Posted on 01/11/2003 9:53:34 PM PST by DWar
EVOLUTION WATCH Refuting Darwinism, point by point Author's new book presents case against theory in just 83 pages
Posted: January 11, 2003 1:00 a.m. Eastern
Editor's note: In 1999, author James Perloff wrote the popular "Tornado in a Junkyard," which summarizes much of the evidence against evolution and is considered one of the most understandable (while still scientifically accurate) books on the subject. Recently, WND talked with Perloff about his new book, "The Case Against Darwin."
© 2003 WorldNetDaily.com
QUESTION: Your new book is just 83 pages – and the type is large. What gives?
ANSWER: This past March I got a call from Ohio. There has been a battle there to allow critical examination of evolutionary theory in public schools, and a gentleman wanted 40 copies of Tornado to give to state legislators and school board members. I was delighted to send him the books, but I also knew that a state legislator isn't likely to pick up anything that's 321 pages long.
Q: And not just state legislators.
A: Right. We live in an age when parents often don't have time to read anything long, and their kids, who are usually more into video, may not have the inclination.
Q: So what's the focus of this book?
A: I've divided it into three chapters. The first is called "Is Darwin's Theory Relevant to Our Lives?" In other words, is the subject of this book worth my time or not? A lot of people think this is simply a science issue. And to some of them, science is booooring. But actually, it's the teaching of Darwin's theory as a "fact" that starts many young people doubting the existence of God. Once we stop believing in God, we discard his moral laws and start making up our own rules, which is basically why our society is in so much trouble. In short, Darwinism is very relevant – it's much more than a science matter.
Q: You, yourself, were an atheist for many years, were you not, as a result of evolutionary teaching?
A: That's right. I thought evolution had discredited the Bible. In my books, I give examples of notables who became atheists from being taught evolution, such as Stalin and Carnegie. In fact, the atheist Boy Scout who's been in the news reportedly attributes his atheism to being taught evolution.
Q: Why do you think evolution has such a persuasively negative effect on faith?
A: First, it's taught as "scientific fact." When kids hear "scientific fact," they think "truth." Who wants to go against truth? Second, it's the only viewpoint that's taught. After the Supreme Court kicked God out of schools in the '60s, kids heard the evolutionist viewpoint exclusively. It's like going to a courtroom – if you only heard the prosecutor's summation, you would probably think the defendant guilty. But if you only heard the defendant's attorney, you'd think "innocent." The truth is, we need to hear both sides, and kids haven't been getting it on the subject of origins.
Q: OK, then what?
A: The second chapter is "Evidence Against the Theory of Evolution." Let's face it, no matter what Darwinism's social ramifications, that alone would not be a sufficient basis to criticize it, if it were scientifically proven true.
Q: In a nutshell – if that's possible – what is the scientific evidence against Darwinism?
A: In the book, I focus on six areas of evidence. First, mutations – long claimed by evolutionists to be the building blocks of evolutionary change – are now known to remove information from the genetic code. They never create higher, more complex information – even in the rare cases of beneficial mutations, such as bacterial resistance to antibiotics. That has been laid out by Dr. Lee Spetner in his book "Not By Chance."
Q: What else?
A: Second, cells are now known to be far too complex to have originated by some chance concurrence of chemicals, as Darwin hypothesized and is still being claimed. We detail that in the book. Third, the human body has systems, such as blood clotting and the immune system, that are, in the words of biochemist Michael Behe, "irreducibly complex," meaning they cannot have evolved step-by-step. Behe articulated that in his book "Darwin's Black Box." And then there is the whole issue of transitional forms.
Q: What is a transitional form?
A: Darwin's theory envisioned that single-celled ancestors evolved into invertebrates (creatures without a backbone), who evolved into fish, who evolved into amphibians, who evolved into reptiles, who evolved into mammals. Now, a transitional form would be a creature intermediate between these. There would have to be a great many for Darwin's theory to be true.
Q: Are there?
