[aclug-L] Re: Linux and Creationism...

[Michael Bainum <mbainum@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Would you like to comment on the fossil record?  Do you believe that it 
backs up evolution in any way?  IMHO, this is an important part of 
scientific study.
Mike

Burt Humburg wrote:

>Now we are going very far afield of Linux...
>
>  
>
>>>The "evidence" you mention below points to the age of the universe, but
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>>>
>says absolutely nothing about genetic mutations leading to the evolution of
>new species.
>
>I agree with what you have said: a method of creationism that acknowledges a
>very old earth might still fit the data. When I wrote that blurb about the
>sun and fusion power, I implied - and will here state - that it was but one
>of the evidences in favor of evolution. As far as genetic mutations, that is
>a much different thing than talking about the age of the earth.
>
>  
>
>>>This is also where evolutionists make their error--they assume that
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>because some/most (young-earth) creatonists dispute their ideas of the age
>of the earth with "silly science" that it means anyone who believes in a
>creator is scientifically inept.
>
>I agree. Not all creationists are scientifically inept. There are many ways
>to support creationism, only some of them involve ignorance or stupidity.
>(These are also reasons to support evolution. As a member of KCFS, I assure
>you that I have met people who support our cause who wouldn't know an allele
>from a hole in their ass. It is enough for them to fight things "Christian."
>So, too, is it enough for some creationists to know that creationism is
>"Christian" to get them to support it. Neither situation is optimal and
>ignorance/stupidity remain situations to rebuke.)
>
>However, it is also straightforward that evolution is supported by the
>evidence. I know that you don't agree, but we can talk about it. The point I
>want to get to is how creationism survives despite a scientific consensus
>that overwhelmingly supports evolution, if not through ignorance or
>stupidity.
>
>I believe that creationism can also be supported by people or practices that
>do not share the epistemological beliefs as scientists. Alternative values
>can be political (politicians voting for creationism despite data from
>science), religious (examples are intuitive), philosophical (at least one
>critic of evolution argues from a sort of intellectual nihilism, where since
>we never *prove* anything in science, we therefore don't really know
>anything and therefore his truth - creationism - is just as good as anyone
>else's), etc.
>
>Long story short, there are many ways to support creationism and only a few
>of them involve appeals to ignorance or stupidity. All of them, however, are
>in spite of - and not because of - scientific data.
>
>  
>
>>>Moving along, there is practically no solid evidence to suggest that one
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>>>
>species has ever evolved into another independant species.  The logic behind
>the argument against darwinian evolution is very simple, and could be
>explained to any grade school student.  In the book "Darwin's Black Box"
>(the author's name I don't recall at the moment, but can find it if anyone
>is interested), evolution is approached from a purely scientific (i.e.
>non-religious) biological standpoint.  The complexity of even some of the
>simplest biological beings is great enough that Darwin's theory falls apart
>rather quickly.
>
>Au contraire, there is much "solid" evidence to support evolution. Humans
>and chimpanzees, for one relevant example, share over 98% homology in their
>genes. That's not just the same genes, BTW. That's the same genes in the
>exact same order on nearly the exact same chromosomes. (Two of the human
>chromosomes have to be combined and then they would be exact: chimpanzees
>have 22 pair and humans have 23.) That's just one line of evidence. Look
>here for more. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/
>
>In any case, the book you mention I know well. The book is _Darwin's Black
>Box_ and the author is Michael Behe, a biochemistry teacher who teaches at
>Lehigh College in PA. We can discuss the faults of his notion of
>"irreducible complexity" in a minute, but for now I think it is important to
>point out that Behe has often stated that he is no enemy of common descent,
>which is to say that he endorses evolution generally. Specifically, he has
>stated directly and unequivocally that he has no reason to doubt the claim
>that humans and great apes shared a recent common ancestor. For him to be
>touted as an example of anti-evolutionary thought, then, concedes a great
>deal to evolution, which you may or may not know.
>
>Of course Behe objects to proponents of evolution who draw metaphysical
>claims from science. People like Richard Dawkins argue that since science
>hasn't shown there is a God, there is no God. I also object to these claims,
>so that's no news.
