I
came across an article recently on Futurism.com titled, “Three
Pieces of Evidence That Prove Evolution is a Fact.” You'll
notice the article is over 3 years old but I'm sorry – it's a big
world wide web and I haven't gotten to all of it yet. Even so, the
“proof” presented in the article is the same stuff I continue to
hear so I thought I'd write a post discussing it. At first I thought
about making this a 3 part series but I've done a couple of series
recently and didn't want to start another. Even so, if I tried to
address everything in a single post, it would be a very long post.
Therefore, I've decided to make this a very short series: an
introduction and a rebuttal.
I'll
address the three evidences in my next post. For now, there's a lot
I could say about the article just from its opening paragraphs. I
think they shed a lot of light on the attitude of its author. First,
there's the title: “prove
evolution is a fact.” Really? Prove?
I thought science doesn't ever prove anything. Actually, let me
quote another
article from Futurism.com, “Don’t
ever say around me that science has “proven” something unless you
want an ear full. Understanding why that phrase is problematic is
essential to understanding the most important tool humans have ever
devised to understand reality – science.”
Isn't that a hoot? The same website that warns us to never say
science “proves” anything turns right around and says the
evidence has proven evolution!
The
first paragraph starts saying,
“For
over 150 years—since the time of Charles Darwin—the Theory of
Evolution has been through more scrutiny and rigorous investigation
than just about any other scientific claim.”
Hmm.
“Investigation”? Maybe. “Scrutiny”? Please! I've
said many times before
that most scientists proudly boast that they only ever consider
natural explanations. Regarding our origins, evolution is the only
natural explanation so they don't scrutinize it. No matter how
weakly it might explain some phenomenon, no matter how little
evidence there is for some point of the theory, no matter how absurd
some of its explanations are, they will never question the theory
itself because the only alternative is supernatural creation which
they've disqualified in advance.
The
article continues, “And
the theory has only been strengthened as more evidence has been
accrued.”
I wouldn't say the theory has been strengthened but, rather, it has
been fleshed out as more evidence is found. It's a case of having a
theory and then seeking out evidence for it. You see, every time
they think they have some part of evolution figured out, some new
discovery is made that forces them to rethink everything. I've asked
before, how
many times are they allowed to redraw the tree?
How many times does will different points of the theory be proven
wrong before people begin questioning the theory itself?
Next,
the article says, “While
there are many that people who, for ideological reasons, want to make
it seem like evolution is not widely accepted within the scientific
community, this is not actually the case.”
Of course that's not the case and no one says it is. Creationists
might sometimes point out a contention in the scientific community
about some point of evolution but that's only to show that evolution
is not the neat package that's being presented to the lay public.
However, we completely understand that, even though scientists might
disagree on different points of evolution, they don't question the
theory itself. Where creationists disagree with evolutionists is
over whether evolution is true, not whether evolutionists really
believe it!
“Across
universities, research institutions, and scientific organizations,
evolution is not only nearly universally accepted,...”
Yes, “the
science is settled” and most scientists do not question the
theory of evolution. By the way, there is an oft quoted statistic
that 99.9% of all scientists accept evolution but I've never seen a
scientific survey to support that. Regardless, how many scientists
believe evolution isn't evidence for evolution. Scientists – even
the majority of scientists – can be wrong. Before Galileo, for
example, the majority of people believed the sun orbited the earth.
Anyway, back to the point, “...
[evolution]
is also the basis upon which active, exciting, and important research
is being done. Indeed, the scientific fact that is evolution is the
basis of most of biology.”
Wrong, wrong, wrong! Evolution is the basis only for research into
evolution; it's completely irrelevant to any other field of science.
If
you were to google, “how evolution helps research,” you'll find
plenty of articles by people trying to convince you that
understanding evolution is critical to scientific research. Here's
another exercise to try: see if you can find any invention,
scientific advancement, or life improving technology whose discovery
hinged upon evolution being true. From a survey
into the relevance of evolution to academia, we have this quote:
The
message that Darwinists convey to the public is often very different
than what they recognize as true among themselves. Although they
state to the public that, “nothing in biology makes sense except in
the light of evolution,” most scientists can “conduct their work
quite happily without particular reference to evolutionary ideas”....
One “notable aspect of natural scientists in assembly is how little
they focus on evolution. It’s day-to-day irrelevance is a great
‘paradox’ in biology”.
There
you have it, folks. Scientists say evolution is important but it's
seldom referenced in their research. This is why I call evolution
the trivial
pursuit branch of science.
I'll
discuss the three evidences in my next post. We can see from just
the opening paragraphs, though, we shouldn't expect too much. Please
check back soon!
4 comments:
I've said many times before that most scientists proudly boast that they only ever consider natural explanations.
And I've said many times before that explanations are inherently "naturalistic." They tell you why things are one way rather than some other logically possible way, and they do that by invoking the "nature" of the cause -- it should produce the effects we see whereas other causes are expected to produce different effects. If our description of a cause is "it operates in ways we do not and cannot understand," then we have no ways of testing to see whether the phenomena we're examining are the sorts of thing it would produce. Produce a testable theory of the Intelligent Designer, and we might have something; insist that the Designer's ways need not be explained or that the processes of special creation are no longer active in the world, and scientists have nothing to work with -- you're asking them to make bricks not merely without straw but without mud.