A: There are three places to look for transitional forms. First, there's the living world around us. We see that it is distinctly divided – you have invertebrates, fish, amphibians, reptiles and mammals. But we don't see transitionals between them. If these creatures ever existed, why did none survive? It is too easy to explain it away by saying they all became extinct. And of course, there is the question: Why aren't these creatures evolving into each other today? Why aren't invertebrates evolving into fish today? Why aren't fish growing little legs and so forth?
Q: Where else would you look for a transitional form?
A: In the fossil record. And here we have a problem of almost comparable magnitude. We find no fossils showing how the invertebrates evolved, or demonstrating that they came from a common ancestor. That's why you hear of the "Cambrian explosion." And while there are billions of fossils of both invertebrates and fish, fossils linking them are missing. Of course, there are some transitional fossils cited by evolutionists. However, two points about that. First, there should be a lot more if Darwin's theory is correct. Second, 99 percent of the biology of an organism is in its soft anatomy, which you cannot access in a fossil – this makes it easy to invest a fossil with a highly subjective opinion. The Piltdown Man and the recent Archaeoraptor are examples of how easy it is to be misled by preconceptions in this arena.
Q: What is the other place where you can look for transitional forms?
A: Microscopically, in the cell itself. Dr. Michael Denton, the Australian molecular biologist, examined these creatures on a molecular level and found no evidence whatsoever for the fish-amphibian-reptile-mammal sequence. He summarized his findings in his book "Evolution: A Theory in Crisis."
The last chapter is "Re-evaluating Some Evidences Used to Support the Theory" of evolution. That would include evidences that have been discredited, and also some evidences presented as proof that in fact rest on assumptions.
Q: What evidences have been discredited?
A: Ernst Haeckel's comparative embryo drawings. The human body being laden with "vestigial structures" from our animal past. Human blood and sea water having the same percentage of salt. Babies being born with "monkey tails." These are not foundational evidences, but they still hold sway in the public mind.
Q: You mentioned assumptions as proofs.
A: Yes. Anatomical similarities between men and animals are said to prove common ancestry. But intelligent design also results in innumerable similarities, as in the case of two makes of automobile. Also, what has been called "microevolution" – minor adaptive changes within a type of animal – is extrapolated as evidence for "macroevolution" – the changing of one kind of animal into another. However, a species is normally endowed with a rich gene pool that permits a certain amount of variation and adaptation. Certainly, those things happen. But the change is ordinarily limited to the confines of the gene pool. It doesn't mean a fish could adapt its way into being a human.
Q: You covered a lot of this ground in "Tornado in a Junkyard." Can readers expect something new from "The Case Against Darwin"?
A: There is a bit of new material, but no, if you've read "Tornado," or for that matter, if you read the July 2001 Whistleblower, where we looked at evolution, you already know most of the points. What's new is the size. This is a book to give to a busy friend, a book for a high-school student to share with his science teacher.
"The Case Against Darwin" by James Perloff is available from ShopNetDaily.
ROFL! :-) Thanks for the ping.
Great statement. Same as telling adherents of ID to go jump off the flat edge of the earth.
You can deny it, but you cannot back it up. However, I can back up his statements:
I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so, the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include My Father, Brother, and almost all my best frieds, will be everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine.
Further on he says:
A being so powerful and so full of knowledge as a God who could create the universe, is to our finite minds omnipotent and omniscient, and it revolts our understanding to suppose that his benevolence is not unbounded, for what advantage can there be in the sufferings of millions of lower animals throughout almost endless time.
From; Gertrude Himmelfarb, 'Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution' page 385, quoting from unpublished passages in the Autobiography.
That Darwin was totally dishonest about his religious views in public, there is tons of evidence:
Many years ago I was strongly adviced by a friend never to introduce anything about religion in my works, if I wished to advance science in England; and this led me not to consider the mutual bearings of the two subjects. Had I foreseen how much more liberal the world would become, I should perhaps have acted differently.
From: Gertrude Himmelfarb, 'Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution' page 383, quoting from the Cambridge manuscript.
