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Evolution: What Real Scientists Have to Say

 
 
medved
 
Reply Fri 26 Mar, 2004 04:44 pm
Nearly the whole world thought the Earth was flat in 1491; anybody could have tried to argue that such a majority opinion simply had to be correct and, as we all know, they'd have been dead wrong.

Similarly, we hear that the vast majority of scientists supposedly accept the theory of evolution without reservation. The only problem is, that the really serious scientists who have made any effort to dig into the topic, generally reject it. It's only those who don't really know anything about it and certain kinds of atheistic-leaning and ideologically-motivated neophytes who claim to support the theory any more.

Here's what some of the real scientists who have taken the time and trouble for a hard look at the subject have had to say:

The Fossils In General

"Despite the bright promise that paleontology provides a means of 'seeing'
evolution, it has presented some nasty difficulties for evolutionists, the
most notorious of which is the presence of 'gaps' in the fossil record.
Evolution requires intermediate forms between species and paleontology does
not provide them ..."

David B. Kitts, PhD (Zoology)
Head Curator, Dept of Geology, Stoval Museum
Evolution, vol 28, Sep 1974, p 467

"The curious thing is that there is a consistency about the fossil gaps;
the fossils are missing in all the important places."

Francis Hitching
The Neck of the Giraffe or Where Darwin Went Wrong
Penguin Books, 1982, p.19

"The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary 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."

Stephen Jay Gould, Prof of Geology and
Paleontology, Harvard University
"Is a new general theory of evolution emerging?"
Paleobiology, vol 6, January 1980, p. 127

"...Yet Gould and the American Museum people are hard to contradict when
they say there are no transitional fossils ... I will lay it on the line,
there is not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight
argument."

Dr. Colin Patterson, Senior Paleontologist,
British Museum of Natural History, London
As quoted by: L. D. Sunderland
Darwin's Enigma: Fossils and Other Problems
4th edition, Master Books, 1988, p. 89

"We do not have any available fossil group which can categorically be
claimed to be the ancestor of any other group. We do not have in the fossil
record any specific point of divergence of one life form for another, and
generally each of the major life groups has retained its fundamental
structural and physiological characteristics throughout its life history
and has been conservative in habitat."

G. S. Carter, Professor & author
Fellow of Corpus Christi College
Cambridge, England
Structure and Habit in Vertebrate Evolution
University of Washington Press, 1967

"The history of most fossil species includes two features inconsistent with
gradualism: 1. Stasis. Most species exhibit no directional change during
their tenure on earth. They appear in the fossil record looking much the
same as when they disappear ... 2. Sudden Appearance. In any local area, a
species does not arise gradually by the steady transformation of its
ancestors; it appears all at once and 'fully formed'."

Stephen Jay Gould, Prof of Geology and
Paleontology, Harvard University
Natural History, 86(5):13, 1977

"But, as by this theory innumerable transitional forms must have existed,
why do we not find them embedded in countless numbers in the crust of the
earth?" (p. 206)

"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 (of evolution)." (p. 292)

Charles Robert Darwin
The Origin of Species, 1st edition reprint
Avenel Books, 1979

The Abundance of Fossils

"Darwin... was embarrassed by the fossil record... we are now about
120-years after Darwin and the knowledge of the fossil record has been
greatly expanded. We now have a quarter of a million fossil species but the
situation hasn't changed much. The record of evolution is still
surprisingly jerky and, ironically, ... some of the classic cases of
Darwinian change in the fossil record, such as the evolution of the horse
in North America, have had to be discarded or modified as a result of more
detailed information."

David M. Raup, Curator of Geology
Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago
"Conflicts Between Darwin and Paleontology"
Field Museum of Natural History
Vol. 50, No. 1, (Jan, 1979), p. 25

"Now, after over 120 years of the most extensive and painstaking geological
exploration of every continent and ocean bottom, the picture is infinitely
more vivid and complete than it was in 1859. Formations have been
discovered containing hundreds of billions of fossils and our museums are
filled with over 100-million fossils of 250,000 different species. The
availability of this profusion of hard scientific data should permit
objective investigators to determine if Darwin was on the right track. What
is the picture which the fossils have given us? ... The gaps between major
groups of organisms have been growing even wide and more undeniable. They
can no longer be ignored or rationalized away with appeals to imperfection
of the fossil record."

Luther D. Sunderland (Creationist)
Darwin's Enigma: Fossils and Other Problems,
4th edition, Master Books, 1988, p. 9

"My attempts to demonstrate evolution by an experiment carried on for more
than 40 years have completely failed. ... The fossil material is now so
complete that it has been possible to construct new classes, and the lack
of transitional series cannot be explained as being due to the scarcity of
material. The deficiencies are real, they will never be filled."

Prof N. Heribert Nilsson
Lund University, Sweden
Famous botanist and evolutionist
As quoted in: The Earth Before Man, p. 51

Evidence for Creation ?

"A circular argument arises: Interpret the fossil record in terms of a
particular theory of evolution, inspect the interpretation, and note that
it confirms the theory. Well, it would, wouldn't it?"

Dr.. Tom Kemp, Curator
University Museum of Oxford University
" A Fresh Look at the Fossil Record"
New Scientist, Dec 5, 1985, p. 66

"Much evidence can be advanced in favour of the theory of evolution -- from
biology, biogeography and paleontology, but I still think that to the
unprejudiced, the fossil record of plants is in favor of special creation.
... Can you imagine how an orchid, a duckweed, and a palm have come from
the same ancestry, and have we any evidence for this assumption? The
evolutionist must be prepared with an answer, but I think that most would
break down before an inquisition."

E.J.H. Corner, Prof of Botany,
Cambridge University, England
Evolution in Contemporary Botanical Thought,
Quadrangle Books, 1971, p. 97

"At the present stage of geological research, we have to admit that there
is nothing in the geological records that runs contrary to the view of
conservative creationists, that God created each species separately,
presumably from the dust of the earth."

Dr. Edmund J. Ambrose
Emeritus Prof of Cell Biology, University of London
The Nature and Origin of the Biological World
John Wiley & Sons, 1982, p. 164

The Geologic Column

"In many places, the oceanic sediments of which mountains are composed are
inverted, with the older sediments lying on top of the younger."

"Mountain Building in the Mediterranean"
Science News, Oct 17, 1970, p. 316

"2/3 of Earth's land surface has only 5 or fewer of the 10 geologic periods
in place. ... 80-85% of Earth's land surface does not have even 3 geologic
periods appearing in 'correct' consecutive order." (p. 46)

"Since only a small percentage of the earth's surface obeys even a
significant portion of the geologic column, it becomes an overall exercise
of gargantuan special pleading and imagination for the evolutionary -
uniformitarian paradigm to maintain that there ever were geologic periods.
The claim of their having taken place to form a continuum of rock/life/time
of ten biochronologic 'onion skins' over the earth is therefore a fantastic
and imaginative contrivance." (p. 69)

John Woodmorappe, Geologist (Creationist)
"The Essential Non-Existence of the Evolutionary
Uniformitarian Geologic Column: A Quantitative Assessment"
Creation Research Society Quarterly
June 1981, pp. 46-71.

Circular Dating

"The intelligent layman has long suspected circular reasoning in the use of
rocks to date fossils and fossils to date rocks. The geologist has never
bothered to think of a good reply, feeling the explanations are not worth
the trouble as long as the work brings results. This is supposed to be
hard-headed pragmatism."

J.E. O'Rourke, Evolutionist researcher
"Pragmatism Versus Materialism in Stratigraphy"
American Journal of Science, Jan 1976, p. 48.

"It cannot be denied that from a strictly philosophical standpoint,
geologist are here arguing in a circle. The succession of organisms has
been determined by the study of their remains imbedded in the rocks, and
the relative ages of the rocks are determined by the remains of organisms
they contain."

R.H. Rastall, Lecturer in Economic Geology
Cambridge University
Encyclopedia Britannica, 1956, vol 10, p 168

Catastrophism

"The scientific establishment's acceptance of worldwide catastrophism and
mass extinction does not signify their abandonment of materialistic
evolution. Neither has their grudging acquiescence to the fact that great
catastrophes caused the deposition of many of the fossils forced them to
consider that virtually no fossils are in the process of forming on the
bottom of any lake or sea today. This is a verboten subject. When I asked
the editors of several of the most prestigious scientific journals the
reasons for this silence, I was met with more silence."

