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coram_deo 13-Jul-21, 09:35 |
 Why Darwin’s Theory of Evolution is GarbageFrom “Debunking Evolution: Scientific evidence against evolution - the clash between theory and reality” by John Michael Fischer “Evolution" mixes two things together, one real, one imaginary. People are shown the real part, which makes them ready to believe the imaginary part. That is how the idea of biological evolution has spread since 1859. Variation (microevolution) is the real part. The types of bird beaks, the colors of moths, leg sizes, etc. are variation. Each type and length of beak a finch can have is already in the gene pool and adaptive mechanisms of finches. Creationists have always agreed that there is variation within species. What evolutionists do not want you to know is that there are strict limits to variation that are never crossed, something every breeder of animals or plants is aware of. Whenever variation is pushed to extremes by selective breeding (to get the most milk from cows, sugar from beets, bristles on fruit flies, or any other characteristic), the line becomes sterile and dies out. And as one characteristic increases, others diminish. But evolutionists want you to believe that changes continue, merging gradually into new kinds of creatures. This is where the imaginary part of the theory of evolution comes in. It says that new information is added to the gene pool by mutation and natural selection to create frogs from fish, reptiles from frogs, and mammals from reptiles, to name a few. Just to be clear, evolution theory puts no limit on what mutation/natural selection can invent, saying that everything in nature was invented by it - everything: sex, eye-hand coordination, balance, navigation systems, tongues, blood, antennae, waste removal systems, swallowing, joints, lubrication, pumps, valves, autofocus, image stabilization, sensors, camouflage, traps, ceramic teeth, light (bioluminescence), ears, tears, eyes, hands, fingernails, cartilage, bones, spinal columns, spinal cords, muscles, ligaments, tendons, livers, kidneys, thyroid glands, lungs, stomachs, vocal cords, saliva, skin, fat, lymph, body plans, growth from egg to adult, nurturing babies, aging, breathing, heartbeat, hair, hibernation, bee dancing, insect queens, spiderwebs, feathers, seashells, scales, fins, tails, legs, feet, claws, wings, beaver dams, termite mounds, bird nests, coloration, markings, decision making, speech center of the brain, visual center of the brain, hearing center of the brain, language comprehension center of the brain, sensory center of the brain, memory, creative center of the brain, object-naming center of the brain, emotional center of the brain, movement centers of the brain, center of the brain for smelling, immune systems, circulatory systems, digestive systems, endocrine systems, regulatory systems, genes, gene regulatory networks, proteins, ribosomes that assemble proteins, receptors for proteins on cells, apoptosis, hormones, neurotransmitters, circadian clocks, jet propulsion, etc. Everything in nature - according to evolution theory. Just to be clear. The invention of new parts or systems by mutation has never been witnessed, nor has it been accomplished in a biochemistry laboratory. As Franklin Harold, retired professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at Colorado State University, wrote in his 2001 book "The Way of the Cell" published by Oxford University Press, "There are presently no detailed Darwinian accounts of the evolution of any biological or cellular system, only a variety of wishful speculations." Evolutionists often say "it evolved", but no one lists all the molecular steps because no one knows what they could be. So do the big changes (macroevolution) really happen? Evolutionists tell us we cannot see evolution taking place because it happens too slowly. A human generation takes about 20 years from birth to parenthood. They say it took tens of thousands of generations to form man from a common ancestor with the ape, from populations of only hundreds or thousands. We do not have these problems with bacteria. A new generation of bacteria grows in as short as 12 minutes or up to 24 hours or more, depending on the type of bacteria and the environment, but typically 20 minutes to a few hours. There are more bacteria in the world than there are grains of sand on all of the beaches of the world (and many grains of sand are covered with bacteria). They exist in just about any environment: hot, cold, dry, wet, high pressure, low pressure, small groups, large colonies, isolated, much food, little food, much oxygen, no oxygen, in toxic chemicals, etc. There is much variation in bacteria. There are many mutations (in fact, evolutionists say that smaller organisms have a faster mutation rate than larger ones.) But they never turn into anything new. They always remain bacteria. Fruit flies are much more complex than already complex single-cell bacteria. Scientists like to study them because a generation (from egg to adult) takes only 9 days. In the lab, fruit flies are studied under every conceivable condition. There is much variation in fruit flies. There are many mutations. But they never turn into anything new. They always remain fruit flies. Many years of study of countless generations of bacteria and fruit flies all over the world shows that evolution is not happening today.” End of Part 1 <<There are many (many!) problems with Darwin’s theory. This is only the first installment of what will be many future installments that will include reprinted articles (this excerpt is from a much, much longer article that I’ll be citing, with attribution in the future,) and my own original thoughts. Is it possible this article is out of date? I suppose it’s possible, but the date at the bottom of the article is 2006-2021.>> |
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coram_deo 13-Jul-21, 16:22 |
From “Debunking Evolution: Scientific evidence against evolution - the clash between theory and reality” by John Michael Fischer “Mutation - natural selection Here is how the imaginary part is supposed to happen: On rare occasions a mutation in DNA improves a creature's ability to survive, so it is more likely to reproduce (natural selection). That is evolution's only tool for making new creatures. It might even work if it took just one gene to make and control one part. But parts of living creatures are constructed of intricate components with connections that all need to be in place for the thing to work, controlled by many genes that have to act in the proper sequence. Natural selection would not choose parts that did not have all their components existing, in place, connected, and regulated because the parts would not work. Thus all the right mutations (and none of the destructive ones) must happen at the same time by pure chance. That is physically impossible. To illustrate just how hopeless it is, imagine this: on the ground are all the materials needed to build a house (nails, boards, shingles, windows, etc.). We tie a hammer to the wagging tail of a dog and let him wander about the work site for as long as you please, even millions of years. The swinging hammer on the dog is as likely to build a house as mutation-natural selection is to make a single new working part in an animal, let alone a new creature. Only mutations in the reproductive (germ) cells of an animal or plant would be passed on. Mutations in the eye or skin of an animal would not matter. Mutations in DNA happen fairly often, but most are repaired or destroyed by mechanisms in animals and plants. All known mutations in animal and plant germ cells are neutral, harmful, or fatal. But evolutionists are eternally optimistic. They believe that millions of beneficial mutations built every type of creature that ever existed. Believing in beneficial mutations is like believing a short-circuit in the motherboard of your computer could improve its performance. To make any lasting change, a beneficial mutation would have to spread ("sweep") through a population and stay (become "fixed"). To evolutionists, this idea has been essential for so long that it is called a "classic sweep", "in which a new, strongly beneficial mutation increases in frequency to fixation in the population." Some evolutionist researchers went looking for classic sweeps in humans, and reported their findings in the journal Science. "To evaluate the importance of classic sweeps in shaping human diversity, we analyzed resequencing data for 179 human genomes from four populations". "In humans, the effects of sweeps are expected to persist for approximately 10,000 generations or about 250,000 years." Evolutionists had identified "more than 2000 genes as potential targets of positive selection in the human genome", and they expected that "diversity patterns in about 10% of the human genome have been affected by linkage to recent sweeps." So what did they find? "In contrast to expectation," their test detected nothing, but they could not quite bring themselves to say it. They said there was a "paucity of classic sweeps revealed by our findings". Sweeps "were too infrequent within the past 250,000 years to have had discernible effects on genomic diversity." "Classic sweeps were not a dominant mode of human adaptation over the past 250,000 years." --Hernandez, Ryan D., Joanna L. Kelley, Eyal Elyashiv, S. Cord Melton, Adam Auton, Gilean McVean, 1000 Genomes Project, Guy Sella, Molly Przeworski. 18 February 2011. Classic Selective Sweeps Were Rare in Recent Human Evolution. Science, Vol. 331, no. 6019, pp. 920-924. A 35-year experiment by evolutionists shows how things really work. Instead of waiting for natural selection, researchers forced selection on hundreds of generations of fruit flies. They used variation to breed fruit flies that develop from egg to adult 20% faster than normal. But, as usual when breeding plants and animals, there was a down side. In this case the fruit flies weighed less, lived shorter lives, and were less resistant to starvation. There were many mutations, but none caught on, and the experiment ran into the limits of variation. They wrote that "forward experimental evolution can often be completely reversed with these populations". "Despite decades of sustained selection in relatively small, sexually reproducing laboratory populations, selection did not lead to the fixation of newly arising unconditionally advantageous alleles." "The probability of fixation in wild populations should be even lower than its likelihood in these experiments." --Burke, Molly K., Joseph P. Dunham, Parvin Shahrestani, Kevin R. Thornton, Michael R. Rose, Anthony D. Long. 30 September 2010. Genome-wide analysis of a long-term evolution experiment with Drosophila. Nature, Vol. 467, pp. 587-590. You may have heard of the famous Lenski experiment. Dr. Richard E. Lenski is an evolutionary biologist who began a long-term experiment on February 24, 1988 that continues today. It looks for genetic changes in 12 initially identical populations of Escherichia coli bacteria that have been adapting to conditions in their flasks for over 60,000 generations. I have simplified a report by Scott Whynot, who studied 26 peer-reviewed scientific articles authored by Dr. Lenski (with others) published between 1991 and 2012. These papers represent the major genetic findings from 21 years of the experiment. 1. There was an insertion mutation that inhibited transcription of DNA involved in cell wall synthesis. 2. There was an insertion mutation in a regulatory region that encodes two proteins involved with cell wall synthesis. This may have led to larger cells. 3. A mutation in a gene led to a defect in DNA repair. 4. An insertion mutation may have knocked out a gene involved in programmed cell death and response to stress. 5. There was another mutation in a gene involved in response to stress, disrupting its function. 6. There was a mutation in the gene that encodes an enzyme that loosens DNA coils, leading to an increase in DNA supercoiling. 7. There was an insertion mutation in a gene that represses the production of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD), a molecule that participates in many metabolic reactions, some affecting longevity. This might allow more NAD production. 8. The researchers noted an insertion mutation that they think inactivated a gene, resulting in greater glucose uptake. Glucose is a limited energy source in the experiment. 9. Deletion mutations caused the loss of the ability to catabolize D-ribose, an energy source that is not available in the experiment. 10. There was a mutation in a gene regulating transport of the sugar maltose, an energy source that is not present in the experiment. 11. After about 30,000 generations, the E. coli in one of the twelve isolated populations began to utilize an energy source, citrate, that they normally could not use in the presence of oxygen. E. coli already have the ability to transport and metabolize citrate where there is no oxygen, but they do not produce an appropriate transport protein for an environment with oxygen. In E. coli DNA, the gene for the citrate transporter that works without oxygen is directly upstream from genes for proteins with promoters that are active in the presence of oxygen. A replication of the region happened to put the transporter gene next to one of these promoters, so it could now be expressed in the presence of oxygen. Except for number 11, the changes found in over 60,000 generations of bacteria were due to the disruption, degradation, or loss of genetic information. The ability to use citrate in the presence of oxygen, trumpeted by evolutionists as a big deal, was the result of previously existing information being rearranged, not the origin of new information. Mutations that result in a gain of novel information have not been observed. "Most long-term evolution experiments thus far have been performed in bacteria or haploid yeast populations, where, in most environments, there exist a number of loss-of-function mutations that provide a selective advantage." "For instance, sterility in yeast provides a selective advantage by eliminating unnecessary gene expression." "The emergence of the Cit+ phenotype is the exception in experimental evolution, where most evolved mutations affect independent genes and biological pathways, driven largely by large-target loss-of-function mutations."-- Lang, Gregory I., Michael M. Desai. 2014. The spectrum of adaptive mutations in experimental evolution. Genomics, Vol. 104, No. 6, Part A, pp. 412–416. Microevolution - Macroevolution This candid admission is from the evolutionist journal Nature: "Darwin anticipated that microevolution would be a process of continuous and gradual change. The term macroevolution, by contrast, refers to the origin of new species and divisions of the taxonomic hierarchy above the species level, and also to the origin of complex adaptations, such as the vertebrate eye. Macroevolution posed a problem to Darwin because his principle of descent with modification predicts gradual transitions between small-scale adaptive changes in populations and these larger-scale phenomena, yet there is little evidence for such transitions in nature. Instead, the natural world is often characterized by gaps, or discontinuities. One type of gap relates to the existence of 'organs of extreme perfection', such as the eye, or morphological innovations, such as wings, both of which are found fully formed in present-day organisms without leaving evidence of how they evolved."-- Reznick, David N., Robert E. Ricklefs. 12 February 2009. Darwin's bridge between microevolution and macroevolution. Nature, Vol. 457, pp. 837-842. Another evolutionary biologist wrote, "the processes underlying evolutionary innovation are remarkably poorly understood, which leaves us at a surprising conundrum: while biologists have made great progress over the past century and a half in understanding how existing traits diversify, we have made relatively little progress in understanding how novel traits come into being in the first place." "The origin of novel features continues to be a fascinating and challenging topic in evolutionary biology."-- Moczek, Armin P. May 2008. On the origins of novelty in development and evolution. BioEssays, Vol. 30, Issue 5, pp. 409-512. End of Part 2 <<This is a very interesting (and very long) article, but it is far from my only source and, as I said previously, many (many!) problems exist with Darwin’s theory, both on a scientific (practical) and philosophical level.>> |
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coram_deo 14-Jul-21, 19:02 |
