February 6, 2007
PASS THE GLUE GUN:
The night science came to the party (Nic Fleming, 2/06/07, Daily Telegraph)
Also mustering his forces for battle was Dr Michael Majerus, the Cambridge University geneticist. He is about to complete the replication of a famous study into the resting habits of the peppered moth -- a species held up as an example of evolution because of the way it changed as trees darkened in response to industrial pollution. This will place him on a collision course with Darwin-bashing proponents of intelligent design. His experience climbing trees and rooting about in the shrubbery should however stand him in good stead if it comes to jungle warfare.
The revealing thing is that he still thinks the big problem with the peppered moth is that the evidence was faked, rather than its conspicuous failure to speciate. Of course, the experiment he plans to conduct is already doomed by his determination to find the result he has such fanatical faith in, despite the evidence, Darwin Day and the Peppered Moths (Marek Kohn, 29 February 2004, Independent on Sunday):
These are the two main forms of the peppered moth, emblems and textbook examples of evolution in action. The dark form appeared in Victorian Manchester, described at the time as "the chimney of the world", and had almost taken over from the speckled by the century's end. An entomologist named J.W. Tutt suggested that the dark ones were better concealed from birds in industrial districts, where pollution had stripped the lichen from the trees and covered them in soot. Half a century later, experiments by Bernard Kettlewell, of Oxford University, supported Tutt's hypothesis and made the peppered moths famous as a demonstration of evolution at a pace humans could observe. Then the dark forms duly went into decline along with smokestack industries and coal fires, making the textbook story complete. Yet in the past few years, Creationists and other anti-evolutionists have taken up the peppered moth as a stick with which to beat Darwinians. The LSE event was a rally in defence of the peppered moths' tarnished reputation.And it was personal - relentlessly, vehemently, entirely personal. The speaker was Dr Michael Majerus, who leads the Evolutionary Genetics group at Cambridge University. Some years ago, he published a book in which he reviewed the studies done on the peppered moths. There were some anomalies, such as the appearance of dark moths in unpolluted areas, and it remained infernally difficult to do experiments which did not distort the untidy reality of life in the wild. These difficulties did not, however, shake his confidence in the story that Tutt had started a century before. But reviewing the book in the journal Nature, Jerry Coyne, an American evolutionist, compared his reaction to Majerus's discussion with the dismay he had felt when he discovered the truth about Santa Claus. He considered that the moth should be discarded as "a well-understood example of natural selection in action". [...]
Given a platform, Majerus took his revenge. For an hour he refuted, denounced and mocked. He closed with an impassioned invocation of over forty years' experience, man and boy: "I have caught literally millions of moths in moth traps. And I have found in the wild more peppered moths than any other person alive or dead. I know I'm right, I know Kettlewell was right, I know Tutt was right."
But, he acknowledged, anyone else needs scientific proof.
Skeptics require proof. Darwinists never have. Posted by Orrin Judd at February 6, 2007 6:38 PM
The most revealing thing here, is that the best criticism of "Darwinism" that you can come up with deals with the assertions of two scientist from Victorian England. Have you even checked what other sources (Wikipedia, for the sake of convenience) have to say about what you seem so proud to boast about?
Posted by: Luisa at February 6, 2007 8:02 PMIsn't it rather hypocritical for religious believers to use "lack of proof" as a stick to beat Darwinists? Can't they use the same argument against you?
Posted by: PapayaSF at February 6, 2007 8:11 PMNo, PapayaSF. Religious belief is about postulates. Science is about using those postulates to understand the world, and is one of the great gifts religious belief has given us. Darwinists are trying to add a false postulate to the cannon using their illusionary proof as a wedge to do so. All part of the attack on Truth and the "God is Dead" campaign. That's why they have a special hate for ID, which may split away those who thought of Evolution as a less controlled version of animal breeding. Any sense of order leads to thoughts about Truth. Evolution points away from the idea of Truth, with its creed directionless chaos. The human mind so rebels against the idea that most people add a rising vector to the theory which is not there.
Posted by: Robert Mitchell Jr. at February 6, 2007 9:11 PMRobert, you and OJ seem to be under the impression that evolution by natural selection ("Darwinism") is some sort of conspiracy to overthrow civilization. It's not. It's just the best theory that fit the geological and biological evidence in Darwin's time. It's certainly more convincing to me than the conspicuous lack of theories coming from you and OJ. I don't believe the fossil evidence is a trick of God's to fool us into a false theory. Do you?
The "special hate" some scientists have for IDers is understandable: not only do they not appreciate being treated like they're traitors to society, they don't like being told they're deluded by people who've never studied their field and can't offer a coherent alternative explanation beyond "God did it."
And contrary to the "there's no proof" mantra, evolution has plenty of proof. One huge example: research in genetics has shown how right Darwin was about the close relationship of various types of organisms.
