Thinking Thought —"The fact that an opinion has been widely held doesn't mean that it's not utterly absurd." —Bertrand Russell
Thinking Word — enervate- \EN-ur-vayt\ Click for pronunciation -transitive verb: To deprive of vigor, force, or strength; to render feeble; to weaken. To reduce the moral or mental vigor of.--/ Prolonged exposure to the sun and dehydration enervated the shipwrecked crew./ The sickness enervates its victims until they can no longer get out of bed./ The long day outside in the hot weather enervated the workers.
Dr. Wysong blog - IS EVOLUTION REALLY A FACT?
The following article was sent to a science journal.
I am not a religionist. Now then, with that straw man set aside, I have a gripe with The Scientist—and most other science journals, as well as lay publications that follow their lead. Repeatedly woven into the thread of articles, editorials, and letters is reference to evolution as if it were a fact. If that declaration is not made outright, it is sure intimated with attitude and allusions.
For example, September 2008, p. 14: “Evolution has been well-documented…” In your January 2009 issue, with Darwin’s picture gracing the cover, an author (p. 26) charitably states, “And 127 years after his death researchers are still grappling with some details of the theory of evolution.” As if to say the evolutionary house is in order, except for some dust on the blinds.
Since those making such assertions are scientists taking pride in their objectivity and evidence-based reasoning, and if evolution is something more than a word de jure, let me pose to your writers these obvious questions about the so-called remaining “details”:
1. Where is the proof that life did, in fact, arise from inorganic matter? Life, I say, not a dead amino acid or microsphere that tendentious extrapolations are made from. Something that defeats the Law of Biogenesis (life can only spring from preexisting life) would be a nice “detail,” if evolution is to pass the red face test.
2. Where is the proof that single cells, in overview, transmutated to humans? No extrapolations here either, please. A change in finch beaks and antibiotic resistance in bacteria do not prove humans came from a primordial volcanic belch, any more than an athlete’s success in training to jump higher proves he will one day jump over the moon. Variation is to evolution as a firefly is to a lightning bolt.
I will grant that there is change, and that evolution means change. That’s even in the dictionary. But biological change within bounds (the only change we have ever observed, and science is, after all, observation) does not prove abiogenesis, or that humans evolved from imagined spontaneously generated cells. Rather than abusing lexicography by conflating dictionary evolution (mundane progressive change, like we might see in industry or education) with biological macroevolution, let’s see direct facts and evidence for the big stuff. For example, show the mechanisms and chemical pathways that change inorganic elements to life, no organs to new organs, and cause intrabreeding species to form new, morphologically unique populations that cannot breed back with their progenitors. Is that not the crux of the proof needed for materialism and its favorite daughter, evolution?
Such proof should be everywhere if evolution is true. Instead, the so-called evidence for evolution is equivalent to the evidence one could use to prove humans can jump over the moon. People can learn to jump higher to a degree, that can be scientifically verified. Resistance exercises, plyometrics, fast twitch training and the like can increase vertical jump to a degree. The remaining “detail,” the moon jump, remains elusive. But is it not essential to the proof?
Similarly, organic chemicals can form spontaneously to a degree, and creatures can be shown to vary and adapt to a degree. The remaining “details” of spontaneous generation, and species transmutating from one to another, is elusive. Is this data not, like the moon jump, also essential to the proof?
If evolution is to be spoken in the same breath as fact, let’s see a progressive biochemical schematic demonstrating the origin of a self-replicating cell, an organelle...or even one of the more than 6000 enzymes thus far discovered. Each step within the biopoietic soup must stand on its own, be compatible with the imagined solvent, be sufficient to exist, but insufficient enough for selection to force more and more complex revisions. Or how about a biochemical schematic of how an organ, any organ, can arise when there was not one to begin with. Further, demonstrate how an existing creature is sufficient to exist and at the same time insufficient enough to force dramatic species-jumping revisions. Provide the biochemistry for the steps creating the trillions of chemical parts and pieces, not just purblind apologetics that sound like fairy tales: “Ponds were drying up so fish evolved legs.” Or, “Lizards were falling off cliffs reaching for food, so they evolved wings.” Scientists should not be yarn spinners.