Luther D. Sunderland (Creationist)
"Mass Extinction & Catastrophism Replace
Darwinism & Uniformitarianism"
Contrast: The Creation Evolution Controversy,
Vol 4, No. 2, 1986, pp.1-2

"We can accumulate great quantities of sediment in a given area very
rapidly. This has changed our whole thinking about the processes that came
to lay these layers here in the Grand Canyon." "One thing that supports
this view is the fact that these layers are continuous for mile after mile
through the Canyon. You can pick any one of these layers and follow it
through for a 100 or 200-miles in the Canyon, with very little change. This
kind of continuity and uniformity suggests that deep water was involved in
the process."

Dr. Arthur V. Chadwick (Creationist geologist)
The Fossil Record (film)
Films for Christ Assoc, 1983

"A week's study of the Grand Canyon should be a good cure for Evolutionary
geologists as it is a perfect example of Flood geology with its
paraconformities and striking parallelisms of the under strata. The whole
area was obviously laid down quickly, then uplifted and then the whole
sedimentary area split open like a rotten watermelon."

Albert W. Mehlert, Former Evolutionist &
paleoanthropology researcher
"Diluviology & Uniformitarian Geology -- A Review"
Creation Research Society Quarterly
Vol 23, No. 3 (Dec 1986) p. 106



"The likelihood of the formation of life from inanimate matter is one to a
number with 40,000 noughts after it... It is big enough to bury Darwin and
the whole theory of Evolution. There was no primeval soup, neither on this
planet nor on any other, and if the beginnings of life were not random,
they must therefore have been the product of purposeful intelligence."

Sir Fred Hoyle
Nature, Nov 12, 1981, p. 148

"...in the atmosphere and in the various water basins of the primitive
earth, many destructive interactions would have so vastly diminished, if
not altogether consumed, essential precursor chemicals, that chemical
evolution rates would have been negligible. ... It is becoming clear that
however life began on earth, the usually conceived notion that life emerged
from an oceanic soup of organic chemicals is a most implausible hypothesis.
We may therefore with fairness call this scenario 'the myth of the
prebiotic soup.' " (p. 86)

"...an intelligible communication via radio signal from some distant galaxy
would be widely hailed as evidence of an intelligent source. Why then
doesn't the message sequence on the DNA molecule also constitute prima
facie evidence for an intelligent source? After all, DNA information is not
just analogous to a message sequence such as Morse code, it is such a
message sequence." (pp. 211-212)

Charles B. Thaxton (Creationist)
Ph.D. Chemistry, Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard,
Staff member of the Julian Center
The Mystery of Life's Origin:
Reassessing Current Theories
Philosophical Library, 1984

"At that moment, when the DNA/RNA system became understood, the debate
between Evolutionists and Creationists should have come to a screeching
halt

I.L. Cohen, Researcher and Mathematician
Member NY Academy of Sciences
Officer of the Archaeological Inst. of America
Darwin Was Wrong - A Study in Probabilities
New Research Publications, 1984, p. 4

"Considering the way the prebiotic soup is referred to in so many
discussions of the origin of life as an already established reality, it
comes as something of a shock to realize that there is absolutely no
positive evidence for its existence." (p. 261)

"The complexity of the simplest known type of cell is so great that it is
impossible to accept that such an object could have been thrown together
suddenly by some kind of freakish, vastly improbable, event. Such an
occurrence would be indistinguishable from a miracle." (p. 264)
"It is astonishing to think that this remarkable piece of machinery, which
possesses the ultimate capacity to construct every living thing that ever
existed on Earth, from giant redwood to the human brain, can construct all
its own components in a matter of minutes and weigh less than 10-16 grams.
It is of the order of several thousand million million times smaller than
the smallest piece of functional machinery ever constructed by man." (p.
338)

Michael Denton, Molecular Biologist
Evolution: A Theory in Crisis
Adler and Adler, 1985,

"Once we see, however, that the probability of life originating at random
is so utterly minuscule as to make it absurd, it becomes sensible to think
that the favorable properties of physics, on which life depends, are in
every respect deliberate... It is almost inevitable that our own measure of
intelligence must reflect higher intelligence -- even to the limit of God."

Sir Fred Hoyle & Chandra Wickramasinghe
Prof of Astronomy, Cambridge University
Prof of Astronomy and Applied Mathematics
University College, Cardiff
Evolution from Space, J.M.Dent, 1981, pp 141,144

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dr. Michael Denton:


Dr. Denton, an evolutionist, holds a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology, and is
currently doing biological research in Sydney, Australia.

"Instead of revealing a multitude of transitional forms through which the
evolution of the cell might have occurred, molecular biology has served
only to emphasize the enormity of the gap. We now know not only of the
existence of a break between the living and non-living world, but also that
it represents the most dramatic and fundamental of all the discontinuities
of nature. Between a living cell and the most highly ordered non-biological
system, such as a crystal or a snowflake, there is a chasm as vast and
absolute as it is possible to conceive.

Molecular biology has shown that even the simplest of all living systems on
earth today, bacterial cells, are exceedingly complex objects. Although the
tiniest bacterial cells are incredibly small, weighing less than 10-12 gms,
each is in effect a veritable micro- miniaturized factory containing
thousands of exquisitely designed pieces of intricate molecular machinery,
made up altogether of one hundred thousand million atoms, far more
complicated than any machine built by man and absolutely without parallel
in the non-living world.

Molecular biology has also shown that the basic design of the cell system
is essentially the same in all living systems on earth from bacteria to
mammals. In all organisms the roles of DNA, mRNA and protein are identical.
The meaning of the genetic code is also virtually identical in all cells.
The size, structure and component design of the protein synthetic machinery
is practically the same in all cells. In terms of the basic biochemical
design, therefore no living system can be thought of as being primitive or
ancestral with respect to any other system, nor is there the slightest
empirical hint of an evolutionary sequence among all the incredibly diverse
cells on earth. For those who hoped that molecular biology might bridge the
gulf between chemistry and biochemistry, the revelation was profoundly
disappointing." (pp. 249-250)

------------------------------------------------------------------------

"The American biochemist Harold Morowitz has speculated as to what might be
the absolute minimum requirement for a completely self- replicating cell
... Such a minimal cell containing, say three ribosomes, 4 mRNA molecules,
a full complement of enzymes, a DNA molecule 100,000 nucleotides long and a
cell membrane would be about 1000A. (1A. = 10-8 cm) in diameter. According
to Morowitz:

This is the smallest hypothetical cell that we can envisage within the
context of current biochemical thinking. It is almost certainly a lower
limit, since we have allowed no control function, no vitamin metabolism and
extremely limited intermediary metabolism. Such a cell would be very
vulnerable to environmental fluctuations." (pp. 263-264)

"The intuitive feeling that pure chance could never have achieved the
degree of complexity and ingenuity so ubiquitous in nature has been a
continuing source of skepticism ever since the publication of the Origin;
and throughout the past century there has always existed a significant
minority of first-rate biologists who have never been able to bring
themselves to accept the validity of Darwinian claims." (p. 327)

"It is the sheer universality of perfection, the fact that everywhere we
look, to whatever depth we look, we find an elegance and ingenuity of an
absolutely transcending quality, which so mitigates against the idea of
chance. Is it really credible that random processes could have constructed
a reality, the smallest element of which - a functional protein or gene -
is complex beyond our own creative capacities, a reality which is the very
antithesis of chance, which excels in every sense anything produced by the
intelligence of man? (p. 342)

"Perhaps in no other area of modern biology is the challenge posed by the
extreme complexity and ingenuity of biological adaptations more apparent
than in the fascinating new molecular world of the cell. Viewed down a
light microscope at a magnification of some several hundred times, such as
would have been possible in Darwin's time, a living cell is a relatively
disappointing spectacle appearing only as an ever-changing and apparently
disordered pattern of blobs and particles which, under the influence of
unseen turbulent forces, are continually tossed haphazardly in all
directions. To grasp the reality of life as it has been revealed by
molecular biology, we must magnify the cell a thousand million times until
it is twenty kilometres in diameter and resembles a giant air ship large
enough to cover a great city like London or New Your. What we would then
see would be an object of unparalleled complexity and adaptive design. On
the surface of the cell we would see millions of openings, like the port
holes of a vast space ship, opening and closing to allow a continual stream
of materials to flow in and out. If we were to enter one of those openings
we would find ourselves in a world of supreme technology and bewildering
complexity. We would see endless highly organized corridors and conduits
branching in every direction away from the perimeter of the cell, some
leading to the central memory bank in the nucleus and others to assembly
plants and processing units. The nucleus itself would be a vast spherical
chamber more than a kilometre in diameter, resembling a geodesic dome
inside of which we would see, all neatly stacked together in ordered
arrays, the miles of coiled chains of the DNA molecules. A huge range of
products and raw materials would shuttle along all the manifold conduits in
a highly ordered fashion to and from all the various assembly plants in the
outer regions of the cell.

