. Give us some evidence and science should be interested to. Until then, believe what you like but don’t tell us it makes any sense and that evolution doesn’t.
…forgot to say, that last comment was pretty much for Jack Wellman. And I would have a look at Graham’s links, the evidence for evolution makes my point far more convincingly than my previous ramblings!
Evolution is still refutable and always will be. In fact, even Darwin had a hard time with it. If you read anything of Darwin’s you find he’s continually filling all his writings with tremendous doubts. For example, he says in the sixth chapter of his Origin of the Species, “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.”
In his chapter on instinct he conceded such simple instincts as bees making a beehive could be sufficient to overthrow my whole theory. And to think he said that “The eye could evolve by natural selection seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree.” In his chapter on imperfections in the geological record he complained that the complete lack of fossil intermediates in all geological records was perhaps, quote, “the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory.” In other words, he was at least honest enough to admit that the thing didn’t make any sense. And what has been touted as “proof”, has often been found to be a fraud,like the examples below.
The Britannica says that the Piltdown man was a fraud! An analysis was made to date the bones more precisely and it was discovered that the skull was human and the jaw was that of a monkey with the teeth filed to make them look human. Both creatures had recently died but the bones had been chemically treated to make them look old! Over 500 students wrote their doctoral dissertations on the Piltdown Man and were awarded Ph.D. degrees from outstanding universities of the world!
Are we supposed to believe that from 1912 until 1953, over 40 years, all the “expert, highly educated, brilliant,” evolutionists of the world who studied these bones were fooled by a practical joke? Are we expected to give up our faith in God’s eternal and infallible Word and trust such men who call themselves “scientists,” and yet cannot tell the difference between scientific facts and fakery? Over 500 students wrote their doctoral dissertations on the Piltdown Man and were awarded Ph.D. degrees from outstanding universities of the world! Doctors of fakery!
Donald Johannson discovered a set of fossils that were stated to be 40% complete in Ethiopia. Considered a female, she stood less than 3 & 1/2 feet tall. Her skull was not found, but a portion of the lower jaw was full ape-like. Other fossils from the same strata and location have been found which have all been full ape, with the cranial capacity in the range of a modern chimp. Johannson claimed that Lucy was “the most important find made by anyone in the history of the entire human race.” He claimed she was three millon years old, diagrammed at the very “Y” of the phylum branch that separated man and ape. The media made an immediate celebrity of Johannson…in fact he was considered a hero. He even got his own institute for human biology at Berkeley (Cal.).
But why weren’t scientists not allowed to examine, let alone touch, Lucy’s bones until 1982? Here’s why. When they finally did, guess what they found upon examination? They discovered that they could not tell the difference between and a present-day rainforest Chimpanzee that you might find at the San Diego Zoo. Remember Lucy was only 3 & 1/2 feet tall. Look at the skeletal structures of both. Wow! It looks the same. You decide.
In 1891 a Dutch army doctor, Eugene Dubois, stationed in Java, reported finding the “missing link” between man and animals! He discovered the top of a skull, three jaw teeth, and part of a thighbone. But he found them 70 feet apart, among many bones along a creek, over the period of a year! After completing his military service Dubois kept the bones in a trunk at home and sent pencil drawings to various evolutionary leaders and museums of the world who eagerly welcomed his “scientific” proof.
Calling his find the Java Ape-Man or “Pithecanthropus erectus” (the ape-man that walks upright), evolutionists swallowed his “proof” without question and arrogantly declared to the world that the Ape-Man was 750,000 years old! Many leading scientists eagerly went to his Holland home to see for themselves those amazing bones, only for Dubois to turn them away at his door.
Finally, after about 35 years, the scientific world demanded to see and evaluate the bones for themselves. Twenty-four European scientists met and studied the bones. Ten said they were the bones of an ape; seven said they came from a man; and seven said they were not the bones of a “missing link!” No less an authority than H.G. Wells, the agnostic historian known for his two-volume Outline of History, said they were the bones of an ape. Even Dubois himself finally admitted that the bones were probably from an ape. But the Java Ape-Man has been paraded in museums and high school and college text books the world over as the “missing link” between man and animals, proving evolution! Almighty God must have had these worldly wise men in mind when He inspired the Apostle Paul to tell Timothy to “…keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science, falsely so called!” (1 Tim. 6:20). Still more!
In 1922 a so-called scientist claimed to have found in Nebraska the true “missing link” between men and animals. Dubbed the “Nebraska Man,” it was flaunted in text-books and museums of the world as being one million years old. Pictures and models were created, based on the “scientific” studies of experts. Just three years later, in the famous “Monkey Trial” in Dayton, Tenn., in 1925, this overwhelming evidence was introduced to prove evolution and show that “ignorant Bible-believers” were wrong! Great “scientific experts” were quoted to prove their case and all who were dumb enough to believe that God created man in His image were mocked and ridiculed! This is the same “evidence” that was used in the Scopes Monkey Trial, trying to force evolution as a fact of science in the public schools.
When evidence of the “Nebraska Man” was demanded, the “great scientific experts” reluctantly admitted that their evidence consisted of ONE (1) tooth! But that’s not all! After evolutionists and the mainstream media reporters bullied lowly Bible believers for years with their “scientific proof” the rest of that skeleton was found, and guess what? It was the skeleton of an extinct pig!
Then please do so.