Deniers of Science By Richard Sale

 

A critic of Evolution thundered recently: “Scientific observations do not support biological evolution! What about the icons of evolution that have been presented in textbooks for almost 50 years? Don’t these icons support biological evolution? Some of these do show microevolution within species. This type of evolution, even if it permanently points in one direction, is not evolution. It is no more evolution than dog breeding.”  (What???) “However, if a dog could be bred into a cat, that would be evolution. Even icons like the peppered moths that were only examples of microevolution, used pinned dead moths on black tree trunks that were not a natural resting place for the moths. Hackle’s embryos, ape-to-man drawings, the horse series, etc.” 

The above is taken from a site urging the teaching of Creationism as an alternative to Evolution. That these words are incoherent are not the worst of their faults. Unfortunately, these remarks leave the question of evolution validity or falsehood. Not only are they erroneous, they are misconceived.  

 

A fundamentalist reading of the Bible leads to all sorts of nonsense.  In the 19^th century, there occurs a belief in the spontaneous life. At one time, people maintained that the sun created crocodiles from the mud of the Nile. Mice were supposed to be created out of piles of old soiled rags.  Bluebottle flies had their origin in bad meat. Maggots were created in apples, which is why they at last appeared. U.S. fundamentalists believe this as well. They do think that the earth is only 6,000 years old. 

Alas, Louisiana, Tennessee and other states, clearly striving to be in the forefront of every backward movement, are increasing funding for the teaching of “Creationism” in schools there, demonstrating their support for this falsehood by  thumping their cave man’s clubs or perhaps enacting animal sacrifices. The problem is that the advocates of Creationism are spiritual and mental primitives. They haven’t evolved at all. 

The Creationist folks clearly don’t understand that Evolution is not really a controversy anymore. Evolution is no longer a theory because the debate has long ago moved from biology to chemical analysis. The building up of chemical molecules defines our Life’s beginning. What we have learned from scientists since Darwin is that the cycles of life have a chemical form. Scientists had to do much selfless work to learn how to express the cycles of life in a way that linked them to nature as a whole, and this meant studying chemistry. That’s what the Bible believers get wrong. 

In other words, scientific knowledge has moved way, way beyond Alfred Russel (sic) Wallace, and Darwin and Mendel. The blood that flows in our veins is millions and millions of years old. The history of the Earth is interesting to the point of fascination, but the man who solved the mystery of life’s earliest origins was the Frenchman Louis Pasteur who proved the chemical basis of all human life back in 1863, when the French Emperor asked him to solve the question of why wine went bad. Pasteur solved this in two years.  He discovered that the wine was a “sea of organisms.”  He said, “By some it lives, by some it decays.”  What was the most startling of his discoveries was that life could exist without oxygen. He found that no free oxygen existed before Life existed. 

After Pasteur, it was chemists, not biologists that began to look at amino acids as the building blocks of human life. When anyone of us moves his or her arm, we rely on something called myogiblin which consists of 120 amino acids. The difference in amino acids between a chimpanzee and a human is a small difference. But between a human and a sheep, the difference of amino acids is much greater. Yet the overwhelming conclusion about our life’s origins is that they have their base in chemistry, in molecules that can replicate. Basic molecules form DNA chains, etc. In fact, our life is controlled by four bases of DNA. 

The Earth’s Beginnings 

It is perhaps chastening to note that by 8 billion years ago, about two thirds of the history of our universe passed, and it had passed before the creation of the Earth which took place around 4.6 billion years ago. It was around 4.6 billion years ago that a mass the size of Mars crashed into the Earth at 25,000 miles per hour. There was a huge amount of dust that circled us, but our gravity held on to it and out of that dust the Moon was formed. I believe that it was the moon that gave us 24 hour days and seasons. (A lot of the above is still being refined and debated, so please be patient with my mistakes.)  So we humans were born out of chaos, collisions, ice ages, volcanic eruptions, and the like. No wonder we are so quarrelsome. 