From “Debunking Evolution: Scientific evidence against evolution - the clash between theory and reality” by John Michael Fischer “Evolution’s Third Way Evolution theory says that accumulated small changes in creatures (microevolution) lead to new types of creatures (macroevolution). But some evolutionary biologists are admitting that microevolution does not happen by the supposed mechanism of evolution - mutation/natural selection. Instead, living things have built-in mechanisms that adjust to quick changes in their environment to produce variation. The mechanisms are only beginning to be understood, yet 64 evolutionist academics have put their names and faces on The Third Way website. A system for variation makes sense because species' survival can depend on adapting fast and not waiting millions of years for "beneficial mutations". But this leaves macroevolution out hanging by itself, which is why Third Way members are often bitterly opposed by conventional Neo-Darwinists. Orphan genes - the final blow? Here is an evolutionist with experience in molecular biology, Francois Jacob. Francois Jacob won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1965, along with two others, for discoveries concerning genetic control of enzyme and virus synthesis. He had joined the Institut Pasteur in 1950. He was appointed Laboratory Director there in 1956, then Head of the Department of Cell Genetics in 1960. In 1964 he was appointed Professor at the College de France, where a chair of Cell Genetics was created for him. He was Chairman of the Board of the Institut Pasteur from 1982 to 1988. The work of Francois Jacob dealt mainly with the genetic mechanisms existing in bacteria and bacteriophages, and with the biochemical effects of mutations. He wrote, "Evolution does not produce novelties from scratch. It works on what already exists, either transforming a system to give it new functions or combining several systems to produce a more elaborate one." "During chemical evolution in prebiotic times and at the beginning of biological evolution, all those molecules of which every living being is built had to appear. But once life had started in the form of some primitive self-reproducing organism, further evolution had to proceed mainly through alterations of already existing compounds. New functions developed as new proteins appeared. But these were merely variations on previous themes. A sequence of a thousand nucleotides codes for a medium-sized protein. The probability that a functional protein would appear de novo by random association of amino acids is practically zero. In organisms as complex and integrated as those that were already living a long time ago, creation of entirely new nucleotide sequences could not be of any importance in the production of new information." For decades, everyone agreed. But as researchers compared the genes of similar creatures, they found that the genes differed, from just a little to a lot. They imagined different ways that could have happened. Gene duplication, non-deleterious frame shift mutations, alternative reading frames, overlap with transposable elements, horizontal gene transfer, or overlapping gene. As usual with evolutionists, they do not know what really happened, they assume it was one of these mental explanations, and that is enough. But some genes are so unique, even imagination fails. Evolutionists now conclude they must have assembled spontaneously - "de novo". In fact, "all genome and expressed sequence tag (EST) projects to date in every taxonomic group studied so far have uncovered a substantial fraction of genes that are without known homologs [equivalents]. These 'orphans' or 'taxonomically restricted genes' (TRGs) are defined as being exclusively restricted to a particular taxonomic group." "Orphan genes are defined as genes which lack detectable similarity to genes in other species". "They typically make up 10 to 30% of all genes in a genome." The foundation of evolution theory, gradual modification over time, slowly transforming genes that already exist, suddenly ran up against orphan genes, genes without parents in every taxonomic group studied so far. Looking at it objectively, the theory of evolution has been falsified. After careful study, evolutionists made a bold choice: They cut the theory's last connection to reality, declaring that the impossible is normal: of course genes are produced de novo! The new foundation of evolution theory is Poof - there it is (which sounds like the foundation of creation by Intelligent Design - de novo). Evolutionists now think orphan genes are awesome. "There should be greater appreciation of the importance of the de novo origination of genes." "Today, we know that this evolutionary process is not impossible." "De novo evolution is clearly a strong force - constantly generating new genes over time." "It seems possible that most orphan genes have evolved through de novo evolution." "It looks as if we couldn't find the families of most orphans because they don't really have families." "The sequencing of a large number of eukaryotic and bacterial genomes has uncovered an abundance of genes without homologs... and has shown that new genes have arisen in the genomes of every group of organisms studied so far including humans". For evolutionists, the theory of evolution can never die. The rest of us can see that Francois Jacob was right. Orphan genes reveal that macro-evolution does not represent reality, and is physically impossible.“ (End of Part 3) Orphan genes that magically appear from nothing? Evolutionists are getter closer and closer to creationism. Pretty soon, they’ll throw up their hands and say, “We give up. God did it.” |
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coram_deo 18-Jul-21, 16:51 |
We have no evidence of Darwin’s central belief in “real time” as it theoretically would take a very long time for one species to turn into another species, though long-running experiments on bacteria and fruit flies, which have very short generational spans, have been conducted and fail to support the hypothesis that one species can evolve into a separate species. But does the fossil record show evidence of this? This article addresses that question. The article is entitled, “Fossil Record Evolution: Any Transitional Forms?” and was written by Dr. David Menton, who “holds a PhD in biology from Brown University and served as an award-winning professor at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis for 34 years. He retired as an Associate Professor Emeritus.” The link to the article is here: answersingenesis.org Yes, the website is a Biblical website, but that should no more exclude it as a source than a website run by an atheist who advocates for evolution. The writer has credentials and cites scientific publications to buttress his statements, though some of the publications are quite dated. But the publication date on this article is Dec. 28, 2019 so it is fairly current. “Is there such a thing as fossil record evolution? The central idea of evolution is that all of the kinds of living organisms on earth share a common ancestor and that over time they have evolved one from another by an unplanned and unguided natural process. This unobserved sort of “amoeba-to-man” evolution extending over hundreds of millions of years is called macroevolution to distinguish it from the relatively small-scale variations we observe among the individuals of a species. Evolutionists like to refer to these small variations as “microevolution” with the tacit assumption that over eons of time they add up incrementally to produce macroevolution. Thus, evolutionists look for evidence of these incremental steps, often referring to them as “transitional forms,” suggesting that they represent stages of transformation of one organism into a different kind of organism. Since macroevolution is not observable in the time frame of human observers, evolutionists often invoke microevolution as both evidence for macroevolution as well as its presumed mechanism. But as any animal or plant breeder knows, the limited variation that is observed among the individuals of a species has not been observed to lead to the essentially limitless process of macroevolution. In 1980, a group of evolutionists met in Chicago to discuss the relationship of micro- and macroevolution. Roger Lewin summed up this meeting in the journal Science as follows: “The central question of the Chicago conference was whether the mechanisms underlying microevolution can be extrapolated to explain the phenomena of macroevolution. At the risk of doing violence to the positions of some of the people at the meeting, the answer can be given as a clear No.” The lack of a clear relationship between microevolution and macroevolution has continued to be a problem for evolutionists. No matter what mechanism one might postulate for macroevolution, in the course of presumed evolutionary history there would have been an unimaginably vast number of transitional forms revealing at least some of the incremental stages of macroevolution. Thus evolutionists typically turn to the fossil record in an effort to identify transitional stages in the macro evolutionary process. When this fails, they turn to currently living biological organisms in the hope of “reconstructing” evolutionary transitional stages from living examples. When an appearance of progress is lacking among living organisms and their organs, evolutionists turn to artists who obligingly illustrate what they believe must surely have been the missing transitional stages of evolutionary progress. And, finally, when even artistic imagination fails to produce plausible intermediates of evolutionary progress, some evolutionists simply deny that there even is a vector of progress in evolution! However, evolutionists never question that there is a naturalistic evolutionary process of some kind that explains the origin of all living things. ‘Transitional’ Fossils — The Missing Links Evolutionists begin with the unquestioned assumption that evolution has occurred, starting with some primordial life form and progressing over time in a purely naturalistic way to produce all the kinds of living organisms on earth, past or present. Thus for “evidence” of evolution they need only to examine available fossils and attempt to arrange them in a sequence that appears to show progress over time. But a plausible sequential progression of intermediate stages is rarely, if ever, observed in the fossil record, which explains why we hear so much about ‘missing links.’ Even Darwin himself was aware of this problem and said in his Origin of Species: “The number of intermediate varieties, which have formerly existed on the earth, [must] be truly enormous. Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory.” Why, indeed! For example, no one has observed progressive stages of “prebats” in the fossil record showing a mouse-like mammal gradually evolving into a bat with its long fingered wings. Evolutionists concede that what they consider to be the oldest bat fossils are 100 percent bats with some even showing evidence of sonar navigation. G.K. Chesterton put it simply: ‘All we know of the Missing Link is that he is missing — and he won’t be missed either.’ Many evolutionists now concede the dearth of transitional forms in the fossil record and feel obliged to come up with some sort of explanation for it. The late evolutionist Steven J. Gould bluntly admitted, ‘The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology.’ Again, Eldridge and Gould noted, ‘Most species during their geological history, either do not change in any appreciable way, or else they fluctuate mildly in morphology, with no apparent direction.’ Gould even goes so far as to concede that not only are transitional stages not found in the fossil record, but in many cases we are not even able to imagine such intermediates: ‘The absence of fossil evidence for intermediate stages between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualistic accounts of evolution.’ This conspicuous lack of fossil evidence for intermediate or transitional stages of evolution led Gould to a highly speculative rescuing hypothesis for evolution called ‘punctuated equilibrium,’ or as it is sometimes called, the ‘hopeful monster theory.’ In this scenario, the lack of fossil transitional forms is explained away by claiming that the transitional stages (hopeful monsters) being both unlikely and unstable occurred rarely and relatively quickly (on a geological time scale), leaving no fossil evidence. So what we actually see is stasis, i.e., no change over long periods of geological time! No wonder some evolutionists have argued that ancestor descendent relationships simply cannot be determined from fossils. For example, with regard to human evolution, Richard Lewontin said, ‘Despite the excited and optimistic claims that have been made by some paleontologists, no fossil hominid species can be established as our direct ancestor.’ “ (End of Part 1) |
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coram_deo 18-Jul-21, 23:09 |
This article, entitled “DNA Dictates Design,” was written by Dr. Sean Pitman, a medical doctor whose specialities are Hematopathology, Clinical Pathology and Anatomic Pathology. Here is the first excerpt: “Darwin looked for evidence supporting his conjectures in all the wrong places. The fossil record didn’t oblige. Nineteenth-century scientists dismissed living cells as “structureless globules of protoplasm.” Darwin had no clue a cell had a nucleus. His awareness of DNA was nonexistent. He had no conception that evolution either “happens or doesn’t happen genetically.” “DNA contains the genetic blueprint of life…It gives instructions to the rest of the cell to make proteins, and it passes this same information on to the next generation…Without DNA, living organisms cannot survive. Long after death of a human, DNA residue can be found in the teeth. A single gene’s DNA information can no more be created by chance than medieval alchemists could make gold by mixing recipes of other elements while relying upon abracadabra magic. So where did a cell’s information come from? An unused computer disk offers a blank screen until some human intelligence delivers a digital code loaded with text or pictures. An electronic data bank lacks meaning or purpose without deposit of a precisely coded message put in place by some intelligent source. Once loaded, the coded message can be replicated ad infinitum. DNA may become corrupted, but the basic information package, built into the original genome of every plant and animal, guarantees descendant generations will replicate the unique living organisms of ancestor parents. Mutations degrade DNA, never adding new genetic information. The genome’s certitude for every plant and animal reflects a chain of perpetuity unbroken and unimpeded by evolution theory. The life expectancy of a known species is terminal. While the matter composing a life form may turn to dust, the original parent generation’s DNA lives on, dictating design in descendant generations. Try playing a card game by shuffling a deck of blank cuts of white cardboard, lacking numbers or distinctive graphic prints. No winners, no losers, no game–just a meaningless shuffle of nothingness. An attractive cover that binds a package of blank white paper would never top a best-seller list. It’s the printed message that sells a book. Matter, without information, exists in the abstract. Unproven theory, without supporting evidentiary data, epitomizes intellectual incoherence.“ genesisfile.com |
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coram_deo 19-Jul-21, 13:36 |
Dr. Pitman is a medical doctor whose specialities are Hematopathology, Clinical Pathology and Anatomic Pathology. “Non-living, inorganic chemicals exist in the form of 100 plus known elements. The quantity of protons contained in the nucleus of an atom gives each element its distinguishing number. Ten years after Darwin floated his ideas, Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev arranged the 63 then-known elements in a chart of rows and columns dubbed a Periodic Table of the Chemical Elements. The chart confirms chemistry’s intrinsic organization. Chemical recipes created from molecular mixes of these elements produce products underwriting industry. Living cells contain definitive information blueprints, distinctive DNA codes for every plant and animal species inhabiting earth. DNA’s coded information dictates gene function with a certitude reminiscent of The Periodic Table’s inorganic elements. The predictable results of hybridization and gene splicing contradict even the most remote possibility of the chance hypothesis. “What has been revealed as a result of the sequential comparisons of homologous proteins is an order as emphatic as that of the periodic table. Yet in the face of this extraordinary discovery the biological community seems content to offer explanations which are no more than apologetic tautologies.” Michael Denton’s Evolution: A Theory in Crises, opened the door to a glimpse of molecular biology’s avalanche of insight. “Neither of the two fundamental axioms” of neo Darwinism,“…continuity of nature…linking all species together and ultimately leading back to a primeval cell” and “adaptive design…from a blind random process have been validated by one single empirical discovery or scientific advance since 1859.” Even had spontaneous generation defied impossible odds by accidentally creating a “simple,” living cell, it couldn’t survive much less reproduce itself, without its own package of DNA calling the shots. Once the assumption virus invades reasoning, superstitious nonsense follows. With or without popular acclamation, assumption masquerading as science doesn’t evolve fact. It’s futile folly to contend a cell’s information code originated spontaneously from inert matter. DNA exists sui generis (one of a kind). Multiple protein families provide an array of potential building blocks for specific living formats. Just where did that genetic information originate? Logic slinks out science’s back door when the “design inference” is ignored. Microscopic genetic information codes every cell of every living organism with a one-of-a-kind mark. Tucked into the cell’s nucleus are the strands of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) containing the code of life for every organism. This compendium of living data is so miniscule that it can’t be seen by unassisted human sight. Organic life could not exist without an information blueprint housed in every living cell. DNA contains the master genetic blueprint for every living organism with precision reminiscent of inorganic chemistry’s Periodic Table of the Elements. “Without DNA, living organisms cannot survive.” It’s less than rational, and certainly unscientific, to suggest DNA’s microscopic strings of pre-coded information appeared accidentally after millions of years of chaotic heating, cooling, and thawing mingled with nature’s torrents of rain, lightning flashes, and sporadic gusts of wind. Every prototype plant and animal life on earth carries a staggering stash of unique genetic information locked in place from the get-go. The first living cell could not exist without its own, DNA-imprinted language system—in place and fully functioning from the instant it joined earth’s ecosystem. A meticulous DNA code for the design of every kind of life was activated in the beginning. Even in corrupted form, this unique language of life is passed along to successive generations. While matter composing the format of every life kind disintegrates at death, returning inert chemicals to the earth, DNA data banks live on, guaranteeing kaleidoscopic diversity in descendant generations but never radical change to entirely new and different organisms.“ (A link to this article was provided after the first excerpt.) |
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coram_deo 19-Jul-21, 15:52 |
