A REPLY TO ANDYA PRIMANDA
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A REPLY TO ANDYA PRIMANDA
Andya Primanda, an Indonesian Muslim paleontologist, has recently been criticizing books and articles posted on the website harunyahya.com which reject the theory of evolution. Primanda, who has stated that he believes in God - and so we assume that he believes in the creation - is probably influenced by the Darwinist dogma that dominates the paleoanthropological world. He insistently argues for the theory of evolution and states that he finds the criticisms brought against evolution incorrect. However, as we will see below, Primanda is mistaken in both his belief in the theory of evolution and his criticisms against those who point out the flaws in evolutionary theory.PRIMANDA'S MISCONCEPTIONS REGARDING SAHELANTHROPUS
Primanda's chief contention is against interpretations made concerning a skull found some time ago in Chad that was given the name Sahelanthropus tchadensis. In an article on the skull entitled "New Fossil Discovery Sinks Evolutionary Theories" recently posted on the Harun Yahya website, we stated that the seven-million-year-old Sahelanthropus tchadensis, despite its advanced age, was more "human like" compared to the genus Australopithecus, which is younger and which has been presented as a primitive ancestor of humans. We wrote that this evidence would pull the evolutionary tree out by its roots.
Primanda, in his response to us, rejected our interpretation and throughout his article, he claimed that Sahelanthropus was more "ape like" than Australopithecus in every respect. He wrote
HY based his statements on the assumption that Sahelanthropus displayed 'more human-like attributes' than australopiths (Australopithecus, Paranthropus, Ardipithecus), yet living before them.
However, Primanda ignores an important fact. Those who made this comment on Sahelanthropus were the scientists who found this fossil and examined it, and these scientists are also proponents of evolutionary theory. An article published in Nature magazine said
What is remarkable about the chimp sized cranium TM 266-01-060-1 discovered by Brunet et al. is its mosaic nature. Put simply from the back it looks like a chimpanzee, whereas from the front it could pass for a 1.75-million-year-old advanced australopith. The hominid features involve the structure of the face, and the small, apically worn, canine crowns. Other hominid features are found in the base of the cranium and in the separate jaw fragment. If we accept these as sufficient evidence to classify S.tchadensis as a hominid at the base, or stem, of the modern human clade, then it plays havoc with the tidy model of human origins. Quite simply, a hominid of this age should only just be beginning to show signs of being a hominid. It certainly should not have the face of a hominid less than one-third of its geological age. Also if it is accepted as a stem hominid, under the tidy model the principle of parsimony dictates that all creatures with more primitive faces (and that is a very long list) would, perforce, have to be excluded from the ancestry of modern humans.1
Briefly, the fossil presents a picture that runs counter to the "evolutionary scheme" which has been imposed on the society for over a century, since Darwin. This contradiction is so striking that the Nature writer compares the discovery of this fossil to the Burgess Shale fossils that demonstrate the Cambrian Explosion, which constitutes perhaps the best-known paleontological evidence against Darwin's theory
The fauna of the Burgess Shale in Canada, which samples a bewildering array of ivertebrate groups some 500 million years ago, is a famous example of diversity at the base of an adaptive radiation. Does S.tchadensis belong to the African ape equivalent of the Burgess Shale? 2
The theory of evolution is unable to explain the Cambrian Explosion, the sudden appearance of over 60 animal phyla on our planet. It also fails to explain the origin of humankind. The recently discovered fossil makes this deficiency even more obvious. Primanda is opposed to our revealing this fact, which is a pointless criticism.
Faced with this fact, what Primanda wants to do is to show that Sahelanthropus' relatively modern characteristics do not actually exist. He discusses two characteristics, prognathism and foramen magnum position, but his analysis is quite shallow. His examination of prognathism is nothing but superimposing the outlines of Sahelanthropus on some hominid fossils, and he himself admits that "this method of comparison may be flawed" and that "the results may not be of high value."
His explanation of the foramen magnum is a dodge. This is also seen in his illustration based on foramen magnum position; when compared to Australopithecus, Sahelanthropus is more modern. And this confirms what we have been arguing from the very beginning, that is that Sahelanthropus, despite being older than Australopithecus, had more modern features, and therefore an evolutionary chart based on these features cannot be formed. Primanda made a show of responding to this statement in writing, "Sahelanthropus falls nicely in an intermediate position, between ape and human positions," but this misses the point entirely. The point is the comparison between Sahelanthropus and Australopithecus.
THE DISCUSSION ON AUSTRALOPITHECUS
At this point, Primanda refers to our explanation of Australopithecus and criticizes the work of Zuckerman, Oxnard and Spoor. He also wrote that Spoor's studies have changed. It's a fact that the locomotion of Australopithecus is a contradictory issue. The common view is that members of this genus were arboreal, and that they used their two feet when they walked on the ground. It's accepted that the usage of these two feet was not like that of humans, but was in fact quite different, and constituted a much more bent mode of locomotion as compared to humans.
What would it prove if Australopithecus was moving more erectly than the apes that exist today? Today the world has a rich variety of ape species, and it's no great leap to assume that this variety was even greater in the past and that this also applies to their mode of locomotion. What's key here is that an evolutionary arrangement cannot be put together among these ape types.
There is yet an even more important point which puts the theory of evolution into a big quandary regarding its scenario about the origin of man and other species The mechanisms that would allegedly turn this scenario into reality are wholly imaginary. If you examine the evolutionist account, it says that these creatures got used to walking after they came down from the trees, and their skeletons became more erect since they had to assume a straighter posture when they walked across the savannah. Their hands were empty so they used their hands, and this led their brains to develop. This sounds like a fairy tale based on Lamarckian logic, such as the evolution of the body according to emerging needs and the inheritance of acquired traits. But that's just how this is foisted on the public. (Needless to say, Lamarckism is utter sophistry).
When we probe this account more closely, we see that the only possible mechanism behind this fairy tale is the natural selection-mutation dyad. However, all experiments and observations show that these mechanisms do not provide an increase in genetic information.Looking at this evolutionary account together with natural selection and the mutation mechanism suffices to demonstrate that this is nonsense. The Australopithecus which was trying to stand erect on the savannah must have had such a mutation so he would gain a straighter skeleton, a balance mechanism needed for this skeleton, a foramen magnum and a muscle mechanism, and he mustn't have suffered any ill effects from this mutation. (However, this is impossible because of the pleiotropic effect.) Moreover, this imaginary mutant must have been superior to other mutants of his species only because he was able to see higher parts of the tall grasses, and he must have reproduced and started a new species. All other physical and mental characteristics that make us human must have been created through such random mutations; all these transformations must have taken place through these accidental mutations. This is nothing but a dream, or in the words of Henry Gee, the editor of Nature, a "bedtime story."3 On the other hand, famous French biologist Pierre-Paul Grasse once said, "There is no law against daydreaming, but science must not indulge in it." 4
Therefore Primanda, in the article mentioned earlier, has no basis other than Darwinist prejudice for criticizing our view that Australopithecus was a unique ape genus unrelated to human beings which later became extinct.
DISCUSSIONS ON BUSHES AND PRIMANDA'S CONTRADICTION
Primanda bases his views on imaginary evidence, and he presents contradictory criticism against us. One of his criticisms is that Bernard Wood's view of the evolution of man looks like a bush rather than a ladder. Primanda writes
HY failed on two counts
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As shown before, Sahelanthropus does not show more humanlike characteristics than australopithecines;
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'The evolutionist scheme', 'the ladder from ape to man' is a strawman.
The prevailing scientific view is currently shifting to another perspective. HY quotes Bernard Wood, which said that '...human evolutionary history was a ladder in the 1960s...but it looks like a bush now'. As a matter of fact, this change of evolutionary thought was due to the ever-expanding human fossil record, with new and unexpected discoveries pouring in every few years.
