A colleague of mine sent me the following bait in an email:
evolution = science
creation = philosophyWhy is this so hard for people to understand? Fine, teach intelligent design, but do it in a philosophy class I can make sure my kids don’t take!!
I responded as follows. For those of you sick of the simplistic entropy argument, I used it because it is a simple illustration, and I felt no need to go into all the subarguments (closed systems, crystals, blah blah):
Your statement is hard to understand because it’s an oversimplification, and therefore, ambiguous. Ambiguous statements always lead to misunderstanding instead of clarity. More detail is what you need:
- Macroevolution = an untestable theory of origins, a philosophy of science, with a corresponding worldview (naturalistic, materialistic, often atheistic) (doubtful
- Microevolution = speciation due to genetic changes (two of the same kind can no longer mate) (happens)
- Microevolution 2 = genetic mutation that causes some sort of survival benefit – and is passed on to progeny (never happens?)
- Adaptation = change to a species within its existing genome – environment causes some genes to turn on or off (happens)
- Natural Selection = differential survival based on some existing characteristic – is best explained by adaptation (using existing genome), not mutations (happens)
- Natural Selection 2 = some people think natural selection = evolution. Not true. It is the proposed mechanism by which evolution supposedly works. Though NS occurs, it does not prove that evolution occurs – that’s a non-sequitur
- Intelligent Design = a theory based on informatics, showing that the creation of irreducible and specialized systems in nature are statistically impossible by chance alone (cool)
- Intelligent Design 2 = is NOT a theory of origins, but merely an information view of nature. Nor is it creation science – in fact, some of the main proponents of ID are agnostic (Michael Behe). They are merely responding to the nonsensical claims of evolutionary theory with an alternate way of looking at systems. (cool)
- Creation Science = a scientific model which holds certain Biblical assumptions about the origins and nature of nature. They use these assumptions to organize and explain scientific data into a model that both incorporates what we see and predicts what we should see.
For example, it assumes that the universe was created perfect, and has been degenerating since the beginning. Hence, it would agree with the law of entropy, which says that things go from a state of order to disorder in an unstructured, unguided environment. Evolution, however, argues the other way, saying that by chance and the laws of nature, increased order and/or complexity could arise by chance. These two models start w/ different assumptions and so organize the data differently, and predict cause and outcome differently.
BTW, most science today functions independently of evolutionary theory – if the theory of evolution were disproved tomorrow, most existing science would be unaffected because it is not really needed to explain how systems work or change. However, the creationist view of a degrading, slowing universe, with an original design, fits very well with what we see.
Biology, however, does not function independent of evolution. Diabetics are alive solely due to applied evolution theory in the discovery of the organ involved in the disease, the cause of the disease, and early and modern treatments of the disease. Much of modern public health is grounded in a firm understanding of evolution. But I digress.
When put under oath in the Arkansas trial in 1981, creationists unanimously confesssed that creationism has no science known to back it, and that creationism is based on a particular interpretation of scripture. Of course, they were under oath to tell the truth.
Blogs are not under oath, I take it.
Creationism remains philosophy, especially since each and every mechanism of evolution has been observed in action, and dozens of cases of speciation ("macro" evolution, in your list above) have been observed, and observed in real time.
But don't let the facts God reveals to us in nature get in the way of a good rant. Philosophers never do well when put under oath to tell the truth . . .
I'm not sure what "creationists," they had in the Arkansas trial, but I can assure that I can find numerous doctorate level scientists who will disagree with that. (By the way, I would like a link or some source of information on that Arkansas trial. I want to see what "creationists" testified in that trial.)
But again creationism and ID are too different animals. They are connected, but ID never says anything about God creating the world in 7 days or anything of the sort. It evaluates the data that we currently have and evaluates every possible explanation for it and then reasons that the best (sometimes only) explanation is intelligence (not God per se, simply intelligence).
So every mechanism of evolution has been observed in action? Name anything that has been scientifically observed besides microevolution. Have we seen chemical evolution, have we seen the origin of life, etc. all through natural selection, random chance, with no intelligence involved?
It's funny that people claim ID is basically a God-of-the-gaps belief, when evolutionists do basically the same thing. How do irreducibly complex cells evolve? Evolution did it. How? Natural Selection. How? Evolution did it. How? Over a long period of time.
There is no scientific proof that evolution can create information. There is no scientific proof that anything outside of intelligence can produce information. But how does DNA come about and the information that drives life at a basic level? Well we know it couldn't be intelligence, so evolution did it.