BTW, I’m not quoting this article in full. I’m skipping the highly technical parts of the article but will provide a link to this article (again) at the bottom of these two quoted excerpts for those who would like to see the technical parts (and who would like to see footnotes and sources.) “ “Nucleotides cannot be added at will; even if they did, they could not align themselves in a meaningful sequence….any physical change of any size, shape, or form, is strictly the result of purposeful alignment of billions of nucleotides. Nature or species do not have the capacity of rearranging them nor to add them.” Sir Fred Hoyle scoffed at the concept of a genetic code emerging from some primordial organic soup by chance, dismissing it as “nonsense of a high order.” The genome’s complexity and DNA source defies science. Denial of DNA design, put in place at the command of an infinite intelligence, conjures up images of superstitious ancients, worshiping at the feet of inert matter, bowing in supplication before the sun or homemade idols of wood and stone. The first cell’s DNA base pair could not exist without imprinted language of life instructions. A single cell’s DNA comes loaded with information sufficient to fill 3,000 sets of printed encyclopedias.” xxxxxxxxxxxxxx “The capacity of DNA to store information vastly exceeds that of any other known system; it is so efficient that all the information needed to specify an organism as complex as man weighs less than a few thousand millionths of a gram…Each gene is a sequence of DNA about one thousand nucleotides long.” Internet entrepreneur Bill Gates recognizes the limits of cyberspace language in contrast to the cell’s ability to store and utilize living data. “DNA is like a computer program but far more advanced than any software we’ve ever created.” It’s been calculated that if “…all the copies of the DNA in all the cells of your body were straightened and laid end-to-end they would be about 50 billion kilometers long” and would stretch from the earth to beyond the solar system. Did the 50 billion kilometer length of microscopic strands of human DNA result from mega-millions of luck-of-the-draw mutations? Seriously? Multiply nothingness by billions and the answer remains a vacuous zip. “DNA and RNA molecules do not form spontaneously or abiotically in any ‘primordial earth’ type experiment…” Ribonucleic acid (RNA) acts as DNA’s transfer agent taking the code from the nucleus to the cytoplasm. Its never been demonstrated that either DNA or RNA components of a cell can evolve spontaneously from non-living matter.” genesisfile.com My favorite paragraph of Dr. Pitman’s article, so far, is this one: “Once the assumption virus invades reasoning, superstitious nonsense follows. With or without popular acclamation, assumption masquerading as science doesn’t evolve fact. It’s futile folly to contend a cell’s information code originated spontaneously from inert matter.” Wish I could fit it on a bumper sticker. |
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coram_deo 22-Jul-21, 16:04 |
From The Irish Times: “As president of the Centre des Etudes et de Prospective sur la Science (CEP), I would like to present some arguments which, I suggest, indicate that evolution theory is about to collapse. The centre is a 700-strong Catholic organisation linked to scientists contesting evolution. Pope Pius XII (Humani Generis, 1950) mandated that arguments both for and against evolution theory should be discussed with all fairness and restraint by experts in both theology and science. A commission has yet to be formed to discuss the matter. When it does, it will have to address the following situation: 1) No empirical proof exists that macro-evolution (that is, evolution from one distinct kind of organism into another) is occurring at present, or has ever happened in the past. No one, throughout recorded history, has ever seen it. Evolutionist anthropologist Jeffrey H. Schwartz stated in his 1999 book Sudden Origins . . . that with the exception of Dobzhan sky's claim about a new species of fruit fly (micro-evolution, not macro-evolution), the formation of a new species, by any mechanism, has never been observed. 2) No transitional fossils. If evolution had taken place there should have been a great many transitional structures preserved in fossilised form recording the stages of development from one type of organism to another type. For instance, invertebrates are supposed to have transformed into vertebrates, having passed through many intermediate stages. The fossil record does not document such transitions. Yet there are countless millions of fossils, all of which are non-transitional. Prof Schwartz claims that instead of filling in the gaps in the fossil record with so-called missing links, most paleontologists found themselves facing a situation in which there were only gaps in the fossil record, with no evidence of transformational intermediates between documented fossil species. Not only are the links missing, but professional evolutionists now admit they cannot even imagine how one species could be linked with another. In the American Scientist review of the book In Search of Deep Time by Henry Gee, Peter J. Bowler writes: "We cannot identify ancestors or `missing links', and we cannot devise testable theories how particular episodes of evolution came about. "Gee is adamant that all the popular stories about how the first amphibians conquered the dry land, how the birds developed wings and feathers for flying, how the dinosaurs went extinct, and how humans evolved from apes are just products of our imagination, driven by prejudices and preconceptions" (vol 88, March-April 2000, p169). 3) There is no evidence of evolution at the molecular level. Even with DNA sequence data, we have no direct access to the processes of evolution, so objective reconstruction of the vanished past can be achieved only by creative imagination (N.A. Takahata, Genetic Perspective on the Origin and History of Humans - Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics; vol 26, 1995, p34). DNA and other genetic evidence as proof of evolution are found to be inconsistent with the fossil record and comparative morphology of the creatures. Anthropologist Dr Roger Lewin has commented: "The overall effect is that molecular phylogenetics is by no means as straightforward as its pioneers believed . . . The Byzantine dynamics of genome change has many other consequences for molecular phylogenetics, including the fact that different genes tell different stories" ("Family Feud", New Scientist, vol 157 January 24th, 1998, p39). 4) Geological timescale questioned. Evolution theory depends upon the great age of rocks calculated by the geologic timescale. This scale was based upon principles of geology recently invalidated by laboratory experiments. (French Academy of Science 1986, 1988, Geological Society 1993, Fusion, May-June 2000). If this fact had been known in the 19th century, Darwin could never have formulated his theory. Evolution depends upon geological formations taking millions of years to form, and Darwin's geologist friend Charles Lyell provided those years with his principles of geology. It is these principles that now stand refuted. New knowledge of geology allows the reconstruction of the original conditions in which the rocks were formed. These original conditions include the time taken for formation. In reconstructions, the time taken is shown to have been in weeks or even days rather than millions of years (see www.geology.ref.ac/berthault) 5) Evolution ignores laws of physics. The supposed evolutionary process breaks the most universal and best-proved law of physics, the law of increasing entropy, known as the second law of thermodynamics. It applies not only in physical and chemical systems, but also in biological and geological systems, in fact all systems, without exception. The law stipulates that all systems tend to lose order. They go towards disorganisation and loss of complexity. The law of increasing entropy therefore precludes evolution, because all evolutionary systems are expected to increase in order and complexity. Physicists E.H. Lieb and Jacob Yngvason explain: "No exception to the second law of thermodynamics has ever been found, not even a tiny one. Like conservation of energy [the `first law'], the existence of a law so precise and so independent of details of models must have a logical foundation that is independent of the fact that matter is composed of interacting particles" ("A Fresh Look at Entropy and the Second Law of Thermodynamics", Physics Today, vol 53, April 2000, p32). Despite the above, and many other facts, a naturalistic origin of mankind and the cosmos continues to be justified by evolution theory. The idea taught to students, that everything evolved, even religion, has led to a massive decline in faith and rampant materialism. The plentiful contrary arguments are withheld.“ www.irishtimes.com It’s the last sentence of this article that formed the basis for the mission statement of DissentFromDarwin.org, which has as its mission statement: “A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism During recent decades, new scientific evidence from many scientific disciplines such as cosmology, physics, biology, ‘artificial intelligence’ research, and others have caused scientists to begin questioning Darwinism’s central tenet of natural selection and studying the evidence supporting it in greater detail. Yet public TV programs, educational policy statements, and science textbooks have asserted that Darwin’s theory of evolution fully explains the complexity of living things. The public has been assured that all known evidence supports Darwinism and that virtually every scientist in the world believes the theory to be true. The scientists on this list dispute the first claim and stand as living testimony in contradiction to the second. Since Discovery Institute launched this list in 2001, hundreds of scientists have courageously stepped forward to sign their names. The list is growing and includes scientists from the US National Academy of Sciences, Russian, Hungarian and Czech National Academies, as well as from universities such as Yale, Princeton, Stanford, MIT, UC Berkeley, UCLA, and others. A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism ‘We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged.’ ‘There is scientific dissent from Darwinism. It deserves to be heard.’ ” dissentfromdarwin.org As to the author, yes he is from a religious organization and may be thought to have a vested interest in whether the theory of evolution is true. But that should no more disqualify his scientific criticisms than an atheist and supporter of the theory of evolution who also has a vested interest in whether the theory is true. Those who cannot refute substance often question the source. If substance can be refuted, it must be refuted by substance. |
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coram_deo 28-Jul-21, 00:40 |
The video is nearly an hour but well worth watching. www.hoover.org Here is a summary: “Recorded on June 6, 2019 in Italy. Based on new evidence and knowledge that functioning proteins are extremely rare, should Darwin’s theory of evolution be dismissed, dissected, developed or replaced with a theory of intelligent design? Has Darwinism really failed? Peter Robinson discusses it with David Berlinski, David Gelernter, and Stephen Meyer, who have raised doubts about Darwin’s theory in their two books and essay, respectively The Deniable Darwin, Darwin’s Doubt, and “Giving Up Darwin” (published in the Claremont Review of Books). Robinson asks them to convince him that the term “species” has not been defined by the authors to Darwin’s disadvantage. Gelernter replies to this and explains, as he expressed in his essay, that he sees Darwin’s theory as beautiful (which made it difficult for him to give it up): “Beauty is often a telltale sign of truth. Beauty is our guide to the intellectual universe—walking beside us through the uncharted wilderness, pointing us in the right direction, keeping us on track—most of the time.” Gelernter notes that there’s no reason to doubt that Darwin successfully explained the small adjustments by which an organism adapts to local circumstances: changes to fur density or wing style or beak shape. Yet there are many reasons to doubt whether Darwin can answer the hard questions and explain the big picture—not the fine-tuning of existing species but the emergence of new ones. Meyer explains Darwinism as a comprehensive synthesis, which gained popularity for its appeal. Meyer also mentions that one cannot disregard that Darwin’s book was based on the facts present in the 19th century. Robinson then asks the panel whether Darwin’s theory of gradual evolution is contradicted by the explosion of fossil records in the Cambrian period, when there was a sudden occurrence of many species over the span of approximately seventy million years (Meyer noted that the date range for the Cambrian period is actually narrowing). Meyer replies that even population genetics, the mathematical branch of Darwinian theory, has not been able to support the explosion of fossil records during the Cambrian period, biologically or geologically. Robinson than asks about Darwin’s main problem, molecular biology, to which Meyer explains, comparing it to digital world, that building a new biological function is similar to building a new code, which Darwin could not understand in his era. Berlinski does not second this and states that the cell represents very complex machinery, with complexities increasing over time, which is difficult to explain by a theory. Gelernter throws light on this by giving an example of a necklace on which the positioning of different beads can lead to different permutations and combinations; it is really tough to choose the best possible combination, more difficult than finding a needle in a haystack. He seconds Meyer’s statement that it was impossible for Darwin to understand that in his era, since the math is easy but he did not have the facts. Meyer further explains how difficult it is to know what a protein can do to a cell, the vast combinations it can produce, and how rare is the possibility of finding a functional protein. He then talks about the formation of brand-new organisms, for which mutation must affect genes early in the life form’s development in order to control the expression of other genes as the organism grows. “Intelligent design” is something only Meyer agrees with, but Berlinski replies that as a scientific approach, one can agree or disagree with it, but should not reject it. Meyer talks about the major discovery in the 1950s and ’60s concerning the DNA molecule, which encodes information in a somewhat digital format, providing researchers with the opportunity to trace the information back to its source. Gelernter argues that if there was/is an intelligent designer then why is the design not the most efficient, rather than prone to all sorts of problems, including the mental and emotional. Robinson quotes Gelernter: “Darwinism is no longer just a scientific theory but a basis of a worldview, and an emergency . . . religion for the many troubled souls who need one.” Gelernter further adds that it’s a fantastically challenging problem that Darwin chose to address. How difficult will it be for scientists to move on from Darwin’s theory of evolution? Will each scientist need to examine the evidence for his or herself? These are some of most important questions facing science in the 21st century.“ |
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coram_deo 28-Jul-21, 01:02 |
“This is important. Yale University computer scientist David Gelernter is a polymath, a brilliant writer, artist, and thinker. Famed both for his specific scientific expertise, and for his cultural, political, and historical reflections, he’s also now a confessed Darwin skeptic. More than a skeptic really. In a wonderful essay in the new issue of The Claremont Review of Books, ‘Giving Up Darwin,’ he credits reading Stephen Meyer’s book Darwin’s Doubt as the primary cause of his rejecting neo-Darwinian evolution, a ‘brilliant and beautiful scientific theory’ but one that’s now been overtaken by science. An Intellectual Landmark He calls Darwin’s Doubt ‘one of the most important books in a generation,’ a ‘landmark in the intellectual history of Darwinism,’ and says that, ‘Few open-minded people will finish it with their faith in Darwin intact.’ Well, ‘open-minded’ is the key qualifier, isn’t it? Dr. Gelernter is not on board with intelligent design: ‘Meyer doesn’t only demolish Darwin; he defends a replacement theory, intelligent design (I.D.). Although I can’t accept intelligent design as Meyer presents it, he does show that it is a plain case of the emperor’s new clothes: it says aloud what anyone who ponders biology must think, at some point, while sifting possible answers to hard questions. Intelligent design as Meyer explains it never uses religious arguments, draws religious conclusions, or refers to religion in any way. It does underline an obvious but important truth: Darwin’s mission was exactly to explain the flagrant appearance of design in nature.’ The Deciding Factor While Gelernter is a religiously observant Jew, he makes clear that, despite what the critics so often say, neither for him nor for Meyer is religion the deciding factor. Science is: ‘The religion is all on the other side. Meyer and other proponents of I.D. are the dispassionate intellectuals making orderly scientific arguments. Some I.D.-haters have shown themselves willing to use any argument — fair or not, true or not, ad hominem or not — to keep this dangerous idea locked in a box forever. They remind us of the extent to which Darwinism is no longer just a scientific theory but the basis of a worldview, and an emergency replacement religion for the many troubled souls who need one.’ It’s worldview commitments that drive loyalty to Darwinism, along with considerations of career and personal prestige, joined with herd thinking and sheer complacency. What Now for Biology? I’ll have more to say about this remarkable testament to independent thinking. But as for biology, now what? ‘Darwin’s intellectual daring will always be inspiring. The man will always be admired.’ I have no doubt about that. But: ‘How cleanly and quickly can the field get over Darwin, and move on? — with due allowance for every Darwinist’s having to study all the evidence for himself? There is one of most important questions facing science in the 21st century.’ This long, thoughtful, and beautifully written article reflects David Gelernter’s own willingness to ‘study all the evidence for himself.’ He cites the work of our colleagues Douglas Axe, David Berlinski, and Paul Nelson by name. He notes that two books I collected for Discovery Institute Press, Berlinski’s The Deniable Darwin and Other Essays and Debating Darwin’s Doubt, he also found to be ‘essential.’ Wow. A lot of writers, a lot of scientists, less gifted than Professor Gelernter refuse to think through these issues for themselves. We’re familiar with the results. Others take the plunge: Tom Wolfe, Thomas Nagel, Dennis Prager, and Ben Shapiro are four quite different but all fiercely independent voices who startled friends and enemies by studying the matter and coming out as Darwin critics. All had their brush with Stephen Meyer’s work, including Darwin’s Doubt and Signature in the Cell. Just the Past Few Months We are watching as one support after another peels away from the intellectual ‘consensus’ supporting evolutionary theory. We’ve seen this in just the past few months: Three Nobel Prize-winning scientists endorse chemist Marcos Eberlin’s case for intelligent design, argued in his brand new book Foresight: How the Chemistry of Life Reveals Planning and Purpose. Well over a thousand PhD scientists declare themselves publicly as evolution skeptics. Modern ID theory’s founding scientist, biochemist Michael Behe, engages in an extended written debate with one of the world’s most distinguished evolutionary researchers, National Academy of Sciences member Richard Lenski, over Behe’s new book Darwin Devolves — and wins (as any fair observer would agree from the record of exchanges between Behe and his critics). Scientists, intellectuals, and ordinary thoughtful adults are giving up the old pledge of allegiance to Darwin. The evolution in thought is very gradual, admittedly, but it’s unmistakably happening.” evolutionnews.org |