So what? In the midst of criticizing us, Primanda repeats exactly the facts that we had already stated. Yes, the evolutionary account no longer looks like a "tree" but rather a "bush," and this is because the evidence unearthed fits neither the 150-year-old Darwinist tree of life nor any evolutionary arrangement. Primanda and others are still trying to cobble together an "evolutionary hypothesis" from this bush, but in the end we have this concrete truth The fossils do not support Darwinism. The evolutionist community thought that the more fossils they found, the stronger evolutionary theory would become, but in fact it was the other way around. Niles Eldredge from Harvard University, one of the
United States' leading paleontologists, and Ian Tattersall from the American Museum of Natural History once wroteIt is a myth that the evolutionary histories of living things are essentially a matter of discovery. If this were true, one could confidently expect that as more hominid fossils were found the story of human evolution would become clearer. Whereas if anything, the opposite has occured. 5
One point here especially deserves underlining replacing the "tree" with a "bush" is not the result of evidence, but rather of a lack of evidence. Yes, many fossils have been found but these constitute evidence against the theory of evolution. The only way out for the evolutionists was to come up with a "bush" model to replace the tree so as to be able to depict this chaos. The bush model is nothing but an excuse conjured up to explain away the body of fossil evidence which contradicts Darwinism.
If you believe blindly in evolutionary theory, you would try to interpret every new finding so as to support this theory. Marxists who believe blindly in Marxism sought refuge in excuses such as Leninism when the promised revolution failed to take place. Prejudiced people can always come up with an artificial explanation to every problem. An unprejudiced person, however, can easily see the real situation the concrete data do not fit this theory.
ALLEGATIONS OF A DISTORTION OF GEE
One of Primanda's criticisms was that Nature magazine's editor Henry Gee had been misquoted by us
HY also misquoted Henry Gee, which said that 'The idea of the missing link ? is now completely untenable.'
This allegation is completely unfounded. Below we reproduce one of Gee's lengthier explanations in order to dispel any doubts on this matter
A seven-million-year-old skull found in a central African desert is probably the most important discovery in the search for human origins in living memory - since Raymond Dart announced the "ape man" Australopithecus africanus in 1925. Yet its initial effect may be to confuse rather than enlighten. Whatever the outcome, the skull shows, once and for all, that the old idea of a "missing link" is bunk...
Why is Touma? so important? First, it is the earliest known credible vestige of a hominid - a member of the group of creatures more closely related to human beings than to any other animals. It also doubles the antiquity of the earliest known skull the previous recordholder, from Kenya, is around 3.3m years old.Second, it has dropped straight into the most crucial, but least known, part of the story of human evolution. It is suspected that the last common ancestor of humans and our closest living relatives, the chimpanzees, lived around 7m years ago. We know this not from direct fossil evidence, but from studying the small differences in the otherwise similar genes of humans and chimps, and estimating the time needed for these differences to accrue.
Looking at the fossil evidence itself, we see a huge and frustrating gap. Ten million years ago, the world was full of apes, but there is no agreement about which of these stand closest to the evolution of humans. In any case, a distinct lineage leading to humans, as distinct from chimps, would not have existed back then...
So what does Touma? look like? It is a mixture of primitive and disconcertingly advanced traits. The braincase has the same size and shape as a chimpanzee. The face, though, is where the interest lies. Rather than having a projecting snout with large canine teeth, the face is flat and the teeth are very small and human-like. Strangest of all are the enormous brow-ridges. These are usually associated with our own genus Homo, and are not otherwise seen in anything older than about 2m years...
People and advertising copywriters tend to see human evolution as a line stretching from apes to man, into which one can fit new-found fossils as easily as links in a chain. Even modern anthropologists fall into this trap, accepting a certain bushiness in the human family tree between 3m and 2m years ago - when the genus Homo first emerged - but thinking of human evolution before then as, essentially, linear. Wood thinks it was bushiness all the way down. Recent research to put tabs on how much we really know of the past supports this view, suggesting that we have direct evidence of only 7% of all the primate species that ever lived.
This means three things. First, that we tend to look at those few tips of the bush we know about, connect them with lines, and make them into a linear sequence of ancestors and descendants that never was. But it should now be quite plain that the very idea of the missing link, always shaky, is now completely untenable. 6
Briefly, Gee is saying that the model for human evolution comes "not from direct fossil evidence," that there is "a huge and frustrating gap" in the fossil record, and that therefore the view of the "missing link" is also "completely untenable." This is what we have been saying from the beginning. Therefore Primanda's allegation that Gee was misquoted is entirely unfair.
PRIMANDA'S DOGMATISM
Primanda's dogmatism is even more interesting. Right after his unfounded allegation against us about the Gee quote, he wrote
Of course there is no such thing as 'the' missing link. Every organism, living or fossil, is a link between those which existed before and those which existed after. Each one is a transitional form; there is not one which can be assigned as the missing link, the turning point, the mark of change from one type to another. Evolutionary change is gradual.
In claiming this, Primanda is changing the definition of "transitional form," or - better put - distorting it. Transitional form, since Darwin, does not refer to existing species, but instead is the name given to theoretical ancestors that are assumed to have lived in the past and are separated from each other by very minor morphological differences. If every living thing were a transitional form, then Darwin wouldn't have suffered for page after page in The Origin of the Species trying to explain why these transitional forms were nowhere to be found.
Paleontologists wouldn't have spent the last 150 years digging up the four corners of the earth in an attempt to find these forms.In other words, due to the lack of these transitional forms, Primanda finds shelter in a superficial explanation, namely that "every organism is a transitional form." Only a child could believe such an assertion, because reality says just the opposite. In fact, more serious evolutionists admit this fact. For instance, Robert Carroll, a leading authority on evolution, writes
Although an almost incomprehensible number of species inhabit Earth today, they do not form a continuous spectrum of barely distinguishable intermediates. Instead, nearly all species can be recognized as belonging to a relatively limited number of clearly distinct major groups, with very few illustrating intermediate structures or ways of life. 7
THE MOLECULAR MISTAKE
Primanda's other article, titled An Invitation to the Facts Response to Chapter 9
of The Evolution Deceit," which he prepared as a response to the chapter of "The Evolution Deceit" dealing with human origins, also contains significant errors.Those who read the title of this article might be led to think that it presents an extensive response. However, the only claim in it worthy of attention is the assertion that there is a molecular (genetic) similarity between chimpanzees and man. Primanda says that there is a 99 percent similarity and that therefore we can't deny that humans and apes are relatives, which is just where he makes his great mistake there is no such genetic similarity. A scientific finding on this issue that was announced just a few weeks ago revealed that this genetic similarity had been exaggerated and the true figure was actually less than 95 percent. Our article, called "The 99% Myth Is Dead," lays all this out in detail and in doing so refutes Primanda's allegation of molecular similarity, which apparently is his strongest ammunition.
CONCLUSION
Despite his loyalty towards Darwinism, Primanda says that he is a believing Muslim. We respect that. But we would be remiss not to point out the contradiction between his faith in Islam and Darwinism. He should ask himself If he is a believing Muslim, why is he defending a theory which is championed by outright and militant atheists? If he is a believing Muslim, why is he working to defend this theory, which is the basis for Marxism, Leninism, Maoism, Freudianism, and, most importantly, all materialist philosophy? He shouldn't try to answer these questions by saying that he's doing this for the sake of science, because today the entire world knows that Darwinism is not a scientific theory, but rather a philosophy. It is a philosophy whose very reason for existence is to deny creation and the Creator.
We can only hope that Primanda will be able to tear himself away from the bewitching effects of this philosophy and begin to see things as they really are.
(1) Bernard Wood, "Hominid Revelations from Chad", Nature, 11 July 2002, p. 134.
(2) Bernard Wood, "Hominid Revelations from Chad", Nature, 11 July 2002, p. 135.
(3) Henry Gee, In Search of Deep Time, New York, The Free Press, 1999, s. 116-117.
(4) Pierre-P Grass?, Evolution of Living Organisms, Academic Press, New York, 1977, p. 103.
(5) Niles Eldredge, Ian Tattersall, The Myths of Human Evolution, p. 126-127
(6) "Face Of Yesterday Henry Gee On The Dramatic Discovery Of A Seven-Million-Year-Old Hominid" The Guardian, July 11, 2002.