Variation that merely reveals the potential within an existing genome does not count. Neither do faith-based assertions about how you believe atom to man evolution is true. What is needed to remove the fog is the chemistry for the continuum from star dust to humans under the power of natural law. Before that, perhaps you could point me to a cogent explanation for how natural laws evolved.
Why, for some strange reason, does evolution demand a spontaneous decrease in entropy and increase in information that repudiates its supposed natural law benefactors; why, on the same piece of geography under the same selective pressures, to this day, is there outrageous (from an evolutionary perspective) diversity, such as fish, clams, humans, birds, insects, worms, trees, molds, bacteria, and viruses; why can there be found no detail and direct evidence for how the same mechanism, operating in the same environmental context, creates such vastly different results; and why do freely breeding species always revert to the wild type, not new innovative forms…and so on?
Moreover, how, if evolution is an exacting and winnowing force, can the supposed relatives of the ancestors of every creature that exist today still exist side by side with their evolved progeny? We supposedly came from one-celled organisms, etc., but one-celled organisms, etc., still exist side by side with us. Creatures exist today (living fossils) that look identical to fossils hundreds of millions of years old.
Strangely, of the tens of thousands of articles and books about evolution, not one answers such essential questions! Yet evolution is a fact?
A neat evolutionary continuum can only be devised by being carefully selective of the evidence and ignoring the endless oxymorons and conundrums. For example, how does one fit the following into the simple to complex schemata: humans have about 25,000 nuclear genes and some 50-100 trillion cells; a threadworm has about the same number of genes but only 959 cells? Selling evolution to explain such absurdity reminds me of, “It slices, it dices, it makes julienne fries, removes warts and is a floor polish.”
If the headwind of natural law, logic, and science matter, evolutionists should be overwhelmed with a crisis of conscience, not hubris.
Genetics shows no inclination toward, nor does it foster the dramatic revisions necessary to spur macroevolution. To the contrary, biology goes to great lengths to preserve the status quo, such as with DNA repair mechanisms. Genetics merely reshuffles cards in obedience to natural laws, it does not turn them into a slot machine. Reality is not liberal, it does not behave as we might like it to. It is radically conservative, imposing absolute laws and exacting a heavy price for disobedience.
Even if intelligent humans in their laboratories are permitted to intercede as nature surrogates (as they have for hundreds of years) and attempt to create factitious life from inorganic elements, or hatch new functional organs, nothing happens. Even if it did, it wouldn’t be a fair test. Using intelligence to prove there was no intelligence is not very intelligent.
You say I am being naïve because these matters are too complex and took eons of time to accomplish. You have faith that the proof is forthcoming, because, since life is here, life must have evolved. Giving you comfort with this blissful addiction to a belief is your assumption that there is but one other alternative, religion. Since you believe the anthropomorphized grey beard in the sky option is invalid by reductio ad absurdum, evolution must be true. Such nimble use of logic is not science.
Provide the proofs and evidence or stop referencing evolution in your article titles, sequaciously seeding it in text as if it lends to erudition, and pretending that science would collapse if it weren’t for Darwin. In fact, although his hypothesis that is now propagandized worldwide as fact and dogs thought on origins, it has not yielded one salutary discovery. Not one! The depressing amorality it spawns, however, does justify about any action and makes a mockery of ethics. (I am not saying evolutionists are amoral, just that they should be if they are intellectually honest.)
If your writers were to substitute the correct descriptive words, “change” or “variation,” every time they felt the uncontrollable urge to pay homage to evolution and chant its ohm, not one bit of value in any article would be lost.
If you can’t provide actual proof for stardust to man evolution, don’t assume (have faith) that it is merely due to insufficient research. Also, don’t panic that evolution’s defeat means you must concede an ecclesiastical victory and start genuflecting. The better inference is that the materialistic/reductionistic paradigm is wrong. There are options other than religion or evolution. These other options are where reality (true science) resides, in all of its rationally perceived and unperceivable dimensions.