We would wonder at the level of control implicit in the movement of so many
objects down so many seemingly endless conduits, all in perfect unison. We
would see all around us, in every direction we looked, all sorts of
robot-like machines. We would notice that the simplest of the functional
components of the cell, the protein molecules, were astonishingly, complex
pieces of molecular machinery, each on consisting of about three thousand
atoms arranged in highly organized 3-D spatial conformation. We would
wonder even more as we watched the strangely purposeful activities of these
weird molecular machines, particularly when we realized that, despite all
our accumulated knowledge of physics and chemistry, the task of designing
one such molecular machine - that is one single functional protein molecule
- would be completely beyond our capacity at present and will probably not
be achieved until at least the beginning of the next century. Yet the life
of the cell depends on the integrated activities of thousands, certainly
tens, and probably hundreds of thousands of different protein molecules.

We would see that nearly every feature of our own advanced machines had its
analogue in the cell: artificial languages and their decoding systems,
memory banks for information storage and retrieval, elegant control systems
regulating the automated assembly of parts and components, error fail-safe
and proof-reading devices utilized for quality control, assembly processes
involving the principle of prefabrication and modular construction. In
fact, so deep would be the feeling of deja-vu, so persuasive the analogy,
that much of the terminology we would use to describe this fascinating
molecular reality would be borrowed from the world of late
twentieth-century technology.

What we would be witnessing would be an object resembling an immense
automated factory, a factory larger than a city and carrying out almost as
many unique functions as all the manufacturing activities of man on earth.
However, it would be a factory which would have one capacity not equalled
in any of our own most advanced machines, for it would be capable of
replicating its entire structure within a matter of a few hours. To witness
such an act at a magnification of one thousand million times would be an
awe-inspiring spectacle." (pp. 328-329)

"As Von Neumann pointed out, the construction of any sort of self-
replication automaton would necessitate the solution to three fundamental
problems: that of storing information; that of duplicating information; and
that of designing an automatic factory which could be programmed from the
information store to construct all the other components of the machine as
well as duplicating itself. The solution to all three problems is found in
living things and their elucidation has been one of the triumphs of modern
biology.

So efficient is the mechanism of information storage and so elegant the
mechanism of duplication of this remarkable molecule that it is hard to
escape the feeling that the DNA molecule may be the one and only perfect
solution to the twin problems of information storage and duplication for
self-replicating automata." (pp. 337-338)
......................................................................


Fossil Evidence

"The family trees which adorn our text books are based on inference,
however, reasonable, not the evidence of fossils."

Stephen Jay Gould, Prof of Geology and
Paleontology, Harvard University
"Evolution's Erratic Pace"
Natural History, May, 1977, p. 13

"... if man evolved from an apelike creature he did so without leaving a
trace of that evolution in the fossil record."

Lord Solly Zuckerman, MA, MD, DSc (Anatomy)
Prof. of anatomy, University of Birmingham
Chief scientific advisor, United Kingdom
Beyond the Ivory Tower
Taplinger Publishing Company, 1970, p 64

"The entire hominid (a so-called 'ape-man' fossil) collection know today
would barely cover a billiard table... Ever since Darwin... preconceptions
have led evidence by the nose in the study of fossil man."

John Reader
"Whatever Happened to Zinjanthropus?
New Scientist, March 26, 1981, pp. 802-805

"The fossils that decorate our family tree are so scarce that there are
still more scientists than specimens. The remarkable fact is that all the
physical evidence we have for human evolution can still be placed, with
room to spare, inside a single coffin."

"Modern apes, for instance, seem to have sprung out of nowhere. They have
no yesterday, no fossil record. And the true origin of modern humans -- of
upright, naked, tool-making, big-brained beings -- is, to be honest with
ourselves, an equally mysterious matter."

Dr. Lyall Watson
"The Water People"
Science Digest, May 1982, p 44.

"The fossil record pertaining to man is still so sparsely known that those
who insist on positive declarations can do nothing more than jump from one
hazardous surmise to another and hope that the next dramatic discovery does
not make them utter fools... As we have seen, there are numerous scientists
and popularizers today who have the temerity to tell us that there is 'no
doubt' how man originated. If only they had the evidence..."

William R. Fix
The Bone Peddlers (Macmillan, 1984), pp. 150

"A five million year old piece of bone that was thought to be a collarbone
of a humanlike creature is actually part of a dolphin rib... The problem
with a lot of anthropologists is that they want so much to find a hominid
that any scrap of bone becomes a hominid bone."

Dr. Tim White
Evolutionary anthropologist
University of California at Berkeley
New Scientist, April 28, 1983, p. 199

"...not being a paleontologist, I don't want to pour too much scorn on
paleontologists, but if you were to spend your life picking up bones and
finding little fragments of head and little fragments of jaw, there's a
very strong desire to exaggerate the importance of those fragments..."

Greg Kerby
From an address to the Biology Teachers
Association of South Australia, 1976

"Echoing the criticism made of his father's Homo habilis skulls, he
(Richard Leakey) added that Lucy's skull was so incomplete that most of it
was 'imagination, made of plaster of paris,' thus making it impossible to
draw any firm conclusion about what species she belonged to."

Richard Leakey (Son of Louis Leakey)
Director of National Museums of Kenya, Africa
The Weekend Australian, May 7-8, 1983, p. 3

"The evidence given above makes it overwhelmingly likely that Lucy was no
more than a variety of pygmy chimpanzee, and walked the same way (awkwardly
upright on occasions, but mostly quadrupedal). The 'evidence' for the
alleged transformation from ape to man is extremely unconvincing."

Albert W. Mehlert, Former Evolutionist &
paleoanthropology researcher
"Lucy - Evolution's Solitary Claim for Ape/Man"
Creation Research Society Quarterly,
Vol 22, No. 3, (Dec 1985), p. 145

"Neanderthals had short, narrow skulls, large cheekbones and noses and,
most distinctive, bunlike bony bumps on the backs of their heads. Many
modern Danes and Norwegians have identical features, Brace reported at the
annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association in Phoenix...
Indeed, the present-day European skulls resemble Neanderthal skulls more
closely than they resemble the skulls of American Indians or Australian
aborigines, he said. Brace...measured more than 500 relatively modern
northwestern Europeans craniums last year..."

"Neanderthal Traits Extant, Group Told"
The Arizona Republic (Phoenix)
Nov 20, 1988, p. B-5, reporting on:
C. Loring Brace
Physical anthropologist and evolutionist
University of Michigan

Genetic Evidence

"The evolutionary interpretation of homology is clouded even further by the
uncomfortable fact that there are many cases of 'homologous like'
resemblance which cannot by any stretch of the imagination be explained by
descent from a common ancestor." ( p. 151)

"The really significant finding that comes to light from comparing the
proteins' amino acid sequences is that it is impossible to arrange them in
any sort of an evolutionary series." (p. 289)

Dr. Michael Denton
Evolution: A Theory in Crisis
Adler and Adler Publishers, 1985,

"It has often been claimed, moreover, that these new and momentous findings
have at last unearthed the true mechanism of evolution, and that we are
presently on the brink of discovering precisely how macroevolution has come
about. However, the truth of the matter is very much the opposite: now that
the actual physical structure of what might be termed the biochemical
mainstays of life has come into view, scientists are finding -- frequently
to their dismay -- that the evolutionist thesis has become more stringently
unthinkable than ever before... "

"...on the molecular level, these separations, and this hierarchic order
stand out with a mathematical precision which once and for all silences
dissent. On the fundamental level it becomes a rigorously demonstratable
fact that there are no transitional types, and that the so called missing
links are indeed non-existent."

Wolfgang Smith, Ph.D
Teilardism and the New Religion
Tan Books and Publishers, Inc., 1988, p. 8

"In recent years several authors have written popular books on human
origins which are based more on fantasy and subjectivity than on fact and
objectivity... by and large, written by authors with a formal academic
background... Prominent among them were On Aggression by Konrad Lorenz, The
Naked Ape and The Human Zoo by Desmond Morris..." (p. 283)

"Yet the tendency for individual paleontologists to trace human history
directly back to their own fossil finds has persisted to the present day."
(p. 285)

"So one is forced to conclude that there is no clear cut scientific picture
of human evolution." (p. 285)

Dr. R. Martin, Senior Research Fellow
Zoological Society of London
"Man is Not an Onion"
New Scientist, Aug 4, 1977


"The paleontologists have convinced me small changes do not accumulate."

