Posted on 09/05/2011 5:17:21 PM PDT by SJackson
Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry said that evolution was “just a theory” and that it had “some gaps in it.”
Paul Krugman thinks that Republicans are dumb, knuckle-dragging Neanderthals. In the not-too-distant future he sees a Republican half-wit delivering his acceptance speech as presidential nominee at the convention in grunts, beating his chest, and bopping his wife over the head with the a club as he drags her on to the stage by her hair.
Writing in The New York Times, Krugman says, “One of these years the world’s greatest nation will find itself ruled by a party that is aggressively anti-science, indeed anti-knowledge.
And, in a time of severe challenges – environmental, economic, and more – that’s a terrifying prospect.”
Terrifying indeed. What’s more frightening then the prospect of a bunch of underdeveloped orangutans with their finger on the nuclear button? But saying that Republicans are anti-science is about as accurate as saying that democrats are anti-religion, and one wonders which is more outrageous: the prospect of a primitive party of Republicans getting control of government, or a Nobel-prize winning columnist in one of the world’s most authoritative newspapers writing broad generalities about how they’re unlettered buffoons who hate learning and science.
What seems even more outrageous is the fact that Krugman’s ire was piqued by Texas Governor and Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry’s comment that evolution was “just a theory” and that it had “some gaps in it.”
I am not a scientist. But beginning in about 1990, I started organizing an annual debate at Oxford University on science versus religion where the focus was almost always on evolution and which featured some of the world’s greatest evolutionists, like Richard Dawkins and the late John Maynard-Smith of the University of Sussex – then widely regarded as the leading evolutionary theorist. While I moderated the first few debates, I later participated in a debate against Dawkins at Oxford that he later denied ever took place, forcing us to post the full video of the debate online; in that video, it can be seen that Dawkins is not only the principal proponent of the science side, but actually loses the debate in a student vote. I later debated Dawkins again at the Idea City Convention at the University of Toronto, the video of which is likewise available online.
What I learned from these debates, as well as from reading extensively on evolution, is that evolutionists have a tough time defending the theory when challenged in open dialogue.
This does not mean that evolution is not true or that the theory is without merit or evidence. It does, however, corroborate what Perry said. Evolution is a theory. It has never been proven beyond the shadow of a doubt to be true.
Indeed, Dawkins and the late and celebrated Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould fiercely debated basic assumptions about evolution, with Gould arguing that the large gaps in the fossil record make a mockery of a theory of gradual evolution, which is why Gould advocated “punctuated equilibrium” – a variation on Darwinism in which evolution takes place in dramatic periods of change followed by long eons of stasis. Gould maintained this position precisely because, as Perry said, the theory of evolution has “some gaps in it” – in the case of the fossil record, quite literally.
No scientist has ever witnessed evolution directly; science itself says this is impossible given the vast amount of time needed for species to evolve.
Rather, evidence for evolution is found primarily in the fossil record, and evidence for natural selection stems from some famous contemporary observations. For example, prior to the Industrial Revolution, the vast majority of peppered moths (Biston betularia), which can produce light or dark offspring, were light in coloration.
However, with the rise in pollution during the Industrial Revolution, the lichens and trees against which the light-colored moths habitually hid from predators were darkened with soot, making the light-colored moths conspicuous to predatory birds and allowing the dark moths to survive.
A similar proof brought for natural selection is the Galapagos Finch, which Darwin theorized was originally a single species but over time changed very slowly in response to the demands of the environment.
For example, the large ground-finch had a big, powerful beak that seemed well-suited to cracking open seeds, while the vampire finch had a long, pointed beak, which allowed it to puncture the flesh of other birds and drink their blood. In each case, Darwin reasoned, beak shape had evolved over time to provide an adaptive advantage.
THE PROBLEM with both these observations is that they are manifestations of horizontal, rather than vertical, evolution, as they document how members of a species may change within the range of characteristics that they already possess. No new traits are generated. Vertical evolution, whereby natural selection can supposedly create entirely new structures, has yet to be directly observed and is thus a theory.
Other challenges remain regarding evolutionary theory, most notably the anthropic principle, which maintains that if the physical laws and constants governing our universe were even slightly different, we would not be here to notice it because the emergence of life could not have occurred.