(7) Robert L. Carroll, Patterns and Processes of Vertebrate Evolution, Cambridge University Press, 1997, p. 9. -
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The Little Engine That Could...Undo Darwinism
Evolution may be proven false very soonThe Little Engine That Could...Undo Darwinism
By Dan Peterson
Published 8/5/2005 120532 AM
IMAGINE A NANOTECHNOLOGY MACHINE far beyond the state of the art a microminiaturized rotary motor and propeller system that drives a tiny vessel through liquid. The engine and drive mechanism are composed of 40 parts, including a rotor, stator, driveshaft, bushings, universal joint, and flexible propeller. The engine is powered by a flow of ions, can rotate at up to 100,000 rpm (ten times faster than a NASCAR racing engine), and can reverse direction in a quarter of a rotation. The system comes with an automatic feedback control mechanism. The engine itself is about 1/100,000th of an inch wide -- far smaller than can be seen by the human eye.
Most of us would be pleasantly surprised to learn that some genius had designed such an engineering triumph. What might come as a greater surprise is that there is a dominant faction in the scientific community that is prepared to defend, at all costs, the assertion that this marvelous device could not possibly have been designed, must have been produced blindly by unintelligent material forces, and only gives the appearance -- we said appearance! -- of being designed.
As you may have guessed, these astonishingly complex, tiny, and efficient engines exist. Millions of them exist inside you, in fact. They are true rotary motors that drive the "bacterial flagellum," a whip-like propulsion device for certain bacteria, including the famous E. coli that lives in your digestive system.
Oddly enough, this intricate high-speed motor is at the center of a controversy that has been kindling in scientific circles for a decade, and is now igniting hot debate outside those circles. That's because, even more oddly, the implications of whether this little engine was designed are incalculably profound. They involve questions such as What constitutes science? Did living things "just happen" by natural causes or were they designed by an intelligence? And what follows from those two competing alternatives -- in morality, education, culture, and science itself?
THE CONTROVERSY STEMS from the work of a growing cadre of scientists, mathematicians, and scholars in the field of "intelligent design," or ID for short. In the life sciences, the proponents of intelligent design are challenging the reigning orthodoxy that life developed entirely by the blind operation of natural forces. Their arguments are essentially of two kinds.
First, building on recent discoveries in cell biology, molecular genetics, and other disciplines, they contend that life, and the complex processes by which cells do their work, cannot have been produced by that combination of chance and necessity known as Darwinian evolution. Second, using the analytical techniques of information theory, they contend that the kind of information embodied in things that are designed can only be produced by an intelligent agent, not by undirected material causes. Design, they say, is empirically detectable -- and it is detectable, in fact, in living things. (Some of the ID proponents have demonstrated that the physical laws of the universe also show overwhelming evidence of being designed. For reasons of space rather than interest, I can only discuss here the work that ID is doing in the biological sciences.)
Of course, if the hypothesis that the universe and life are designed is true, the ready inference is that this designer has to be an incomprehensibly potent and awesome Intelligent Agent. A lot of influential people in science, the media, the schools, and other institutions don't much like the notion of the Big Intelligent Agent. Hence the controversy over ID, and the slanted treatment of it that is often seen.
Among certain sectors of the media, for example, it's an article of faith that those who believe in God, or advocate principles supporting that belief, are just a mob of Bible-thumping, knuckle-dragging, Scripture-spouting, hellfire and brimstone-preaching, rightwing, gun-toting, bigoted, homophobic, moralistic, paternalistic, polyester-wearing, mascara-smeared, false-eyelashed, SUV-driving, Wal-Mart shopping, big hair, big gut, fat butt, holy-rolling, snake-handling, Limbaugh-listening, Bambi-shooting, trailer-park-dwelling, uneducated, ignorant, backwater, hayseed, hick, inbred, pinhead rubes -- mostly from the South, or places no better than the South -- who voted for Bush.
So, many of the news stories refer to intelligent design theory as "creationism" and ignore the science behind it. They imply that ID is just religion in disguise "Creationism in a cheap tuxedo," as one headline put it. Let's look at the science, then, because the truth about the intelligent design school could not be more different from those stereotypes. The proponents of ID base their arguments on biological and physical data generally accepted in science. They use the same kinds of analytical methods and mathematical tools as other scientists. The ID theorists do not reason from religious premises. Neither do they attempt to prove the truth of Scripture, or of any particular religious views. As a rule, they do not contest that life on Earth is billions of years old, or that evolution has occurred in the sense of "change over time" in biological forms.
What they do contest is that undirected material causes alone can explain life's origin and development. Instead, they argue that design is the best scientific explanation for the stunning complexity of the cellular processes that underlie life, and for the evidence of how life actually developed. That conclusion, if true, certainly has religious implications. But, as will become evident, the reasoning and methods used by the ID proponents are fact-based and scientific.
BEFORE GETTING TO THE SCIENCE, though, let's take a moment to see who the ID proponents are. Many of the prominent ID theorists are affiliated with the Center for Science and Culture (CSC) at the Seattle-based Discovery Institute (most of them hold day jobs, too). Some background on the individuals whose work is mentioned in this article may be helpful in deciding if the ID movement is really just a confederacy of dunces allied against the enlightened.
The most prolific of the ID proponents is William Dembski. A bespectacled, youthful-looking man, Dembski has a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Chicago, a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Illinois, and a Master of Divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary. He has done postdoctoral work in mathematics at MIT, in physics at the University of Chicago, and in computer science at Princeton, as well as being a National Science Foundation doctoral and postdoctoral fellow. He is the leading thinker in applying information theory in the field of intelligent design, and has written or edited ten books.
Michael Behe, who popularized the flagellar motor as an example of intelligent design, is a professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, with more than 35 articles in refereed scientific journals (and many popular works) to his credit. Stephen Meyer, director of the Discovery Institute's CSC, has undergraduate degrees in physics and geology, and a Ph.D. in the history and philosophy of science from Cambridge University in England for his dissertation on the history of origin of life biology.
Jonathan Wells holds a Ph.D. in molecular and cell biology from the University of California at Berkeley, and another Ph.D. in religious studies from Yale University. He got double 800s on his SATs. Phillip Johnson, whose advocacy will be mentioned in a moment, is professor of law at the University of California-Berkeley. He graduated first in his law school class at the University of Chicago Law School, clerked for Chief Justice Earl Warren on the United States Supreme Court, and published scores of articles and several books during his career.
Highly educated journalists may be forgiven for looking down their noses at hopeless dummies like these. To the rest of us, their credentials may suggest that they could be fairly intelligent men, whose arguments may be worth considering. In fact, they and others like them have put the Darwinist establishment on the defensive in the battle of ideas.
THERE IS GOOD REASON FOR THAT, when you think about it. Throughout most of the history of Western civilization, the fact that life was designed by God was beyond any serious dispute. Genesis told the story of how God created the heavens, earth, and life. The complexity, beauty, and order we see in life and the cosmos was confirming evidence of his hand at work, and a reflection of his glory. There was no other plausible, competing explanation of how life could be so perfectly designed to fit the environment, and how the environment could be so perfect for life. But in the mid-19th century, Darwin changed all that.
Darwin posited that a purely materialist account, dispensing with God, could explain the origin of species. His central mechanism was natural selection acting on random variation. When variations in living things naturally occurred by chance, those variations that were harmful to the organism's survival would be ruthlessly weeded out. Variations that were conducive to survival or reproduction, however, would gradually come to prevail. The organisms that possessed them would, over time, outcompete those with less adaptive characteristics. This purely naturalistic mechanism -- wholly devoid of any foresight, design, or purpose -- could, in Darwin's view, explain the development of life and why different species were apparently so well designed for their environment.
Darwin thus provided a "creation story" for a naturalistic or materialistic view of the world. Richard Dawkins -- Oxford zoologist, militant atheist, and leading exponent of materialistic Darwinism -- has declared that "although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist." But if atheistic materialism is true, life on Earth by definition cannot have been designed by an intelligence (except perhaps by space aliens, whose own design would remain unexplained). Dawkins therefore asserts that "biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose." He refers to living beings as "designoid" objects. "Designoid objects look designed," Dawkins contends, "so much so that some people -- probably, alas, most people -- think they are designed. These people are wrong."