>
>Where Behe parts company with modern proponents of evolution is in the
>workings of the cell. He doubts whether "unguided" natural selection is
>enough to account for the formation of the intricate mechanical/chemical
>workings of the cell. Once a cell has such a feature, Behe argues that
>evolution takes over and the rest happens as "Darwinists" see it happening.
>Essentially, then, Behe's argument contradicts not evolution but gradualism:
>he thinks design interventions occur every so often which pump up the genes
>in an animal or plant. He then sees examples of "irreducible complexity" in
>organisms and consider them as evidence for design and evidence against
>evolutionary gradualism for that structure or gene.
>
>There are many problems with irreducible complexity. At a very low level, it
>doesn't fit the data we find in nature. (See, e.g.,
>http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/behe.html , and the complement cascade and
>others, wherein Behe's idea of "irreducible complexity" is shown to exist in
>things that are known to have evolved.) Another example is the existence of
>bacteria which breakdown PCP, a xenobiotic that man made first in the early
>part of this century. This detoxification system is shown to be the result
>of co-option of other enzymes and, though it be irreducibly complex, is not
>easily explained by "design," unless the designer has intervened since the
>early part of this century. Hence, Behe's "irreducible complexity" fails
>*the* test for scientific theories: they have limited usefulness in the
>observable and measurable "natural" world for the prediction of new
>findings.
>
>The main problem I would mention, here in this not-necessarily-scientific
>listserv, is the problem that Behe's logic is a restatement of William
>Paley's "Argument from Design." (The Linux and creationism website I
>referred everyone to was written, suspiciously, by a "Paley." William Paley
>died several years before Darwin was born.) While Paley never said so much,
>the argument from design boils down to an argument from ignorance: if
>science hasn't yet figured out how something arose via natural processes,
>then it must not have arose through natural processes and only God could
>have done it.
>
>Here's another good site for would-be Behe fans.
>http://biocrs.biomed.brown.edu/Darwin/DI/Design.html Kenneth Miller, BTW, is
>a committed Catholic and his book "Finding Darwin's God" is recommended
>reading for anyone who is worried about evolution as an attack on
>Christianity. It's also a good primer on why "intelligent design"
>creationism sucks theologically.
>
>(If you can't tell, I live, eat, and breathe this stuff.)
>
>  
>
>>>For Darwin's theory to stand the test of logic, every mutation between
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>>>
>Species A and Species B must yield a "workable" or "usable" body. It is easy
>to see this is not biologically possible if you take a known organ,
>cell, or other biological entity, and try to 'step backwards' to a simpler,
>yet functional, version.
>
>This argument kinda makes sense, till you dissect it. One of the easy ways
>for evolution to give rise to "irreducible complexity" is through the
>process of co-option. IOW, a protein that will eventually be used to
>(whatever) may not necessarily have (whatever) function all through its
>phylogeny: the function can change while a gene is evolving. By "co-opting"
>genes that do other functions, evolution can "create" (English is such a
>clumsy language) structures that are irreducibly complex.
>
>Another way that irreducible complexity can arise from evolution is through
>the process of optimization. Consider the St. Louis arch, which was built by
>human hands "brick by brick," if you will. But knowing that the arch was not
>capable of supporting itself during construction (one arm cannot hold itself
>up until it is completely made) is not an argument that it was plopped down
>fully functional in one piece. Rather, scaffolding was used to support the
>weight during construction. At some point during the development, both the
>arms of the arch and the scaffolding were accomplishing the same function of
>support. When the scaffolding was removed and the structure was "optimized,"
>the support of the arch was no longer redundant and it became irreducibly
>complex, such that a removal of a single brick would result in the
>structure's collapse.
>
>With explanations like these, and because irreducible complexity does not
>adequately explain data from the natural world, Behe's idea of irreducible
>complexity has been discarded by the scientific community. Again, evolution
>remains not because of any philosophical bias, but because the data have
>robustly supported its maintenance.