Scientists returned to the beginning, asking, what was the surface of the Earth and what was our atmosphere like? From my own fitful reading, I discovered from reading was that the atmosphere of the Earth was originally a mixture of steam, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, ammonia, methane, but no free oxygen. A great step forward occurred in 1952 or thereabouts, thanks to a scientist named Steven Miller, who, with a colleague named Harold Urey, bottled up in a flask what they guessed was the Earth’s original atmosphere. Theirs was an experiment intended to simulate the conditions thought at the time to be present on the early Earth, and the experiment tested for the occurrence of our chemical origins of life. Specifically, the experiment tested Alexander Oparin's and J. B. S. Haldane's hypothesis that conditions on the primitive Earth favored chemical reactions that “synthesized organic compounds from inorganic precursors.”  (This language for me is a bit like tramping through a dense thicket in the woods and getting lost, but it is interesting nonetheless.) 

So Miller bottled up nitrogen, water, methane, ammonia, water, carbon dioxide, and other reducing gases. The mixture turned pink within a day. For days he and Urey subjected their flask to heat, to ultra-violet light, loud noises, trying to simulate the chaotic fury of the Earth’s original atmosphere. This went on for some time, maybe weeks. Suddenly as Miller and Urey looked on, they saw that the pink liquid had suddenly darkened. Their experiment had produced basic amino acids, rudimental protein.  The experiment was seen “as the classic experiment of the origin of life.(*)

A Wikipedia entry notes, “After Miller's death in 2007, scientists examining sealed vials preserved from the original experiments were able to show that there were actually well over 20 different amino acids produced in Miller's original experiments. That is considerably more than what Miller originally reported, and more than the 20 that naturally occur in life. Moreover, some evidence suggests that Earth's original atmosphere might have had a different composition from the gas used in the Miller–Urey experiment. There is abundant evidence of major volcanic eruptions 4 billion years ago, which would have released carbon dioxide (CO₂), nitrogen (N₂), hydrogen sulfide (H₂S), and sulfur dioxide (SO₂) into the atmosphere. Experiments using these gases in addition to the ones in the original Miller–Urey experiment have produced more diverse molecules.^[8]

There was another man of genius, Leslie Orgel, who also worked with Miller. There is hardly anything about him on his Wikipedia site, but somewhere I had squirreled notes on him back in the 1980s. Orgel was a Brit, breathtakingly brilliant, and he used ice as a research tool to discover more about the basic elements of air. Freezing things was a way of concentrating them. He froze ammonia, hydrogen cyanide, methane, and some other elements of the atmosphere. He produced amino acids, but he produced something else too something much more important. He produced one of the four constituents of the genetic alphabet, which directs all life. He had in fact discovered adenine, one of the four bases of  DNA. He ended by forming organic molecules, a big advance of our understanding.

I did find note of other achievements of his. “During the 1970s, Orgel suggested reconsidering the panspermia hypothesis, according to which the earliest forms of life on earth did not originate here, but arrived from outer space with meteorites.

His name is popularly known because of Orgel's rules, credited to him, particularly Orgel's Second Rule: "Evolution is cleverer than you are."

I am slowly realizing that the ability to analyze a batch of facts requires a certain kind of reasoning. It requires the talent of absorbing an abstraction.  To be astute means we have to be a good observer. J.S. Mill once said “The observer is not he who merely sees the thing which is before his eye, but he who sees that parts the thing is composed of.” Someone like me, sees a fact or make an observation, but I don’t realize its particularity. I get only a very general and inadequate view, a hazy gist of the thing. I don’t detect similarities to other observations. But the scientist breaks up the observation and notices the particular attributes of it. He suddenly sees what the rest of us don’t  – that the observation has properties which the original, basic observation didn’t have.

I really think that the dedication, the colossal capacity for focused effort, the self-effacing patience, the subordination of the appetite for glory in the service of solid achievement, the building of the powers of analysis in order to define a problem by breaking it down into its simplest elements, then testing a combination of them under different circumstances so something substantial can be proved -- that is and was – nothing short of a miracle to me.  And I cannot imagine that God could not help but feeling affection and admiration for the intelligence in the creatures He created.

In the end, science is a test of temperament and mind that underlies a culture. Creationism fails that test. 

