7) People
who believe creation don't understand science
I
routinely hear evolutionists saying that people who believe in
creation don't understand science. For example, in a NY
Times Interview, Bill Nye made the following comments:
If
we have a society that’s increasingly dependent on these
technologies, with a smaller and smaller fraction of that society who
actually understands how any of it works, that is a formula for
disaster.... My biggest concern about creationist kids is that
they’re compelled to suppress their common sense, to suppress their
critical thinking skills at a time in human history when we need them
more than ever.
There
are several things wrong with statements like this. First, it's a
tangle of logical fallacies. Let's see... it's non sequitur
in the sense that there's no link between believing creation and
understanding technology. What, I can't use a computer because I'm a
creationist? It's also an example of a No True Scotsman argument
because it invents a qualifier for understanding science – that is,
“everyone who truly
understands science believes evolution.” Finally, it's an
appeal to consequences; even if people who believe creation don't understand science, that's not evidence against a miraculous creation.
Next,
Bill Nye – nor anyone else to my knowledge – has ever provided
some scientific survey to demonstrate that a belief in creation
affects a person's ability to understand science. If somebody knows
of such a survey, I would love to see it because, to this day, I've
seen nothing – not
one thing
– that evolutionists can point to that supports their assertion.
It is nothing more than a tactic, an insult meant to ridicule
creationists and scare us into thinking we are doomed unless people
believe in evolution. On the contrary, I've
written before that on standardized tests, students who attend
private schools or are home-schooled, places where creation is more
likely to be taught, tend to outperform students who attend public
schools, where evolution is more likely to be taught. By the way, I attended public schools and was taught evolution. I believed it for many years. Most people in the US attended public schools. I would say that most of the people who believe creation sat in the same classrooms as most evolutionists and so would understand science at least as well as the people who believe evolution.
If
you're interested in anecdotal evidence, I could provide quotes from
people like Newton, Mendel, or Kepler that show they believed in a
Divine Creator. I could talk about Dr.
Ben Carson whose achievements include, “performing
the first and only successful separation of Siamese twins joined at
the back of the head, pioneering the first successful neurosurgical
procedure on a fetus inside the womb, performing the first completely
successful separation of type-2 vertical craniopagus twins,
developing new methods to treat brain-stem tumors and reviving
hemispherectomy techniques for controlling seizures” (not
bad for someone who doesn't understand science). I could mention
that Dr.
Raymond Vahan Damadian,
the
guy who invented the MRI,
is a creationist, too. But I'm not saying that creation is true
because people like Newton believed in a Creator. I'm saying that
their belief in a Creator did not affect their ability to make
contributions to science or invent life improving technologies.
On
the other hand, I would ask Nye for an example of how believing in
evolution has contributed to science in any way. Name one invention
in the last century that was born out of a belief in evolution.
Evolution is the trivial
pursuit branch of science.
8) Nothing
in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution
In
a 1973 essay, biologist and evolution-apologist, Theodosius
Dobzhansky
wrote, “Nothing
in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.”
Really, Dobzhansky? Nothing?
Normally, I could dismiss this as a simple use of hyperbole but I've
heard this quote cited many times by many people and, yes, they
really mean, nothing.
From the same Wiki article linked above, there is this quote:
The
underlying theme of the essay is the need to teach biological
evolution in the context of debate about creation and evolution in
public education in the United States. The fact that evolution
occurs explains the interrelatedness of the various facts of biology,
and so makes biology make sense. The concept has become firmly
established as a unifying idea in biology education.
Just
think about the absurdity of saying nothing in biology makes sense except for evolution. What are
some things we include in the science of biology? How about
reproduction? Do they mean to say we can't understand anything about
reproduction unless we understand evolution?! It was Prissy in Gone
With the Wind who said, “Lawzy,
we got to have a doctor. I don't know nothin' 'bout birthin' babies.”
I guess that's what evolutionist think about creationists. They
want us to believe that reproduction equals evolution – end of
story. What other things are under the umbrella of biology? There's
animal migration. Does migration make no sense except that they
evolved? Please explain that to me. We can't grow crops, study
medicine, or understand anything
about living things unless evolution is true? Please!