Francisco Ayala, Ph.d
Assoc Professor of Genetics, U of California
"Evolutionary theory under fire"
Science, Nov 21, 1980. p 883-887

"People are misled into believing that since microevolution is a reality,
that therefore macroevolution is such a reality also. Evolutionists
maintain that over long periods of time small-scale changes accumulate in
such a way as to generate new and more complex organisms ... This is sheer
illusion, for there is no scientific evidence whatever to support the
occurrence of biological change on such a grand scale. In spite of all the
artificial breeding which has been done, and all the controlled efforts to
modify fruit flies, the bacillus escherichia (E-coli), and other organisms,
fruit flies remain fruit flies, E-coli bacteria remain E-coli bacteria,
roses remain roses, corn remains corn, and human beings remain human
beings."

Darrel Kautz, Creationist Researcher
The Origin of Living Things, 1988, p. 6

"The salient fact is this: if by evolution we mean macroevolution (as we
henceforth shall), then it can be said with the utmost rigor that the
doctrine is totally bereft of scientific sanction. Now, to be sure, given
the multitude of extravagant claims about evolution promulgated by
evolutionists with an air of scientific infallibility, this may indeed
sound strange.
And yet the fact remains that there exists to this day not a shred of bona
fide scientific evidence in support of the thesis that macroevolutionary
transformations have ever occurred."

Wolfgang Smith, Ph.D Mathematics , MS Physics
Teilardism and the New Religion
Tan Books and Publishers, Inc., 1988, p. 5

Mutations

"A mutation doesn't produce major new raw (DNA) material. You don't make a
new species by mutating the species."

Stephen Jay Gould, Prof of Geology and
Paleontology, Harvard University
"Is a New and General Theory of Evol. Emerging?
Lecture at Hobart&Wm Smith College,Feb4,1980

"With ... the inability of mutations of any type to produce new genetic
information, the maintenance of the basic plan is to be expected." (p.168)
"There are limits to biological change and ... these limits are set by the
structure and function of the genetic machinery." (p. 153)

Ph.D. L.P.Lester & R.G. Bohlin (Creationists)
The Natural Limits of Biological Change
Zondervan/Probe, 1984

"No matter how numerous they may be, mutations do not produce any kind of
(E)volution."

Pierre-Paul Grosse
past-President, French Acadamie des Science
Evolution of Living Organisms
Academic Press, New York, 1977, p 88

"A random change in the highly integrated system of chemical processes
which constitute life is certain to impair - just as a random interchange
of connections in a television set is not likely to improve the picture."

James F. Crow
Radiation & mutation specialist
"Genetic Effects of Radiation"
Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, Vol. 14, pp 19-20

Natural Selection

"Natural selection, a central feature of neo-Darwinism ... may have a
stabilizing effect, but it does not promote speciation. It is not a
creative force as many people have suggested."

Roger Lewin
Science 217:1239-1240, 1982

"But how do you get from nothing to such an elaborate something if
Evolution must proceed through a long sequence of intermediate stages, each
favored by natural selection? You can't fly with 2% of a wing ... How, in
other words, can natural selection explain these incipient stages of
structures that can only be used (as we now observe them) in much more
elaborated forms? ... one point stands high above the rest: the dilemma of
incipient stages. Mivart identified this problem as primary and it remains
so today."

Stephen Jay Gould, Prof of Geology and
Paleontology, Harvard University
"Not Necessarily a Wing"
Natural History, Oct 1985, pp. 12-13

"No one has ever produced a species by mechanisms of natural selection. No
one has ever gotten near it..."

Dr. Colin Patterson, Senior Paleontologist,
British Museum of Natural History, London
Interview, BBC television, March 4, 1982

" 'Survival of the fittest' and 'natural selection'. No matter what
phraseology one generates, the basic fact remains the same: any physical
change of any size, shape or form is strictly the result of purposeful
alignment of billions of nucleotides (in the DNA). Nature or species do not
have the capacity to rearrange them nor to add to them. Consequently no
leap (saitation) can occur from one species to another. The only way we
know for a DNA to be altered is through a meaningful intervention from an
outside source of intelligence - one who know what it is doing, such as our
genetic engineers are now performing in the laboratories."

I. L. Cohen
Member New York Academy of Sciences
Officer of the Archaeological Institute of America
Darwin Was Wrong - A Study in Probabilities
New Research Publications, Inc., 1984. p. 209

"The peppered moth experiments beautifully demonstrate natural selection or
survival of the fittest. But they do not show evolution in progress. For
however the population may alter in their content of light, intermediate or
dark forms, all the moths remain from beginning to end Biston betularia."

L. Harrison Matthews, D.Sc, FRS
Intro to Origin of Species, Dent, London, 1971

"In the meantime, the educated public continues to believe that Darwin has
provided all the relevant answers by the magic formula of random mutations
plus natural selection -- quite unaware of the fact that random mutations
turned out to be irrelevant and natural selection a tautology."

Arthur Koestler
Janus: A Summing Up, Vintage Books, 1978, p 185

Separation between the Species

"Firstly, why, if species have descended from other species by insensibly
fine gradations, do we not everywhere see innumerable transitional forms?
Why is not all nature in confusion instead of the species being, as we see
them, well defined?"

Charles R. Darwin
The Origin of Species, first edition reprint
Avenel Books, 1979, p. 205

"...now that the actual physical structure of what might be termed the
biochemical mainstays of life [DNA] has come into view, scientists are
finding -- frequently to their dismay -- that the evolutionist thesis has
become more stringently unthinkable than ever before... " "...on the
molecular level, these separations, and this hierarchic order stand out
with a mathematical precision which once and for all silences dissent. On
the fundamental level it becomes a rigorously demonstratable fact that
there are no transitional types, and that the so called missing links are
indeed non-existent."

Wolfgang Smith, Ph.D Mathematics , MS Physics
Teilardism and the New Religion
Tan Books and Publishers, Inc., 1988, p. 8

The Fossil Record

"Beginning about six hundred million years ago ... the earliest known
representative of the major kinds of animals still populating today's seas
made a rather abrupt appearance. This rather protracted 'event' shows up
graphically in the rock record: all over the world, at roughly the same
time, thick sequences of rocks, barren of any easily detected fossils, are
overlain by sediments containing a gorgeous array of shelly invertebrates:
trilobites, brachiopods, mollusks. ... Creationist have made much of this
sudden development of rich and varied fossil record where, just before,
there was none ... Indeed, the sudden appearance of a varied,
well-preserved array of fossils ... does pose a fascinating intellectual
challenge."

Niles Eldredge, Paleontologist
American Museum of Natural History
The Monkey Business: A Scientist Looks at Creationism
Washington Square Press, N.Y., 1982, p. 44

"One of the major unsolved problems of geology and evolution is the
occurrence of diversified, multi-cellular marine invertebrates in Lower
Cambrian rocks on all the continents and their absence in rocks of greater
age."

D. Axelrod,
Science 128:7, 1958

"The geological record has so far provided no evidence as to the origin of
the fishes ..."

J. R. Norman, Dept of Zoology
British Museum of Natural History, London
"Classification and pedigrees: fossils"
A History of Fishes, Dr P.H. Greenwood (editor)
British Museum of Natural History, 1975, p. 343

"There are no intermediate forms between finned and limbed creatures in the
fossil collections of the world."

Gordon Rattray Taylor
Award-winning science writer
Former editor of the BBC's "Horizon" series
The Great Evolution Mystery,
Harper & Row, 1983, p. 60

"The [evolutionary] origin of birds is largely a matter of deduction. There
is no fossil evidence of the stages through which the remarkable change
from reptile to bird was achieved."

W.E. Swinton, British Museum of Natural History
Biology and Comparative Physiology of Birds
A.J. Marshall (editor), Vol 1, Academic Press
New York, 1960, p. 1

"The evolution of the horse provides one of the keystones in teaching of
evolutionary doctrine, though the actual story depends to a large extent
upon who is telling it and when the story is being told. In fact one could
easily discuss the evolution of the story of the evolution of the horse."

Prof G. A. Kerkut
Dept of Physiology & Biochemistry
University of Southhampton
Implications of Evolution
Pergamon Press, London, 1960, p 144

"The family tree of the horse is beautiful and continuous only in the
textbooks. ...... The construction of the whole Cenozoic family tree of the
horse is therefore a very artificial one, since it is put together from
non-equivalent parts ..."

Prof N. Heribert Nilsson
Lund University, Sweden
Famous botanist and evolutionist
Synthetische Artbildung
Verlag CWE Gleerup Press

"It must be significant that nearly all the evolutionary stories I learned
as a student ... have now been 'debunked'. Similarly, my own experience of
more than twenty years looking for evolutionary lineages among the Mesozoic
Brachiopoda has proven them equally elusive."

Prof. Derek Ager
Dept of Geology, Imperial College, London
"The nature of the fossil record."
Proc. Geological Assoc. Vol. 87, 1976, p. 132


"Evolutionism is a fairy tale for grown-ups. This theory has helped nothing
in the progress of science. It is useless."