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coram_deo 28-Jul-21, 02:37 |
This is the first excerpt: “Darwinian evolution is a brilliant and beautiful scientific theory. Once it was a daring guess. Today it is basic to the credo that defines the modern worldview. Accepting the theory as settled truth—no more subject to debate than the earth being round or the sky blue or force being mass times acceleration—certifies that you are devoutly orthodox in your scientific views; which in turn is an essential first step towards being taken seriously in any part of modern intellectual life. But what if Darwin was wrong? Like so many others, I grew up with Darwin’s theory, and had always believed it was true. I had heard doubts over the years from well-informed, sometimes brilliant people, but I had my hands full cultivating my garden, and it was easier to let biology take care of itself. But in recent years, reading and discussion have shut that road down for good. This is sad. It is no victory of any sort for religion. It is a defeat for human ingenuity. It means one less beautiful idea in our world, and one more hugely difficult and important problem back on mankind’s to-do list. But we each need to make our peace with the facts, and not try to make life on earth simpler than it really is. Charles Darwin explained monumental change by making one basic assumption—all life-forms descend from a common ancestor—and adding two simple processes anyone can understand: random, heritable variation and natural selection. Out of these simple ingredients, conceived to be operating blindly over hundreds of millions of years, he conjured up change that seems like the deliberate unfolding of a grand plan, designed and carried out with superhuman genius. Could nature really have pulled out of its hat the invention of life, of increasingly sophisticated life-forms and, ultimately, the unique-in-the-cosmos (so far as we know) human mind—given no strategy but trial and error? The mindless accumulation of small changes? It is an astounding idea. Yet Darwin’s brilliant and lovely theory explains how it could have happened. Its beauty is important. Beauty is often a telltale sign of truth. Beauty is our guide to the intellectual universe—walking beside us through the uncharted wilderness, pointing us in the right direction, keeping us on track—most of the time. Demolishing a Worldview There’s no reason to doubt that Darwin successfully explained the small adjustments by which an organism adapts to local circumstances: changes to fur density or wing style or beak shape. Yet there are many reasons to doubt whether he can answer the hard questions and explain the big picture—not the fine-tuning of existing species but the emergence of new ones. The origin of species is exactly what Darwin cannot explain. Stephen Meyer’s thoughtful and meticulous Darwin’s Doubt (2013) convinced me that Darwin has failed. He cannot answer the big question. Two other books are also essential: The Deniable Darwin and Other Essays (2009), by David Berlinski, and Debating Darwin’s Doubt (2015), an anthology edited by David Klinghoffer, which collects some of the arguments Meyer’s book stirred up. These three form a fateful battle group that most people would rather ignore. Bringing to bear the work of many dozen scientists over many decades, Meyer, who after a stint as a geophysicist in Dallas earned a Ph.D. in History and Philosophy of Science from Cambridge and now directs the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, disassembles the theory of evolution piece by piece. Darwin’s Doubt is one of the most important books in a generation. Few open-minded people will finish it with their faith in Darwin intact. Meyer doesn’t only demolish Darwin; he defends a replacement theory, intelligent design (I.D.). Although I can’t accept intelligent design as Meyer presents it, he does show that it is a plain case of the emperor’s new clothes: it says aloud what anyone who ponders biology must think, at some point, while sifting possible answers to hard questions. Intelligent design as Meyer explains it never uses religious arguments, draws religious conclusions, or refers to religion in any way. It does underline an obvious but important truth: Darwin’s mission was exactly to explain the flagrant appearance of design in nature. The religion is all on the other side. Meyer and other proponents of I.D. are the dispassionate intellectuals making orderly scientific arguments. Some I.D.-haters have shown themselves willing to use any argument—fair or not, true or not, ad hominem or not—to keep this dangerous idea locked in a box forever. They remind us of the extent to which Darwinism is no longer just a scientific theory but the basis of a worldview, and an emergency replacement religion for the many troubled souls who need one. As for Biblical religion, it forces its way into the discussion although Meyer didn’t invite it, and neither did Darwin. Some have always been bothered by the harm Darwin is said to have done religion. His theory has been thought by some naïfs (fundamentalists as well as intellectuals) to have shown or alleged that the Bible is wrong, and Judeo-Christian religion bunk. But this view assumes a childishly primitive reading of Scripture. Anyone can see that there are two different creation stories in Genesis, one based on seven days, the other on the Garden of Eden. When the Bible gives us two different versions of one story, it stands to reason that the facts on which they disagree are without basic religious significance. The facts on which they agree are the ones that matter: God created the universe, and put man there for a reason. Darwin has nothing to say on these or any other key religious issues. Fundamentalists and intellectuals might go on arguing these things forever. But normal people will want to come to grips with Meyer and the downfall of a beautiful idea. I will mention several of his arguments, one of them in (just a bit of) detail. This is one of the most important intellectual issues of modern times, and every thinking person has the right and duty to judge for himself.“ claremontreviewofbooks.com |
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coram_deo 28-Jul-21, 10:06 |
“Looking for Evidence Darwin himself had reservations about his theory, shared by some of the most important biologists of his time. And the problems that worried him have only grown more substantial over the decades. In the famous ‘Cambrian explosion’ of around half a billion years ago, a striking variety of new organisms—including the first-ever animals—pop up suddenly in the fossil record over a mere 70-odd million years. This great outburst followed many hundreds of millions of years of slow growth and scanty fossils, mainly of single-celled organisms, dating back to the origins of life roughly three and half billion years ago. Darwin’s theory predicts that new life forms evolve gradually from old ones in a constantly branching, spreading tree of life. Those brave new Cambrian creatures must therefore have had Precambrian predecessors, similar but not quite as fancy and sophisticated. They could not have all blown out suddenly, like a bunch of geysers. Each must have had a closely related predecessor, which must have had its own predecessors: Darwinian evolution is gradual, step-by-step. All those predecessors must have come together, further back, into a series of branches leading down to the (long ago) trunk. But those predecessors of the Cambrian creatures are missing. Darwin himself was disturbed by their absence from the fossil record. He believed they would turn up eventually. Some of his contemporaries (such as the eminent Harvard biologist Louis Agassiz) held that the fossil record was clear enough already, and showed that Darwin’s theory was wrong. Perhaps only a few sites had been searched for fossils, but they had been searched straight down. The Cambrian explosion had been unearthed, and beneath those Cambrian creatures their Precambrian predecessors should have been waiting—and weren’t. In fact, the fossil record as a whole lacked the upward-branching structure Darwin predicted. The trunk was supposed to branch into many different species, each species giving rise to many genera, and towards the top of the tree you would find so much diversity that you could distinguish separate phyla—the large divisions (sponges, mosses, mollusks, chordates, and so on) that comprise the kingdoms of animals, plants, and several others—take your pick. But, as Berlinski points out, the fossil record shows the opposite: ‘representatives of separate phyla appearing first followed by lower-level diversification on those basic themes.’ In general, ‘most species enter the evolutionary order fully formed and then depart unchanged.’ The incremental development of new species is largely not there. Those missing pre-Cambrian organisms have still not turned up. (Although fossils are subject to interpretation, and some biologists place pre-Cambrian life-forms closer than others to the new-fangled Cambrian creatures.) Some researchers have guessed that those missing Precambrian precursors were too small or too soft-bodied to have made good fossils. Meyer notes that fossil traces of ancient bacteria and single-celled algae have been discovered: smallness per se doesn’t mean that an organism can’t leave fossil traces—although the existence of fossils depends on the surroundings in which the organism lived, and the history of the relevant rock during the ages since it died. The story is similar for soft-bodied organisms. Hard-bodied forms are more likely to be fossilized than soft-bodied ones, but many fossils of soft-bodied organisms and body parts do exist. Precambrian fossil deposits have been discovered in which tiny, soft-bodied embryo sponges are preserved—but no predecessors to the celebrity organisms of the Cambrian explosion. This sort of negative evidence can’t ever be conclusive. But the ever-expanding fossil archives don’t look good for Darwin, who made clear and concrete predictions that have (so far) been falsified—according to many reputable paleontologists, anyway. When does the clock run out on those predictions? Never. But any thoughtful person must ask himself whether scientists today are looking for evidence that bears on Darwin, or looking to explain away evidence that contradicts him. There are some of each. Scientists are only human, and their thinking (like everyone else’s) is colored by emotion.“ claremontreviewofbooks.com |
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coram_deo 29-Jul-21, 17:06 |
This is an interesting article on the origin of music, as related in the Holy Bible, and whether the theory of evolution can adequately explain it. “Humans seem to be drawn irresistibly to music. We may not all know how many semiquavers make a minim, but we know what kind of music helps us to relax after a hard day. Nor do we need to know whether a sixteenth-century Phagotus was made with a conical or cylindrical bored pipe in order to appreciate the delicacy of Handel’s ‘Nightingale Chorus’ or the simple beauty of The Beatles’ song ‘Yesterday’. In fact, even if we were tone deaf it wouldn’t stop most of us from entering a debate about changing the national anthem. Soldiers march better when they have band music to help them keep in step. Mental patients are said to have been calmed by the playing of soothing tunes. Work is done faster when brisk music is being played within hearing distance. National pride is heightened when foreigners hear songs from their home country… Music is uniquely wonderful. It is incapable of being touched, yet it touches everyone who is capable of hearing sounds. It can seemingly evoke any emotion: we instinctively respond to happy tunes, mournful songs, beautiful melodies, inspiring anthems, stirring hymns, majestic orchestrations. Every sound we hear actually fits somewhere on the all-encompassing music scale. Perhaps your phone rings in F above middle C; your china cup clinks a high D when you stir it; maybe you have a shoe that squeaks in A and a door-knocker that sounds a dull B-flat. Music is simply any combination of sounds that is pleasing to our ears. Take your phone, cup, squeaky shoe and door-knocker, add a couple of bottles that sound G and C, and you’ve got enough notes for a rough version of the famous ‘Ode to Joy’! Have you ever thought what would happen if no one could compose music? With no composers there would be no orchestras, no operas, no ballets or ballerinas, no musical comedies, no songs of triumph, no church organists, no singing, no chiming clocks, no musical instruments, no lullabies to sing your new-born babe to sleep. Film-makers would have no one to write background music: many radio stations would lose most of their programs; TV advertisers would have to find new ways to attract our attention. The world certainly would be a lacklustre place without composing geniuses such as Johann Sebastian Bach and Burt Bacharach. Think of the effect on recording companies and carnivals! Now try to imagine what our world would be like with no musical sounds. We would simply have no sound at all. Your china cup couldn’t clink that high D, your shoe wouldn’t squeak, you wouldn’t be able to utter or hear a sound. Music permeates every area of life in which sound is heard and sound had to come complete right from the start. To claim that musical sounds evolved by random, haphazard processes is patently absurd since the ‘evolution’ of sound is a technical impossibility! Who can imagine half a boom, part of a click, two-thirds of a tinkle, or 97 per cent of a thump? Booms, clicks, tinkles and thumps make up most percussion music. But that’s not all. How can the evolutionist even begin to explain the development of our capacity to perceive certain combinations of sounds as pleasing and harmonious, our capacity to recognise certain patterns as ‘music’ and others as ‘noise’? The tremendous amount of complexity and organisation demonstrated by our capacity to perceive, enjoy and ‘create’ these patterns defies explanation by ‘chance’. What conceivable survival advantage can there have been? The attempts of evolutionist musicians to explain the origin of music have been somewhat creative even though lacking in detail. Cecil Forsyth’s monumental book on Orchestration is a classic in its field. In this work he describes in detail the workings of practically every musical instrument known. He traces the intricate development, design, and make-up of instruments that leaves the reader marvelling at the creative prowess people have used to produce such amazingly effective instruments. Yet of the origin of the first instruments, Forsyth speculates: ‘Earlier still than this we may imagine man as just emerging from his state of savagery with a new and wonderful craving for something more than mere rhythm, a craving which may have been first satisfied by means of a hard blade of grass held between his two thumbs.’ Of the origin of music, Forsyth conjectures further: ‘We may suppose a time at the beginning of things when the naked savage squatted down on his native mud, his mind half entranced, passive and vacant to every influence of the wild, but still with a thirst in his nature which could only be quenched by the endless drum-drum-drum of his knuckles on the block earth. Beyond this we can imagine nothing but the animal.’ So, according to Forsyth the instruments which have been artistically designed, expertly manufactured, and scientifically classified play musical sounds which ‘evolved’ from a few thumps on the black earth by a naked savage. Forsyth admits he is only guessing, because he truly doesn’t know how music originated. Among all societies we find music in some form. Non-creationists conclude that even music in its most elementary state represents a later stage of development ‘from an unknown original’. In many tribes though, it includes features familiar to European music, such as harmony and imitation. So — what is the origin of music? It came from God. It was given to man at the moment of creation when ‘the morning stars sang together’ (Job 38:7). The Bible alone provides an acceptable explanation for the origin of music and musical instruments. We read in Scripture that God surrounds Himself with angelic choirs and the songs of the redeemed sinners (Rev. 14:2–3). A heavenly choir of angels sang at the birth of Christ. We are told to ‘sing to the Lord’ as His saints, to ‘praise His holy name’ (Psalm 30:4). Again, we are exhorted to ‘sing joyfully to the Lord’ and to ‘praise the Lord with the harp’, ‘make music to Him on the ten-stringed lyre’, ‘play skilfully and shout for joy’ (Psalm 33:2–3). The purpose of music was, and is, to praise God. Music provides joy because music has been provided by God. The theory of evolution can never postulate even a faintly satisfactory explanation for the origin of music or why it affects us. When we realise that God wants us to worship Him through music we see God as the Master Musician — the conductor of all life. Musical instruments are mentioned early in the Bible. We are told in Genesis 4:21 that Jubal was the father of all who play the harp and flute. Without the Bible we are unable to identify the first musician or the earliest instrument makers. It also tells us, in the words of David the musician: ‘The fool says in his heart, there is no God’ (Psalm 14:1). Serious reflection on the origin and nature of music may yet redeem many such fools.“ creation.com |