(*) UPDATED KNOWLEDGE “Originally it was thought that the primitive secondary atmosphere contained mostly ammonia and methane. However, it is likely that most of the atmospheric carbon was CO₂ with perhaps some CO and the nitrogen mostly N₂. In practice gas mixtures containing CO, CO₂, N₂, etc. give much the same products as those containing CH₄ and NH₃ so long as there is no O₂. The hydrogen atoms come mostly from water vapor. In fact, in order to generate aromatic amino acids under primitive earth conditions it is necessary to use less hydrogen-rich gaseous mixtures. Most of the natural amino acids, hydroxyacids, purines, pyrimidines, and sugars have been made in variants of the Miller experiment.^{[citation needed]}

More recent results may question these conclusions. The University of Waterloo and University of Colorado conducted simulations in 2005 that indicated that the early atmosphere of Earth could have contained up to 40 percent hydrogen—implying a much more hospitable environment for the formation of prebiotic organic molecules. The escape of hydrogen from Earth's atmosphere into space may have occurred at only one percent of the rate previously believed based on revised estimates of the upper atmosphere's temperature.^[23] One of the authors, Owen Toon notes: "In this new scenario, organics can be produced efficiently in the early atmosphere, leading us back to the organic-rich soup-in-the-ocean concept... I think this study makes the experiments by Miller and others relevant again." Outgassing calculations using a chondritic model for the early earth complement the Waterloo/Colorado results in re-establishing the importance of the Miller–Urey experiment.^[24]”

 

Comments

[no one]

GCP, magical ever existing Energy?

"Personally, I'm not that interested in the question."

I can see that. Such a lack of interest seems unscientific to me.

"Scientists will work it out over time and there will be appropriate reworkings of the theory."

Ah, so you are given to faith after all.

"I'm more interested in making sure that people like you and Tyler don't bring your religious dogma into science classes in the public schools."

I don't think I said anything that suggests I adhere to a religious dogma. All I did is point to big holes in your pet theory - as did a few others.

How scientific is it to teach evolution dogma in schools, as if it were absolute truth, when even you admit that theories will have to be re-worked because they fall short? Why not present a range of beliefs and discuss their relative merits and shortcomings. This seems to me to be a better way of stimulating young minds.

[Richard Armstrong]

All, there is an old expression regarding wrestling with one of those video game players mentioned above but I'll jump into the mud anyway.

I do not understand why the onus is only on scientists to defend evolution and creationists are never expected to rationally defend their position. It also seems to me that science doesn't take the position that creationists are wrong, if they address the subject at all it is pointed out there is no scientific evidence to support it.

Creationists instead spend quite a lot if time formally instructing their children that the theory of evolution is incorrect using only anecdotes and derision.

[GulfCoastPirate]

no one wrote:

'Ah, so you are given to faith after all.'

Do you practice mischaracterizing the words of others or does it come naturally? If the theory needs to be reworked it will. If it doesn't it won't.

'All I did is point to big holes in your pet theory - as did a few others.'

It's not MY theory.

'Why not present a range of beliefs and discuss their relative merits and shortcomings.'

That's what homes and churches are for. Keep it out of science class.

[William R. Cumming]

ALL: It would be more accurate in this thread if all understood the term "science" and "science theory" to mean the "scientific method"!

[William R. Cumming]

ALL:

wiki extract!
consider splitting content into sub-articles or condensing it. (June 2013)

An 18th-century depiction of early experimentation in the field of chemistry
The scientific method is a body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge.[1] To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning.[2] The Oxford English Dictionary defines the scientific method as: "a method or procedure that has characterized natural science since the 17th century, consisting in systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses."[3]

The chief characteristic which distinguishes the scientific method from other methods of acquiring knowledge is that scientists seek to let reality speak for itself,[discuss] supporting a theory when a theory's predictions are confirmed and challenging a theory when its predictions prove false. Although procedures vary from one field of inquiry to another, identifiable features distinguish scientific inquiry from other methods of obtaining knowledge. Scientific researchers propose hypotheses as explanations of phenomena and design experimental studies to test these hypotheses via predictions which can be derived from them. These steps must be repeatable to guard against mistake or confusion in any particular experimenter. Theories that encompass wider domains of inquiry may bind many independently derived hypotheses together in a coherent, supportive structure. Theories, in turn, may help form new hypotheses or place groups of hypotheses into context.