The English cosmologist Sir Martin Rees argues in his book Just Six Numbers that the values of six numbers determine to a great degree many of the large- and small-scale properties of our universe, and if any of these were changed, even slightly, the universe might not exist at all.
The second number, epsilon, which is roughly .007, describes, roughly speaking, how durable matter is, because it tells us how much energy is required to separate an atom into its constituent particles. If epsilon were .006 – a difference of about 14% – the universe would consist entirely of hydrogen. No other elements would form, because the process of nuclear fusion could not occur. There would be no planets, very little light, no nebulae, no comets and certainly no life.
The value of epsilon is one of the most profound mysteries of the universe.
Nobel laureate Richard Feynman, in his typically flamboyant way, said of it: “It’s one of the greatest damn mysteries of physics: a magic number that comes to us with no understanding by man. You might say ‘the hand of God wrote that number...’” Many leading scientists, like Francis Collins – described by the Endocrine Society as “one of the most accomplished scientists of our time” – therefore believe that while evolution may indeed be an accurate theory regarding the rise of life, it still requires the guiding hand of a higher power in order to operate.
Indeed, Dawkins himself said in a famous interview with Ben Stein that the intelligent life in our universe may have come from “a higher intelligence” consisting of space aliens that seeded our planet with intelligent life.
IN THE final analysis, however, the biblical account of creation easily accommodates an evolutionary ascent, seeing as the narrative expressly relates that God created the mineral, the vegetable, the animal and finally human life forms in ascending order.
It would be wise of Krugman to remember that the very essence of science is to question, and that stifling doubt is a sin of which religion has been quite guilty in the past – one science should refrain from repeating in the present.
Questioning a scientific theory doesn’t make you anti-science. But dismissing a scientific theory as false based solely on religious theology doesn’t make a lot of sense.
We define “fitness” as “able to survive.” Therefore, it is a tautological theory.
A steamer trunk full of bones is their basis for evolution!
That, sir, would be a strawman - misrepresenting your opponent's position and then "debunking" it.
A "strawman" is a distortion of an opponent's position by taking it to an extreme that no rational person would ever actually propose.
Claiming it is a "strawman" implicity claims that no reasonably sane person would ever dismiss evolution for purely theological reasons.
Having seen what appears to be exactly that done on many occasions, I have to question whether that really qualifies as a "strawman".
You’re claiming that since you can come up with examples of people dismissing evolution for purely theological reasons that it is not a strawman to dismiss evolution opponents as merely doing so for theological reasons.
And I suppose you would claim that I could not come up with a Darwinist/evolutionist that dismisses Creationism for “purely [anti]religious beliefs”, like, say, “atheism”?
Just admit it - SoJo was using a strawman argument, and we’ll go on. I can’t for the life of me figure out why you’d defend that argument.
The statement was:
Questioning a scientific theory doesn’t make you anti-science. But dismissing a scientific theory as false based solely on religious theology doesn’t make a lot of sense.
I see no assertion there that any challenge to a scientific theory will always be based on theology. It states that any dismissal of a scientific theory that is based on theology is non-sensical.
It appears that you are the one misrepresting his arguement, not the other way around, so I will be making no such admission.
Yep, he made no overt implication that _all_ opposition to evolution was based on religious theology, but the implication was there, nonetheless.
So, I will do the same:
“Dismissing Creationism as false based on anti-religious, atheistic theology doesn’t make a lot of sense.”
There we go.
I cannot say the implication was there, but I can say that the inference was there. Why something was inferred that doesn't appear to have been implied, I cannot say.
You quoted “No mortal has been allowed (before this) to approach so near to divinity.” People say that about Einstein. Or even Darwin. Where does Halley say “scientific knowledge is divine and absolute”?
Newton himself certainly
Where did he say “scientific knowledge is divine and absolute”?
where he equated mechanics to geometry
So, for example, according to you, Einstein also thought that "scientific knowledge is divine and absolute" because he made geometry pre-eminent in physics.
What else?
I'm sure you have more leftist mythology of science coming.