Evolutionists
are so convinced of their theory that they can no longer see the
evidence except through the lens of their theory. Perhaps to them,
evolution explains the evidence but other people didn't need
any understanding of evolution to study biology. Evolutionists, for
example, believe animals share traits because they are related.
Carolus Linnaeus, however, developed taxonomy more than a century
before Darwin published Origin. When you think about it, nearly
every field in biology was founded by people who didn't need to
understand evolution to do their work – people like Mendel or
Pasteur. Edward Blythe wrote about natural selection decades before
Darwin published Origin.
Dr.
Jerry Bergman published an article
on True Origins dealing with this same subject. Consider this
interesting excerpt from that article:
National
Academy of Science Member and renown carbene chemist, Professor
emeritus Dr. Philip Skell of Pennsylvania State University,... did a
survey of his colleagues that were “engaged in non-historical
biology research, related to their ongoing research projects.” He
found that the “Darwinist researchers” he interviewed, in answer
to the question, “Would you have done the work any differently if
you believed Darwin's theory was wrong?” that “for the large
number” of persons he questioned, “differing only in the amount
of hemming and hawing” was “in my work it would have made no
difference.”
What you call lie number seven conflates several distinct claims made by evolutionists. There is the claim that creationists don't understand evolution, the claim that they don't understand science generally, the claim that misunderstanding science is why creationists reject evolution, and the claim that rejecting evolution is why creationists won't and don't understand science. These are not the same claim.
ReplyDeleteFor example, evolutionists generally claim that creationists reject evolution because they wish it to be false, because it contradicts their religious beliefs. The argument that they simply misunderstand evolution, or science in general, and therefore reject evolution, is much rarer. On the other hand, it is quite common for creationist arguments to get evolutionary theory very wrong (e.g. claims that evolutionary theory attributes complex adaptions to random changes alone); whether this is a partial cause or an effect of their creationism is unclear. Upton Sinclair was not speaking of Answers in Genesis or the Discovery Institute when he declared that "it is difficult to get a man to understand something if his salary depends on not understanding it," but the sentiment applies to them.
Bill Nye carries this a step further, and argues that the rejection of logical reasoning and the "interpretation" of evidence to mean whatever one wishes it to mean will vitiate all one's efforts to do science and engineering. Nye, for rhetorical reasons, probably underestimates the human capacity for compartmentalizing: reasoning logically on some subjects and delusionally on others, at the same time. I think you do the same in reverse: holding that, e.g. if Michael Egnor is a great neurosurgeon, he can't possibly be a prattling nincompoop when discussing evolution, or that if Raymond Damadian could help invent the MRI, he couldn't possibly be subordinating science to blind faith when considering descent with modification. No one is flawlessly and consistently rational, and very few people are consistently irrational on all subjects.
And of course anyone, however scientifically adept, might be a creationist because evidence for evolution has not yet been discovered (e.g. Newton and his contemporaries). Note that Newton, per my point above, was also an alchemist (though arguably here, too, he didn't know better). Ben Carson falls under my comments concerning Egnor and Damadian, though I note that he also apparently believes that the pyramids were built as granaries, which suggests that his views on them are entirely unadulterated by knowledge of their structure and contents or of the proper design of grain storage facilities. He might be similarly handicapped in his position on evolution.
Regarding "lie" number eight, while Dobzhansky might have engaged in hyperbole (by the way, Dobzhansky described himself as both a creationist and an evolutionist), he was also using the term "make sense" to mean something other than "figure out the basic facts of." For example, if we say a politician's statements make no sense, we usually don't mean that he's uttering gibberish; we mean that his sentences are intelligible but they implicitly contradict each other (e.g. "the TPP trade agreement is one of my great accomplishments and I believe is it fatally flawed and should be rejected").
ReplyDeleteYou can figure out, for example, that humans and (other) great apes and old world monkeys have identically-disabled GULO pseudogenes (as well as pseudogenes for the main protein in egg yolk) without accepting or even having the concept of common descent with modification -- but what possible explanation can you come up with for such shared features? You don't need the idea that humans share ancestors with monkeys and marigolds to notice that baleen whales grow teeth and hind limb buds as embryos, then lose them before birth, or that we see in nature marvelous examples of both well-camouflaged prey animals and keen-sighted predators -- but how are we to account for apparent designs that counter each other and work at cross-purposes?