Dawkins' view that we, and all life forms, are only apparently designed has been the emphatically enforced orthodoxy among biologists since not long after Darwin. But, as it turns out, increasing knowledge over the past few decades about the immensely complicated processes and structures within the cell, the operation of DNA, the fossil record of the development of species, and other pertinent evidence has not confirmed Darwinism, but radically undermined it.
Enter the intelligent design theorists. Severe difficulties with the Darwinian theory were becoming increasingly obvious by the 1980s, and some scientists began to state openly that design should be considered as an alternative theory. Then in 1991 Phillip Johnson (the Berkeley law professor mentioned above) published a powerful critique of Darwinism entitled Darwin on Trial. In that volume Johnson marshaled the extensive scientific evidence against Darwinism. More importantly, he showed that Darwinism has essentially become a faith in naturalism that is immune to refutation by any set of facts. Arguments or conclusions that are not Darwinian are automatically ruled out of bounds by the scientific establishment. Within the Darwinian fold, wild conjectures, surmises unsupported by facts, and arguments lacking in explanatory power are accepted as legitimate, so long as they permit a "naturalistic" explanation.
Johnson also had the temerity to point out that many of the "classic" examples of Darwinian evolution, including those often presented in textbooks, were either distorted or outright fakes. ID proponent Jonathan Wells later took up this theme in his book Icons of Evolution. (See also the article by Wells, "Survival of the Fakest," TAS, December 2000/January 2001.) Often the Darwinists knew of these falsifications, but managed to forgive themselves for the good of their mutual cause. Johnson and Wells didn't cut them any slack.
THE DARWINISTS were outraged by Johnson, but there was worse to come. In 1996, Michael Behe (the Lehigh biochemistry professor) published a blockbuster called Darwin's Black Box. In that book, he explored the mind-boggling complexity of biochemical activities within the body and the cell. Some complex structures or processes, known as cumulatively complex, may continue to function if some part is taken away. An army, for example, is highly complex, but it can lose soldiers, vehicles, or even whole units, and still be able to perform its function of fighting, although progressively less well. But Behe demonstrated that the molecular machines existing inside cells, and other biological processes, are sometimes irreducibly complex. An irreducibly complex machine or process is one that has multiple parts, and will not function if any one of the fundamental parts is taken way. All of the parts must be there, all at once, for any function to occur.
Behe's most famous example is the bacterial flagellum described above. If you take away the driveshaft from the flagellar motor, you do not end up with a motor that functions less well. You have a motor that does not function at all. All of the essential parts must be there, all at once, for the motor to perform its function of propelling the bacterium through liquid.
Why is that important? Because that is precisely what Darwinian evolution cannot accomplish. Darwinian evolution is by definition "blind." It cannot plan ahead and create parts that might be useful to assemble a biological machine in the future. For the machine to be assembled, all or nearly all the parts must already be there and be performing a function. Why must they already be performing a function? Because if a part does not confer a real, present advantage for the organism's survival or reproduction, Darwinian natural selection will not preserve the gene responsible for that part. In fact, according to Darwinian theory, that gene will actually be selected against. An organism that expends resources on building a part that is useless handicaps itself compared to other organisms that are not wasting resources, and will tend to get outcompeted.
Darwin himself said that "if it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down." But an irreducibly complex system cannot evolve in that way, according to Behe. By definition, if an irreducibly complex system were missing just one of its essential parts, it would not function. How or why, then, would blind, purposeless evolution have created the other parts that had no prior function, just waiting for the final part to fall into place? Answer it wouldn't. Irreducibly complex systems, which do not function if any core part is missing, can only be created by an intelligent designer who plans ahead.
BEHE DESCRIBES several irreducibly complex biological structures or processes in addition to the bacterial flagellar motor. One that is especially astounding is the blood-clotting cascade, which requires about a dozen specialized proteins to be present, plus intermediate forms generated during the cascade. Activated by a cut, a complex chain reaction is set off in the blood, in which each protein activates others in a long sequence. If any of the dozen proteins is missing, the clotting process either will not occur or will grossly malfunction. None of the cascade proteins serves any other function except controlling the formation of a blood clot. So it's not as if they were sitting around, performing some other function, and were "co-opted" into use for clotting blood. Because all of the proteins are necessary for the clotting process to function, they "would have to arise as an integrated unit, in one fell swoop, for natural selection to have anything to act on," Behe observes. In other words, the cascade is exactly the sort of process that "could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications" -- Darwin's own description of what would cause his theory to collapse.
But what about the scientific literature? Surely all one need do is turn to the literature to find the detailed accounts of how the flagellar motor, the blood clotting cascade, and similar biological features were gradually produced, step-by-step, by Darwinian evolution. Modern Darwinism is founded on those kinds of factual accounts. Right?
Wrong. Here's where Behe really showed that the emperor has no clothes. Behe the biochemist had the audacity to search the relevant scientific journals, books, and proceedings of meetings to find out what the Darwinists had really proven about the origin of complex biochemical systems. He first reviewed the articles in the Journal of Molecular Evolution (JME), which would be the leading candidate to publish this kind of work. The JME publishes about a thousand papers per decade. Behe's findings may shock laymen who have accepted the notion that Darwinism has proven how complex biochemical systems actually evolved. Let Behe speak "None of the papers published in JME over the entire course of its life as a journal has ever proposed a detailed model by which a complex biochemical system might have been produced in a gradual, step-by-step Darwinian fashion."
He went on to examine other relevant scientific journals, proceedings of meetings, and books. The result was the same "There has never been a meeting, or a book, or a paper on details of the evolution of complex biochemical systems." That's quite different from what most of us have been led to believe. Behe, recalling the "fierce resistance" he encountered after the publication of Darwin's Black Box, remarks that much of it came from "internet fans of Darwinism who claimed that, why, there were hundreds or thousands of research papers describing Darwinian evolution of irreducibly complex biochemical systems." Except that there aren't.
Well, this sent the Darwinians scrambling. Kenneth Miller, a biologist at Brown University who argues in favor of Darwinian evolution, made a splash when he announced (and he bolded the language in his article) that "the bacterial flagellum is not irreducibly complex." Miller cited a cellular structure known as the type III secretory system (TTSS) that allows certain bacteria to inject toxins through the cell walls of their hosts. This "nasty little device," in Miller's words, is a feature of several bacteria, including Y. pestis, the bacterium that is responsible for bubonic plague. According to research cited by Miller, the TTSS is made up of several proteins that are "homologous" to a set of proteins from the base of the flagellum. Miller argued that the injector pump is probably an "evolutionary precursor" to the flagellum, and it is fully functional although it has fewer parts. Therefore, "the claim of irreducible complexity has collapsed, and with it any 'evidence' that the flagellum was designed." The "flagellum has been unspun," Miller concluded.
But there was a little problem with Miller's declaration of victory. As it turns out, the bubonic plague bacterium already has the full set of genes necessary to make a flagellum. Rather than making a flagellum, Y. pestis uses only part of the genes that are present to manufacture that nasty little injector instead. As pointed out in a recent article by design theorist Stephen Meyer and microbiologist Scott Minnich (an expert on the flagellar system), the gene sequences suggest that "flagellar proteins arose first and those of the pump came later." If evolution was involved, the pump came from the motor, not the motor from the pump. Also, "the other thirty proteins in the flagellar motor (that are not present in the ), are unique to the motor and are not found in any other living system." Undirected evolutionary processes do not produce 30 novel proteins, of just the needed kind, to laze around idly in the cell for millennia so that a pump could some day transform itself into a motor. In short, the proteins in the TTSS do not provide a "gradualist" Darwinian pathway to explain the step-by-step evolution of the irreducibly complex flagellar motor. Miller's spin has been unspun.
Thus, many scientists embracing naturalism find themselves in the seeming dilemma recently articulated by biochemist Franklin Harold "We should reject, as a matter of principle, the substitution of intelligent design for the dialogue of chance and necessity ; but we must concede that there are presently no detailed Darwinian accounts of the evolution of any biochemical system, only a variety of wishful speculations."