Prof. Louis Bounoure, Former:
President Biological Society of Strassbourg,
Director of the Strassbourg Zoological Museum,
Director of Research at the
French National Centre of Scientific Research
The Advocate, March 8, 1984, p. 17

"Today our duty is to destroy the myth of evolution, considered as a
simple, understood, and explained phenomenon which keeps rapidly unfolding
before us. ... The deceit is sometimes unconscious, but not always, since
some people, owing to their sectarianism, purposely overlook reality and
refuse to acknowledge the inadequacies and falsity of their beliefs."

Pierre-Paul Grasse
past-President, French Acadamie des Science
Evolution of Living Organisms
Academic Press, New York, 1977, p 8

"I myself am convinced that the theory of evolution, especially the extent
to which it's been applied, will be one of the great jokes in the history
books of the future. Posterity will marvel that so very flimsy and dubious
an hypothesis could be accepted with the incredible credulity that it has."

Malcolm Muggeridge
Well-known Journalist and philosopher
Pascal Lectures, University of Waterloo

"After having chided the theologian for his reliance on myth and miracle,
science found itself in the unenviable position of having to create a
mythology of its own: namely, the assumption that what, after long effort
could not be proved to take place today, had, in truth, taken place in the
primeval past."

Loren Eiseley, Ph.D. Anthropology
The Immense Journey
Random House, NY, 1957, p. 199

"Scientists who utterly reject Evolution may be one of our fastest- growing
controversial minorities... Many of the scientists supporting this position
hold impressive credentials in science."

Larry Hatfield
"Educators Against Darwin"
Science Digest Special, Winter 1979, pp. 94-96

"Today, a hundred and twenty-eight years after it was first promulgated,
the Darwinian theory of evolution stands under attack as never before. ...
The fact is that in recent times there has been increasing dissent on the
issue within academic and professional ranks, and that a growing number of
respectable scientists are defecting from the evolutionist camp. It is
interesting, moreover, that for the most part these 'experts' have
abandoned Darwinism, not on the basis of religious faith or biblical
persuasions, but on strictly scientific grounds, and in some instances
regretfully, as one could say."

"We are told dogmatically that Evolution is an established fact; but we are
never told who has established it, and by what means. We are told, often
enough, that the doctrine is founded upon evidence, and that indeed this
evidence 'is henceforward above all verification, as well as being immune
from any subsequent contradiction by experience'; but we are left entirely
in the dark on the crucial question wherein, precisely, this evidence
consists."

Wolfgang Smith, Mathematician and Physicist
Prof. of Mathematics, Oregon State University
Former math instructor at MIT
Teilhardism and the New Religion:
A Thorough Analysis of the Teachings of de Chardin
Tan Books & Publishers, 1988, pp. 1-2

"Scientists who go about teaching that evolution is a fact of life are
great con-men, and the story they are telling may be the greatest hoax
ever. In explaining evolution we do not have one iota of fact."

Dr. T. N. Tahmisian, Physiologist
Atomic Energy Commission. As quoted in:
Evolution and the Emperor's New Clothes,
3D Enterprises Limited, 1983, title page

"In fact, evolution became in a sense a scientific religion; almost all
scientists accepted it and many are prepared to 'bend' their observations
to fit in with it."

H. J. Lipson, F.R.S.
"A physicist looks at evolution"
Physics Bulletin, vol 31, 1980

"One of the reasons I started taking this anti-evolutionary view, was ...
it struck me that I had been working on this stuff for twenty years and
there was not one thing I knew about it. That's quite a shock to learn that
one can be so misled so long. ...so for the last few weeks I've tried
putting a simple question to various people and groups of people. Question
is: Can you tell me anything you know about evolution, any one thing that
is true? I tried that question on the geology staff at the Field Museum of
Natural History and the only answer I got was silence. I tried it on the
members of the Evolutionary Morphology Seminar in the University of
Chicago, a very prestigious body of evolutionists, and all I got there was
silence for a long time and eventually one person said, 'I do know one
thing -- it ought not to be taught in high school'."

Dr. Colin Patterson, Senior Palaeontologist
British Museaum of Natural History, London
Keynote address at the
American Museum of Natural History,
New York City, 5 November, 1981

"The twentieth century would be incomprehensible without the Darwinian
revolution. The social and political currents which have swept the world in
the past eighty years would have been impossible without its intellectual
sanction. ... The influence of the evolutionary theory on fields far
removed from biology is one of the most spectacular examples in history of
how a highly speculative idea for which there is no really hard scientific
evidence can come to fashion the thinking of a whole society and dominate
the outlook of an age. Considering its historic significance and the social
and moral transformation it caused in western thought, one might have hoped
that Darwinian theory ... a theory of such cardinal importance, a theory
that literally changed the world, would have been something more than
metaphysics, something more than a myth."

Michael Denton, Molecular Biologist
Evolution: A Theory in Crisis
Adler and Adler, 1985, p. 358

"One is forced to conclude that many scientists and technologists pay
lip-service to Darwinian theory only because it supposedly excludes a
Creator..."

Dr. Michael Walker
Senior Lecturer, Anthropology, Sydney University
Quadrant, Oct 1982, p. 44

"I think we need to go further than this and admit that the only acceptable
explanation is creation. I know this is an anathema to physicists, as
indeed it is to me, but we must not reject a theory that we do not like if
the experimental evidence supports it."

H. S. Lipson
Prof of Physics, University of Manchester
A paper published by The Institute of Physics
IOP Publishing Ltd., 1980

"In a certain sense, the debate transcends the confrontation between
evolutionists and creationists. We now have a debate within the scientific
community itself; it is a confrontation between scientific objectivity and
ingrained prejudice - between logic and emotion - between fact and fiction.
" (pp. 6-7)

"...In the final analysis, objective scientific logic has to prevail - no
matter what the final result is - no matter how many time-honored idols
have to be discarded in the process." (p. 8)

"... After all, it is not the duty of science to defend the theory of
evolution, and stick by it to the bitter end - no matter what illogical and
unsupported conclusions it offers.... If in the process of impartial
scientific logic, they find that creation by outside superintelligence is
the solution to our quandary, then let's cut the umbilical cord that tied
us down to Darwin for such a long time. It is choking us and holding us
back." (pp. 214-215)

"... every single concept advanced by the theory of evolution (and amended
thereafter) is imaginary as it is not supported by the scientifically
established facts of microbiology, fossils, and mathematical probability
concepts. Darwin was wrong." (p. 209)

"... The theory of evolution may be the worst mistake made in science." (p.
210)

I. L. Cohen, Mathematician, Researcher, Author,
Member New York Academy of Sciences
Officer of the Archaeological Institute of America
Darwin Was Wrong - A Study in Probabilities
New Research Publications, Inc., 1984.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
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suzy
 
  1  
Reply Fri 26 Mar, 2004 05:05 pm
It's just curious that they forgot to mention certain creatures in the bible.
0 Replies
 
roger
 
  1  
Reply Fri 26 Mar, 2004 05:08 pm
Did you really read all that, Suzy?
0 Replies
 
edgarblythe
 
  1  
Reply Fri 26 Mar, 2004 06:02 pm
What I read was a load of horse ****.
0 Replies
 
SCoates
 
  1  
Reply Fri 26 Mar, 2004 06:07 pm
You just proved to me that good documentation, and accuracy are entirely two different things.
0 Replies
 
Piffka
 
  1  
Reply Fri 26 Mar, 2004 06:37 pm
<ahem> Two can play at this copying game......

The Illogic of a Creationist Argument
by
Ian Johnston
July 1998

[This document is in the public domain, released July 1998]

There's a common argument which has been going around for years advocating that we should be teaching Creation Science in our schools. The proponents of this view insist that the Genesis account of the creation of the world and the species in it should receive equal time in our science classes with Darwin. To this end, various spokesmen tour the province and fill cyberspace with aggressive arguments seeking to persuade us of the logic of their case. Now, I haven't read all the arguments, but I have consulted enough of them to recognize the structure of what seems to be the commonest way these people try to persuade us. It is entirely illogical from beginning to end, so much so, in fact, that it makes a particularly useful case study in many of the basic errors of reason.

Briefly put, the argument goes something like this: everyone agrees that either Darwin's account of evolution or the Genesis account of creation is correct; however, there are some serious problems, inconsistencies, errors in Darwin's account; therefore, evolution is incorrect, and the Genesis account is correct. Thus, we must give it at least equal time in our science curriculum.

The first obvious error, of course, is the way the argument is set up. There are scores of accounts of creation, for virtually every culture has its own. Thus, the original premise is a False Dilemma, and the "disproof" of Darwin, even if valid, does not specially privilege the Genesis account. If the point is to list all the alternatives and then to eliminate all contenders but the Genesis account, these arguers need to get to work on more than just Darwin. There are many other competing accounts on the table.

