Who doesn't understand evolution? Part 6, conclusion

In Tyler Francke's article, THE TOP 10 SIGNS THAT YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND EVOLUTION AT ALL, Francke sought to point out what he claimed were some common misunderstandings creationists have of evolution. In my series responding to his points, I believe I have demonstrated how the “misunderstandings” were really straw men used to ridicule creationists and that even some of Francke's explanations were misrepresentations of evolution. In his final points, Francke makes perhaps his most egregious misrepresentations.

9. You don’t like Pokémon because you think it “promotes” evolution.

I haven’t encountered this sentiment in my dealings on this site, thankfully, but I was reminded of this “controversy” after the recent release of the latest entries in the Pokémon franchise.

Perhaps the reason Francke never encountered this sentiment on his website is because no creationist has ever seriously espoused it. Francke has made the embarrassing mistake of believing a parody is real!

There was a Wired article several years back that stated, “The Kansas State School Board has banned all things Pokemon from its schools–not because it's keeping kids from doing their schoolwork, but because they claim it promotes evolution.... The hullaballoo started when a local religious group discovered that evolution is a core element of Pokemon gameplay and started distributing pamphlets warning about the game's "subversive content."”

Hilarious. Anyway, the Wired article was updated on 4/23/07 with this amendment: “As pointed out in the wake of the Square Enix parody story, this Game|Life post is drawn from the same parody web site and is untrue. Game|Life deeply regrets the error.”

Francke wrote his article in November of 2013. It's sad that he believed this parody for 6 years! Of course, I'm reading his article in 2018 and the error is still there so maybe he still believes it after 11 years! Or maybe he knows it's debunked yet continues to repeat it for people who will also be gullible enough to believe it.

10. You think it’s inherently opposed to Christianity or the Bible.

Evolution, as defined by Helena Curtis and N. Sue Barnes in their textbook, “Biology,” is “any change in the frequency of alleles within a gene pool from one generation to the next.” It is beyond me how accepting this fact of science could possibly undermine one’s faith in Jesus.

If a population of moths is 90% dark colored in one generation, then 85% dark colored in the next, technically, it has “evolved.” Such a trivial event couldn't undermine anyone's faith in Jesus. Indeed, if that was all there was to evolution, there wouldn't be any controversy. Francke is obviously reducing the theory to a benign sounding, “change in the frequency of alleles,” to make it sound less threatening. However, he knows that's not all there is to it so he is being blatantly equivocal in what he is calling evolution.

Evolution practically demands that there was no Adam or Eve. Evolution is absolutely incompatible with the recent, global flood described in Genesis. Evolution makes a mockery of the genealogies given in both the Old and New Testaments. Evolution renders an ordinary reading of the plain words of the Bible impossible. Evolution would make our perfect God a liar!

Frank Zindler, an outspoken atheist, once said, The most devastating thing though that biology did to Christianity was the discovery of biological evolution. Now that we know that Adam and Eve never were real people the central myth of Christianity is destroyed. If there never was an Adam and Eve there never was an original sin. If there never was an original sin there is no need of salvation. If there is no need of salvation there is no need of a Savior. And I submit that puts Jesus, historical or otherwise, into the ranks of the unemployed. I think that evolution is absolutely the death knell of Christianity.

So we have a testimony straight from the horse's mouth, as it were. Here is an atheist saying why he thinks evolution is the “death knell” of Christianity. He's not alone in this attitude. Consider this quote from that notorious critic, Richard Dawkins:

The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are slowly being devoured from within by rasping parasites, thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst, and disease. It must be so. If there ever is a time of plenty, this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in the population until the natural state of starvation and misery is restored. In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.

Still not enough? How about this gem from Talk Origins:

Many organisms show features of appallingly bad design. This is because evolution via natural selection cannot construct traits from scratch; new traits must be modifications of previously existing traits. This is called historical constraint. A few examples of bad design imposed by historical constraint:... In human males, the urethra passes right through the prostate gland, a gland very prone to infection and subsequent enlargement. This blocks the urethra and is a very common medical problem in males. Putting a collapsible tube through an organ that is very likely to expand and block flow in this tube is not good design. Any moron with half a brain (or less) could design male "plumbing" better.