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coram_deo 29-Jul-21, 22:59 |
Yes, sleep serves many purposes, but wouldn’t conscious rest be more of an evolutionary advantage since a species would be less vulnerable to predators? Wouldn’t fewer hours of sleep be more of an evolutionary advantage than the optimal eight hours? Here’s an excerpt from an article that says sleep remains a mystery for the evolutionist, but then suggests an evolutionary reason for it: “It is ‘one of the last great biological mysteries’ that although sleep is ubiquitous and essential, we have yet to determine its true evolutionary purpose. Even though every species of animal, as well as many plants, go to sleep every day, a satisfactory answer to one of biology’s fundamental questions is lacking. We know a lot about the physiology of sleep, with more being learned every day. We know what happens during sleep, and what happens when we or other animals are deprived of it. What we still do not know is why sleep exists in the first place. What Allen Rechtschaffen wrote in 1998 is still true: A number of sleep theories have been put forth and fluctuations in biological patterns have been measured during sleep, but the function of sleep is not yet understood. Sleep can be understood as fulfilling many different functions but intuition suggests there is one essential function. The discovery of this function will open an important door to the understanding of biological processes.” The author then proposes this hypothesis as an evolutionary reason for sleep: “Daytime and nighttime are different and distinct niches, creating an evolutionary push and pull that would make a perfect ‘fit’ impossible. Evolutionarily, being forced to evolve into two separate niches at the same time forces an organism to develop structures and functions that fit neither fully. We and nearly every other species on earth must navigate an environment of approximately half light and half dark. Since other organisms change in response to that cycle, there are also different biological environments that exist between night and day, further enforcing the differences between the two niches. The physiology of every organism is driven by evolutionary pressure from its environment. Millions of years before there were animals, plants, or even DNA on the Earth, there were two niches: day and night. The instant life began these two very different environments were waiting for it, at nearly every spot on Earth. Early life and all subsequent life was forced to confront a dilemma of how to adapt to these two rapidly alternating niches. Being awake day and night forces an organism to adapt to both light and dark, as well as to the different organisms populating each, and to do so would compromise its ability to perform well in either. Since the day/night schedule has been around since before there was life on Earth it would be ingrained in all but the most sequestered organisms. The daily cycle is so constant, and at such a high frequency, repeating every single day, that it is impossible to keep up (i.e. circumnavigating the earth every day) so the only alternative is to change physiology to match. The day/night problem therefore created a powerful, pervasive and inescapable selection pressure. Adaptation to these two niches must therefore lie deep within our DNA, as in fact, we find a circadian clock functioning in all cells of all organisms. Evolution quickly devised a way for organisms, particularly animals to change physiology each day – they go to sleep. It is as if evolution were saying ‘Pick one, either day or night, and optimize your structure, function and behavior for that environment, then get away from the one you did not choose, to avoid attempting to optimize to both.’ ” www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov Interesting hypothesis, but like so much with the theory of evolution, it’s just a guess. And it doesn’t explain why sleep requires unconsciousness. Apparently, the only difference (or perhaps the main difference) between being asleep and being in a coma is that the person who’s asleep can be awakened if the stimuli is strong enough. But they’re both unconscious and both unproductive and vulnerable. |
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coram_deo 02-Aug-21, 14:04 |
BTW, I’m aware a rebuttal exists to this article and, in the interests of fairness, I’ll be posting that rebuttal (along with a rebuttal to that rebuttal) after I finish posting Gelernter’s article. “The Advent of Molecular Biology Darwin’s main problem, however, is molecular biology. There was no such thing in his own time. We now see from inside what he could only see from outside, as if he had developed a theory of mobile phone evolution without knowing that there were computers and software inside or what the digital revolution was all about. Under the circumstances, he did brilliantly. Biology in his time was for naturalists, not laboratory scientists. Doctor Dolittle was a naturalist. (He is the hero of the wonderful children’s books by Hugh Lofting, now unfortunately nearing extinction.) The doctor loved animals and understood them, and had a sharp eye for all of nature not too different from Wordsworth’s or Goethe’s. But the character of the field has changed, and it’s not surprising that old theories don’t necessarily still work. Darwin’s theory is simple to grasp; its simplicity is the heart of its brilliance and power. We all know that variation occurs naturally among individuals of the same type—white or black sheep, dove-gray versus off-white or pale beige pigeons, boring and sullen undergraduates versus charming, lissome ones. We all know that many variations have no effect on a creature’s prospects, but some do. A sheep born with extra-warm wool will presumably do better at surviving a rough Scottish winter than his normal-wooled friends. Such a sheep would be more likely than normal sheep to live long enough to mate, and pass on its superior trait to the next generation. Over millions of years, small good-for-survival variations accumulate, and eventually (says Darwin) you have a brand new species. The same mechanism naturally favors genes that are right for the local environment—warm wool in Scotland, light and comfortable wool for the tropics, other varieties for mountains and deserts. Thus one species (your standard sheep) might eventually become four specialized ones. And thus new species should develop from old in the upward-branching tree pattern Darwin described. The advent of molecular biology made it possible to transform Darwinism into Neo-Darwinism. The new version explains (it doesn’t merely cite) natural variation, as the consequence of random change or mutation to the genetic information within cells that deal with reproduction. Those cells can pass genetic change onward to the next generation, thus changing—potentially—the future of the species and not just one individual’s career. The engine that powers Neo-Darwinian evolution is pure chance and lots of time. By filling in the details of cellular life, molecular biology makes it possible to estimate the power of that simple mechanism. But what does generating new forms of life entail? Many biologists agree that generating a new shape of protein is the essence of it. Only if Neo-Darwinian evolution is creative enough to do that is it capable of creating new life-forms and pushing evolution forward. Proteins are the special ops forces (or maybe the Marines) of living cells, except that they are common instead of rare; they do all the heavy lifting, all the tricky and critical assignments, in a dazzling range of roles. Proteins called enzymes catalyze all sorts of reactions and drive cellular metabolism. Other proteins (such as collagen) give cells shape and structure, like tent poles but in far more shapes. Nerve function, muscle function, and photosynthesis are all driven by proteins. And in doing these jobs and many others, the actual, 3-D shape of the protein molecule is important. So, is the simple neo-Darwinian mechanism up to this task? Are random mutation plus natural selection sufficient to create new protein shapes? Mutations How to make proteins is our first question. Proteins are chains: linear sequences of atom-groups, each bonded to the next. A protein molecule is based on a chain of amino acids; 150 elements is a ‘modest-sized’ chain; the average is 250. Each link is chosen, ordinarily, from one of 20 amino acids. A chain of amino acids is a polypeptide—‘peptide’ being the type of chemical bond that joins one amino acid to the next. But this chain is only the starting point: chemical forces among the links make parts of the chain twist themselves into helices; others straighten out, and then, sometimes, jackknife repeatedly, like a carpenter’s rule, into flat sheets. Then the whole assemblage folds itself up like a complex sheet of origami paper. And the actual 3-D shape of the resulting molecule is (as I have said) important. Imagine a 150-element protein as a chain of 150 beads, each bead chosen from 20 varieties. But: only certain chains will work. Only certain bead combinations will form themselves into stable, useful, well-shaped proteins. So how hard is it to build a useful, well-shaped protein? Can you throw a bunch of amino acids together and assume that you will get something good? Or must you choose each element of the chain with painstaking care? It happens to be very hard to choose the right beads. Inventing a new protein means inventing a new gene. (Enter, finally, genes, DNA etc., with suitable fanfare.) Genes spell out the links of a protein chain, amino acid by amino acid. Each gene is a segment of DNA, the world’s most admired macromolecule. DNA, of course, is the famous double helix or spiral staircase, where each step is a pair of nucleotides. As you read the nucleotides along one edge of the staircase (sitting on one step and bumping your way downwards to the next and the next), each group of three nucleotides along the way specifies an amino acid. Each three-nucleotide group is a codon, and the correspondence between codons and amino acids is the genetic code. (The four nucleotides in DNA are abbreviated T, A, C and G, and you can look up the code in a high school textbook: TTA and TTC stand for phenylalanine, TCT for serine, and so on.) Your task is to invent a new gene by mutation—by the accidental change of one codon to a different codon. You have two possible starting points for this attempt. You could mutate an existing gene, or mutate gibberish. You have a choice because DNA actually consists of valid genes separated by long sequences of nonsense. Most biologists think that the nonsense sequences are the main source of new genes. If you tinker with a valid gene, you will almost certainly make it worse—to the point where its protein misfires and endangers (or kills) its organism—long before you start making it better. The gibberish sequences, on the other hand, sit on the sidelines without making proteins, and you can mutate them, so far as we know, without endangering anything. The mutated sequence can then be passed on to the next generation, where it can be mutated again. Thus mutations can accumulate on the sidelines without affecting the organism. But if you mutate your way to an actual, valid new gene, your new gene can create a new protein and thereby, potentially, play a role in evolution. Mutations themselves enter the picture when DNA splits in half down the center of the staircase, thereby allowing the enclosing cell to split in half, and the encompassing organism to grow. Each half-staircase summons a matching set of nucleotides from the surrounding chemical soup; two complete new DNA molecules emerge. A mistake in this elegant replication process—the wrong nucleotide answering the call, a nucleotide typo—yields a mutation, either to a valid blueprint or a stretch of gibberish.” claremontreviewofbooks.com |
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coram_deo 02-Aug-21, 14:25 |
“Building a Better Protein Now at last we are ready to take Darwin out for a test drive. Starting with 150 links of gibberish, what are the chances that we can mutate our way to a useful new shape of protein? We can ask basically the same question in a more manageable way: what are the chances that a random 150-link sequence will create such a protein? Nonsense sequences are essentially random. Mutations are random. Make random changes to a random sequence and you get another random sequence. So, close your eyes, make 150 random choices from your 20 bead boxes and string up your beads in the order in which you chose them. What are the odds that you will come up with a useful new protein? It’s easy to see that the total number of possible sequences is immense. It’s easy to believe (although non-chemists must take their colleagues’ word for it) that the subset of useful sequences—sequences that create real, usable proteins—is, in comparison, tiny. But we must know how immense and how tiny. The total count of possible 150-link chains, where each link is chosen separately from 20 amino acids, is 20^150. In other words, many. 20^150 roughly equals 10^195, and there are only 10^80 atoms in the universe. What proportion of these many polypeptides are useful proteins? Douglas Axe did a series of experiments to estimate how many 150-long chains are capable of stable folds—of reaching the final step in the protein-creation process (the folding) and of holding their shapes long enough to be useful. (Axe is a distinguished biologist with five-star breeding: he was a graduate student at Caltech, then joined the Centre for Protein Engineering at Cambridge. The biologists whose work Meyer discusses are mainly first-rate Establishment scientists.) He estimated that, of all 150-link amino acid sequences, 1 in 10^74 will be capable of folding into a stable protein. To say that your chances are 1 in 10^74 is no different, in practice, from saying that they are zero. It’s not surprising that your chances of hitting a stable protein that performs some useful function, and might therefore play a part in evolution, are even smaller. Axe puts them at 1 in 10^77. In other words: immense is so big, and tiny is so small, that neo-Darwinian evolution is—so far—a dead loss. Try to mutate your way from 150 links of gibberish to a working, useful protein and you are guaranteed to fail. Try it with ten mutations, a thousand, a million—you fail. The odds bury you. It can’t be done. A Bad Bet But neo-Darwinianism understands that mutations are rare, and successful ones even scarcer. To balance that out, there are many organisms and a staggering immensity of time. Your chances of winning might be infinitesimal. But if you play the game often enough, you win in the end, right? After all, it works for Powerball! Do the numbers balance out? Is Neo-Darwinian evolution plausible after all? Axe reasoned as follows. Consider the whole history of living things—the entire group of every living organism ever. It is dominated numerically by bacteria. All other organisms, from tangerine trees to coral polyps, are only a footnote. Suppose, then, that every bacterium that has ever lived contributes one mutation before its demise to the history of life. This is a generous assumption; most bacteria pass on their genetic information unchanged, unmutated. Mutations are the exception. In any case, there have evidently been, in the whole history of life, around 10^40 bacteria—yielding around 10^40 mutations under Axe’s assumptions. That is a very large number of chances at any game. But given that the odds each time are 1 to 10^77 against, it is not large enough. The odds against blind Darwinian chance having turned up even one mutation with the potential to push evolution forward are 10^40x(1/10^77)—10^40 tries, where your odds of success each time are 1 in 10^77—which equals 1 in 10^37. In practical terms, those odds are still zero. Zero odds of producing a single promising mutation in the whole history of life. Darwin loses. His idea is still perfectly reasonable in the abstract. But concretely, he is overwhelmed by numbers he couldn’t possibly have foreseen: the ridiculously large number of amino-acid chains relative to number of useful proteins. Those numbers transcend the details of any particular set of estimates. The obvious fact is that genes, in storing blueprints for the proteins that form the basis of cellular life, encode an awe-inspiring amount of information. You don’t turn up a useful protein merely by doodling on the back of an envelope, any more than you write a Mozart aria by assembling three sheets of staff paper and scattering notes around. Profound biochemical knowledge is somehow, in some sense, captured in every description of a working protein. Where on earth did it all come from? Neo-Darwinianism says that nature simply rolls the dice, and if something useful emerges, great. Otherwise, try again. But useful sequences are so gigantically rare that this answer simply won’t work. Studies of the sort Meyer discusses show that Neo-Darwinism is the quintessence of a bad bet.” claremontreviewofbooks.com |
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coram_deo 02-Aug-21, 19:28 |