Last night Dicey and Litchfield were talking about J. Stuart Mill's never expressing his religious convictions, as he was urged to do so by his father. Both agreed strongly that if he had done so, he would never have influenced the present age in the manner in which he has done. His books would not have been text books at Oxford, to take a weaker instance. Lyell is most firmly convinced that he has shaken the faith in the Deluge far more efficiently by never having said a word against the Bible, than if he had acted otherwise.
...
I have lately read Morley's Life of Voltaire and he insists strongly that direct attacks on Christianity (even when written with the wonderful force and vigor of Voltaire) produce little permanent effect; real good seems only to follow the slow and silent side attacks.
From: Gertrude Himmelfarb, 'Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution' page 387, quoting from the Cambridge manuscript.
"P.S. Would you advise me to tell Murray [his publisher] that my book is not more un-orthodox than the subject makes inevitable. That I do not discuss the origin of man. That I do not bring in any discussion about Genesis, &c, &c., and only give facts, and such conclusions from them as seem to me fair.
Or had I better say nothing to Murray, and assume that he cannot object to this much unorthodoxy, which in fact is not more than any Geological Treatise which runs sharp counter to Genesis."
From: Daniel J. Boorstein, The Discoverers, page 475.
Sometimes, especially when he's hunkering in the bunker while the forum erupts in glee at one of his wildly elliptical gore-isms, I'm pretty sure that he understands and remembers more than he lets on.
No, I am saying that the development of a fertilized egg cell into a fully-formed individual with differentiated cells is not part of the study of evolution. Any other 'points' of mine that you'd like to make up?
I am not making anything up about you. I am showing that evolution is not science. If evolution were science it would have to account for those changes not only in looks, not only in the genes, but also in the developmental program which achieves a new organism from an old one. Evolutionists cannot do that so they just ignore the problem just like they ignore many other problems with evolution.
No one is pretending. It is a fact. In addition to what the article shows, Darwin's atheism, the total removal of God from the process of creating new life - including man (which specifically contradicts His Word), the complete materialism of the theory of evolution are more than sufficient proof that evolution is definitely atheistic.
It is also interesting that aside from insults, you and your friends have nothing to say to show that evolution is not atheistic.
Don't forget the lawyers. If you can rope a jury of idiots with two non-sequiturs, a barrage of ad hominem, an argument from consequences ("His Mama will be devastated!"), and generally blow more smoke than the other guy, then you must be right.
Too many people "think" as though any answer they arrive at, however they do it, is right. Hmmm. Maybe that's their teachers's fault ...
Yes he was and the proof is in his biography, in his own words (see my post# 124 above). As to Asa Gray and Dana, they were not even close to being major promoters of evolution. Haeckel, Spengler, Huxley, Gould and Dawkins are the best known and strongest proponents of evolution and they were all dyed in the wool atheists (as are almost all the evolutionists on these threads).
Hehehe.
Whatever Archaeoptoryx was (and really we cannot know, all we know is that it definitely had feathers), it has no known ancestors and no known descendants so it in no way serves the purpose of proving the evolution of birds.
It doesn't really matter. If the theory is good science, that's what counts. Einstein was an atheist. So what? Relativity doesn't stand or fall on how many gods Einstein believed in.
There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.
No it does not. The posting was in regards to the theory of evolution, not about his atheism. However the above proves even more Darwin's atheism, a Christian would have said that life was created by God, instead of the deliberate avoidance of it which is seen in the above passage.
Unfortunately atheists have no compunction about calling themselves Christians as the quotes on post# 124 abundantly show. Junior is nowadays an atheist and he refuses to discuss the matter because he knows his claim cannot stand examination.
Semantics again. Evolution is a materialist philosophy. Marx praised Darwin for his theory. Evolution is the basis of scientific materialism. It is the keystone of the materialistic/atheistic triumvirate which includes abiogenesis (to which almost all evolutionists here adhere to) and the concept of a random Universe.
Methinks I have given enough proof of the atheism of evolution. Your side however has only insulted and indulged in rhetoric. Show me that evolution allows for and/or welcomes divine intervention.
And it is not good science, that is why you and your friends have just been insulting those expressing contrary views insted of giving evidence that their statements are incorrect.
I have no idea what your trying to say here. Calm down and try again.
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