Posted on 10/21/2008 8:28:11 PM PDT by Soliton
Francisco J. Ayala pulls open the top drawer of a black cabinet and flips through nearly a dozen files, all neatly titled by publication and due date. These are the essays on evolution he has been churning out over the past six to eight weeks for popular books and magazines. “Hack jobs,” he calls them with a smile, bragging that each one takes only a day or two to complete.
After some 30 years of proselytizing about evolution to Christian believers, the esteemed evolutionary biologist at the University of California, Irvine, has honed his arguments to a fine point. He has stories and examples at the ready, even a shock tactic or two at his fingertips. One out of five pregnancies ends in spontaneous miscarriage, he often reminds audiences. Next he will pointedly ask, as in an interview with U.S. Catholic magazine last year, “If God explicitly designed the human reproductive system, is God the biggest abortionist of them all?” Through such examples, he explains, “I want to turn around their arguments.”
The 74-year-old Ayala is preparing for an exceptionally busy 2009. The year marks the bicentennial of Charles Darwin’s birthday and the sesquicentennial of the publication of On the Origin of Species, and the battle over the teaching of evolution is sure to heat up. Ayala says the need is especially great for scientists to engage religious people in dialogue. As evidence, he lugs over the 11-by-17-inch, 12-pound Atlas of Creation mailed out by Muslim creationist Adnan Oktar in Turkey to scientists and museums across the U.S. and France. This richly illustrated tome not only attacks evolution but also links Darwin’s theory to horrors, including fascism and even Satan himself.
(Excerpt) Read more at sciam.com ...
? Indeed.
Such refreshing candor.
Basically, every halfway honest person with any brains and talent who has taken any sort of a hard look at evolution in the past 60 years has given up on it and many have denounced it. A listing of fifty or sixty such statements makes for an overwhelming indictment of that part of the scientific community which goes on trying to defend evolution and they (the evolosers) have a favorite term ( "quote mining") which they use to describe that sort of argument.
My own response to that is to note what I view as the ultimate evolution quote by the noted evolutionist (actually, FORMER evolutionist) Jeffrey Dahmer:
"If a person doesn’t think there is a God to be accountable to, then—then what’s the point of trying to modify your behaviour to keep it within acceptable ranges? That’s how I thought anyway. I always believed the theory of evolution as truth, that we all just came from the slime. When we, when we died, you know, that was it, there is nothing…"Jeffrey Dahmer, in an interview with Stone Phillips, Dateline NBC, Nov. 29, 1994.
Dahmer converted to Christianity before he died. The basic tenets of true religion appear to be inprinted upon most of us biologically which is the only reason that Islammic societies and "secular humanist" societies like Britain and Canada function at all. A psychopath like Dahmer is basically somebody on whom that imprint did not take. For those guys, it has to be written down somewhere, and it has to be written down accurately; the bible does that. Telling somebody like Dahmer that we all evolved from "lucky dust" is a formula for getting people killed.
Evolution was the basic philosophical cornerstone of communism, naziism, the various eugenics programs, the out of control arms races which led to WW-I and WW-II, and all of the grief of the last 150 years. Starting from 1913, Europe had gone for a hundred years without a major war. They didn't even have to think. All they needed to do was act cool, go to church, have parades, formal balls, attend board meetings, and they'd still be running the world today; they'd be so fat and happy they'd not know what to do with themselves. Instead, they all got to reading about Darwinism, fang and claw, survival of the fittest and all the rest of that nonsense, and the rest as they say is history.
The most interesting analysis of that sad tale is probably Sir Arthur Keith's "Evolution and Ethics"
Keith apparently viewed belief in evolution as some sort of duty of the English educated classes, nonetheless he had a very clear vision of the problems inherent in it and laid it out in no uncertain terms:
From Sir Srthur Keith's "Evolution and Ethics:
Chapter 3
The Behavior of Germany Considered from an Evolutionary Point of View in 1942
....It is worth noting that Hitler uses a double designation for his tribal doctrine National Socialism: Socialism standing for the good side of the tribal spirit (that which works within the Reich); aud Nationalism for the ethically vicious part, which dominates policy at and outside the German frontiers.
The leader of Germany is an evolutionist not only in theory, but, as millions know to their cost, in the rigor of its practice. For him the national "front" of Europe is also the evolutionary "front"; he regards himself, and is regarded, as the incarnation of the will of Germany, the purpose of that will being to guide the evolutionary destiny of its people....
... "Humanitarianism is an evil . . . a creeping poison." "The most cruel methods are humane if they give a speedy victory" is Hitler's echo of a maxim attributed to Moltke. Such are the ways of evolution when applied to human affairs.
...I have said nothing about the methods employed by the Nazi leaders to secure tribal unity in Germany methods of brutal compulsion, bloody force, and the concentration camp. Such methods cannot be brought within even a Machiavellian system of ethics, and yet may be justified by their evolutionary result.