>
>  
>
>>>Using the example of an eye, there are other, simpler "seeing" instruments
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>>>
>found in animals.  Flatworms, for instance, can detect intensity and
>direction of light, although they cannot make out color or clarity of images
>as we can. The problem is in the fact that to get from a flatworm's eye to a
>sheep's eye, you must add mechanisms that serve no useful puprose until the
>product is "complete." Now, if a person can find for me some scientific
>evidence that it is possible to go incrimentally from a flatworm's eye to a
>sheep's eye, within Darwin's theory, then I'd be more than happy to listen.
>
>If you are interested in eye evolution, swing by
>http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/behe/publish.html and have a look at the
>relevant literature. A more narrative form is here
>http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/vision.html . A user-friendly essay on PBS's
>_Evolution_ website is here http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/change/grand/
>(I also recommend putting "eye" into the search field above and seeing the
>other results.)
>
>  
>
>>>But the fact of the matter is, Darwin proposed his theory at a time when
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>>>
>the sort knowledge of biology we have now was not available to disprove his
>theory.  In fact, Darwin himself said (paraphrased) that if it were ever
>possible to demonstrate that it is not possible to go from one distinct
>species to another by way of incrimental changes, that his theory would not
>hold.
>
>Darwin also couldn't account for recessive traits. The fact that some trait
>would hide itself in one generation, which would then not manifest itself to
>be selected for or against, only to reappear in the next generation was a
>great bugaboo to him. Since the publication of _Origin_, we've learned all
>about Mendelian genetics and they have been integrated into Darwin's work.
>(Which, incidentally, is why "Darwinism" is not a useful word, unless you
>mean evolution as Darwin described it without such modernizations. The
>"Modern Synthesis" also called "Neodarwinism" is most aptly described as
>"evolution.") So Darwin had other problems to overcome than just the
>evolution of the eye.
>
>In any case, Darwin's dictum remains accurate and if any structure cannot be
>explained by his theory in the fullness of time, then evolution will have
>effectively been refuted. Note, please, that you cannot substitute our
>waning scientific ignorance in here and pronounce evolution dead: simply
>because we don't yet know how the eye evolved cannot reasonably be taken to
>mean that the eye *could not* have evolved. There must be reliable evidence
>to show that the eye did not evolve, and not simply an appeal to ignorance.
>
>In any case, data exist to support the evolution of eyes. Notably, the
>proteins that make up fish lenses (I think it was fish) have been found to
>be modified from other proteins (digestive or something). (Put "crystallin
>evolution" in a google search and see what comes up.) While co-option is not
>impossible for an act of special creation or creator, it certainly lends
>itself to an explanation involving co-option.
>
>  
>
>>>He himself realized his theory was __just a theory__, and that, at its
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>time of conseption, it could not be proven nor disproven.  It now, by his
>own standard, _can_ be disproven.
>
>Nonsense. Recall, please, the Hoyle quote from above. When Darwin was
>living, it was thought that the sun would have burned itself out long before
>the time that Darwin needed for his theory to work would have happened.
>Enter fusion chemistry into our story and Darwin had more than enough time
>to work.
>
>  
>
>>>Why then are we, as a society and a world, so afraid to accept it as
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>>>
>disproven?  Probably because most Darwinists think the only alternative is
>illogical "creatonism."  Whether you believe in a god or not, though, there
>are many other theories of creation--both religious and secular.  Perhaps we
>should all take a look at some of them, instead of this stupid
>trench-warfare between the two most common theories--neither of which holds
>any water.
>
>Not to be a broken record, but evolution has not been disproven, hence why
>abandon it. Frankly, it hasn't even been challenged, unless you consider the
>political rhetoric of modern creationists a scientific challenge. (It's not;
>it's postmodernist tripe.) There is no controversy about the validity of
>evolution in science: scientists today are asking *how* evolution happened,
>not *whether.* There is a controversy in the religious, political, and
>non-scientific realms, however, and it is here where creationism develops
>its support base.
>
>In any case, as a theist (Christian), I assure you that I have no qualms
>against creationism, per se. It's just that the data do not support it and,
>as a personal viewpoint, my Christianity needs to sync with the scientific
>understanding that I have.
>
>Recognizing that I'm pushing the patience of many on this list who don't
>have a rat's ass about this issue, :)
>
>BCH
>
>
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