The fact that it's used by Dawkins & Co. to attack religion is irrelevant to its truth: evolution neither disproves nor proves the existence of God.
The idea that evolution represents "directionless chaos" is sadly narrow. The clouds, the trees in the forest, the grass in the fields, the waves on the beach: are they chaotic, or following rules we don't see without some help from science? God works in mysterious ways, so how is a belief that life on Earth has changed and developed over eons incompatible with that?
Posted by: PapayaSF at February 7, 2007 2:01 AMEvolution and fossils have nothing to do with Darwinism, which was, of course, just an attempt to escape God via Natural determinism.
No one questions that life on Earth changed. Genesis tells us so. The question is how it changed and Darwinism fails to answer.
Posted by: oj at February 7, 2007 7:49 AMPapaya:
Bingo! Darwinism is, as you suggest, a religious faith.
You're welcome to be a member of the cult, but it is obviously inappropriate for y'all to be given authority over public school students when 87% of the country disagrees with your revelation.
Posted by: oj at February 7, 2007 7:53 AMLuisa:
As the attempt to resurrect the faked results demonstrates, the peppered moths were the only evidence the Darwinists ever had and with it gone the ideology has no leg left to stand on.
Posted by: oj at February 7, 2007 7:54 AMI shouldn't have to remind a conservative that truth is not determined by popular vote.
No doubt some see Darwinism as a religion, but most believers in evolution don't. It's also not "an attempt to escape God via Natural determinism" for most, any more than it was for Darwin himself, or any more than heliocentric astronomy was.
Of course Darwin and fossils and evolution are related. He explained the age and appearance of fossils with evolution, and postulated natural selection as the way evolution worked. If you admit that evolution occurred and the Earth is as old as science says (and not what Bishop Usher said), you've conceded at least half the argument and separated yourself from most of that 87% you mention. All you need to do is come up with another mechanism for evolution, but I haven't seen any suggested other than divine intervention. That seems unsatisfactory to me for two reasons: Occam's Razor (unneeded complexity) and suspect theology (God has to intervene in Earth's biology constantly to keep it changing? Can't He set up a mechanism for that? You attribute many things in the world to systems God set up but doesn't actively operate, so why not evolution?).
As for your claim that we've never seen new species, read that.
Posted by: PapayaSF at February 7, 2007 3:13 PMPapayaSF:
If you admit that evolution occurred and the Earth is as old as science says [...] you've conceded at least half the argument ...
Not even close to half! I'll concede that things have changed, but if this is your sole definition of evolution, the point is trivial and not a theory, merely an observation. It only eliminates a static viewpoint, but the Darwinian supposition of gradual accumulated change has difficulty with the long stable periods which so disturbed Gould and led to his (otherwise unexplained) punctuated equilibrium.
I'll also concede that the earth is approximately 4.5 billion years old. This is the statistical fallacy that evolutionists eventually resort to: given enough time, anything is possible, even if improbable. But if the odds of an event are 10^-50/yr., then the expectation of it occurring within the age of the earth is still infinitesimal. Evolutionists must believe that the odds of the many advantageous mutations necessary to explain the current biological world is much greater than 1/4.5x10^9 ~ 2.2x10^-10/yr. I find this dubious - given my limited knowledge of genetics and the combinatorics involved, I think the odds are closer to 10^-50 than 10^-10, and at least some scientists agree. Some theoretical genetic justification is required, not merely the observation that it happened, so the odds must be sufficiently large.
All you need to do is come up with another mechanism for evolution ...
This "rule against negative argument" is anti-scientific. Criticism is an essential part of the scientific method and does not require any alternative theory be proposed. Otherwise, no one could criticize string theory unless they had a better one, or anthropomorphic global warming unless they had a better computer model.
As to the new species observed, it is unclear what definition of species is used in your list - Wikipedia lists 8 different definitons of species. I find the term so vague as to be useless.
Posted by: jd watson at February 7, 2007 6:15 PMThe account of Creation in Genesis proceeds by evolution. Indeed, Darwinism is entirely a product of the milieu in which evolution is accepted as truth.
While the paucity of the "evidence" you cite is itself an eloquent enough indication of why Darwinism has so few believers these days, note that in all your examples the "two species" can still interbreed just fine. A mosquito that evolves into a mosquito is a mosquito.
Likewise, blacks and whites in South Africa were isolated populations, but even Darwinists are too ashamed of where their ideas led to still pretend they were separate species.
It is hardly a coincidence that after the 6th Day nothing has subsequently evolved. Creation adequately explains Evolution.
Posted by: oj at February 7, 2007 6:31 PMjd:
They've had to keep changing the term as the one that's current is shown not to work for their theory.
Posted by: oj at February 7, 2007 6:56 PM