Here’s what I expect to hear about Darwin in the next week or so.
1. First, Darwin was the greatest scientist of the 19th century, maybe even ever.
2. Darwin revolutionized biology, making possible all new biologic discoveries.
3. The world would still be in the dark ages without Darwin’s keen insight.
4. Evolution is the most important theory ever.
5. Evolution is not questioned; it happened. Only the mechanisms are questioned.
6. Evolution is science; science is evolution.
7. Evolution is truth; religion is false.
8. Evolution has mountains of evidence.
Here are some actual facts about Darwin and Darwinism.
1. There were many scientists in the 19th century whose achievements and contributions to both science and mankind far outstrip Darwin’s. For example, Robert Koch, devisor of Koch’s Postulates, whom I have written about before.So the real question is, if evolution is the poorest of sciences, why is Darwin being so worshipped? Mendel and Lister and Koch do not have fan clubs, booster websites, ACLU defense teams, or special days of worship. How can it not be obvious that it is not the flimsy science that is revered, it is the implication of what the science means, if it were actually “true”: Atheism.
2. Darwin did change the understanding of biology into a false tree of life structure that is just now being overturned. However, there are no biological breakthroughs that depend on the theory of evolution; conversely, the theory of evolution tries to accommodate itself to modern biological breakthroughs.
3. The true scientific breakthroughs – those by Mendel, Lister, Koch and many others - are entirely independent of evolutionary hypotheses. These major breakthroughs did, in fact, provide a basis for further biological discoveries, and provided medical benefits to the entire population of the world, unlike evolutionary hypotheses which, in reality, affect almost no one.
4. If evolutionary theory were to collapse today, what would the impact on modern biology be? It would be negligible, because modern biology does not start from evolution as an axiom. Evolutionary theory is not as important as the discovery of DNA, for example. Or Mendel’s genetic discoveries. In fact, the supposed axiom of evolution is still not adequately defined and is totally dependent upon input from modern biology, such as molecular biology.
5. Evolution cannot be proven using standard empirical techniques; even more so, descent from a common ancestor cannot be proven using standard empirical techniques. Therefore, all input to the hypothesis of both evolution and descent from a common ancestor is inferential, which is – by definition – a belief without validation. When evolutionists claim not to work from a belief system, they are arguing a fallacy. So the common assertion that “evolution happened”, is a belief, not an empirical, scientific method validated position.
6. Since evolution is not able to progress beyond conjecture and inference, it cannot fall into the “strong inference” or empirical category commonly referred to as the scientific method. And the common journalistic convention of referring to evolution as containing all science is not only false, it betrays a religious overtone.
7. The overwhelming influence of the Darwinian evolutionary theory is in its immediate adoption by the drivers of the Atheist/scientific tyrannies that bled the world in the 20th century. The theory’s natural refusal of deity and claim for the survival of the fittest (or best adapted) fit tongue in groove with the elitist drive for domination and the resulting horrors. Rejecting the validity of “social Darwinism” after the fact has no bearing on the reality that Darwin’s evolutionary theory, even though never validated, gave scientific legitimacy to bloodshed and brutality. Evolution became a scientistic philosophy that supported the emergent and virulent humanist "New Man" Atheism attached to the Enlightenment. It came to be worshipped as “truth”, despite the inability of science to produce such a thing as truth.
8. Does evolution have mountains of evidence, as its fans claim? One must be certain to get a full definition of the concept of “evidence” from those fans. Because there is no (zero, nada) empirical evidence for evolution. Fossils exist in many forms, as instances of an existence of certain bone structures in animals that once existed. Relationships between fossil sets is purely inferential, not empirical. Also, the entire concept of “species” is likely to be abandoned in the near future, rendering “speciation” obsolete as a criterion for evolution. So then, what exactly is evolution, if it exists and there are mountains of evidence? This conundrum by itself is proof enough that evolution, as a theory, is being driven by modern molecular biology, is floundering in mal-definition, and has only an inferential belief system to support it. If it cannot even be defined, how can there be a mountain of evidence that supports it?
Darwin worship is merely the religion of Philosophical Materialism – Atheism. Watch the not-so-subtle inferences being taken by the Darwin worshippers in the next few days.
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"Mendel and Lister and Koch do not have fan clubs, booster websites, ACLU defense teams, or special days of worship."
Because there is no political movement to replace Koch's postulates with the theory of demon possession in medical school.
Because there is no political movement to replace Mendelian genetics with Gandalf's Magical Bestiary Spells.
Because there is no political movement to replace Lister sterilization techniques with Navajo Shaman witch doctor rituals.
That's why.
Ah, Martin.