“The Great Darwinian Paradox There are many other problems besides proteins. One of the most basic, and the last I’ll mention here, calls into question the whole idea of gene mutations driving macro-evolution—the emergence of new forms of organism, versus mere variation on existing forms. To help create a brand new form of organism, a mutation must affect a gene that does its job early and controls the expression of other genes that come into play later on as the organism grows. But mutations to these early-acting “strategic” genes, which create the big body-plan changes required by macro-evolution, seem to be invariably fatal. They kill off the organism long before it can reproduce. This is common sense. Severely deformed creatures don’t ever seem fated to lead the way to glorious new forms of life. Instead, they die young. Evidently there are a total of no examples in the literature of mutations that affect early development and the body plan as a whole and are not fatal. The German geneticists Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard and Eric Wieschaus won the Nobel Prize in 1995 for the ‘Heidelberg screen,’ an exhaustive investigation of every observable or inducible mutation of Drosophila melanogaster (the same patient, long-suffering fruit fly I meddled with relentlessly in an undergraduate genetics lab in the 1970s). ‘[W]e think we’ve hit all the genes required to specify the body plan of Drosophila,’ said Wieschaus in answering a question after a talk. Not one, he continued, is ‘promising as raw materials for macroevolution’ —because mutations in them all killed off the fly long before it could mate. If an exhaustive search rules out every last plausible gene as a candidate for large-scale Drosophila evolution, where does that leave Darwin? Wieschaus continues: ‘What are—or what would be—the right mutations for major evolutionary change? And we don’t know the answer to that.’ There is a general principle here, similar to the earlier principle that the number of useless polypeptides crushes the number of useful ones. The Georgia Tech geneticist John F. McDonald calls this one a ‘great Darwinian paradox.’ Meyer explains: ‘genes that are obviously variable within natural populations seem to affect only minor aspects of form and function—while those genes that govern major changes, the very stuff of macroevolution, apparently do not vary or vary only to the detriment of the organism.’ The philosopher of biology Paul Nelson summarizes the body-plan problem: ‘Research on animal development and macroevolution over the last thirty years—research done from within the neo-Darwinian framework—has shown that the neo-Darwinian explanation for the origin of new body plans is overwhelmingly likely to be false—and for reasons that Darwin himself would have understood. Darwin would easily have understood that minor mutations are common but can’t create significant evolutionary change; major mutations are rare and fatal.’ It can hardly be surprising that the revolution in biological knowledge over the last half-century should call for a new understanding of the origin of species.” claremontreviewofbooks.com |
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coram_deo 02-Aug-21, 23:01 |
“Darwin’s Limits Intelligent Design, as Meyer describes it, is a simple and direct response to a specific event, the Cambrian explosion. The theory suggests that an intelligent cause intervened to create this extraordinary outburst. By ‘intelligent’ Meyer understands ‘conscious’; the theory suggests nothing more about the designer. But where is the evidence? To Meyer and other proponents, that is like asking—after you have come across a tree that is split vertically down the center and half burnt up—‘but where is the evidence of a lightning strike?’ The exceptional intricacy of living things, and their elaborate mechanisms for fitting precisely into their natural surroundings, seemed to cry out for an intelligent designer long before molecular biology and biochemistry. Darwin’s theory, after all, is an attempt to explain ‘design without a designer,’ according to evolutionary biologist Francisco Ayala. An intelligent designer might seem more necessary than ever now that we understand so much cellular biology, and the impossibly long odds facing any attempt to design proteins by chance, or assemble the regulatory mechanisms that control the life cycle of a cell. Meyer doesn’t reject Darwinian evolution. He only rejects it as a sufficient theory of life as we know it. He’s made a painstaking investigation of Darwin’s theory and has rejected it for many good reasons that he has carefully explained. He didn’t rush to embrace intelligent design. Just the opposite. But the explosion of detailed, precise information that was necessary to build the brand-new Cambrian organisms, and the fact that the information was encoded, represented symbolically, in DNA nucleotides, suggests to Meyer that an intelligent designer must have been responsible. ‘Our uniform experience of cause and effect shows that intelligent design is the only known cause of the origin of large amounts of functionally specified digital information,’ he writes. (‘Digital’ is confusing here; it only means information represented by a sequence of symbols.) Was the Cambrian Explosion unique in some absolute sense, or was it the extreme endpoint of a spectrum? After all, there were infusions of new genetic information before and after. Meyer himself writes that ‘the sudden appearance of the Cambrian animals was merely the most outstanding instance of a pattern of discontinuity that extends throughout the geologic column.’ It’s not easy to decide whether something stands alone or at the far end of some spectrum. Consider Meyer’s ‘functionally specified digital information.’ Information intended for one specific purpose and spelled out in a sequence of symbols is a rare bird in nature. It’s an outlier in the world of intelligence, too. We nearly always communicate in symbols that are used for many purposes; it’s hard for us to confine any symbol system to a single purpose. Even digits are used to represent numbers of many kinds, to express order as well as magnitude, as names (2001: A Space Odyssey) or parts of English phrases (‘second rate’). A line of music can be heard in the head, hummed or sung, played on a zither or performed by a large orchestra. Or it can serve as a single graphic symbol meaning ‘music.’ But the genetic code is used to specify the structure of certain molecules only (albeit in a series of separate steps and information-transfers within the cell). Nature, for its part, encodes information in many ways: airborne scents are important to bees, butterflies, elephants seeking to mate, birds avoiding trouble, and untold other creatures. The scent is a symbol; it’s not the scent that threatens the bird. Channels in sand dunes encode information about the passing breezes—and so on. There are endless examples—none approaching the sophistication and complexity of DNA coding. If Meyer were invoking a single intervention by an intelligent designer at the invention of life, or of consciousness, or rationality, or self-aware consciousness, the idea might seem more natural. But then we still haven’t explained the Cambrian explosion. An intelligent designer who interferes repeatedly, on the other hand, poses an even harder problem of explaining why he chose to act when he did. Such a cause would necessarily have some sense of the big picture of life on earth. What was his strategy? How did he manage to back himself into so many corners, wasting energy on so many doomed organisms? Granted, they might each have contributed genes to our common stockpile—but could hardly have done so in the most efficient way. What was his purpose? And why did he do such an awfully slipshod job? Why are we so disease prone, heartbreak prone, and so on? An intelligent designer makes perfect sense in the abstract. The real challenge is how to fit this designer into life as we know it. Intelligent design might well be the ultimate answer. But as a theory, it would seem to have a long way to go. A Final Challenge I might, myself, expect to find the answer in a phenomenon that acts as if it were a new and (thus far) unknown force or field associated with consciousness. I’d expect complex biochemistry to be consistently biased in the direction that leads closer to consciousness, as gravitation biases motion towards massive objects. I have no evidence for this idea. It’s just the way biology seems to work. Although Stephen Meyer’s book is a landmark in the intellectual history of Darwinism, the theory will be with us for a long time, exerting enormous cultural force. Darwin is no Newton. Newton’s physics survived Einstein and will always survive, because it explains the cases that dominate all of space-time except for the extreme ends of the spectrum, at the very smallest and largest scales. It’s just these most important cases, the ones we see all around us, that Darwin cannot explain. Yet his theory does explain cases of real significance. And Darwin’s intellectual daring will always be inspiring. The man will always be admired. He now poses a final challenge. Whether biology will rise to this last one as well as it did to the first, when his theory upset every apple cart, remains to be seen. How cleanly and quickly can the field get over Darwin, and move on?—with due allowance for every Darwinist’s having to study all the evidence for himself? There is one of most important questions facing science in the 21st century.” claremontreviewofbooks.com |
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coram_deo 03-Aug-21, 01:04 |
The Theory of Evolution is Not Science Consider this article, which says what I’ve been saying for years: “A World-Famous Chemist Tells The Truth: There’s No Scientist Alive Today Who Understands Macroevolution Professor James M. Tour is one of the ten most cited chemists in the world. He is famous for his work on nanocars, nanoelectronics, graphene nanostructures, carbon nanovectors in medicine, and green carbon research for enhanced oil recovery and environmentally friendly oil and gas extraction. He is currently a Professor of Chemistry, Professor of Computer Science, and Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science at Rice University. He has authored or co-authored 489 scientific publications and his name is on 36 patents. Although he does not regard himself as an Intelligent Design theorist, Professor Tour, along with over 700 other scientists, took the courageous step back in 2001 of signing the Discovery Institute’s ‘A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism’, which read: ‘We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged.’ On Professor Tour’s Website, there’s a very revealing article on evolution and creation, in which Tour bluntly states that he does not understand how macroevolution could have happened, from a chemical standpoint: Although most scientists leave few stones unturned in their quest to discern mechanisms before wholeheartedly accepting them, when it comes to the often gross extrapolations between observations and conclusions on macroevolution, scientists, it seems to me, permit unhealthy leeway. When hearing such extrapolations in the academy, when will we cry out, ‘The emperor has no clothes!’? …I simply do not understand, chemically, how macroevolution could have happened. Hence, am I not free to join the ranks of the skeptical and to sign such a statement without reprisals from those that disagree with me? … Does anyone understand the chemical details behind macroevolution? If so, I would like to sit with that person and be taught, so I invite them to meet with me. In a more recent talk, entitled, Nanotech and Jesus Christ, given on 1 November 2012 at Georgia Tech, Professor Tour went further, and declared that no scientist that he has spoken to understands macroevolution – and that includes Nobel Prize winners! Here’s what he said when a student in the audience asked him about evolution: … I will tell you as a scientist and a synthetic chemist: if anybody should be able to understand evolution, it is me, because I make molecules for a living, and I don’t just buy a kit, and mix this and mix this, and get that. I mean, ab initio, I make molecules. I understand how hard it is to make molecules. I understand that if I take Nature’s tool kit, it could be much easier, because all the tools are already there, and I just mix it in the proportions, and I do it under these conditions, but ab initio is very, very hard. I don’t understand evolution, and I will confess that to you. Is that OK, for me to say, ‘I don’t understand this’? Is that all right? I know that there’s a lot of people out there that don’t understand anything about organic synthesis, but they understand evolution. I understand a lot about making molecules; I don’t understand evolution. And you would just say that, wow, I must be really unusual. Let me tell you what goes on in the back rooms of science – with National Academy members, with Nobel Prize winners. I have sat with them, and when I get them alone, not in public – because it’s a scary thing, if you say what I just said – I say, ‘Do you understand all of this, where all of this came from, and how this happens?’ Every time that I have sat with people who are synthetic chemists, who understand this, they go ‘Uh-uh. Nope.’ These people are just so far off, on how to believe this stuff came together. I’ve sat with National Academy members, with Nobel Prize winners. Sometimes I will say, ‘Do you understand this?’And if they’re afraid to say ‘Yes,’ they say nothing. They just stare at me, because they can’t sincerely do it. I was once brought in by the Dean of the Department, many years ago, and he was a chemist. He was kind of concerned about some things. I said, ‘Let me ask you something. You’re a chemist. Do you understand this? How do you get DNA without a cell membrane? And how do you get a cell membrane without a DNA? And how does all this come together from this piece of jelly?’ We have no idea, we have no idea. I said, ‘Isn’t it interesting that you, the Dean of science, and I, the chemistry professor, can talk about this quietly in your office, but we can’t go out there and talk about this?’ If you understand evolution, I am fine with that. I’m not going to try to change you – not at all. In fact, I wish I had the understanding that you have. But about seven or eight years ago I posted on my Web site that I don’t understand. And I said, ‘I will buy lunch for anyone that will sit with me and explain to me evolution, and I won’t argue with you until I don’t understand something – I will ask you to clarify. But you can’t wave by and say, ‘This enzyme does that.’ You’ve got to get down in the details of where molecules are built, for me. Nobody has come forward. The Atheist Society contacted me. They said that they will buy the lunch, and they challenged the Atheist Society, ‘Go down to Houston and have lunch with this guy, and talk to him.’ Nobody has come! Now remember, because I’m just going to ask, when I stop understanding what you’re talking about, I will ask. So I sincerely want to know. I would like to believe it. But I just can’t. Now, I understand microevolution, I really do. We do this all the time in the lab. I understand this. But when you have speciation changes, when you have organs changing, when you have to have concerted lines of evolution, all happening in the same place and time – not just one line – concerted lines, all at the same place, all in the same environment … this is very hard to fathom. I was in Israel not too long ago, talking with a bio-engineer, and [he was] describing to me the ear, and he was studying the different changes in the modulus of the ear, and I said, ‘How does this come about?’ And he says, ‘Oh, Jim, you know, we all believe in evolution, but we have no idea how it happened.’ Now there’s a good Jewish professor for you. I mean, that’s what it is. So that’s where I am. Have I answered the question? (52:00 to 56:44) Professor Tour’s online talk is absolutely fascinating as well as being deeply moving on a personal level, and I would strongly urge readers to listen to his talk in its entirety – including the questions after the talk. You won’t regret it, I promise you. One interesting little gem of information which I’ll reveal is that it was Professor Tour who was largely instrumental in getting Nobel Laureate Richard Smalley, winner of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, to reject Darwinian evolution and accept Old Earth creationism, shortly before he died in 2005. It was Tour who persuaded Smalley to delve into the question of origins. After reading the books ‘Origins of Life’ and ‘Who Was Adam?’, written by Dr. Hugh Ross (an astrophysicist) and Dr. Fazale Rana (a biochemist).. Dr. Smalley explained his change of heart as follows: Evolution has just been dealt its death blow. After reading ‘Origins of Life’, with my background in chemistry and physics, it is clear evolution could not have occurred. The new book, ‘Who Was Adam?’, is the silver bullet that puts the evolutionary model to death. Strong words indeed, for a Nobel scientist. Readers can find out more about Professor Richard Smalley’s change of views here. Why should we believe macroevolution, if nobody understands it? Now that Professor Tour has informed the world that even Nobel Prize-winning scientists privately admit that they don’t understand macroevolution, a layperson is surely entitled to ask: ‘Well, if even they don’t understand it, then why should we believe it? How can we possibly be obliged to believe in a theory which nobody understands?’ That’s a good question. And it’s no use for Darwinists to trot out the standard ‘party line’ that ‘even if we don’t yet understand how it happened, we still have enough evidence to infer that it happened.’ At the very most, all that the current scientific evidence could establish is the common descent of living organisms. But that’s not macroevolution. Macroevolution requires more than a common ancestry for living organisms: it requires a natural mechanism which can generate the diversity of life-forms we see on Earth today from a common stock, without the need for any direction by an Intelligent Agent. But the mechanism is precisely what we don’t have evidence for. So the question remains: why should we believe in macroevolution? The decline of academic freedom Given the massive uncertainty about the ‘how’ of macroevolution among scientists working in the field, you might think that a wide variety of views would be tolerated in the scientific arena – including the view that there is no such process as macroevolution. However, you would be sadly mistaken. As Professor Tour notes in his online article on evolution and creation, an alarming academic trend has emerged in recent years: a growing intolerance of dissent from Darwinism. This trend is so pronounced that Professor Tour now advises his students not to voice their doubts about Darwinism in public, if they want a successful career: In the last few years I have seen a saddening progression at several institutions. I have witnessed unfair treatment upon scientists that do not accept macroevolutionary arguments and for their having signed the above-referenced statement regarding the examination of Darwinism. (I will comment no further regarding the specifics of the actions taken upon the skeptics; I love and honor my colleagues too much for that.) I never thought that science would have evolved like this. I deeply value the academy; teaching, professing and research in the university are my privileges and joys… But my recent advice to my graduate students has been direct and revealing: If you disagree with Darwinian Theory, keep it to yourselves if you value your careers, unless, of course, you’re one of those champions for proclamation; I know that that fire exists in some, so be ready for lead-ridden limbs. But if the scientific community has taken these shots at senior faculty, it will not be comfortable for the young non-conformist. When the power-holders permit no contrary discussion, can a vibrant academy be maintained? Is there a University (unity in diversity)? For the United States, I pray that the scientific community and the National Academy in particular will investigate the disenfranchisement that is manifest upon some of their own, and thereby address the inequity. It remains to be seen if other countries will allow their young scientists to think freely about the origin of life, and of the various species of organisms that we find on Earth today. What I will say, though, is that countries which restrict academic freedom will eventually be overtaken by countries which allow it to prosper. There is still time for America and Europe to throw off the dead hand of Darwinism in academic circles, and let their young people breathe the unaccustomed air of free speech once again.” uncommondescent.com |