BUT WHY SHOULD SCIENTISTS reject design as a matter of principle? And why should they do so when naturalistic explanations are lacking or deeply flawed, and the evidence of design is becoming more and more compelling?
That's the question being asked by the intelligent design theorists. William Dembski, whom we met above (the bespectacled guy with the bookcase full of advanced diplomas), has developed powerful arguments based on mathematics and information theory to show that design can be detected scientifically. He also demonstrates that as a matter of principle blind necessity -- that is, the laws of nature -- cannot produce design of the kind life exhibits. Neither can that kind of design be produced by the interaction of chance and necessity -- that is, by the Darwinian principle of random variation filtered through the laws of nature. Only intelligence can produce what Dembski refers to as "complex specified information," and life exhibits complex specified information (or "specified complexity" to an extraordinary degree.
It may seem strange, at first blush, to speak of life in terms of "information." A fascinating part of this debate is that the naturalists do not disagree with the ID theorists in the slightest on this fundamental point. Both sides agree that life exhibits specified complexity, and that information theory is a fruitful and even necessary tool in explaining how life may have developed. But the term "information" is used here in a specially defined way.
For information of that type to be present in an object, Dembski explains, three conditions must be satisfied. These are contingency, complexity, and specification.
Let's look at contingency first. In an ordinary sequence of letters typed on a computer keyboard, each "slot" in the sequence can contain any of the 26 letters of the alphabet, as well as numbers, punctuation marks, or other symbols. The symbol that can go in any one slot is therefore "contingent" it might be A, it might be B, and so forth. But suppose my computer keyboard had only one key, and all I could type was
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
My computer would be incapable of producing contingency. This is rather like the operation of many physical laws in nature. A pattern may be produced, but multiple outcomes are not possible. When molecules arrange themselves in a repeating pattern to form a crystal, that is the necessary result of their physical properties. Different, "contingent" outcomes cannot occur (at least not if the conditions under which the molecules are brought together remain the same).
Now let's look at complexity. The sequence of 22 letters
KAZDNHF OPZSJHQL ZXFNV
is complex in a certain sense, because that exact pattern is highly unlikely to be produced by chance. If my computer keyboard could type only capital letters and the space character, there would be 27 characters that could go in any "slot" of the sequence. The total number of unique sequences of characters that could be produced would be 27 multiplied by itself 22 times, or 27 to the 22nd power. That is a very large number. Expressed in powers of 10, it is more than 10 to the 31st power (10^31); that is, 10 with another 30 zeros behind it. To give an idea of the size of that number, fewer than 10^18 seconds have elapsed since the universe began about 20 billion years ago. If we wrote a program to run on a supercomputer that would generate random strings 22 characters long, and our supercomputer could run through a trillion tries every second, the odds would still be against producing this exact sequence by chance in 20 billion years. The fact that it's very improbable to produce this precise sequence by chance is another way of saying, in information theory, that it is highly complex.
The third criterion is specification. Here's another 22-character sequence
THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR
When we see this sequence, we conclude without a moment's hesitation that it has been produced by a fine intelligence. Like the gibberish sequence of the same length, it is complex because it would take more than those trillion tries a second over the history of the universe to produce it by chance. It is also specified in relation to a pre-existing standard or function; in this case, the rules, spelling, and vocabulary of the English language.
We easily, and usually accurately, make inferences as to when purposeful design by an intelligent agent is at work. In New Hampshire, there was for centuries a rock formation called "The Old Man of the Mountain," that resembled a human face. (It was obliterated by a rockslide in 2003.) Most of us would recognize this formation as simply a chance occurrence rather than design. There are lots of rocks in the world, and humans tend to see patterns that resemble faces. But if we plucked a villager from a remote valley in Nepal, who had not the slightest knowledge of American history, and whisked him to South Dakota, he would instantly and correctly recognize Mount Rushmore as an instance of design by an intelligence.
CAN COMPLEX SPECIFIED information be produced by unintelligent natural causes? Dembski argues forcefully that it cannot. In every case in which we know the "causal story" underlying complex specified information (writing a sonnet, creating a computer program, or sculpting Mount Rushmore) we know that it has been produced by an intelligence. Citing the "Law of Conservation of Information," Dembski also shows that, apart from intelligence, the amount of information in a closed system can only stay the same or decrease. Natural causes can "shuffle around" information, but the total amount cannot increase without the activity of an intelligent agent.
As a matter of both theory and experience, therefore, specified complexity does not come into existence unless it is designed by an intelligence. And, where it exists, specified complexity can be identified either in a rough and ready way (Mount Rushmore) or by more rigorous, probabilistic means. In employing improbability to detect design, Dembski has formulated what he calls the "universal probability bound." This is a number beyond which, under any circumstances, the probability of an event occurring is so small that we can say it was not the result of chance, but of design. He calculates this number by multiplying the number of elementary particles in the known universe (10^80) by the maximum number of alterations in the quantum states of matter per second (10^45) by the number of seconds between creation and when the universe undergoes heat death or collapses back on itself (10^25). The universal probability bound thus equals 10^150, and represents all of the possible events that can ever occur in the history of the universe. If an event is less likely than 1 in 10^150, therefore, we are quite justified in saying it did not result from chance but from design. Invoking billions of years of evolution to explain improbable occurrences does not help Darwinism if the odds exceed the universal probability bound. Why should we care how specified complexity comes about, or how it can be detected? Because all life contains an enormous amount of complex specified information. The DNA in genes and chromosomes that makes up the blueprint for life is basically computer code. The information is contained in long sequences of nucleotide bases. There are four potential bases for any "slot" in the sequence, often abbreviated by the letters A, C, G, and T to represent their chemical names. The sequence of those bases specifies what proteins will be produced, and how a plant or animal will be produced.
Like computer code or language, the sequencing of those four bases is contingent -- the nucleotides don't bond with the nucleotides next to them in a necessary, repeating sequence. DNA sequences are also complex. In the human genome (that is, in the DNA present in each of our cells) there are about three billion such slots. The amount of information in the DNA of every human cell is greater than the information in all of the volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Most importantly, DNA sequences in living things are specified in relation to a function building a human, animal, or plant that can, at minimum, survive and reproduce.
HOW COULD THIS VAST AMOUNT of complex specified information come about without intelligence? The problem for Darwinian theory is particularly acute with respect to the origins of life. But even after life gets underway, random variation and natural selection can't conceivably generate the magnitude of information necessary, the ID theorists argue.
To take just one example, a well-known (and unsolved) problem for Darwinism is the Cambrian Explosion. As noted by Stephen Meyer in the book Debating Design, this event might be better called the Cambrian Information Explosion. For the first three billion years of life on Earth, only single-celled organisms such as bacteria and bluegreen algae existed. Then, approximately 570 million years ago, the first multi-cellular organisms, such as sponges, began to appear in the fossil record. About 40 million years later, an astonishing explosion of life took place. Within a narrow window of about 5 million years, "at least nineteen and perhaps as many as 35 phyla (of 40 total phyla) made their first appearance on Earth...." Meyer reminds us that "phyla constitute the highest categories in the animal kingdom, with each phylum exhibiting unique architecture, blueprint, or structural body plan." These high order, basic body plans include "mollusks (squids and shellfish), arthropods (crustaceans, insects, and trilobites), and chordates, the phylum to which all vertebrates belong."
These new, fundamental body plans appeared all at once, and without the expected Darwinian intermediate forms. The amount of new biological information necessary to create these abruptly emerging body plans is staggering. Meyer states that sponges such as those that existed right before the Cambrian explosion probably required about five basic cell types. More complex animals like the arthropods would have required 50 basic cell types. These in turn are dependent on new and different proteins. Citing recent research, he notes that the more complex kinds of single cell organisms might require about a million DNA base pairs to manufacture the necessary proteins. But a complex, multicellular organism such as an arthropod would require "orders of magnitude" more coding instructions. The modern fruit fly is an arthropod, and it has about 120 million base pairs. The odds that this quantity of information could be generated by random variation filtered through natural selection quickly surpass the "universal probability bound." It's not going to happen. Not even once, in the entire universe, in its whole history.