The poor abused science excuse just doesn't work. The real reason is that the work of Koch, Mendel, and Lister stands on its own, verified and replicated, with social benefits to one and all and social theories = none.
This is as opposed to evolution which is merely a cult of Philosophical Materialism strutting around as if it were real science; it is a belief system that is competing with other belief systems, a religion that is competing with other religions, and it uses the false premise of the secular state to enforce its own beliefs.
Evolution provides benefits to no-one, yet it threatens the populace with the irrationality of Atheist relativism, which is anathema to a sizable percentage of the population. Since evolution is a threat and brings irrationality to the educational system, the populace rejects it.
The irrationality is one-sided, on the side of non-science parading as "truth" and bestowing itself with the right to define social theories for everyone else.
So if you have some real empirical data with respect to the "truth" of evolution and/or Atheism, kindly show it to us.
What about this?
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/
There is not even one empirically verifiable, replicable experiment contained on that website (at least not when I reviewed it sometime ago). Each point is an inference/extrapolation drawn from instances of fossils stacked up serially. There are no experiments that can be performed in the quest of replicating and validating any of this (inferential) evidence.
Go to the ear development part for example. What is said to be the development of the inner ear from a bifurcated jaw bone is actually not that at all. It is the migration of an existing hearing system from large components to small components, with all those hearing components existing a priori (in all liklihood; soft tissues such as the membrane cannot be traced). The need to declare it to be evolution obscured the reality of what is actually there for those making the declaration. Going from big hearing bones to small hearing bones is not a reason to declare it evolution.
Again if there is a replicable empirical experiment that validates evolution, show it to me please. (Not an entire website to slog through, just the experiment).
Virology research and vaccinations are entirely dependent on evolutionary theory.
I suggest that you speak with an evolutionary biologist to find out about evolution's explanatory power. Predictions are made based on evolutionary theory, including what paths viruses will take, what undiscovered fossil forms may be found and where (helps out with paleontological digs), and many other areas of biological research.
You're incorrect to say that all evolutionary biologists have is a bunch of fossils (although comparative anatomy is rather suggestive). Evolutionary biologists also have DNA--you were right to label it an important discovery. In fact, for evolution, it is the most important validation. Comparing DNA between species verifies relationships between them.
Downplaying evolution's importance in the area of biology only displays your ignorance of the subject. I agree that Darwin is put on a pedestal a bit too much--something he probably wouldn't like all that much himself, if he were alive--but to say that evolution is the poorest of sciences truly shows how little you know about it.
I make the standard proposal: if you know of an empirical, replicable, experimental data set that unequivocably validates evolution (in its simple form: speciation by selection of beneficial random mutations), kindly show it to me.
I make this proposal in all seriousness; no one has provided anything more than generalities and inferences that are consistent with their belief system.
Retroviruses leave random bits of code in DNA. These viral remnants are in the exact same position on both human and chimp DNA:
Pubmed Abstract
Martin,
Thanks for that reference, it is interesting, and a good example of intellectual integrity.
Validation of evolution? Close but not exactly.
Retroviral Sequences Common to Both Chimps and Humans?
The study cited had to include some significant data manipulations in order to make its speculation that the presence of the viral / protoviral sequence in both chimps and humans indicates its presence before evolutionary divergence.
First, the retroviral sequence is apparently not found in “normal” human DNA, but is found in cloned DNA according to the study. Why this is so, and its actual relationship to "normal" human DNA is not clear.
Second, the retroviral sequence in cloned human DNA does not completely match that in chimp DNA and had to be modified in order to match. Then it matched (within 1%) in 33 out of 34 cases.
At none of the sites in human DNA is a complete version of the viral DNA found. At each site, the viral (or protoviral) DNA was incomplete by identical factors. In other words, in humans the DNA in question was all identical and identically different from the chimp DNA. This was not considered to be a curious coincidence, but instead the missing factors were inserted to complete the DNA to be identical with that found in chimps.
Third, the probability calculations were done on the modified data, which correlated to within “1%”. The probability of randomness was caclulated to be essentially negligible.
Fourth, the authors’ conclusion was not adamant that common descent was the only answer. Two other possibilities were given: preferential site locations, and protoviral introgression. Common descent was given the dominant weight due to the probability calculations, which addressed site preference, but did not address protoviral introgression.
My take on this is that the probability calculations (although unknown and unstated) are probably OK, but only for the stated conditions: modified human DNA (cloned only) sequences matching chimp DNA sequences at similar sites in humans and chimps. But the results under the stated conditions are not conclusive, incontrovertable evidence for declaring that chimps and humans diverged, based on this data, and other possibilities are given by the authors.
To make such a definitive conclusion would involve an “Affirming the Consequent Fallacy” and/or a “Confirmation Bias Fallacy”.
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