Then, of course, there is the endemic confusion over the meaning of the term evolution. Darwin did not invent the concept (it was around well before his day), and its truth does not depend upon anything Darwin wrote. The proof of Evolution in its most general sense, that is, the development of species from species unlike themselves over time, rests on three clear facts. First, there is variety in the natural world (that is self-evident). Second, all living individuals must have come from a living parent (no one has ever been able to prove the contrary). And third, simple species were around long before more complex species (any inspection of fossilized sedimentary strata confirms this point). The conclusion to this argument is unavoidable: the complex species must have come from the simpler species.

Darwin's theory of Natural Selection is not concerned with this proof. He is providing an explanation of how evolution might take place. Hence, attacking Darwin directly does no particular harm to the case for evolution (which would be just as valid if no one had ever heard of Darwin), and so one wonders why Creation Scientists spend so much time on that rather than on stating which of the three facts upon which the proof of evolution rests is incorrect. One suspects they do not do that because they have no way at all of refuting any of the three key points above. However, if the truth of evolution is something they wish to challenge, all that attention to Darwin's theory is something of a red herring. Until they attack the claims upon which the case for evolution rests, their argument against it is pointless.

Calling attention to certain difficulties with Darwin's theory is easy to do, of course, because there are a number of interesting problems with it. But it is quite erroneous to suppose that these problems therefore mean that Darwinism has no scientific credibility. Scientists themselves constantly argue about the various parts of the theory, adjust it, refine it, come up with competing versions of it, and so forth. In fact, that is one of the most interesting areas of modern biology. The idea that a single problem or series of anomalies disqualifies a scientific theory indicates that those making such a claim have little idea what science, in fact, is or how it is carried out. A theory in which there are no such problem areas is generally of very little interest to scientists. Newtonian mechanics has serious problems, too. Does this mean we throw out the notion of gravity?

Misrepresenting or failing to understand the nature of science (deliberately or not) is central to an allied argument that often crops up with the above case, namely, a definition of science which claims that what cannot be observed cannot be scientific. Since evolution cannot be observed because the time spans are too long, therefore it cannot be scientific. This, of course, is the old logical trick of setting up a self-serving definition. Scientific theories deal all the time with things we cannot observe, like, gravity, electrons, electric fields, viruses, and so on. On the basis of these theories predictions are made which lead to observable results which will enable the theories to be confirmed or falsified. In this sense, evolution is thoroughly scientific. It leads to predictions which can be checked against the fossil record. A single finding, well confirmed, could destroy the case for evolution (e.g., a vertebrate skeleton in the pre-Cambrian rocks). That has never happened in the thousands of inspections which occur.

This point illustrates the key objection scientists have to the Creationist account, namely that it generates only one prediction, and that has been consistently falsified and never confirmed, namely that if all the species were created at once then we should find their fossil remain all together in every fossilized strata. Nowhere in the world has this ever occurred. Hence the explanatory predicting power of the Genesis account is empty and without scientific interest.

None of this presupposes that there might not be great value in believing in Genesis. All it shows is that the case for considering the Genesis account scientific is non-existent. Hence, it has no place in our science classes. Whether or not it should be taught in schools for its literary or religious or cultural value is another question. Curiously enough, that case is never made in the current debates.

____________________

The Short Proof of Evolution
by
Ian Johnston

[This document is in the public domain and may be used, in whole or in part, without charge and without permission, by anyone, provided the source is acknowledged. Last revised in July 2001]

We live, we are constantly told, in a scientific age. We look to science to help us achieve the good life, to solve our problems (especially our medical aches and pains), and to tell us about the world. A great deal of our education system, particularly the post-secondary curriculum, is organized as science or social science. And yet, curiously enough, there is one major scientific truth which vast numbers of people refuse to accept (by some news accounts a majority of people in North America)--the fact of evolution. Yet it is as plain as plain can be that the scientific truth of evolution is so overwhelmingly established, that it is virtually impossible to refute within the bounds of reason. No major scientific truth, in fact, is easier to present, explain, and defend.

Before demonstrating this claim, let me make it clear what I mean by evolution, since there often is some confusion about the term. By evolution I mean, very simply, the development of animal and plant species out of other species not at all like them, for example, the process by which, say, a species of fish gets transformed (or evolves) through various stages into a cow, a kangaroo, or an eagle. This definition, it should be noted, makes no claims about how the process might occur, and thus it certainly does not equate the concept of evolution with Darwinian Natural Selection, as so many people seem to do. It simply defines the term by its effects (not by how those effects are produced, which could well be the subject of another argument).

The first step in demonstrating the truth of evolution is to make the claim that all living creatures must have a living parent. This point has been overwhelmingly established in the past century and a half, ever since the French scientist Louis Pasteur demonstrated how fermentation took place and thus laid to rest centuries of stories about beetles arising spontaneously out of dung or gut worms being miraculously produced from non-living material. There is absolutely no evidence for this ancient belief. Living creatures must come from other living creatures. It does no damage to this point to claim that life must have had some origin way back in time, perhaps in a chemical reaction of inorganic materials (in some primordial soup) or in some invasion from outer space. That may well be true. But what is clear is that any such origin for living things or living material must result in a very simple organism. There is no evidence whatsoever (except in science fiction like Frankenstein) that inorganic chemical processes can produce complex, multi-cellular living creatures (the recent experiments cloning sheep, of course, are based on living tissue from other sheep).

The second important point in the case for evolution is that some living creatures are very different from some others. This, I take it, is self-evident. Let me cite a common example: many animals have what we call an internal skeletal structure featuring a backbone and skull. We call these animals vertebrates. Most animals do not have these features (we call them invertebrates). The distinction between vertebrates and invertebrates is something no one who cares to look at samples of both can reasonably deny, and, so far as I am aware, no one hostile to evolution has ever denied a fact so apparent to anyone who observes the world for a few moments.

The final point in the case for evolution is this: simple animals and plants existed on earth long before more complex ones (invertebrate animals, for example, were around for a very long time before there were any vertebrates). Here again, the evidence from fossils is overwhelming. In the deepest rock layers, there are no signs of life. The first fossil remains are of very simple living things. As the strata get more recent, the variety and complexity of life increase (although not at a uniform rate). In all the countless geological excavations and inspections (for example, of the Grand Canyon), no one has ever come up with a genuine fossil remnant which goes against this general principle (and it would only take one genuine find to overturn this principle).

Well, if we put these three points together, the case for evolution is air tight. If all living creatures must have a living parent, if living creatures are different, and if simpler forms were around before the more complex forms, then the more complex forms must have come from the simpler forms (e.g., vertebrates from invertebrates). There is simply no other way of dealing reasonably with the evidence we have. Of course, one might deny (as some do) that the layers of the earth represent a succession of very lengthy epochs and claim, for example, that the Grand Canyon was created in a matter of days, but this surely violates scientific observation as much as does the claim that, say, vertebrates just, well, appeared one day out of a spontaneous combination of chemicals.

To make the claim for the truth of evolution in this way is to assert nothing about how it might occur. Darwin provides one answer (through natural selection), but others have been suggested, too (including some which see a divine agency at work in the transforming process). The above argument is intended, however, to demonstrate that the general principle of evolution is, given the scientific evidence, logically unassailable and that, thus, the concept is a law of nature as truly established as is, say, gravitation. To deny evolution (as defined here) is on the same level of logic as to deny the fact that if someone jumps off the balcony of a high rise apartment and carries no special apparatus, she will fall towards the ground. That scientific certainty makes the widespread rejection of evolution in our modern age something of a puzzle (but that's a subject for another essay). In a modern liberal democracy, of course, one is perfectly free to reject that conclusion, but one is not legitimately able to claim that such a rejection is a reasonable scientific stance.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[For a more detailed treatment of the same issue, please see the following article "Creationism in the Science Curriculum?"]
0 Replies
 
akaMechsmith
 
  1  
Reply Fri 26 Mar, 2004 07:00 pm
Folks, I am unqualified unless 45 years or so of reading the "pop" literature may make it possible to make an observation.

Natural Selection only determines the fitness of an organism for the environment in which it finds itself. It is responsible for adaptations on a basic theme. That is pretty much what Darwin saw in the Galapagos.

But to develop a new species it is necessary for a different type of development to occur. I prefer to think of like a "Bingo" game with millions of cards being played. Rather than natural selection with its "lottery" type of evolution adding or subtracting characteristics based on a "fitness" factor we seem to be playing "Bingo" occasionally.

When several persons are playing "Bingo" there will necessarily be several patterns made by the markers on the cards. One of these patterns will eventually form the line, or the diagonal resulting in a "winner".