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coram_deo 05-Aug-21, 07:32 |
The Religion of Evolution “The Religion of Evolution ‘For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.’ Beverly Carol Lucey is a writer living in Covington, Georgia. In an article that appeared in the 19 August 2002, issue of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, she attacks Christians, ‘Christian fundamentalists’ to be more precise, who don’t like the idea that evolution can be taught in public (government) schools without scientific criticism. ‘They have power,’ she insists. ‘They are getting elected to school boards.’ Horror! Citizens are actually getting involved in the political process and showing an interest in what their children are being taught in school. Sounds like America to me. <<Note that Ms. Lucey is objecting to Christians who want scientific criticism of the theory of evolution to be taught in public schools - not to Christians who don’t want the theory taught in public schools or to Christians who want creationism taught alongside it. She’s objecting to scientific criticism of the theory being taught.>> Her horror does not stop with the political involvement of Christians. These ‘Christian fundamentalists … are making teachers nervous, not to mention that many teachers are, in and of themselves, fundamentalist Christians.’ Shocking, isn’t it, that American citizens who hold to certain fundamental religious beliefs should even dare to teach in public (government) schools? The Christian heritage of this nation is a historical reality and documented fact, how then could anyone intimate that Christians should be excluded from public discourse on any subject? Are Christians to be relegated to second-class citizenship? Ms Lucey shows her ignorance of history with the claim that Christianity is somehow an inhibitor of scientific discovery and understanding. Langdon Gilkey demonstrates quite well that ‘the religious idea of a transcendent Creator actually made possible rather than hindered the progress of the scientific understanding of the natural order.’ Ms Lucey’s uninformed prose is directed at Cobb County, Georgia, where the school board has stated that science textbooks that teach evolution should carry the following disclaimer: ‘This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered.’ Seems reasonable enough, since even the theory of evolution has ‘evolved’ over the years. But this is too much for those who are blinded by evolutionary religious dogma. That’s right. Evolution is more metaphysics than physics; more faith than reason. Is this just the opinion of this anti-Darwinist? Not at all. <<I wonder how many evolutionists would have a problem with that disclaimer. Is there a single word of that disclaimer that isn’t true?>> Let the Darwinists Speak for Themselves Michael Ruse, professor of history and philosophy and author of The Darwinian Revolution (1979), Darwinism Defended (1982), and Taking Darwin Seriously (1986), acknowledges that evolution is religious: ‘Evolution is promoted by its practitioners as more than mere science. Evolution is promulgated as an ideology, a secular religion—a full-fledged alternative to Christianity, with meaning and morality. I am an ardent evolutionist and an ex-Christian, but I must admit in this one complaint… the literalists [i.e., creationists] are absolutely right. Evolution is a religion. This was true of evolution in the beginning, and it is true of evolution still today.’ Ruse didn’t always espouse the religious foundation of evolution. But since evolution asks the same questions as religion—telling us where we came from, where we’re going, and what we should do on the way—he had to admit the religious nature of his chosen materialistic worldview. For Ruse, and he is correct, ‘evolution is a kind of secular ideology, an explicit substitute for Christianity.’ If evolution is a ‘substitute for Christianity,’ and Christianity is religious, then evolution, as Christianity’s substitute, is religious. The distinction in this debate, therefore, is not between religion and science, as so many claim, but between one religion and science (materialistic evolution) and another religion and science (creation science). Is it any wonder that Darwin’s most vocal defender, Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895), in addition to being called ‘Darwin’s Bulldog,’ was also known as ‘Pope Huxley’? ‘Huxley personalized ‘nature,’ referring to it as ‘fair, just and patient,’ ‘a strong angel who is playing for love.’ How can this be when evolution is described as ‘blind’? Huxley’s great-grandson, Julian Huxley (1887-1975), ‘conceded that his beliefs are ‘something in the nature of a religion,’ and described his humanist beliefs as ‘The New Divinity.’ Ruse and the Huxleys are not alone in their contention that evolution is a materialistic religion that is founded on metaphysical assumptions: The distinguished biologist Lynn Margulis has rather scathingly referred to new-Darwinism as ‘a minor twentieth century religious sect within the sprawling religious persuasion of Anglo-Saxon biology.’ Stuart Kauffman observes that ‘natural selection’ has become so central an explanatory force in neo-Darwinism that ‘we might as well capitalise [it] as though it were the new deity.’ Professor Richard Lewontin, a geneticist and author of a number of books on Darwinian theory, illustrates the implicit metaphysical starting point of the evolutionary dogma. Even when the facts point away from a certain scientific explanation for a given theory, evolution must be followed because the materialistic religion of Darwin must be protected against any Divine intrusion: ‘We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.’ Ms Lucey is under the false impression that science is an objective enterprise, neutral in face of the facts. ‘Science,’ she says, ‘is an intellectual pursuit; it’s being able to let go of ideas that don’t pan out.’ Now go back and read Lewontin again. As a self-professed materialist, Lewontin, by his own admission, is ‘forced by [his] a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counterintuitive’ Lewontin’s new-found religion, bordering on irrationalism, has nothing in common with Christianity which calls for rational investigation based on known physical properties.” answersingenesis.org (End of Part 1) |
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coram_deo 05-Aug-21, 07:55 |
“Robert Jastrow, an internationally known astronomer, founder and director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Professor of Astronomy and Geology at Columbia University, and Professor of Earth Sciences at Dartmouth College, describes science as ‘religion’ in the chapter where the following quotation is taken: ‘Consider the enormity of the problem. Science has proven that the Universe exploded into being at a certain moment. It asks, What cause produced this effect? Who or what put the matter and energy into the Universe? Was the Universe created out of nothing, or was it gathered together out of pre-existing materials? And science cannot answer these questions, because, according to the astronomers, in the first moments of its existence the Universe was compressed to an extraordinary degree, and consumed by the heat of a fire beyond human imagination. The shock of that instant must have destroyed every particle of evidence that could have yielded a clue to the cause of the great explosion. An entire world, rich in structure and history, may have existed before our Universe appeared; but if it did, science cannot tell what kind of world it was. A sound explanation may exist for the explosive birth of our Universe; but if it does, science cannot find out what the explanation is.’ Jastrow is correct about science having a metaphysical starting point. Science asks ultimate questions to which it has no scientifically substantiated answers. According to Jastrow, no evidence exists for the scientist to study on the subject of origins, since it was destroyed at the moment of creation (an idea that is based on the unbiblical ‘big bang’ hypothesis, which even many non-Christian scientists reject). In his book Until the Sun Dies, Jastrow outlines two origin options, both of which he describes as a ‘miracle’: ‘The first theory places the question of the origin of life beyond the reach of scientific inquiry. It is a statement of faith in the power of a Supreme Being not subject to the laws of science. The second theory is also an act of faith. The act of faith consists in assuming that the scientific view of the origin of life is correct, without having concrete evidence to support that belief.’ These aren’t the words of a ‘Christian fundamentalist’ who is ‘anti-intellectual’ and where ‘logic takes a holiday,’ to use Ms Lucey’s description of biblical creationists. Jastrow is a well-respected scientist, described as ‘the greatest writer of science living today.’ Whose Evolution? When members of the First Church of Charles Darwin maintain that only their creedal formulation of evolutionary origins should be taught in public schools, one wonders which denominational variety should it be? Should it be Darwin’s textus receptus version before it underwent its numerous revisions and reformulations? How about the ‘hopeful monster’ version developed in the 1930s by Otto Schindewolf and promoted in 1940 by Richard Goldschmidt? Ms Lucey doesn’t say. Another proposed mechanism of evolution is that of ‘punctuated equilibrium’ by Niles Eldredge and the late Stephen Jay Gould. ‘Punk Eek,’ as it is affectionately called by some and derisively labeled by others, is a radical departure from the confessional statement of beliefs of the First Church of Charles Darwin. Where the Church of Darwin first suggested that changes occur gradually over long periods of time (equilibrium or stasis), Punk Eek adherents conjecture that the ‘abrupt appearance of species (in the fossil record) could be explained by the transition occurring quickly, geologically speaking, in small, isolated populations such that transitional forms would be highly unlikely to be preserved.’ The change in doctrine came when transitional fossils could not be found to support the orthodox Darwinian dogma. Gould, a high priest of the movement before his death this year, had to confess: ‘The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology… . [T]o preserve our favored account of evolution by natural selection we view our data as so bad that we never see the very process we profess to study.’ Did you get that? ‘We never see the very process we profess to study.’ Not only that, but no one, creationist or evolutionist, has ever seen the beginning of creation. Christians, however, believe that they have been told about it. Science works to reconstruct existing and past data to learn more about the creation process. ‘Christian fundamentalists’ don’t abandon the scientific method when they declare that God designed and created the universe anymore than a mechanic denies the engineers who designed the car he’s working on. It doesn’t make him any less of a mechanic to admit that the car was designed and manufactured by someone he has never seen. In fact, he would be considered crazy if he denied that the car had a designer. Furthermore, knowing that the car was designed leads the mechanic to conclude that the car has a prescribed way of working and predetermined settings that are vital to its functioning optimally. Would you take your car to a mechanic who believes that your car came into existence randomly? Eldredge, in similar fashion, takes a peek behind the Darwinian altar and admits: ‘No wonder paleontologists shied away from evolution for so long. It never seems to happen.’ Evolutionists are so blinded by their presuppositions that origins must be explained by their materialist religion. There is no other option even when the facts scream otherwise. Any argument raised against their Darwinian assumptions is dismissed as being non-scientific, a ‘spiritual pursuit,’ or ‘magical thinking,’ in the words of Ms Lucey.“ answersingenesis.org (End of Part 2) |
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coram_deo 07-Aug-21, 16:20 |
“Aliens Did It If the above evolutionary creedal formulations do not suit you, one can always adopt the view of Francis Crick, co-discoverer of the structure of the DNA molecule, for which he received a Nobel Prize—‘directed panspermia.’ Crick, a serious and well-respected scientist, thinks ‘that life on earth may have begun when aliens from another planet sent a rocket ship containing spores to seed the earth.’ Of course, Crick doesn’t explain how the aliens got there, but, hey, this is science. A theory is deemed scientific as long as it has the imprimatur of at least one member of the Darwinian priesthood. Sometimes the priesthood objects to one of its own members when he strays too far from the accepted dogma. Crick is one of them. When this happens, a very rare occurrence to be sure, the full force of inquisitional opposition from the scientific priesthood is brought to bear on the heretic. Consider Danish environmental scientist Bjorn Lomborg, a left-wing evolutionary scientist whose specialty is statistics, who dared to stray and state that ‘We are not running out of energy or natural resources.’ A former member of Greenpeace and the author of The Skeptical Environmentalist (1998), Lomborg has been giving the leftist environmental lobby fits. Since his scientific paradigm does not correspond to the prevailing environmental religion, drastic measures had to be taken in an attempt to silence him: ‘Some scientists say they initially hoped to ignore Lomborg but in the wake of the book’s popularity have reacted with a fury rarely seen in academia… . A dozen esteemed environmental scientists, including [Peter] Raven and Harvard’s Edward O. Wilson, are demanding that Lomborg’s publisher cut him loose. - ‘We are deeply disturbed that Cambridge University Press would publish and promote an error-filled, poorly referenced and non-peer-reviewed work,’ they write in a letter calling on Cambridge to transfer publishing rights to a popular, nonscholarly press.’ This ‘poorly referenced and non-peer-reviewed work’ contains 2,930 footnotes. Of course, just because a book includes nearly 3,000 footnotes does not mean the author is right in all his assertions and conclusions, but it does afford critics an opportunity to check out the author’s methodology and debate him on the facts. But because the book does not support the dogma of the scientific status quo, it is dismissed without considering the author’s counter arguments. The facts don’t matter because they do not fit the accepted environmental worldview. Any environmental position that does not begin with a global warming starting point is wrong by definition. Creation scientists find themselves in a similar position. Until creation scientists have their work go through ‘peer review,’ it’s not true science. But no creationist could ever pass a peer-review test, because there is a presuppositional bias against creation science. Consider the following: D.M.S. Watson, known to the public for his B.B.C. talks popularizing the Darwinian notion that human beings descended from primates, declared in an address to his fellow biologists at a Cape Town conference: ‘Evolution itself is accepted by zoologists not because it has been observed to occur or … can be proved by logically coherent evidence to be true, but because the only alternative, special creation, is clearly incredible.’ C. S. Lewis was astounded at Watson’s frank admission and responded: ‘Has it come to that? Does the whole vast structure of modern naturalism depend not on positive evidence but simply on an a priori metaphysical prejudice? Was it devised not to get in facts but to keep out God?’ Evolutionists Gould and Eldredge are not reluctant to admit that ‘The general preference that so many of us hold for gradualism is a metaphysical stance embedded in the modern history of Western cultures: it is not a high-order empirical observation, induced from the objective study of nature.’ Gould adds: ‘But our ways of learning about the world are strongly influenced by the social preconceptions and biased modes of thinking that each scientist must apply to any problem. The stereotype of a fully rational and objective ‘scientific method’, with individual scientists as logical (and interchangeable) robots, is self-serving mythology.’ Conclusion Ms Lucey’s deepest wound is made when she pronounces that ‘Fundamentalism tends to be literal, not figurative. Hence, it’s anti-intellectual. Logic takes a holiday.’ Who is she describing? No doubt there are Christians who are anti-intellectual. But lots of people are anti-intellectual, including many non-Christians. Lots of smart people hold to some ridiculous beliefs. Some of them are Nobel prize winning scientists like Francis Crick. Who’s defining ‘anti-intellectual’? I find it amazing, illogical, and anti-intellectual that an atheist and evolutionist like Richard Dawkins can deny a designed creation when everything he touches and uses in his life has been designed. The only thing that hasn’t been designed, according to Dawkins and other ‘intellectuals,’ is a marvelously constructed cosmos that got the way it is by chance. To borrow a phrase from Ms Lucey, the notion of random, chance, and undirected evolution is ‘magical thinking,’ and, if evolutionists have anything to say about it, ultimately religious. Ms Lucey and other Darwinian religionists could take a lesson from Isaac Newton who had no problem mixing his Biblical religion and science: ‘This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being… . He endures forever, and is everywhere present; and by existing always and everywhere, he constitutes duration and space.’ ” answersingenesis.org |