Scientific inquiry is generally intended to be as objective as possible in order to reduce biased interpretations of results. Another basic expectation is to document, archive, and share all data and methodology so they are available for careful scrutiny by other scientists, giving them the opportunity to verify the results by attempting to reproduce them. This practice, called full disclosure, also allows statistical measures of the reliability of the data to be established (when data is sampled or compared to chance).

[Tyler]

Versus your cult views that you can't fully explain being put into schools.

[Tyler]

This is exactly what I'm talking about. This smug attitude that you don't have to answer the questions asked about evolution and instead you get to wail on this strawman that has been built up in your head ffs.

Projection much?

[Tyler]

Yeah that's exactly what happened, and not the FedGov constantly taking him to court, losing in court, and then changing the rules so they could sue him again.

Let's not even get started on the Reids and their role in "acquiring" federal land in order to lease it to solar power companies.

I wouldn't expect you to understand how this government ignoring rule of law factors into this, but that's just the GCP experience.

[Tyler]

Uh actually, yes my disbelief allows exactly that. Defining speciation isn't a "rigorous technical proof".

The fact you wrote a towering block of words to attack a strawman just goes to show you don't regard evolution as "science" and more like a cult where disbelievers 'just don't get it'.

[Tyler]

Well accepting things are fuzzy the high priests of the Evolution Cult should be able to answer basic questions instead of responding like offended matrons when someone questions their "theory".

[Cieran]

Well, Tyler, pardon me while I point out the obvious, namely that you have no idea what I think, or how I regard evolution. So you're not fooling anybody by pretending that you do.

If you have something substantiative to disagree with about what I wrote, feel free to contend on technical grounds: I'm quite familiar with the principles of evolution, so I'm pretty sure I can handle an honest debate just fine.

But you're on pretty thin intellectual ice if all you can bring to the conversation here is to tell total strangers what you believe they think.

[optimax]

Tyler

Cieran's clear and intelligent explanation of scientific theory is not a "strawman", for it answers your question directly by explaining why the holes in scientific theories do not nullify the theory; and cannot be considered "a towering block of words", for it is coherent and rational, unlike your emotional response.

Can you prove evolution false using the scientific method, or do you believe evolutionary theory is not a science but a cult? That is the creationists argument and Anne Coulter's too. Here is a short and precise refutation to Anne Coulter's argument that the concept "survival of the fittest" is a tautology. Her argument is based on a falsified definition of the term.

http://www.csicop.org/specialarticles/show/is_natural_selection_a_tautology/

I don't know what you believe, Tyler. But I can understand why some Protestant evangelicals feel separation anxiety from their god when secular schools teach godless science. Like poorly raised dogs, they tear apart the house in frustration. After all, humans are animals too.

I realize this is bad timing on my part.

[GulfCoastPirate]

If the deadbeat didn't want to pay his bills maybe he should petition the government to allow him to give the land back to the Shoshone whom his family ripped off and stole the land from long ago.

[GulfCoastPirate]

They have NO right to teach religion in public schools.

[GulfCoastPirate]

Science is a cult?

LOL - Put down all that scientific equipment you use on a daily basis. Start with your computer.

[Tyler]

Dude, you think I haven't seen this arrogant tut tutting/strawman kabuki before whenever someone asks the obvious questions about evolution? Your response is not at all unique, including your construction of a giant strawman with 20000 more words than necessary to dance around the questions already posed.

So here they are again: define speciation and how it occurs in nature. Specifically what's the average rate of speciation and how many mutations are required to per speciation? That's four questions.

Babak asked some good questions about things like origin of life and species stability. How do those fit in with evolution?

How do you go from molecules floating around to DNA to dinosaurs? These are serious questions and that's why I think its a matter of massive hubris to hand wave these questions and proof that science is more and more about cult of personality (Darwin, Einstein) and less about actually discovering things.