Of course we can ignore the scores of research into ID and origin of life. Of course we can dismiss all the books that deal with origin of life. Afterall the evolutionists that run the research papers haven't put a ID theory in their paper, so they can't be true.
Ed, you are confusing terms here. I agree that speciation (which I use as one definition of MICRO evolution) does occur.
But macro? Does not happen, only the hopeful monster of the evolutionists. Adaptation and speciation are consistent with creationism.
Can you tell me any examples of mutations that were introduced in a subject that led to beneficial changes in its progeny?
And even if you can, that will be the exception to the rule. So at best, macroevolution is built on a series of exceptional mutations. In other words, an improbabability multiplied by many other improbabilities. It just does not happen.
Oh yeah, and Ed, can you explain how an evolutionary perspective led to medical advances in diabetes treatment? You made the claim, but perhaps you could give us the specifics to prove your claim.
The source of diabetes was discovered using canine analogs for human surgery. In fact all animal research is based on the understanding that we are related closely enough that the research makes sense.
The first mass treatments for diabetes involved the use of pig and cow insulin — again, based on the evolutionary understanding that we share enough heritage with the animals that their insulin would work.
Humulin, too, is evolution based. The engineering done to get e. coli to produce human insulin is all grounded in evolution theory.
You didn't know the history of the treatment of diabetes?
You might do well to pay attention to other advances in medicine since Darwin.
Aaron: If you have any "creationist" scientist who could qualify as an expert under the federal rules of evidence, holler. I know of several trials where such a person could be of use — but I know of no one who has the research bona fides to qualify. I simply state a matter of fact: There is no creationism research, and consequently there are no researchers who could pass the usual tests for what qualifies as an expert in the field. In Arkansas, the creationists called Chandra Wickramasinghe as their top expert — a desperate ploy, I suspect. The other experts were top biology professors at Christian and Bible colleges. I don't know why you think you could find experts to lie under oath, or if you're under some sort of delusion that there is science to back creationism. The creationists testified truthfully, and that sank the creationist case. You can look at much of the material from the trial here: http://www.antievolution.org/projects/mclean/new_…
The theory of evolution doesn't include the rise of life, so the observations of the creation of life in a test tube, though they directly contradict your hopeful claim, don't qualify as demonstrations of evolution. What we have seen in the wild is divergence of one population into two, and then reproductive isolation, and later genetic mutations that spread through one of the populations making future interbreeding unlikely in some cases, and impossible in others. Selection events in the wild have been observed that give rise to these new species. To the extent that "random chance" could be involved, it's been observed, though your focus there is probably leading you astray. Evolution depends on variation regardless its source (Darwin observed that most species already have enough variation to speciate); it's selection that does the work, and natural and sexual selection are well documented. See for example the lay explanation in Jonathan Weiner's 1994 book, The Beak of the Finch, which won a Pulitzer that year. Peter and Rosemary Grant, the chief subjects of that book, have at least a half-dozen papers documenting speciation in action in the wild.
I would ask you: What part of evolution do you claim has not been observed?
Oh, and if you know of any cell that is "irreducibly complex," let me know. Michael Behe is in desperate need of such a cell for his research to back his claims. Unfortunately, everything he's proposed so far turns out to have one or more potential evolutionary paths, and in some cases the evolutionary history is quite clear. Consequently, of course, no one can tell you how an irreducibly complex cell evolved, since there are no such cells known.
Research at Texas A&M on grasses recorded the spontaneous increase of information and spontaneous creation of new information. Look for the projects involving T-URF 13. The claims that cells cannot "create" new information is thus elegantly refuted, although DNA studies had indicated that result was common throughout living systems, earlier.
Why wouldn't someone with an ID hypothesis publish it? The non-existence of such papers can be taken clearly as an indication that no such research exists.
Seeker, speciation IS "macro" evolution, by all accounts (even creationist accounts). So the observation of speciation is the entire ballgame. Beneficial mutations? Lots of them. Mosquitoes acquired a gene that allows them to digest DDT, preventing the eradication of several species (alas!). Some American moths have developed the ability to jettison legs if the legs contact insecticides, preventing the poison from getting under the cuticle and killing the insect. Birds in the Galapagos have been observed to develop beaks better able to break into certain seeds, preserving the species during droughts. Other birds have been observed to drop their body size, requiring less food, another drought preservation strategy. There are dozens of examples of beneficial mutations. During a selection event, those individuals in a population who have the beneficial mutations survive and pass it to the next generation. Depending on the severity of the selection event, such intergenerational spread of beneficial mutations can be accomplished in large populations in just a few generations; in insects, it can be accomplished significantly in one generation.