That is a story that evolutionists, leftists, atheists and communists like to peddle. The story goes like this. Everyone used to believe that propositions were absolutely true with no possibilty of mistake... and then "science" or "quantum mechanics" or "relativity" proved otherwise. Propositions are often wrong... therefore there is no such thing as truth these days. 1+1=2 is relative, there is no God, etc, etc, etc. This is all very amusing of course because on the one hand, evolutionists like to educate us about there being no truth in science, and on the other hand we are vilified if we agree with them and say evolution is not true.
"We" don't. If you define fitness this way, then there is no way to tell, not even in principle, who is fit or unfit. You can't examine an organism to determine fitness, nor do you have any idea what traits are supposed to be fit or unfit. The only way is to wait a long time and retroactively assign fitness. In other words, there is no way to estimate the fitness of any organism alive today.
Therefore, it is a tautological theory.
If a man lives to be 90 and leads a productive life but left no children, did he survive? Most normal people would say yes, but evolutionists would say no, because they do not use words in normal ways. If a homeless bum lived to the ripe age of 19 but left 27 illigitimate children, an evolutionist would say he survived. And was fit. But then if all those illigitmate kids perished later on, then oh, no, he was less fit than we thought. Such absurdities can be multiplied endlessly because this notion of fitness is absurd to begin with.
Basically the other poster is saying that if someone believes in God, then he must also believe that science and scientists are infallible.
Many resonable and intelligent people reject evolution (as in all life descended from a single life form through the mechanism of random mutation and natural selection) for reasons other than religious theology.
No other scientist that I know of has been praised in the florid terms of Halley’s Ode to Newton. It can be dismissed as mere sentiment, but Halley does not merely describe Newton’s mind as divine. He credits him with discovering God’s eternal and universal laws.
The various translations are loose, because any literal translation would read like Data’s Ode To Spot. It starts:
En tibi norma Poli, et divae libramina Molis,
Computius acque Joivs; quas, dum primordia rerum
Pangeret, omniparens Leges violare Creator
Noluit, aeternique fundamina fixit.
which I think roughly goes:
O to you ( was given ) the rectification of the Poles,
and the weighing of the heavenly masses, and the computation
of the Jovian waters; since, while first things were formed
the all-giving Creator did not violate His Law, but fixed it eternally in the foundation of things.
As to geometry, Newton accepts Euclidean geometry as the actual foundation of physical space. He says, in his preface, “what is perfectly accurate is called geometrical; what is less so is called mechanical. However the errors are not in the art, but in the artificers” and goes on to say that there is no bar to mechanical perfection.
Of course, this would imply infinite divisibility of matter, and Newton no doubt thought this was required to justify his infinitesimal reasoning.
And of course he explicitly postulates ABSOLUTE space and ABSOLUTE time.
All this was considered a closed book until the advent of modernism.
Many florid homages to Darwin have been written. So, the more florid the homage, the more infallible the science? No wonder evolutionists get into such a frenzy when Darwin is questioned. But did Halley say “scientific knowledge is divine and absolute”? Where did he say that science and scientists are infallible?
And of course he explicitly postulates ABSOLUTE space and ABSOLUTE time.
So, according to you, "absolute space" actually means "infallible science." Where does Newton say that science and scientists are infallible?
Well said, great post.
And your personal definition of the word "species" is what, exactly?
What all the evidence shows is that to develop into a new species -- by whatever definition -- a population must first be isolated from its other members, under conditions that require significant adaptations over long periods of time.
How long?
Well certainly not 200 years for any higher level life.
Nor is 2,000 or even 20,000 years of separation likely to produce animals no longer capable of interbreeding -- and that is the typical definition of a "species."
Two hundred thousand years of separation? Now we are talking Neanderthals and humans, or horses and donkeys -- maybe, maybe not, depending on circumstances.
What about two million years of separation?
Now for sure, regardless of definitions, we can easily see where different "species" evolved in different locations.
And what happens in 20 million or 200 million years?
Now different species can become different genera and different genera evolve into new families, families into orders, orders into classes...
Classes into phyla?
Phyla into Kingdoms?
Kingdoms into Domains?
Now we are talking billions of years.
All it needs is separation and enough time.
Only to those whose god is Science.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.