Scientists don't just reject "supernaturalistic" explanations with regard to origins. There are still things we don't understand about lightning, but this does not provoke atmospheric scientists to invoke Thor's hammer, Perun's ax, or Zeus' bolts as alternatives to naturalistic hypotheses.
Where creationists disagree with evolutionists is over whether evolution is true, not whether evolutionists really believe it!
This is a worthwhile point, but "science" is not just some interesting cultural activity like music or painting where you can argue for "I like what I like." Science is valued and taught because its methods have worked. The scientific consensus has in the past often needed to be modified or replaced, but at any given time it has generally been more accurate than the beliefs it replaced. The whole point of teaching science is that the scientific consensus is much more likely to be true than any particular dissent from it.
This is why I call evolution the trivial pursuit branch of science.
Which has, I would think, no bearing on how true it is. You are arguing, here, not "evolution is false," but "it does no harm to replace scientific ideas with delusions and mythology in this case" -- which is a different claim and not entirely compatible with your earlier statement that you care whether evolution is true.
You see, every time they think they have some part of evolution figured out, some new discovery is made that forces them to rethink everything. I've asked before, how many times are they allowed to redraw the tree?
There is a long controversy in American history over whether the descendants of Thomas Jefferson's slave Sarah "Sally" Hemings are also the descendants of Thomas Jefferson himself. DNA tests a few years ago showed that at least some of them are indeed the descendants of a male-line descendant of Jefferson's male-line ancestors. Defenders of Jefferson's reputation have argued that his nephews (sons of his brother) are equally plausible candidates for fathering Hemings' children, and DNA tests cannot settle this question. But the question of where, exactly, Eston Hemings fits into the Jefferson family tree is a separate question from whether he fits in or not (he does).
Note, furthermore, that answering this question does not demand any detailed explanation for how either European settlement or slavery came about in North America.
By the same token, how exactly the three main groups of dinosaurs (theropods, sauropodomorphs, and ornithischians) are related to each other (there are currently three different, about equally plausible ideas) is a separate question of whether they are related to one another at all. Whether we are descended from Australopithecus afaranesis or Australopithecus africanus, or whether a particular fossil hominin is a direct or collateral ancestor (an evolution "great aunt" rather than "grandmother") is a separate matter from whether we share common ancestors with Lucy or Harambe.
And this does not depend in any way on being able to explain how the first self-replicating metabolizing organisms came about (abiogenesis or archaeobiopoesis).
Isn't that a hoot? The same website that warns us to never say science “proves” anything turns right around and says the evidence has proven evolution!
The same New Testament in which Paul says that Abraham was justified by faith, not works, has the epistle of James that says Abraham was justified by works. Here's the fun part: James and Paul do not, as far as I can see, actually disagree on the relationship between faith and action; they disagree on the meaning of "works" -- Paul uses it to mean religious rituals and culture-specific taboos (e.g. circumcision) whereas James uses it to mean doing the things you have faith are pleasing to God. But it's easy to quote them as contradicting each other.
Words, except for the most narrow and rare technical terms, have ranges of meaning. To argue that two writers (or even the same writer on different occasions) contradict one another, you have to show not that they say opposite things about the same word but that they mean opposite things about the same idea. It is logically consistent to say that, on the one hand, empirical matters cannot be "proved" beyond the possibility of falsification like a theorem in Euclidean geometry, and to say on the other than a matter has been "proved" (in the "beyond a reasonable doubt" sense) to the point that it would be perverse not to accept it until actual evidence to the contrary has surfaced.
Steven J,
There is no scientific reason to believe miracles cannot or have not occurred. It's more of a bias or philosophical starting point. If Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, your definition of science does nothing to prove He didn't. As secular scientists evaluate evolution as a theory, they may consider how it happened but they will never question if it happened because the only alternative to a natural explanation of our origins is a supernatural explanation. That's not allowed according to their arbitrary definition of science. Hence I say, they don't “scrutinize” the theory.
You're right that evolution can be trivial and still be true. However, how trivial it is does have a bearing on whether should waste time teaching it to our children or even waste money researching it. I see far more value in teaching arts than teaching evolution. Even in science, evolution is rather worthless to research.
Your analogy of Sarah Hemings is interesting but it's not a perfect analogy. Jefferson could be the father of Sarah Hemings descendants because he at least is the same species. Furthermore, we know someone is the father of her descendants. In this case, though, you're asking me to consider whether an ape is my grandfather or great uncle. I'm saying we're not related at all so the question of how we're related is moot.
Finally, the usual lecture creationists hear from evolutionists concerning the meaning of the word “proof” in science typically follows a comment like, “Evolution is only a theory – it hasn't been proven.” If your side wants to chide us over the technical meaning of words used by scientists, it needs to start with your side being more careful about how they use the words themselves. In this case, these evidences don't “prove” evolution in ANY sense of the word so it's rather laughable Futurism.com would even use that term.
Thank you for your comments. I'm going to reply to some other comments very soon. God bless!!
RKBentley
Post a Comment