Do you get it, Francke? Are you starting to see now, Francke, how evolution could possibly undermine a person's faith in Christ? Perhaps you think trying to make Christianity compatible with evolution will make it more appealing to the world. Maybe it does. But you're replacing the God of the Bible with a lying, lazy, incompetent, moron of a god who is indistinguishable from dumb luck. There is no salvation in the god of theistic evolution.

In His conversation with Nicodemus, Jesus said, If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things? (John 3:12). You're telling people that the Bible is wrong about things like the creation and the flood but that it's right about the after life. Does that make any sense? Evolution is not just another, harmless myth like Big Foot or pro wrestling. It’s a poison that destroys the gospel. You're preaching a false gospel, Francke. Shame on you.

Who doesn't understand evolution? Part 5

I've been writing a series responding to Tyler Francke's article, THE TOP 10 SIGNS THAT YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND EVOLUTION AT ALL. I had been covering two points with each of my posts until my last post where I only covered one point. I had intended to conclude my series by covering the last 3 points with this post but point #8 also has a lot of material to cover so I've decided to cover only point #8 here and will write one more post to conclude the series. Thanks for bearing with me.

8. You think our modern understanding of it rests on a long series of hoaxes perpetuated by scientists.

Affirmed by the likes of everyone’s favorite nut-job conspiracy theorist meets cartoonist, Jack Chick, this idea is alive and well in evangelical culture. And why shouldn’t it be? Repeatedly assured by young-earth creationist groups that there is “absolutely no evidence for evolution,” what else would explain the theory’s unshakable dominance in the scientific community, courts and public schools besides a vast atheist conspiracy? And so, young-earthers on the Internet commonly parrot blatant falsehoods like “Archaeopteryx was a hoax”... and “Java Man and Peking Man were frauds”.

Let me start with a quick clarification. Evolution is indeed the prevailing opinion within the scientific community – presumably because they feel it's supported by the evidence (but maybe more so because it's the only theory that fits the “natural-explanations-only” paradigm which I'll address in a moment). However, “the theory's unshakable dominance” in the courts and public schools is not because the evidence for it is so overwhelming. It is because any criticism of the theory in a public school is challenged in court as a violation of the so-called “separation of church and state.” To my knowledge, no court has ever tried the evidence for evolution and judged it to be true. Rather, any competing theory – indeed, any criticism of the theory – is simply declared a religious belief and, so, is banned from public schools.

OK, back to the point. I absolutely believe that, if more people understood evolution, fewer people would believe it. The acceptance of evolution by the lay public has been made more successful by intentional deception committed by the scientific community. I wouldn't call it a hoax, per se, because the scientists may actually believe this one interpretation of the evidence. Is it a conspiracy? I'm reluctant to use that word because it is so often associated with people like Jesse Ventura. There is definitely something going on in the scientific community. For the lay public, academia allows untruths and half-truths about evolution to continue to be believed by the masses. I'm not even talking about Piltdown Man and Nebraska Man, which Francke mention in his article. I'm talking about modern examples of objectively false information currently believed by the public to be evidence for evolution.

I could talk about the persistent spin that evolution has been declared true by the supreme court but I've already discussed that. Let's see... oh, here's one: Have you ever heard that human and chimp DNA is 98% similar? This is often cited as “proof” that humans and chimps are related. But have you ever heard the people who cite this statistic also explain that chimp DNA is 10% longer than human DNA? I'll bet you haven't.

In the book, Anthropology: The Human Challenge, we find the following quote: Moreover, the genetic comparison is misleading because it ignores qualitative differences among genomes. Genetic evolution involves much more than simply replacing one base with another. Thus, even among such close relatives as human and chimpanzee, we find that the chimp’s genome is estimated to be about 10 percent larger than the human’s.... [T]he tips of each chimpanzee chromosome contain a DNA sequence that is not present in humans.

The seemingly amazing 98% similarity is achieved only by comparing sections of the DNA and not the entire genome! Of course, the lay public thinks our DNA (the entire genome) is nearly identical to a chimp's. A letter by letter comparison of the entire genome shows human and chimp DNA is only 70-80% similar. 

