Let's
pretend, for a moment, that we have no ideas how mountains were
formed so I put on my thinking cap and begin making observations. On
beaches, I notice how the waves sometimes make ripples in the sand.
In the desert, I notice how sand dunes are formed by wind. These
observations lead me to hypothesize that mountain formation is the
cumulative effect of millions of years of wind and water moving dirt
around. Sounds plausible, right?
Working
on this theory, I look around to find examples of mountains being
made taller by the wind and rain – but I can't find any. All I
find, instead, are mountains being worn by erosion caused by wind and
rain. In other words, they're becoming shorter, not taller. Not
willing to abandon my theory, I define “mountain forming” to mean
“any change in the elevation of a point of land.” Now, even
examples of erosion can be used to support my theory.
Instances
of erosion may fit my definition but they do nothing to support my
claim that these processes can form mountains if they just continue
long enough. Ideally, I should abandon my theory. At the very
least, I should change my definition to include, “a rise
in the elevation of land....” But I do neither. Instead, I double
down on my definition and begin arguing that even a lowering of land
elevation is mountain formation because it creates valleys!
Clever,
huh? Employing such an ambiguous definition actually thwarts
criticism of my theory. It may make my theory somewhat unassailable,
but it doesn't make my theory true. Vague definitions like this
probably hinder science more than help it. Using this definition, I
could continue citing new instances of erosion, call them examples of
“mountain formation,” and never once find an example of a
mountain truly forming!
So
where am I going with this? I've often written about the word games
evolutionists play. They constantly want to define terms in their
favor. And it's not just scientific terms, they also want to
redefine words like “faith.” The word they equivocate over the
most is evolution.
The
Oxford
Dictionary defines evolution as, “the
process by which different kinds of living organisms are thought to
have developed and diversified from earlier forms during the history
of the earth. ”
When we talk about “evolution,” most people think of things like
fish becoming frogs, dinosaurs becoming birds, and apes becoming men.
Am I right? Yet, when we look around, we never seen examples of
things like this happening. Oh sure, we see animal populations
change,
but they don't change into other kinds of animals.
Enter
the ambiguous definition.
Talk
Origins, a rabidly pro-evolution website, prefers this
definition:
[E]volution
can be precisely defined as any change in the frequency of alleles
within a gene pool from one generation to the next.
Wow,
that sounds fancy. This is THE definition used by most, militant
evolutionists. Notice, though, that it doesn't do anything to
qualify the kind of change. There's no condition that the change has
to add any new characteristics to the population, for example. If a
population of gray and black mice were to go from 50% gray to 45%
gray over successive generations, then they've evolved according
to this definition. Yet it doesn't explain how something like a
mouse could turn into something like a bat over “millions of
years.”
For
evolution to be possible, biological populations have to acquire new
characteristics. To turn a dinosaur into a bird, you would have to
add feathers. To turn a reptile into a mammal, you would have to add
hair. The supposed first common ancestor didn't have feathers or
hair. Neither did it have skin or scales or bones or blood or organs
of any sort. How many new traits would you have to add to make turn
molecule into a man? So just to say a population has “changed”
doesn't mean the population is on its way to becoming something else
unless the change adds something. Removing the gray mice from a
population, for example, can't add new colors to the population.
The
definition of evolution most favored and championed by evolutionists,
the one cited above, is very much like my ridiculous definition of
mountain formation. Any change in a population is called evolution,
even though it doesn't add anything new to the population. Indeed,
no new traits ever need to be found and evolution could still be said
to be happening. In fact, I believe that's precisely why zealous
evolutionists prefer it. Consider this except from the Talk Origins
article I cited:
Unfortunately
the common definitions of evolution outside of the scientific
community are different. For example, in the Oxford Concise Science
Dictionary we find the following definition:
"evolution: The gradual process by which the present diversity of plant and animal life arose from the earliest and most primitive organisms, which is believed to have been continuing for the past 3000 million years."
This
is inexcusable for a dictionary of science. Not only does this
definition exclude prokaryotes, protozoa, and fungi, but it
specifically includes a term "gradual process" which should
not be part of the definition. More importantly the definition seems
to refer more to the history of evolution than to evolution itself.
Using this definition it is possible to debate
whether evolution is still occurring....”
I
have to shake my head. They're right, it's hard to debate whether
evolution is occurring if they are allowed to call any kind of
change, “evolution.” Just like no one could question my theory
of mountain formation as long as I'm
able to include mountains being eroded as examples of mountain
forming.
This
is why evolutionists spend so much time haggling over terms. They
want to bolster their arguments by defining words in their favor. It
may be clever but it's still a gimmick. It's subtle. It's lying by
definition.
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