Why does the nested hierarchy of comparative anatomy and comparative genomics even exist? Why does the giant panda use a modified wrist bone as a thumb rather than a finger like sensible animal designs? Now, again, one can accuse Dobzhansky of hyperbole -- a seagull's wing makes sense as a product of design. A penguin's or emu's, not quite so much. Why are modified flying organs used for definitely non-flying functions? Evolution isn't needed to grasp these facts; it is needed to provide them with an explanation that doesn't reduce to "arbitrary and inexplicable whim of the Creator."
Steven J,
ReplyDeleteYou said, “What you call lie number seven conflates several distinct claims made by evolutionists. There is the claim that creationists don't understand evolution, the claim that they don't understand science generally, the claim that misunderstanding science is why creationists reject evolution, and the claim that rejecting evolution is why creationists won't and don't understand science. These are not the same claim.”
True, evolutionists may mean slightly different things when they repeat this lie. However, where is the evidence that any variation is true? Please show me some scientific study that has found any correlation between a belief in creation and understanding science in general. Like I said in my post, it's a false qualifier, a No True Scotsman argument that basically says, “everyone who 'truly' understands science believes in evolution.” It's a logical fallacy and not a statement of fact regardless of how it is intended.
You said, “For example, evolutionists generally claim that creationists reject evolution because they wish it to be false, because it contradicts their religious beliefs.”
Evolutionists may generally claim that but, again, where is the evidence that such a belief in creation retards anyone's understanding of science?
You said, “[I]t is quite common for creationist arguments to get evolutionary theory very wrong (e.g. claims that evolutionary theory attributes complex adaptions to random changes alone); whether this is a partial cause or an effect of their creationism is unclear.”
I'm not saying that creationists necessarily understand science (or even evolution) better than average. I'm saying lay creationists understand science on at least the same level as lay evolutionists. The belief in creation has never been shown to be an indicator of how well someone understands science.
I'm not going to include any more quotes from your comment because it's burning up Bloggers character limit restrictions.
Nye said that we need to understand evolution like we understand electricity. Why? No one, including Nye, has ever provided a convincing argument how understanding evolution is critical to studying science. Even if evolution is true (which it's not) it would still be trivia.
I've heard Carson talk about creation and, well, let's just say I wouldn't invite him to write on my blog. But I would never say that his belief in creation has affected his ability to be an exceptional surgeon. On the other hand, I can think of examples of how believing in evolution can lead to bad science. Dr. Crick, for example, discovered DNA. His understanding of its extreme complexity and his belief in evolution has led him to belief in Directed Panspermia. That is, he believes intelligent aliens must have “seeded” the earth with the first species.
I'll respond to your next comment in a separate reply. God bless!!
RKBentley
Steven J,
ReplyDeleteYou said, “Regarding "lie" number eight, while Dobzhansky might have engaged in hyperbole (by the way, Dobzhansky described himself as both a creationist and an evolutionist), he was also using the term "make sense" to mean something other than "figure out the basic facts of."”
Just as I said in my post, Dobzhansky's remark is hyperbole. However, it's cited several times as though it's a statement of fact. Evolutionists would have us believe that, unless evolution is true, biology would be completely incoherent.
You've said, for example, that evolution make sense of anatomy when comparing closely related species. I wrote a while back about an evolutionist who insisted all mammals have 7 cervical vertebrae because they have all descended from a common ancestor. To him, common descent made perfect sense of that fact. My question then was, why don't the same similarities exist in other classes of animals? Why is there no universality in the number of neck bones in reptiles, birds, or amphibians? Why is there no correlation between the number of neck bones between dinosaurs and birds? If you invoke evolution to explain one instance, it doesn't answer the questions about the others.
Evolutionists often cite the appendix being present in both humans and chimps as the result of shared ancestry. That doesn't explain the appendix in possums. Humans and chimps both have finger prints. That doesn't explain why koalas have finger prints. Evolutionists call humans “naked apes,” meaning that we've lost our heavy coat of fur. That doesn't explain why humans grow hair on their brows, chins, and upper lips while chimps have virtually no hair in the same places.
You can cherry pick examples and say that evolution makes sense of two, seemingly unrelated observations. However, such a piecemeal application of the theory often fails to explain anything broader than that narrow example.
Thank you for visiting and for your comments. God bless!!
RKBentley