[Stephanie]

True, Gould made his share of mistakes, although his theory about the decline of the .400 hitter has held up pretty well.

[no one]

WRC, What you quoted is an ideal of what science is as method of inquiry. That ideal often falls short because the method is practiced by humans whose need to eliminate uncertainty and cognitive dissonance in their lives trumps the need to arrive at truth; whatever it is and whatever its ramifications may be.

What we seen in this thread of discussion is people who are not practicing the science they claim to adhere to. It's more important to them to have everything wrapped up nice and tidy in a little box that can be put away on a shelf so they can stop thinking or worrying about it and onto to something else.

"......giving them the opportunity to verify the results by attempting to reproduce them"

Speciation has never been produced, let alone reproduced, by scientists. Darwin noted adaption - meaning emphasis of certain genes already existing within a species' gene pool - not speciation. Adaptation certainly is real and we can see it in the lab and reproduce it.

Scientists have tried and failed to zap the equivalent of the primordial ooze with electricity and produce life; or at least the building blocks of it.

These are facts and they would be worrisome for scientists operating from the ideal you quote.

I have an area of interest wherein I repeatedly run into scientific materialists' absolute refusal to be rational and to deal with reality because that reality runs counter to what they have faith in. That area of interest is in the so called "near death experience" (NDE) and the scientific materialist counter faith is that we are nothing more than biological robots - a brain with electro-chemical impulses creating all thought, emotion and memory that becomes extinct for ever upon cessation of said impulses.

I became interested after having a fairly classic NDE myself wherein my awareness separated from my physical body and looked down at it and the happenings around it and then moved on to experience some wondrous things. My perceptions were very clear, awareness heightened, and not at all foggy or hallucinatory. I later was able to *accurately* report what was happening around my physical body even though it would have been impossible to have seen those things from the physical vantage point of my body; which was unconscious at the time anyhow.

I didn't know much if anything about the phenomenon at the time, but once I began researching I came to know that many people have had similar experiences. Many with veridical perceptions of things that could not be seen from the physical body. The physical body often being flatlined - meaning no brain activity according to monitors - at the time of the event. These events and veridical perceptions have frequently been witnessed and attested to by physicians. The body of evidence strongly suggesting that NDEs are real events and real proof that mind does not equal brain has grown to be quite impressive and continues to grow.

Yet, the scientific materialist crowd comes up with all sorts of highly improbable poorly fitting materialist explanations because NDEs pose a challenge to their model of humans as biological robots. They flippantly dismiss the evidence as if it doesn't exist. They go so far as to lie about reported/verified cases and to attack the character of both the experiencer and any professionals lending support to the claim (e.g. physicians involved in the resuscitation). The better the case in terms of evidence for the reality of the NDE, the more vicious and underhanded the attacks. They try to damage professional reputations of scientists who do honest research in this area and who come away with a positive opinion of the phenomenon.

I'd seen science manipulated for profit, but the reaction to the NDE really opened my eyes to science as religion.

[Tyler]

Uh I never said his focus on the scientific method was a straw man. It was his belief that I was somehow defending creationism that was the straw man I was pointing out. So your argument is starting to get Inception level straw man here.

The irony is that evolution cultists will mock creationists for taking things on faith when they do the exact same thing! Just replace a creator with "science" or "scientists" and you've got the exact same chain of thought. Is linking Coulter supposed to be some sort of new variation of argumentum ad Hitlerum fallacy or something?

Finally, you're really asking me to prove a negative? I've yet to see an honest attempt to answer any of the questions about evolution, just a lot of smug, twee responses, strawmanning, and "lol creationist" level of ridiculousness.

[Tyler]

20 million illegal aliens, an AG ignoring the laws, a President who doesn't follow the laws and creates them by fiat: okay with GCP.

Dude refuses to sell out due to arbitrary regulation: WHOA WHOA WHOA NATION OF LAWS.

Gcp would have been declaring the Stamp Act was a law and who were these Sons of Liberty to be rebelling against their King.

[Tyler]

Conflating a half ass theory with science, your first mistake.