But it did happen. The preceding paragraph of this article also happened, even though the odds of it being produced by chance also far exceed the universal probability bound. That's because it's not difficult for an intelligence to produce complex specified information that would otherwise be vanishingly improbable. That's also why the ID theorists contend that only an intelligence could possibly produce the vast and detailed information base that is required for life in all its amazing complexity and variety.
This is not an "argument from ignorance" or for a "God of the gaps." The ID theorists are not saying "We don't know how something occurred, therefore God must have done it." Rather, it is an "inference to the best explanation." Naturalistic explanations have turned out to be wholly insufficient, in principle and in practice, to explain the specified complexity that characterizes life at the cellular and molecular level. We know that intelligent agents can generate complex specified information. As a matter of both experience and theory, it appears that complex specified information can only be generated by intelligence. So when we find living organisms that exhibit specified complexity, the best explanation is that the information was produced by an intelligent agent, and that the organism was, in fact, designed.
HOW HAS THE SCIENTIFIC ESTABLISHMENT reacted to the ID challenge? Variously. Some scientists have reconsidered their views, and become sympathetic to intelligent design. Others have engaged the ID theorists in debate, ranging in character from cordial to caustic.
Richard Dawkins refuses to debate Dembski, and a couple of years ago published an unfinished letter to the late Stephen Jay Gould, the renowned evolutionist from Harvard. In that letter, Dawkins proposed that they not debate "latter day creationists" who only want to share a platform with a "real scientist" (such as, presumably, himself). Dawkins is a true believer in the Darwinian faith, who characterizes his role as "Advocate for Disinterested Truth." He refers to religion as a "virus of the mind," and explicitly affirms that he is both "contemptuous" and "hostile" towards it. According to Dawkins, "It is absolutely safe to say that, if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked, but I'd rather not consider that)."
It is plain to see that there is more than a disagreement over scientific techniques or reasoning here. Dawkins' commitment to materialism and atheism is a philosophical position, not a scientific one. Those who challenge materialism's creation story must be anathematized. Unfortunately, the American Association for the Advancement of Science has taken a similar position. In a board resolution adopted in 2002, that organization charges the "so-called" ID movement with, among other things, claiming "that contemporary evolutionary theory is incapable of explaining the origin of the diversity of living organisms." In other words, ID proponents are charged not merely with being wrong, but with committing heresy against contemporary evolutionary theory."
Richard M. von Sternberg holds two Ph.D.s in the area of evolutionary biology, and is not himself an advocate of intelligent design. When serving as the managing editor of the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, he allowed a scholarly paper by the Discovery Institute's Stephen Meyer to be published in that journal. Although he had followed standard peer review procedures, the full brunt of the Darwinian establishment's wrath was brought down on him. You can read his account at http//www.rsternberg.net/. Dembski summarizes the strident reaction to ID by parts of the scientific community (and presents strategies for handling it) in "Dealing with the Backlash against Intelligent Design," available at http//www.designinference.com/.
The controversy has for several years been spilling into the public schools. The ID proponents do not contend that their theory ought to be taught in the public schools. All they claim is that students should be made aware that there is a controversy here. But the supporters of Darwinism are adamant. Only the Darwinian orthodoxy can be taught, and no theory critical of it can even be mentioned.
All of this suggests that what is at stake here are two competing philosophical visions one that automatically rules out the possibility of God (and therefore a designer) as a matter of principle, and one that affirms God, or is at least willing to entertain the possibility of a designer. That division, to a great extent, underlies the "culture wars" and much else in our public life.
It is precisely because intelligent design relies upon scientific methods and evidence that it is regarded by the materialists as so extraordinarily dangerous. It threatens to allow religion to escape from the ghetto assigned to it by the dominant 19th- and 20th-century materialism. It actually claims to be true, on the same level that all science claims to be true.
If intelligent design makes good its claims, it might change the definition of science. It might change the assumptions on which we conduct our public discourse and education. It might change conceptions about whether there is an objective moral order. It might help open minds that would otherwise be closed.
It might be true, and be able to prove it.
http//spectator.org/util/print.asp?art_id=8543
Dan Peterson is a writer and attorney designed to live in Northern Virginia. The views expressed are solely his own. This article appeared in the June issue of The American Spectator
Original content is Copyrighted ? by NoDNC.com . Original author(s) retain their own copyright(s). Pursuant to Title 17 U.S.C. 107, other copyrighted work is provided for educational purposes, critical comment, or debate without profit or payment.
Published on 2005-08-07 (2557 reads)
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Peace "farida",
Before you go any further i kindly ask you to watch the videos i linked to here. We dont even need the fossil record anymore. Genetic evidence is now sufficient to prove evolution is true and that includes us sharing a common ancestor with apes. Plz watch this vid
http//www.youtube.com/watch?v=zi8FfMBYCkk (Note Ken Miller is a devout THEIST)
The flagellum argument has been debunked MANY times
http//www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdwTwNPyR9w
http//www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_HVrjKcvrU
Theres much more evidence on the following channels
http//www.youtube.com/profile?user=ExtantDodo&view=videos
http//www.youtube.com/user/DonExodus2 (This guy is a THEIST)
http//www.youtube.com/profile?user=Kabane52&view=videos (This young fellow is a THEIST TOO)
http//www.youtube.com/profile?user=cdk007&view=videos (Very good vids explaining evo)
http//www.youtube.com/profile?user=Thunderf00t&view=videos (Especially watch his "why do people laugh at creationists" videos)
Tht shld do for now. When your done plz tell me n ill send u more. GOD Bless! -
Peace "farida",
Genetic evidence is now sufficient to prove evolution is true and that includes us sharing a common ancestor with apes.
GOD Bless!No way! You may share a common ancestor with apes but I certainly don't. nope
Please send me a photographic proof of your shared ancestry. '( -
http//free-minds.org/forum/index.php?topic=9597918.msg194482#new
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Greetings people,
Just like to share that
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Please get it clear that evolution doesn't mean "no God" in ideas link jonny_k is saying (especially the Ken Miller video) is something like "Theistic Evolution" - things don't happen themself - all things happen under the laws/power of the One who set the Laws of the universe.
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Just want to remind that it's probably of no real benefit to actually know how we were made - it doesn't make you a better person. So don't waste too much time/effort in it. Better to focus on how to do more good and less bad. It is these unclear and unbeneficial topics like this that cause lots of waste of time but no real moral benefit.
Peace,
Zidane. -
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Despite his loyalty towards Darwinism, Primanda says that he is a believing Muslim. We respect that. But we would be remiss not to point out the contradiction between his faith in Islam and Darwinism. He should ask himself If he is a believing Muslim, why is he defending a theory which is championed by outright and militant atheists? If he is a believing Muslim, why is he working to defend this theory, which is the basis for Marxism, Leninism, Maoism, Freudianism, and, most importantly, all materialist philosophy? He shouldn't try to answer these questions by saying that he's doing this for the sake of science, because today the entire world knows that Darwinism is not a scientific theory, but rather a philosophy. It is a philosophy whose very reason for existence is to deny creation and the Creator.
We can only hope that Primanda will be able to tear himself away from the bewitching effects of this philosophy and begin to see things as they really are.
Hmm. So after ploughing through all the seeming science, we get to the nub of the matter, which is, apparently, that Primanda should substitute his conviction of the correctness of Neodarwinism for conviction that Islam is incompatible with Neodarwinism (not to mention Marxism, Leninism, Maoism, and so on).
The "entire world" does not KNOW that Darwinism is not a scientific theory. Matter of fact, no one KNOWS how life evolved on this planet, and I personally have strong doubts in the Darwinian explanation, though far less doubt that evolution has occurred through SOME mechanism that we haven't yet discovered. If one looks at the fossil record, one can't fail to see that, over time, organisms became more complex. True, there were periods when this was comparatively fast, putting into doubt gradualism, which would be expected from Neodarwinism, but one can't jump to the conclusion that evolution is thereby disproven.