12.
....No aspect of Hitler's policy proclaims the antagonism between evolution and ethics so forcibly as his treatment of the Jewish people in Germany.... ...Hitler is an uncompromising evolutionist, and we must seek for an evolutionary explanation if we are to understand his actions....
It must not be thought that in seeking to explain Hitler's actions I am seeking to justify them. The opposite is the case. I have made this brief survey of public policy in modern Germany with a definite object: to show that Dr. Waddington is in error when he seeks to place ethics on a scientific basis by a knowledge of evolutionary tendencies and practice.
Chapter 4
Human Life: Its Purpose or Ultimate End
IN THE COURSE OF GATHERING INFORMATION concerning man's morality and the part it has played and is playing in his evolution, I found it necessary to provide space for slips which were labeled "Life: Its Ultimate and Proximate Purposes." Only those who have devoted some special attention to this matter are aware of the multitude of reasons given for the appearance of man on earth. Here I shall touch on only a few of them; to deal with all would require a big book. The reader may exclaim: Why deal with any of them! What has ultimate purpose got to do with ethics and evolution! Let a man with a clearer head and a nimbler pen than mine reply. He is Edward Carpenter, who wrote Civilization: Its Cause and Cure (1889).
14.
It is from the sixteenth edition (1923) I am to quote, p. 249:
If we have decided what the final purpose or Life of Man is, then we may say that what is good for that purpose i
s finally "good" and what is bad for that purpose is finally "evil."
...If the final purpose of our existence is that which has been and is being worked out under the discipline of evolutionary law, then, although we are quite unconscious of the end result, we ought, as Dr. Waddington has urged, to help on "that which tends to promote the ultimate course of evolution." If we do so, then we have to abandon the hope of ever attaining a universal system of ethics; for, as we have just seen, the ways of national evolution, both in the past and in the present, are cruel, brutal, ruthless, and without mercy. Dr. Waddington has not grasped the implications of Nature's method of evolution, for in his summing up (Nature, 1941, 150, p. 535) he writes "that the ethical principles formulated by Christ . . . are those which have tended towards the further evolution of mankind, and that they will continue to do so." Here a question of the highest interest is raised: the relationship which exists between evolution and Christianity; so important, it seems to me, that I shall devote to it a separate chapter. Meantime let me say that the conclusion I have come to is this:
the law of Christ is incompatible with the law of evolution as far as the law of evolution has worked hitherto. Nay, the two laws are at war with each other; the law of Christ can never prevail until the law of evolution is destroyed.
All of that, of course, deals only with the question of ethics and the logical consequences of evolutionism. The fact that evolution is junk science argues against it as well.
Are you joking? Please tell me that everything you just wrote was a joke. Please. Please!
>“If God explicitly designed the human reproductive system, is God the biggest abortionist of them all?”
No. God DEFINES Morality. God also holds in his hands both life and death. (Just read Daniel and Job)
If evolution is junk science present some evidence to support your contention.
But stay away from those creationist websites; when it comes to science and facts they lie, distort, and misrepresent what they can -- and ignore the rest.
God certainly has created life in ways or stages that are far beyond our comprehension. What many scientists may look at as evidence of random evolution may be simply a planned progression by our creator. We have already been told that we cannot understand time as defined by God.
>>The fact that evolution is junk science argues against it as well.
>
>If evolution is junk science present some evidence to support your contention.
>
>But stay away from those creationist websites; when it comes to science and facts they lie, distort,
>and misrepresent what they can — and ignore the rest.
Well, let’s take something that is cited quite often: dating of fossils. Radiation-dating (carbon, etc) works by comparing the ratio of a radioactive isotope (the parent materiel) to that of it’s decayed (daughter) materiel. Now, it works quite well in a laboratory setting, but in “the field” not so much; because in the field is not a closed system (meaning parent and daughter materials may move in and out). In fact, if fossilization is the transference of minerals between the surrounding environs and the corpse being fossilized we should EXPECT the parent and daughter materials to have changed in relation to each other. This is why carbon-dating on the same skull can yield wildly different results if the samplings are taken from different places. Also to question is the initial amounts of the parent and daughter materials; assuming that ALL the material was the radioactive isotope would likely be wrong, but would also result in a MUCH larger age.
How am I to take your comment seriously when you have so many errors. It is clear that you don't personally know much of anything about the dating methods you are commenting on.
Radiocarbon dating is useful only back about 50,000 years or so. It is only usable on once-living materials (shell, bone, charcoal, etc.).
It is not usable on fossils, in which the bone has been replaced by stone and which generally are far older than 50,000 years.
Here are some good links on the subject. Digest these and get back to me with any questions you might have, particularly on radiocarbon dating (I have submitted quite a few radiocarbon samples during a long career as an archaeologist).