Show me a link that links the "new feature" to a mutation, and furthermore, that this mutation was passed on to progeny.
Actually, the fact that dogs are similar doesn't mean that assuming they are related makes the advance an evolutionary one at all. That's circular – "they are similar, therefore related by evolution, and since they are related by evolution and we found the cure, therefore evolution is true." Please.
"New features" linked to mutations? You didn't read the papers, or you just choose not to believe what has been demonstrated?
Insect Biochemistry and Molecular Biology 29 (1999); "Cytochromes P450 and insecticide resistance": http://www.entomology.cornell.edu/Faculty_Staff/S…
Website: "Can A Duplication Mutation Be Beneficial?": http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/creation/dup_f…
Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 1999; "Population Genetics of Insecticide Resistance in the mosquito Culex pipiens": http://bpi.antibes.inra.fr/topics/perso/guillemau…
Mutations that are beneficial to the mosquito, mutations that create an entirely new way of dealing with the insecticide, and clear evidence that they were passed along to progeny.
Google works well for such searches, if you don't have a library in your town. I recommend it.
I haven't seen this argument posted:
I would argue that Science and Religion are mutually exclusive philosophies. They have completely opposing ways of determining "Truth."
Religion, or any belief system, deals with Absolute Truth, that is, what is believed to be true is true now, has always been true, and will be true forever. This immutable Absolute Truth depends on faith, not on empirical proof. Once you have the faith there is a God, that Truth is Absolute, and is subject neither to doubt nor the need for
proof.
In Science, all truth is tentative. A scientific theory is a statement of tentative truth based on all of the available empirical evidence.
As new evidence is discovered on a scientific problem, this can either support the existing theory and make it more reliable as a basis for further investigation, or it can require that the existing theory must be modified to incorporate the new data, or it can show that the existing theory is incorrect; what was thought to be true has fatal flaws. This flawed theory must be discarded and a new tentative theory must be instituted in its place, knowing that this theory, too, may be straightened, modified, or discarded by future scientific investigations. All three of these possibilities have happened repeatedly over the history of science.
Examples of established theories that have been discarded would be the Ether Theory which was used to explain how light can travel through a vacuum or the Phlogiston Theory to explain the process of combustion. Both of these were discarded when new empirical data showed new ways of viewing these phenomena and new tentative theories were accepted by the science community.
A good example of a current viable theory would be the Theory of Evolution, which has been both strengthened and modified since it was proposed in 1859.
Scientists don't 'believe' anything. You either accept the theory on its merits or you don't. If you don't, you are obligated to devise a better theory by doing research to discover new empirical data. If there are two or more opposing theories to answer a scientific question, then further research must be done to settle the conflict.
It is possible for scientists to hold religious beliefs. But when they do so, they are being inconsistent and operating in two opposing philosophical systems. Since scientists are also human, they can be inconsistent if they choose. But when they are being scientists, they
should make every effort not to confuse the two philosophies. Trying to use the two philosophies at the same time can lead to both poor scientific theories and bad theology.
I think that no scientist should declare themselves to be an atheist. Atheism is a belief system, like any other, a Absolutist philosophy, and contrary to the science philosophy. When being a scientist, researchers would be agnostics, awaiting empirical proof of the existence of a supernatural being.
If you don't accept the Theory of Evolution and try to explain the great diversity and complexity of life on Earth as the product of an Intelligent Designer, then all research in evolution– and in the areas of science that support the Evolution Theory– becomes meaningless. You have The Answer: God did it.
This belief system is anti-science. It doesn't require empirical proof.
If you don't accept the concept of life on Earth as the product of a supernatural being, then you are free to explore how the complexity and diversity of this life came to be as it is by natural evolutionary processes over billions of years.
Theistic Evolution, an attempt to meld Religion and Science (the process of evolution is correct, but it's under the control of a supernatural entity), requires that you accept a belief system and an empirical method at the same time. This is inconsistent and, I think, often leads to bad theology and bad science.
So when those who don't "believe" in the Theory of Evolution say, "It's just a theory," they are correct. But then all scientific statements are "just" theories and evolution is no different. The problem seems to be that those who want their Truth to be Absolute can't understand that this isn't how science works and can't accept
the idea of tentative truths.
In science nothing is "The Truth."
And that's the truth.
Your ideas may have been addressed in:
Faith and Reason – Link Dump
How scientific materialism undermines science and reason
'Reason is the Devil's whore'