But if you keep in playing the game eventually every player will have a "winning" pattern on his board.

Now if we were to play "Evolutionary Revolutionary Bingo" Smile the first player would be called, lets say intelligence. Unless that player eats all the other cards eventually every card will have a "surviving" pattern. But all of the patterns will have different characteristics.

Now lets transfer the patterns to a "genome". Then we find out that a certain pattern is "self replicating" This tells us little about its characteristics except that it can utilize energy of some sort and divide. But in figuring the odds against it we find out that although the odds are terrible. (I won't quarrel with the 10to the 40,000 figure It's in the ballpark) I found out that ---given a sterile earth like object that life would appear in from 1.5 seconds to about four and a half days.

Those times were arrived at by determining the number of possible interaction between 100 elements per second per liter and extrapolating it to the number of possible interactions in the worlds oceans, lakes and rivers.

Now, rather suddenly I was surprised to find out, we suddenly have trillions and trillions of "Bingo players". This is easily responsible for the variety of life that we observe.

I had thought of developing a game with the various rules similar to "Bingo" that would account for the various attributes that we can observe but as I developed the idea further it became obvious that I would have to provide a card for at least five million people and then the "game" could go on for hundreds of years before you duplicated the genome of a prion.

I didn't think that I would be able to profitably market the game. Very Happy
but it makes our observations much more reasonable. It also answers the problems of unexpressed portions of our own genome.

I am hoping Farmerman and Brandon see fit to comment.
0 Replies
 
akaMechsmith
 
  1  
Reply Fri 26 Mar, 2004 07:54 pm
Make that "first winning player" Embarrassed
0 Replies
 
JLNobody
 
  1  
Reply Fri 26 Mar, 2004 08:10 pm
truth
What an amazing waste of time. Anti-evolutionists would not change their mind in the face of ANY kind of evidence. And evolutionists would not change their mind--at least they would not adopt the creationist theory--for anything but definitive proof of the model's falsehood.
I take a middle position. I believe that evolution has happened exactly as Darwin described it--but only on the Galapagos. Laughing
0 Replies
 
farmerman
 
  1  
Reply Fri 26 Mar, 2004 08:24 pm
Its interesting that your "out of context quotes " are , in most cases, almost 20 years out of date. Significant research has occured in the time since 1980. I wish you Creationists would at least use knowledge that is more current. In 1980 DNA was only being unraveled . Today weve got comparitive genomes. and actuator genes , and a whole bunch of intermediate fossils in forms that dont require Edredge /Goulds "punctuated equil;ibrium"
"The witness of experts engaged in a lifelong study of particular groups (of fossils) provides compelling testimony because natural history is a science of relative frequencies, not unique cases. "We" have never doubted that examples of gradualism and punctuation can be found in the hhistory of any group. Thhe debate about punctuated equilibrium rests upon our claim for a dominant relative frequency, not for mere occurence" (Gould 2002) After this, Gould discusse the "apparent overabundance of evidence to support punctuated equilibrium.He draws on a subtle relationship of a taxas appearance and disappearance within a carefully laid out temporal startigraphic sequence. In otherwords, no matter how species change, whether through gradual adaptive radiation or geographic isolation: or , whether they change rapidly (punctuated) due to responses to rapid environmental change, is merely a discussion and a search for mechanisms in evolution. You seem to feel that the writers have cast doubt upon the process, nothing is further from the truth. Since evolution first starts with an individual , punctuated equilibrium seems almost intuitive. However, research at SUNY has cast some doubt upon whether the "abrupt" appearance of a species in the fossil record is merely a statistical phenom since , fossilization occurs in a dynamic environment, the syntectonic activities of sedimentation and erosion may be responsible for the rapid apparent appearance of species in adjacent deposits . This has been the case with detailed sampling within the Marine Devonian Hamilton Group .
I have a feeling that you dont really understand the significance of your quotes because, in general, most scientists agree re the significance (or lack thereof ) of genic mutation as a driver in evolution. In other words , we agree on all but your obvious posted conclusion. Thhe fact that the genomes of higher organisms can be can be traced back to homologous genes of simpler species. As T Dobzhansky said "Nothhing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution"


I wish I could say Im familiar with all your quotes, but alas, Im one of the working scientists who (along with about 99% of those listed in your list) am convinced with evidence that evolution is correct and Darwins got it mostly right (his one theory concerning GRADUALISM, may be debatable but all the data is still not conclusive.
"The common knowledge of a profession often goes unrecorded in tech literature for 2 reasons: one need not preach the commonplace to the initiated and one should not attempt to inform the unititiated in publications they do not read" guess which one you are medved.
0 Replies
 
farmerman
 
  1  
Reply Fri 26 Mar, 2004 09:00 pm
I saw your little jibe about the flat world in 1491, (Ill even assume that this is a correct statement, Im sure someone like Setanta will "set " you straight about that misunderstanding of history. But nemmind, In 1857 the educated world thought that God created the earth , Many thought it occured in 4004 BC. We know by direct evidence and geochem and geophysics and cosmology that Ushers calcs were funny, but dead wrong.

I said , in the other post that Evolutionary theory is silent about the origin of life, but I forgot that in 1989 Cech andAltman got the Nobel prize for unlocking the self catalytic properties of RNA. Noller later discovered that peptide linkage was not catalyzed by any of the 60 or so amino acids in the ribosome. Instead peptide linkage is catalyzed by RNA within the ribosome. Noller actually stripped away all the proteins and still found it carried out peptide bonding.
This led to a great hypothesis in the late 90s, since DNA cant assemble itself without proteins, you couldnt replecate the molecule. BUT RNA could . Noller and Crick came up with the RNA "world" , wherein RNA is the evolutionary relic.
"Once natural selection has solved a problem it tends to stick with it in effect"if it aint broke..."So cellular systems do not innovate and so bear many imprints of an evolutionary past (maybe thats why many animal genomes , like a lungfish are waaay longer than humans{my insert}) This process is carried out in a certain way because it simply evolved that way, not because its the most efficient way" JAMES WAtson (2003)

I dug up the article from the Nat History mag of 1985. The point that Gould made in that article was that insect wings developed from thermal regulating thingies on their thoracis sections. He mentioned intermediate fossils of dragonflies in the Miss strat. His argument was how the "wing" was evolved . I have to assume that , if I were to dig through each article by the "real" (Non Creationist scientists) Id probably find that not only have you taken stuff out of context , youve tried to make a pile of convincing quotes out of literature that was written in direct opposition of your opening statements.

Real scientists demand proof
Acceptance without proof is the mainstay of modern religion
Rejection without proof, is the mainstay of modern science

Ive often said to Creationists "Show me some evidence of your beliefs, anything that we can discuss on a table , that shows where and how Creation "scientists " have added to the understanding of how the world works and hhow life developed. The Creation model is based upon one book of unsubstantiated myth, and your arguments are primarily drawn from taking quotes out of context from the abundant"honest peer reviewed" scientific literature andhoping that the audience is gullible enough to buy your stories and, further you really hope they dont read the full articles youve posted. Ive only debunked one of your articles and , with the exception of the Creation articles which are more full of
nyah nyah than real thought, Ill bet a shiny farthing that the other literature articles dont lie in any of your "evidentiary" columns. In fact, like the Gould article, they were written within an entirely different point of reference .
0 Replies
 
suzy
 
  1  
Reply Fri 26 Mar, 2004 09:42 pm
Read the whole thing? Are you kidding!? I read about the first half hour's worth, then I skimmed. Laughing
0 Replies
 
El-Diablo
 
  1  
Reply Fri 26 Mar, 2004 09:47 pm
I'd like to see what real scientists say about creationism. I guarantee it would take a MUCH longer post Rolling Eyes
0 Replies
 
farmerman
 
  1  
Reply Sat 27 Mar, 2004 06:43 am
ON a lighter note.
Georgia Decides To Restore Evolution .
"GEorgia's State School Superintendent announced thhat she will recommend that the word "evolution" be restored to Georgias Curriculum, almost one month after proposing to replace the word "evolution" with "biological changes over time"-GEOTIMES MARCH 2004 issue.