Just fancy we share "only" 95% of our DNA with chimps. Good grief! we must have no relationship whatsoever with them, then! Tell me, why would God create chimps so close to us genetically? What's He been up to? Is each species a special creation, with God learning how to "do it better" through time? My friend, surely God could have made human beings perfectly right from the beginning if He'd wanted to, and not have to have gone through eons from prokariotes through unicellular eukariotes to simple multicellular ones and progressively more complex forms until He got to man?
The fact He didn't do that, that the fossil record strongly supports an evolutionary progression, suggests that He decided, for whatever reason, to create the basic laws of organic evolution (which we still don?t understand) . Having done so, He let nature get on with it. One can believe in evolution and at the same time believe in God as the ultimate creator. In fact, many scientists take precisely this view. There are many evolutionists, even Neodarwinists, who are devoutly religious; they?re not all atheists, Marxists. Maoists, and so on. It?s more that they aren?t literalists or narrow-minded exclusionists.
This body of ours, with its striking similarity to the great apes, is just a physical vessel. There?s no shame in it having evolved through time from the simplest of organisms. What?s much more important than the container is the content. Therein is what lies the true human being. True, the container helps the human being evolve in another sense ? spiritually - but it is of ultimately of secondary significance.
I believe that organic evolution has occurred. I also believe that God is the creator of the universe. The two are not incompatible. There is no contradiction between Primanda?s faith and his scientific views, even if in time he will be proven wrong and some other scientific explanation than Neodarwinism prevails. Live and let live, and long live pluralism!
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Re The Little Engine That Could...Undo Darwinism Evolution may be proven false very soon
For anyone interested in finding out why the Intelligent Design people are actually creationists and not the least scientific, even if life were to prove at some stage to be intelligently designed, I recommend reading about the Kitzmiller v. Dover case. Overview at http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitzmiller_v._Dover_Area_School_District, and the fascinating full trial transcript (with lots of interesting lessons in biology) at http//www.toarchive.org/faqs/dover/kitzmiller_v_dover.html
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Islam's evolutionary legacy
As we celebrate Darwin, let's not forget the unsung champions of evolution from the Muslim world....?Instead, if today's young scientists could just take a peek into the history of science in Islamic cultures, they would see a respectable tradition of thinking, debate and argument on the origins of life and the evolution of species.?
http//www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2009/feb/27/islam-religion-evolution-science
peace
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Indeed. And let's not forget Rumi in the 13th century
Rumi was an evolutionary thinker in the sense that he believed that the spirit after devolution from the divine Ego undergoes an evolutionary process by which it comes nearer and nearer to the same divine Ego. All matter in the universe obeys this law and this movement is due to an inbuilt urge (which Rumi calls "love" to evolve and seek enjoinment with the divinity from which it has emerged. Evolution into a human being from an animal is only one stage in this process. The doctrine of the Fall of Adam is reinterpreted as the devolution of the Ego from the universal ground of divinity and is a universal, cosmic phenomenon. This synthesis of evolution and creationism is a culmination of the ideas of Plotinus and of previous Muslim philosophers like Al Farabi. The French philosopher Henri Bergson's idea of life being creative and evolutionary is similar, though unlike Bergson, Rumi believes that there is a specific goal to the process the attainment of God. For Rumi, God is the ground as well as the goal of all existence."
I died as a mineral and became a plant,
I died as plant and rose to animal,
I died as animal and I was Man.
Why should I fear? When was I less by dying?
Yet once more I shall die as Man, to soar
With angels bless'd; but even from angelhood
I must pass on all except God doth perish.
When I have sacrificed my angel-soul,
I shall become what no mind e'er conceived.
Oh, let me not exist! for Non-existence
Proclaims in organ tones,
To Him we shall return.(From http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumi)
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I don't believe in evolution. I think its a myth. It started good but after failing to find evidence it just kept going on and on because many scientist are atheist and can't let go. But I do not see any contradiction between evolution and faith in God. I just think its stupid and silly. This is a theory that has never been observed or shown how it can take place. They use words like NATURAL selection and RANDOM mutation. Yet they rely on assumptions that are scientifically impossible, like species acquiring new information on their genes or species being able to identify what characteristics are beneficial to them and this benefit remains constant for millions of years. Can you believe that? Its totally unrealistic.
All they have is simpler organisms appeared first on Earth and more complex oraganisms arrived later. They then try to use that to make science out of it. They try to connect the dots by saying simpler organism evolved to more complex oragnisms. Maybe, but what does that have to do with science.
Like Behe said, we must follow the evidence and not vice versa.
And of course my favorite
http//www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMoQf5CG93c&feature=related
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Peace "farida",
No way! You may share a common ancestor with apes but I certainly don't. nope
Please send me a photographic proof of your shared ancestry. '(JK- Your chromosome 2 is fused just like the rest of us. Did you watch tht video. If yes 1) What do you make of that fusion? 2) WHY are we humans BOTH phenotypically and genetically more similar to apes as compared to any other living creature in the world and theres no doubt tht apes already lived on earth long before humans came into the picture? GOD Bless!
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Peace "Zidane",
- Just want to remind that it's probably of no real benefit to actually know how we were made - it doesn't make you a better person. So don't waste too much time/effort in it. Better to focus on how to do more good and less bad. It is these unclear and unbeneficial topics like this that cause lots of waste of time but no real moral benefit.
Peace,
Zidane.JK- Im sorry but ive to disagree. Evolution is very important in modern biology as it is this theory which enables us to produce vaccines and study many diseases and how to treat them in humans. Without the theory we cldnt make such predictions and we wldnt be able to study specific diseases in lower animals and how to derive a cure for them in humans. Furthermroe seeking the truth is very important for a true Muslim. It's all signs from GOD. I urge everyone to go out and discuss these things with biologists whor working in this area. GOD Bless!
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Peace "bigmo",
I don't believe in evolution. I think its a myth. It started good but after failing to find evidence it just kept going on and on because many scientist are atheist and can't let go. But I do not see any contradiction between evolution and faith in God. I just think its stupid and silly. This is a theory that has never been observed or shown how it can take place. They use words like NATURAL selection and RANDOM mutation. Yet they rely on assumptions that are scientifically impossible, like species acquiring new information on their genes or species being able to identify what characteristics are beneficial to them and this benefit remains constant for millions of years. Can you believe that? Its totally unrealistic.
All they have is simpler organisms appeared first on Earth and more complex oraganisms arrived later. They then try to use that to make science out of it. They try to connect the dots by saying simpler organism evolved to more complex oragnisms. Maybe, but what does that have to do with science.
Like Behe said, we must follow the evidence and not vice versa.
And of course my favorite
http//www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMoQf5CG93c&feature=related
JK- First of all Behe beleives in ape-men evolution and common descent as a whole. He just claims that the very first cells werre IRREDUCIBLY COMPLEX
http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Behe#Promotion_of_irreducible_complexity_and_intelligent_design
Secondly regarding Dawkins being stumped THTS A MISREPRESENTATION AT BEST AND A LIE AT WORST by the creationists. Here go check this out on information increase
http//www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsP0qSkCHbk
HERES the entire article where Dawkins clearly explains all of his views in detail
http//www.skeptics.com.au/articles/dawkins.htm
I quote the first para here from Dawkins himself
"In September 1997, I(R. Dawkins) allowed an Australian film crew into my house in Oxford without realising that their purpose was creationist propaganda. In the course of a suspiciously amateurish interview, they issued a truculent challenge to me to "give an example of a genetic mutation or an evolutionary process which can be seen to increase the information in the genome." It is the kind of question only a creationist would ask in that way, and it was at this point I tumbled to the fact that I had been duped into granting an interview to creationists - a thing I normally don't do, for good reasons. In my anger I refused to discuss the question further, and told them to stop the camera. However, I eventually withdrew my peremptory termination of the interview as a whole. This was solely because they pleaded with me that they had come all the way from Australia specifically in order to interview me. Even if this was a considerable exaggeration, it seemed, on reflection, ungenerous to tear up the legal release form and throw them out. I therefore relented.