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coram_deo 08-Aug-21, 12:34 |
Let a well-known evolutionist who has written books on the subject provide the answer: “Evolution is promoted by its practitioners as more than mere science. Evolution is promulgated as an ideology, a secular religion—a full-fledged alternative to Christianity, with meaning and morality. I am an ardent evolutionist and an ex-Christian, but I must admit in this one complaint… the literalists [i.e., creationists] are absolutely right. Evolution is a religion. This was true of evolution in the beginning, and it is true of evolution still today.” Michael Ruse, professor of history and philosophy and author of The Darwinian Revolution (1979), Darwinism Defended (1982), and Taking Darwin Seriously (1986), Now the article: “Ten Major Flaws of Evolution - Revised 1. The complexity of living systems could never evolve by chance—they had to be designed and created. A system that is irreducibly complex is one in which all the components work together and are essential to perform the system’s basic function. (A mousetrap is a simple example.) It is not possible to build such a system gradually, one component at a time, since it cannot function unless all components are present. Many living systems exhibit such irreducible complexity (e.g vision, blood clotting, etc.). When you look at a watch, you assume there was a watchmaker. A watch is too complex to ‘happen’ by chance. Yet living systems are vastly more complex than a watch. Darwin considered this fact one of the most serious challenges to his theory of evolution. The magnitude of this challenge has increased exponentially since Darwin’s time as the details of living systems have been uncovered down to and below the level of the cell. The incredible machinery of life exists in networks so complex and interdependent that they could not have arisen gradually or through random chance – they simply had to be designed and created. 2. The high information content of DNA could only have come from intelligence. According to information science, information can only be produced by intelligence. Highly complex information must originate from a highly intelligent source. DNA is by far the most compact and complex information storage/retrieval system known. A pinhead-sized amount of DNA has a billion times more information capacity than a 4-gigabit hard drive, can contain multiple copies of all the information necessary to build and maintain things as complex as the human brain and body, and is self-replicating. However, the proponents of evolution believe that random chance, not intelligence, gave rise to all of the information found in DNA. Ironically, evolutionary scientists involved in the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) project search the sky with massive radio telescopes, hoping to detect even simple patterns in radio signals which might be a sign of otherworldly intelligence, all the while ignoring the clear evidence of intelligence built into the incredibly complex DNA patterns of every living creature right here on Earth. 3. Mutations do not increase information, as required by evolution. Mutations are thought to drive evolution, but they cannot increase information. Mutations can only change DNA by deleting, damaging, duplicating, or substituting already existing information. The vast majority of mutations are harmful or have no apparent effect. Over 100 years of fruit fly experiments have clearly demonstrated that mutations only result in normal, dead, or grotesquely deformed fruit flies – they are still fruit flies! Even mutations which are in some way beneficial (such as antibiotic resistance in bacteria or wingless beetles on windy islands) result from the loss of information. This is the opposite of the vast increase in information required to get from amoeba to man, as proposed in the theory of evolution. 4. Natural Selection is conservative, not creative. The concept of natural selection was originally developed by natural theologians, who thought that it worked to preserve distinct created types. Darwin argued that natural selection, if given enough time, could actually create new types. However, field and laboratory observations of natural selection in action confirm that it only changes the relative abundance of certain already-existing characteristics, and doesn’t create new ones. For example, Darwin observed that the average beak size of finches increased in dry years, but later observers noted that this trend reversed in wet years. This is very different than the kind of changes that would be required to transform a finch beak into some other structure or a finch into a completely different kind of animal. In other words, scientific studies of natural selection demonstrate, without exception, that Darwin was wrong. 5. There is a total lack of undisputed examples (fossilized or living) of the millions of transitional forms required for evolution to be true. If evolution were true, we should be surrounded by a zoo of transitional forms that cannot be categorized as one particular life form. But we don’t see this—there are different kinds of dogs, but all are clearly dogs. The fossils show different sizes of horses, but all are clearly horses. None is on the verge of being some other life form. The fossil record shows complex fossilized life suddenly appearing, and there are major gaps between every major ‘kind’ of life. Darwin acknowledged that if his theory were true, it would require millions of transitional forms. He believed they would be found in fossil records. They haven’t been. 6. Pictures of ape-to-human ‘missing links’ are extremely subjective and based on evolutionists’ already-formed assumptions. Often they are simply contrived. The series of pictures or models that show progressive development from a little monkey to modern man are an insult to scientific research. These are often based on fragmentary remains that can be ‘reconstructed’ a hundred different ways. Many supposed ‘ape-men’ are very clearly apes, and most fossils hailed with much fanfare as ‘missing links’ are later quietly reclassified as simply extinct varieties of non-human primates. Evolutionists now admit that other so-called ‘ape-men’ were fully human. The body hair and the blank expressions of the supposedly primitive humans in these models don’t come from the bones, but from the evolutionary assumptions of the artist. Virtually nothing can be determined about hair and the look in someone’s eyes based on a few old bones. The ‘missing links’ are still missing. 7. The radioactive dating methods that evolutionists use to assign millions and billions of years to rocks are based on questionable assumptions and give unreliable results. Dating methods that use radioactive decay to determine a rock’s age assume that the original amounts of parent and daughter isotopes can be accurately estimated, that no isotopes moved into or out of the rock after its formation (closed system), and that radioactive decay rates have always been constant. However, the original amounts of parent and daughter isotopes can rarely be estimated with reasonable accuracy. In addition, it is commonly acknowledged that hydrothermal fluids (hot, mineral-rich water) often transport both parent and daughter isotopes from one rock to another, invalidating the closed system assumption. In fact, this process is often cited as a reason for rejecting dates that don’t fit the evolutionary timeline. What is not commonly known is that radioactive dating methods usually give a number of different results for the same formation and often even for the same rock! In practice, geologists choose the ‘correct’ age from among these different results based on the age expected from the evolutionary timeline. This is a classic case of circular thinking! Also, different methods give different results, with heavier isotopes consistently giving older ages than lighter isotopes for the same rock. This pattern should not exist if radioactive decay rates have always been the same. Furthermore, lava flows with known historical ages often date as millions or even billions of years old. If radioactive dating methods can be off by so much for rocks of known age, how can they be considered reliable for rocks of unknown age? 8. ‘Leftover’ body structures are not evidence for evolution. Evolutionists point to vestigial organs (supposedly ‘leftover’ body structures with no known function) as evidence of evolution. However, it’s impossible to prove that an organ is useless, because there’s always the possibility that a use may be discovered in the future. In fact, over 100 organs formerly thought of as vestigial are now known to perform essential functions. Scientists continue to discover uses for such organs and only a small number are still considered vestigial. It is increasingly clear that vestigial organs are not the result of evolution but simply examples of scientific ignorance. It’s also worth noting that even if an organ were no longer needed (e.g., eyes of blind creatures in caves), it would prove devolution not evolution. Proponents of evolution need to provide examples of developing organs that are not yet fully functional but can be shown to be increasing in complexity with each succeeding generation. No such examples exist. 9. Evolution is said to have begun by spontaneous generation—a concept ridiculed by biology. When I was a sophomore in high school, and a brand new Christian, my biology class spent the first semester discussing how ignorant people used to believe that garbage gave rise to rats, and raw meat produced maggots. This now disproven concept was called ‘spontaneous generation.’ Louis Pasteur proved that life only comes from life—this is the law of biogenesis. The next semester we studied evolution, where we learned that the first living cell came from a freak combination of nonliving material (where that nonliving material came from we were not told). ‘Chemical Evolution’ is just another way of saying ‘spontaneous generation’—life comes from nonlife. Evolution is therefore built on a fallacy science long ago proved to be impossible. Evolutionists admit that the chances of evolutionary progress are extremely low. Yet, they believe that given enough time, the apparently impossible becomes possible. If I flip a coin, I have a 50/50 chance of getting heads. To get five ‘heads’ in a row is unlikely but possible. If I flipped the coin long enough, I would eventually get five in a row. If I flipped it for years nonstop, I might get 50 or even 100 in a row. But this is only because getting heads is an inherent possibility. What are the chances of me flipping a coin, and then seeing it sprout arms and legs, and go sit in a corner and read a magazine? No chance. Given billions of years, the chances would never increase. Great periods of time make the possible likely but never make the impossible possible. No matter how long it’s given, non-life will not become alive. 10. The scientific method can only test existing data—it cannot draw conclusions about origins. There are two types of science. Operational science deals with the present, and arrives at conclusions based on repeated observations of existing phenomena. Historical science deals with the past, which is not repeatable. Investigations of origins clearly fall within the scope of historical science, and therefore cannot draw definitive conclusions. Since no man was there to record or even witness the beginning, conclusions must be made only on the basis of interpreting presently available information. This interpretation is greatly influenced by one’s prior beliefs. If I put on rose-colored glasses, I will always see red. I accept the Bible’s teaching on creation, and see the evidence as being consistently supportive of that belief. When dealing with origins, everyone who believes anything does so by faith, whether faith in God, the Bible, themselves, modern science, or the dependability of his own subjective interpretations of existing data. I would rather put my faith in God’s revealed Word.“ www.epm.org |
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coram_deo 20-Aug-21, 20:30 |
youtu.be Very short video on how scientific advancements since Darwin’s day are dscrediting - not confirming - the theory of evolution. This video is 3:25 minutes long. |
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coram_deo 20-Aug-21, 20:59 |
Have to give some allowance to Darwin who knew nothing about how complex cells were in his day, but no allowance should be given to today’s scientists who continue to support his bogus theory despite the tsunami of evidence against it. This video is 9:28 minutes long. youtu.be |
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coram_deo 21-Aug-21, 04:10 |
Quote from video: “We’re not dealing with a theory in any sense in which a physicist would recognize a theory. We’re dealing with a collection of anecdotes, a certain point of view, a series of hunches.” youtu.be This video is 4:33 long. |
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coram_deo 21-Aug-21, 05:14 |
This video is about 28 minutes long, but the most damning section, to me, is from 17:55 to 22:00. It’s frankly inexplicable that intelligent people actually believe Darwin’s nonsense. But if you consider the theory for what it genuinely has become - the religion of atheists - their blind acceptance of the theory and unwavering allegiance to it become more understandable. youtu.be |
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coram_deo 22-Aug-21, 16:30 |
Berlinski’s assessment of the theory continues: “One, the theory doesn’t have any substance. Two, it’s preposterous. Three, it’s not supported by the evidence, and, four, the fact that the biologists are uniformly in agreement about this issue could as well be explained by some solid Marxist interpretation of their economic interests.” In the event you think Berlinski’s fourth point isn’t valid, try objecting to the theory as a scientist and see what happens to your reputation and career. youtu.be |
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coram_deo 24-Aug-21, 08:42 |
"Evolution requires plenty of faith; a faith in L-proteins that defy chance formation; a faith in the formation of DNA codes which, if generated spontaneously, would spell only pandemonium; a faith in a primitive environment that, in reality, would fiendishly devour any chemical precursors to life; a faith in experiments that prove nothing but the need for intelligence in the beginning; a faith in a primitive ocean that would not thicken, but would only haplessly dilute chemicals; a faith in natural laws of thermodynamics and biogenesis that actually deny the possibility for the spontaneous generation of life; a faith in future scientific revelations that, when realized, always seem to present more dilemmas to the evolutionists; faith in improbabilities that treasonously tell two stories—one denying evolution, the other confirming the Creator; faith in transformations that remain fixed; faith in mutations and natural selection that add to a double negative for evolution; faith in fossils that embarrassingly show fixity through time, regular absence of transitional forms and striking testimony to a worldwide water deluge; a faith in time which proves to only promote degradation in the absence of mind; and faith in reductionism that ends up reducing the materialist's arguments to zero and forcing the need to invoke a supernatural Creator." R.L. Wysong, The Creation-Evolution Controversy (1981), p. 455. |
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coram_deo 27-Aug-21, 01:59 |
youtu.be This video is 13:35 long. Here is a short biography of Professor Jonathan Wells: “Jonathan Wells has received two Ph.D.s, one in Molecular and Cell Biology from the University of California at Berkeley, and one in Religious Studies from Yale University. A Senior Fellow at Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, he has previously worked as a postdoctoral research biologist at the University of California at Berkeley and the supervisor of a medical laboratory in Fairfield, California. He also taught biology at California State University in Hayward and continues to lecture on the subject. Dr. Wells has published articles in Development, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, BioSystems, The Scientist and The American Biology Teacher. He is the author of Charles Hodge's Critique of Darwinism (Edwin Mellen Press, 1988), Icons of Evolution: Why much of what we teach about evolution is wrong(Regnery Publishing, 2000), The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design (Regnery, 2006), and The Myth of Junk DNA (Discovery Institute Press, 2011). He is also co-author with William Dembski of The Design of Life (FTE, 2008). His latest book, Zombie Science (Discovery Institute Press, 2017), shows how evolutionary theory — "though empirically dead" — continues to stalk our scientific and educational institutions. Dr. Wells is currently doing research and writing on developmental information in embryos that is outside of, and inherited independently of, their DNA.” www.discovery.org |
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