National Park Service removes Creationist literature from Science section of Grand Canyon Bookstore Science Section and moves it to the "Inspirational and Folklore" Section.
(I have a copy of the Creationist View of The Grand Canyon, and found it charming, naive, and totally devoid of scientific thought. It ignores the basic sciences to the extent that , in order for the Creationists model to work. The event that carved the Grand Canyon was no earlier than 6000 years old, a product of Noahs Flood (even though recorded history predates 4000BCE and no evidence of a worldwide flood can be seen anywhere in the world in any correlatable sedimentary or any other rocks).
Creationists argued that standard science , which uses biostratigraphy, structural chronology, geomagnetic reversals, isotope chemistry and stable isotope analyses from ice cores, is just all wrong, yet they fail to make any compellling arguments or produce any independent lab data to substatntiate their claims.
Now a bit of a rant early on a Sat AM
JL-as a retired college teacher, you should be less available to seek a "mid way, non- confrontational stance" because the Creationist view undermines all of science. Its a travesty to the tenets of the scientific method and , although the argument of mechanisms (cladogenesis, punctuated equilibrium, budding v splitting, genic -centered v enviro centered evolution) are still subjects of debate at professional meetings, there is no tested , peer reviewed, valid model of the planet , that centers around Creationist dogma. Also, medveds intermixing of out of context quotes from respected scientists writing about evolutionary mechanisms , with the huckstering by workers who are speaking way out of their areas of expertise because theyve signed on to support the Institute of Creations Science and are lending their Phds in mathematics or physics as a broad impramatur beyond their capabilities. This is a perfidious use of implied degree credibility that is meant less to "train the unititiated" than it is to add a false respect to the overall junk that the Creationists preach and falsely pose as science.

The sciences that underpin evolution have always presented their work to peer scrutiny and such research ahs usually been the subject of heated debate and lively counteragument. The Creationist POV is not , at all open for debate. Its conclusion has always been immutable . How can that be? Its because theyve started with a conclusion and then try to find quotes out of context that "real science" is falling apart, when nothing credible is out there threatening or even challenging experimental sciences.
You believe that we have paleo Indian sites in the US that are older than the Biblical Flood because compelling convergant evidence from numbers of disciplines has focused support for this interpretation by strong irrefutable evidence. Where is the Creationist argument that says this is not true? Thats because , the Creationists dont like to argue recent pre-history because they now that the evidence is so strong it would blow their Biblical Interpretation out of the water. Thyed rather focus on Implied "errors" in interpretations of deep time because , truthfully, their Apostles of the churchgoers are not sophisticated in the sciences and thats their actual audience. Arguing (and misquoting) reputable scientists merely gives them the press they urgently need. They need to keep the issue stirred up and to keep the kiddies confused.
Science doesnt do a great job making science approachable. I notice that , those of us whove been associated with a discipline, develop a jargon that is used to communicate with colleagues and we dont remember to "turn it off" when in the public arena. Some of the worst debators for evolution v Creation , are scientists themselves. We always forget that the target audience isnt the other(Creationist) debator , its the audience whose shown up to hear us. And the audiences are packed with mostly folks who are expert in areas other than science. Lately ive been taking a few Creationists apart by having available some of the same texts that they use to quote.(The ICS has a rubber chicken circuit to try to convince state ed boards to add Creation to the curriculum so their speeches are pretty much cookie cuttered)

Ive taken to reading the entire pages in the literature that contain their quote and , when the audience hears the context , they usually understand that they are being exposed to a selective interpretation of someones elses writing
0 Replies
 
Setanta
 
  1  
Reply Sat 27 Mar, 2004 07:36 am
the Crypto-christian Superstitionist wrote:
Nearly the whole world thought the Earth was flat in 1491; anybody could have tried to argue that such a majority opinion simply had to be correct and, as we all know, they'd have been dead wrong.


Apart from the obvious problems with this statement, such as who constitutes "the whole world," how many of them constitute "Nearly"--this is a specious statement. I doubt that anyone has taught that Columbus proved the earth was round since the 1950's. When your entire thesis is prefaced by such a specious statement, it makes all which ensues suspect. The exercise simply becomes ludicrously bizarre when scientists (or alleged scientists) are purported to refer to themselves as "evolutionists." Someone for whom science is genuinely an avocation is not going to use an ideological term to describe themselves.

If you're gonna use shameless cut and paste jobs, Bubba, you're gonna tip yer hand every time. The only one's who will take it seriously are those who are already disposed to subscribe to your nonsense. Here's a metaphor that a rabidly conservative christian (your protestations to the contrary notwhithstanding) such as yourself will readily understand. This crap only works when you're preaching to the choir.
0 Replies
 
Setanta
 
  1  
Reply Sat 27 Mar, 2004 07:44 am
Re: truth
JLNobody wrote:
What an amazing waste of time. Anti-evolutionists would not change their mind in the face of ANY kind of evidence. And evolutionists would not change their mind--at least they would not adopt the creationist theory--for anything but definitive proof of the model's falsehood.
I take a middle position. I believe that evolution has happened exactly as Darwin described it--but only on the Galapagos. Laughing


JLN, as soon as you use the term "evolutionist" as though it were anything more than a divisive label created by the religious right, you've begun to be sucked in by their attempt to politicize a discussion which ought never to leave the realm of scientific inquiry. The theory of evolution is not an ideological theory; "creationism" and "intelligent design" are however, ideological terms, and were intended for a political agenda from the outset.
0 Replies
 
BoGoWo
 
  1  
Reply Sat 27 Mar, 2004 09:00 am
but i really like the fine 'logic' in use here;

bring up a 'historic' sampling of some inevitable gaps in a theory, and therefore, scrap the whole thing for another theory which has more 'gaps' than 'hits'! Rolling Eyes
0 Replies
 
BumbleBeeBoogie
 
  1  
Reply Sat 27 Mar, 2004 09:43 am
Medved
Medved, I suggest you attend some scientific seminars, as I did this week in Albuquerque, on the Biological Theory of Evolution presented by Zoologist Katherine D. Anderson. Several of the participants were ministers or otherwise associated with religious institutions. None among them proffered the Creationist Theory as valid.

To cover the full range of the topic is not possible in this setting. However, the following may be enlightening to you:

Genes mutate: The mechanism for duplicating the genetic code occasionally makes an error, and a piece of the code gets changed. This change is a mutation.

The resulting different types have different reproduction rates: Because the genes determine the characteristics of an individual, a change in the genetic code can mean the individual is different in some way from the others of the species. These changes may make the individual better adapted to the environment in which it lives. I suggested a good current scientific example of bacteria mutating into antibiotic resistant strains for survival. All it takes is one bacteria being resistant and surviving to change its progeny.

Genes in a population change slowly. These changes, particularly if they give the individuals with them an advantage in reproducing, will become more frequent in the population; indeed, they may completely replace the unchanged gene. The genes in the population have changed from what they were. In other words, we are not today what we were.

The Creationist Theory of Evolution has its roots in the Catholic Church's attack on Galileo in the Seventeenth Century. The Church, threatened with scientific information that the Earth rotated around the Sun rather an vise versa, threatened dissent with death. Thomas Malthus picked up the banner in his An Essay of the Principles of Population in the eighteenth century. This was followed in the nineteenth century with the works of Mendel and Darwin (On the Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection.)

In the 1900-1920s, misunderstandings and abuses of the Theory of Evolution, the most infamous being the Nazis perverted "social Darwinism", the rise of Protestant Fundamentalism set the stage for the current and continuing attempts to base the theory of evolution on religion and literal interpretation of the Bible, instead of good science. The scientific discovery of DNA really threatened the Fundamentalist Movement and it responded with the current pseudoscience defense that an intelligent designer (God) exists who created our universe and the natural things in it.

Creationism cannot, and Creationists have a long history of not making any attempts to submit their theory to test its logic or empirical consequences. Faith is the sole basis for their hypothesis and is based on supernatural, not natural ordinary course of nature. It relates to an order of existence beyond the visible observable universe and relating to a god, demigod, spirit, or devil. It departs from what is usual or normal so as to appear to transcend the laws of nature, such as attributed to an invisible agent (ghost or spirit).

The science of evolution is based on possession of knowledge as distinguished from ignorance or misunderstanding attained through study or practice and scientific testing in the physical world and its phenomena.
Scientific theories are constantly challenged and must be tested repeatedly to sustain itself. And scientific theories do change as new information is applied, but it is still tested on a scientific basis.

The Bible is not a scientific journal. It is a collection of history written by its authors in the same manner as is done today. Fact and history are vunerable to "spin doctors" to the advantage of their agenda. And remember, whoever wins the battle writes the history. Add thousands of years of editing, translation and other fiddling, leaves nothing but faith on which to make such theories.

BBB
0 Replies
 
roger
 
  1  
Reply Sat 27 Mar, 2004 10:13 am
That was an interesting and useful perspective, Mechsmith.
0 Replies
 
JLNobody
 
  1  
Reply Sat 27 Mar, 2004 10:53 am
truth
Farmerman and Setanta, you both know, of course, that I was kidding!!!
I cannot take debates with creationists seriously. Their ideological stance is as meaningless as my dentist insisting on pulling a tooth on theological grounds.
0 Replies
 
 

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