Also watch this video on how evo can increase in information
http//www.youtube.com/watch?v=I14KTshLUkg
I urge u once again Bigmo u need to do a lot of reserach as uve been lied to just as ive been. The creationists propaganda is all over the place but theyr getting exposed every day. GOD Bless! -
Peace "farida",
Islam's evolutionary legacy
As we celebrate Darwin, let's not forget the unsung champions of evolution from the Muslim world....?Instead, if today's young scientists could just take a peek into the history of science in Islamic cultures, they would see a respectable tradition of thinking, debate and argument on the origins of life and the evolution of species.?
http//www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2009/feb/27/islam-religion-evolution-science
peace
JK- the link you cited actually mentions tht early Islamic scholars indeed beleived in evolution and one species transforming into another/speciation. Ibn Khaldoon mentions this even more clearly i.e. mankind arose from the world of apes ALTHOUGH they made a serious miostake in claiming that the animals sprung at a certain point from vegetation whereas we know now tht tht sepration occured very early whilst there were still cells(eukaryotes) in the water. Thts when the plant and animal kingdom split. GOD Bless!
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Peace "tanty",
Harun Yahya is perhaps one of the greatest and most successful deceivers of all time. Here is a youtube video where R. Dawkins HIMSELF DEBUNKS THAT SHARLATAN
http//www.youtube.com/watch?v=1L5TD3nwXXA&feature=channel_page
And here are more vids debunking tht lying mouth HY whom i once believed in
http//www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HXTKw2-mEs
http//www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgOwejDLJjQ
I hope youll get out of this propaganda soon. GOD Bless! -
Arguments against evolution theories
Pierre Paul Grass? is the former president of the French Academy of Sciences and author of the book Evolution of Living Organisms. As he writes
Today our duty is to destroy the myth of evolution, considered as a simple, understood, and explained phenomenon which keeps rapidly unfolding before us. . . .The deceit is sometimes unconscious, but not always, since some people, owing to their sectarianism, purposely overlook reality and refuse to acknowledge the inadequacies and falsity of their beliefs.After setting out the impossibility of random mutations having met all the needs of the living world, Grass? goes on to say There is no law against daydreaming, but science must not indulge in it.
Prof. Derek Ager, who is the former president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (and head of the department of geology and oceanography at University College of Swansea)
It must be significant that nearly all the evolutionary stories I learned as a student . . . have now been debunked.Dr. Robert Milikan is a Nobel Prize winner and renowned evolutionist
The pathetic thing is that we have scientists who are trying to prove evolution, which no scientist can ever prove.Dr. Lewis Thomas, the author of Lives of a Cell
Biology needs a better word than error for the driving force in evolution. . . . I cannot make my peace with the randomness doctrine; I cannot abide the notion of purposelessness and blind chance in nature. And yet I do not know what to put in its place for the quieting of my mind.Jerry Coyne is of the Chicago University Evolution and Ecology Department
We conclude?unexpectedly?that there is little evidence for the neo-Darwinian view its theoretical foundations and the experimental evidence supporting it are weak.H. S. Lipson, the British physicist
I have always been slightly suspicious of the theory of evolution because of its ability to account for any property of living beings (the long neck of the giraffe, for example).I have therefore tried to see whether biological discoveries over the last thirty years or so fit in with Darwin?s theory. I do not think that they do. To my mind, the theory does not stand up at all.Gregory Alan Pesely is Professor of Philosophy
One would immediately reject any lexicographer who tried to define a word by the same word, or a thinker who merely restated his proposition, or any other instance of gross redundancy; yet no one seems scandalized that men of science should be satisfied with a major principle which is no more than a tautology.Dr. Colin Patterson is an evolutionist paleontologist and curator of London?s Natural History Museum, editor of the museum?s journal and author of the book Evolution
Now, one of the reasons I started taking this anti-evolutionary view?well, let?s callt non-evolutionary?was last year I had a sudden realization. For over twenty years, I had thought that I was working on evolution in some way. One morning I woke up, and something had happened in the night, and it struck me that I had been working on this stuff for twenty years, and there was not one thing I knew about it. That was quite a shock, to learn that one can be so misled for so long. . . So for the last few weeks, I?ve tried putting a simple question to various people and groups of people.The question is this ?Can you tell me anything you know about evolution, any one thing, any one thing that you think is true? Is there one thing you can tell me about evolution?? I tried this question on the geology staff at the Field Museum of Natural History and the only answer I got was silence. I tried it on the members of the Evolutionary Morphology seminar in the University of Chicago? a very prestigious body of evolutionists?and all I got there was silence for a long time. But eventually one person said, ?I do know one thing?it ought not to be taught in high school.?
Dr. Albert Fleischman, zoologist at the University of Erlangen
The Darwinian theory of descent has not a single fact to confirm it in the realm of nature. It is not the result of scientific research, but purely the product of imagination.W. R. Thompson is Head of the Commonwealth Institute of Biological Control in - Ottawa
This situation, where scientific men rally to the defence of a doctrine they are unableto define scientifically, much less demonstrate with scientific rigour, attempting to maintain its credit with the public by the suppression of criticism and the elimination of difficulties, is abnormal and undesirable in science.E. O. Wiley of City University of New York?s, Ichthyology Department and the American Museum of Natural History, expresses his thoughts on Norman Macbeth?s book Darwin Retried
Macbeth suggests that we try to look at evolution with new eyes, that we admit to the public, and, if needed, to ourselves, that we have misgivings about Darwinism, and the synthetic theory, that we open debate.Roger Lewin is a well-known evolutionist science writer and former editor of New Scientist magazine
Our intelligence, our reflective consciousness, our extreme technological facility, our complex spoken language, our sense of moral and ethical values?each of these is apparently sufficient to set us apart from nature . . . this gap is an ?embarrassment,? something to be explained away.Dr. Nils Heribert-Nilsson, is a Swedish geneticist and Professor of Botany at the University of Lund in Sweden
My attempts to demonstrate evolution by an experiment carried on for more than 40 years have completely failed. At least I should hardly be accused of having started from any preconceived anti-evolutionary standpoint.Paul Lemoine, a former Director of the National Museum of Natural History at Paris
The theories of evolution in which our student youth was cradled constitute a dogma that all the world continues to teach. But each in his own specialty, zoologist or botanist, comes to the conclusion that none of the available explanations is adequate. . . . The result of this summary is that the theory of evolution is impossible.Norman Macbeth, a Harvard-trained lawyer, has made the study of Darwinian theory his avocation for many years
Unfortunately, in the field of evolution most explanations are not good. As a matter of fact, they hardly qualify as explanations at all; they are suggestions, hunches, pipe dreams, hardly worthy of being called hypotheses.Prof. Cemal Yldrm, a Turkish evolutionist, is Professor of Philosophy at Middle East Technical University and visiting scholar at California State University in Northridge
No scientist, whether be Darwinist or neo-Darwinist, can suggest the notion that the theory of evolution is proven.
That?s right, evolution theory is not proven. -
Peace "tanty",
Are all these professors you quoted all secular or evangelical creation "scisntists"? You need to be very careful with this and just putting up a laudry list of scisntists DOES NOT CHANGE THE FACTS. Since the early Twentieth Century, evolution deniers have been fond of creating lists of "scientists" who do not accept evolution. This tactic is an attempt to give the erroneous impression that, among scientists in general, support for evolution is in decline or that evolution is a "theory in crisis." Have you ever heard about "Project Steve"? It is a parody of these lists conducted by the National Center for Science Education (NCSE). Read this please
http//www.talkorigins.org/faqs/steve/
http//ncseweb.org/taking-action/project-steve
GOD Bless! -
Peace "tanty",
Are all these professors you quoted all secular or evangelical creation "scisntists"? You need to be very careful with this and just putting up a laudry list of scisntists DOES NOT CHANGE THE FACTS. Since the early Twentieth Century, evolution deniers have been fond of creating lists of "scientists" who do not accept evolution. This tactic is an attempt to give the erroneous impression that, among scientists in general, support for evolution is in decline or that evolution is a "theory in crisis." Have you ever heard about "Project Steve"? It is a parody of these lists conducted by the National Center for Science Education (NCSE). Read this please
http//www.talkorigins.org/faqs/steve/
http//ncseweb.org/taking-action/project-steve
GOD Bless!Yup tanty, beware of "the "Conspiracist Scisntists" tempt