[William R. Cumming]

Some future asteroid strike on planet earth will end this thread! Thanks for the memories.

[the Twisted Genius]

Tyler,

I’ll take a shot at giving you some answers to your burning questions on evolution theory.

Define speciation. Let’s start with defining a species as a group of individuals or organisms that actually or can potentially interbreed in nature. In essence, a species is the biggest gene pool possible. Not perfect since bacteria and viruses reproduce without interbreeding… a definite complication in this whole explanatory endeavor. Speciation is the emergence of two or more species from a single ancestral species or can it also be the emergence of a new species from a catastrophic loss of an ancestor species? Or is that just evolution?

How does it occur in nature? Through the process of biological evolution involving genetic mutation and natural selection. A lot of mechanics are involved in the process, but many of them are the same as breeding new domesticated animals and crops. The difference lies in the interbreeding in nature as opposed to forced interbreeding. Genetic mutation in nature is a crap shoot… or a matter of probability. Mutations occur in individuals all the time. Some do nothing. Some are individually catastrophic or fortuitous. A virus can cause genetic mutation in a population that leaves a breeding population with a different genetic make up. This mechanism, only recently discovered, may be a loaded dice in the crap shoot of genetic mutation.

What is the rate of speciation? Well that certainly varies. It’s certainly not a constant rate. Look at flu viruses and bacterial infections. New species appear in a year or less. Fruit flies have been fully speciated (no successful interbreeding) in the lab after 25 generations (fruit fly generations, that is.) The Galapagos Finches speciated over millions of years. The humans and great apes speciated from their common ancestor some 4 to 8 million years ago and we share over 98% of our DNA with the chimpanzee.

How many mutations are required? I don’t know. I doubt the number is consistent across species. I’m sure the genetic history of that fruit fly speciation demonstration would give an answer for fruit flies at least. I’d be interested in seeing that. Given the 98% similarity in human - chimpanzee DNA, it probably doesn’t take that many mutations. It just has to be the right mutations or combination of mutations.

I’m under no illusion that these answers will fully satisfy you. They even raise questions that I will probably research. I think it would take the equivalent of a full semester of study to understand the present state of evolution theory. It’s also a moving target. There are 1.5 million animal and plant species classified to date with 10,000 new species being discovered every year. There are an estimated 8.7 million species in the world. That’s based on a predictive model that I don’t understand. My ignorance of that mathematical field does not invalidate the estimate.

[the Twisted Genius]

no one,

Tonight's episode of Cosmos covered an excellent example of the misuse of science by the petroleum and chemical industries to further their profiting from lead additives. Fortunately, it was an extremely persistent scientist's work that helped prove the dangers of these additives to humans and the environment. Yes, scientists with other than pure motives do exist just like in every other field.

I applaud your interest in NDE. I think it's a valid field of research, including neuro-chemical and neuro-electrical research. There are a lot of things in this universe that we just don't understand or are willing to understand... or both. I have an interest in remote viewing which I investigated by learning how to do it to the point that I am convinced that it is real. This dovetailed nicely with my anthropological interest in shamanism.

[optimax]

no one

I was raised on the modernist side of American Protestantism that believed in modern science and separation of church and state. Both are Christian but there has been a war between the modernist and Protestant evangelicals, who believe in creationism and the centrality of religion in government and education, since the early twentieth century. Some of our congregation were scientists, engineers and science teachers. They were able to separate religion from science and many still can.

I think you're over reaching to condemn all scientists because you've had a bad experience with a few of them. Science is the study of natural phenomena and a scientific theory can only be inductively reasoned from hard evidence or mathematical formulation.

Copernicus blew apart geocentric dogma, and though much of his theory was wrong, and it took years to be accepted, everyone with a basic education knows the planets revolve around the sun. Maybe we will never reach the point were we can create life or new species in a lab. It would be intellectually exciting but I hope we never do. I still have enough superstition and Old Testament echoes to believe there is some Forbidden Knowledge that is too dangerous for us to find.
That a Higher Intelligence, which I believe in, isn't considered in evolutionary theory doesn't bother me, and I don't think it should be forced into it and taught to other people's children.