ReligiousTolerance.org Carbon-14 Dating (C-14): Beliefs of New-Earth CreationistsRadiometric Dating: A Christian Perspective by Dr. Roger C. Wiens.
This site, BiblicalChronologist.org has a series of good articles on radiocarbon dating.
Are tree-ring chronologies reliable? (The Biblical Chronologist, Vol. 5, No. 1)
Tree Ring and C14 DatingHow does the radiocarbon dating method work? (The Biblical Chronologist, Vol. 5, No. 1)
How precise is radiocarbon dating?
Is radiocarbon dating based on assumptions?
Has radiocarbon dating been invalidated by unreasonable results?
Radiocarbon WEB-info Radiocarbon Laboratory, University of Waikato, New Zealand.
ping
Cheers! Great post!
God, or however one may define a creator or a higher intelligence, is not incompatible with the man-made THEORY evolution, or “science” for that matter.
Perhaps mankind creates the super-computer, but mankind is simply solving a puzzle and combining elements in the universe that have been in existence since the dawn of time, and that if combined in the precise same way a billion years ago, would have produced the super-computer. We are using our limited brains to produce that which is already produceable since the dawn of time.
Recommended: Brian Greene’s The Fabric of the Cosmos. Mind-blowing.
>How am I to take your comment seriously when you have so many errors. It is clear that you don’t personally know much of anything about the dating methods you are commenting on.
Ok, then. I phrased my arguments as implications... IF there is the transference of parent/daughter materiel, would that invalidate the results?
I’ll admit that I’m not especially informed on the subject. I’m a CS major, so I do know a little about logic and math. Now, if I understand it right, the principle behind radiocarbondating is based on the idea that one can take a radioactive isotope (for any radioactive element, not just C14) and place it into a “box” and seal it... come back some [random] time later and, by comparing the decayed materiel to the original materiel, determine how much time has passed, given that the half-life is known. Am I correct in that so far?
But, what if someone were to open said box and add/remove more of our radioactive materiel? What if someone were to add/remove some of the decayed materiel from our box? Would our calculations be correct? (It changes the ratio we read, and therefore the time that we get from our calculations in these events, right?)
YEC INTREP
Not true for radiocarbon dating. The decayed material of C-14 is N-14. You don't expect this to stay around.
Instead you compare the amount of (the stable) C-12 and C-14 in the material...
Why be so negative about man's accomplishments? You could just as easily have said the same thing about God's creation of Man.
No, cultures define their moralities. The morality of the Bible evolved over time from tribal brutality to the Golden Rule, yet God supposedly does not evolve. Or do you believe that God realized he was wrong and changed his mind?
I'm guessing you are really a Catholic. Do you know that it is the position of the Church that the Bible teaches the "why" of creation and evolution theaches the "how"?
Evolution is totally incompatible with modern mathematics and probability theory. It would take an endless string of probabilistic miracles to produce even one complex kind of creature via any combination of mutation and selection and the claim is that ALL creatures of whatever complexity were created this way. That stands probability theory on its head.
The best illustration of the problem is still the case of flying birds. Flying birds need a baker's dozen highly specialized systems, including wings, flight feathers, a specialized light bone structure, specialized flow-through design heart and lungs, specialized tail, specialized general balance parameters etc.
For starters, for some coelurosaur trying to evolve into a flying bird, every one of these things would be antifunctional until the day on which the whole thing came together, so that the chances of evolving any of these things by any process resembling evolution (mutations plus selection) would amount to an infinitessimal, i.e. one divided by some gigantic number.
In probability theory, to compute the probability of two things happening at once, you multiply the probabilities together. That says that the likelihood of all these things ever happening, best case, is ten or twelve such infinitessimals multiplied together, i.e. a tenth or twelth-order infinitessimal. The whole history of the universe isn't long enough for that to happen once.
All of that was the best case. In real life, it's even worse than that. In real life, natural selection could not plausibly select for hoped-for functionality, which is what would be required in order to evolve flight feathers on something which could not fly apriori. In real life, all you'd ever get would some sort of a random walk around some starting point, rather than the unidircetional march towards a future requirement which evolution requires.
And the real killer, i.e. the thing which simply kills evolutionism dead, is the following consideration: In real life, assuming you were to somehow miraculously evolve the first feature you'd need to become a flying bird, then by the time another 10,000 generations rolled around and you evolved the second such reature, the first, having been disfunctional/antifunctional all the while, would have DE-EVOLVED and either disappeared altogether or become vestigial.
Now, it would be miraculous if, given all the above, some new kind of complex creature with new organs and a new basic plan for life had ever evolved ONCE.
Evolutionism, however (the Theory of Evolution) requires that this has happened countless billions of times, i.e. an essentially infinite number of absolutely zero probability events.
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