  

I'll give only one more example of a commonly believed lie. Have you ever heard that 99% of all the species that have ever lived are now extinct? If life evolved from a single cell to everything that exists today, it would sort of make sense there would have been countless species in between. I heard an evolutionist once say in a debate that we see this in the fossil record. What a liar! Did you know there are more identified species living today than there are extinct species found in the fossil record? I'll bet you didn't. The statistic is merely an estimate that makes certain assumptions about how long ago the first life form appeared and how long it takes new species to appear. There are about 1.7 million species that have been named. There are maybe 10,000,000 that are believed to exist but haven't been classified or even discovered. Compare that to only 250,000-500,000 extinct species known only from fossils. There is NO fossil evidence for “billions of species” having lived in the past.

There are many, many other other examples of these types of “factoids” that are either blatant lies or grossly misunderstood. I've even written a list of 10 common lies told by evolutionists. Yet lay people believe them and repeat them to support their belief in evolution. What's worse though – far worse, in fact – is the coordinated effort within the scientific community to squelch any research that might challenge evolution.

Since evolution is not real, it really has no impact on any part of science. Evolutionary biologists talk a lot about evolution and hash out their theory in peer reviewed papers but none of their work has anything to do with science. All other scientists are able to do their work just fine without ever thinking about evolution. If everything we think we know about evolution turned out to be wrong, no one else would change a single thing about the research they're doing right now. It makes me a little curious about why they so zealously defend a theory that contributes so little to science.

The first reason is because they have a commitment to naturalism. Scientific American admits to a natural bias. In an article containing 15 half-truths and strawmen aimed at confusing the public, they said this:

A central tenet of modern science is methodological naturalism—it seeks to explain the universe purely in terms of observed or testable natural mechanisms.

You'll have to ignore the irony for a moment – like, how can I observe or test this tenet of science? My point in quoting this is to show how mainstream science has disqualified, a priori, a miraculous creation as a possible explanation of the universe. Not because they've carefully studied the evidence for creation and are more persuaded by the arguments for evolution. No, it's because of their tenet – an opinion, belief, or principle that is held as absolute truth – that says they will only ever consider a natural explanation for anything.

Ben Stein made a movie several years ago called, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, where he detailed some of the systematic discrimination in the scientific community against creationists and proponents of Intelligent Design. This has always been the case and I've observed it for decades.

From one Answers in Genesis article, we find the following quote:

In the summer of 1985 Humphreys wrote to the journal Science pointing out that openly creationist articles are suppressed by most journals. He asked if Science had “a hidden policy of suppressing creationist letters.” Christine Gilbert, the letters editor, replied and admitted, “It is true that we are not likely to publish creationist letters.”

In 2004, Smithsonian editor, Richard Sternberg dared to allow a paper favoring intelligent design to be published. In his account of the “controversy” he said, Because Dr. Meyer’s article presented scientific evidence for intelligent design in biology, I faced retaliation, defamation, harassment, and a hostile work environment at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History that was designed to force me out as a Research Associate there. These actions were taken by federal government employees acting in concert with an outside advocacy group, the National Center for Science Education. Efforts were also made to get me fired from my job as a staff scientist at the National Center for Biotechnology Information.

Very early in my blogging career, I wrote about the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution firing a researcher solely because he was a creationist. In a Boston.com article about the case, Woods Hole, studies how aquatic animals respond to chemical contaminants by examining '. . . mechanisms from a comparative/evolutionary perspective.' Did you catch that? “from an evolutionary perspective.” Anyway, Hahn, the senior scientist as Woods Hole is quoted as saying, This position is incompatible with the work as proposed to NIH and with my own vision of how it should be carried out and interpreted. In other words, Woods Hole only ever considers the evidence from an evolutionary perspective and is not interested in hiring someone who interprets the evidence any other way.

Just recently, Bob Enyart, a radio talk-show host and creationist, offered Jack Horner, a paleontologist, a $20,000 grant if Horner would just give permission to test a t-rex fossil for carbon-14. After much hemming and hawing, Horner refused saying, Your group is a group of creationists and... and... and... the spin they could get off of it, doing it, is not gonna help us.

I've heard a thousand times that science goes wherever the evidence leads. Perhaps I should add that to my list of lies evolutionists tell. They refuse to consider any evidence that goes against their precious theory. They organize groups like NCSE to make sure nothing critical of evolution is ever spoken in public schools. If a teacher so much as says, “we should critically examine evolution,” he is branded a creationists and slapped with a lawsuit. Any scientist who is even suspected of being sympathetic to creationism is at risk of losing his job. Is it a conspiracy? Well, if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then maybe it is a duck.