The Jesuit theologian Edward T. Oakes engaged in a illuminating if complicated exchange over evolutionary science in the journal First Things several years ago. Here is the book review that sparked this controversy:

http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0101/reviews/oakes.html

And here is the correspondence which followed:

http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0104/correspondence-oakes.html

Mr. Coleman requested that I post some links related to specific points on the young-earth model. A few follow:

The earth’s electromagnetic field:
http://www.icr.org/pubs/imp/imp-188.htm
http://www.icr.org/pubs/imp/imp-122.htm

Lord Kelvin’s research:
http://www.icr.org/pubs/imp/imp-016.htm

Helium in the atmosphere:
http://www.icr.org/pubs/imp/imp-143.htm

Moon dust and the age of the solar system: (also deals with nickel)
http://www.icr.org/research/as/drsnelling7.html

Astronomical: (Oort cloud, etc.)
http://www.icr.org/research/df/index.html

The sun:
http://www.icr.org/pubs/imp/imp-276.htm
http://www.icr.org/pubs/imp/imp-082.htm

As to Dr. Ross, my familiarity with his works is limited to some articles from his web site. What would really interest me is the debate that ICR has been trying to arrange with him. Perhaps he’ll eventually relent:
http://www.icr.org/headlines/humphreyshughross.html
http://www.icr.org/headlines/hughrosshumphreys.html
http://www.icr.org/headlines/hughrosshumphreysagain.html

Participants might be interested in the theorizing of Eric Gans. He dismisses creation science, but tries to offer something better in its place. His “Generative Anthropology” starts from a hypothetical originary event that is the simultaneous origin of the human, language, and the sacred. See http://www.anthropoetics.ucla.edu/gaintro.htm.

While this model is situated within the Darwinian model of biological evolution, it also shows that all representational activity descends directly from, and depends on, the “originary scene,” which is structured as a human periphery around a sacred, non-human center. We can model a material, evolutionary time in which God does not play any active role, but our ability to do so is inseparable from our origin before time as language-using human beings in sight of the divine.

Generative Anthropology thus creates a paradox: God theoretically came into being with man some 250,000 years ago, but we depend on the timeless, originary, divine sign to be able to make up such a theory. Generative Anthropology is presented as a secular science of man, but its adoption of deconstructive undecidability makes it as much a Generative Theology as a Generative Anthropology, and the paradox of human time and the eternity of the originary sign is compatible with Augustine’s theme of a God outside of time.

In the right hands, Generative Anthropology is also an effective tool for the analysis of culture, including contemporary events. Prof. Gans’s theory that the primary purpose of culture is to defer intrahuman violence has profound resonance for conservatives. He is much indebted to Rene Girard.

Mr. LeFevre, I will point you to what I have found to be a wonderful resource containing many rebuttals for these sorts of arguments. http://talkorigins.org is a website associated with the talk.origins newsgroup. From the front page:

“The primary reason for this archive’s existence is to provide mainstream scientific responses to the many frequently asked questions (FAQs) that appear in the talk.origins newsgroup and the frequently rebutted assertions of those advocating intelligent design or other creationist pseudosciences.”

Here is a single article the rebuts most of the particular assertions contained in your links:
http://talkorigins.org/faqs/hovind/howgood-dr.html

Here is the page with all of the TalkOrgins Age of the Earth articles:
http://talkorigins.org/origins/faqs-youngearth.html

They are all good, and you can get an idea from the first one of how mainstream science has established the age of the Earth.

Mr. Cella, thank you for the First Things links. I had seen the review, but not the replies. I heard Phillip Johnson speak just after the announcement of the completion of the Human Genome project and got a chance to talk with him later. I do not recall exactly what he said, but you will probably be able to discern my reaction as I still have part of the article that I wrote for my college newspaper afterwards:

“Johnson’s mock biology is clearly in some trouble. It hard not to notice how carefully he skirts the human genome news. He told us how surprised evolutionary biologists have been on finding just how few genes human beings have. (Around 30,000 compared with previous estimates of 100,000. Only twice as many as a flatworm.) Real scientists should never be surprised by new data, no doubt. It must be a real victory for Johnson that creationists have predicted the news for years. Ah, but wait, creationists did not predict it either? It was almost funny watching him grasp for a way to twist this into a defeat for evolutionary theory.

He does not bother referring to the biological explanation that has been presented for the new data: Our individual genes are more complex than those of flatworms, often coding for more than one protein. And, of course, a machine with 10 types of parts is not twice as complex as a machine with only 5 types of parts. It can be orders of magnitudes more complex. After all, adding just one type of part can often increase the complexity of a device by a great deal. Transistors come to mind. This is not to say that each gene codes a new part of the body or anything of the kind, it is simply an expression of how complexity can be generated.

Johnson also completely ignores the more relevant findings about the genome. I had hoped he would at least mention the really amazing news, maybe even claim fraud, but he finds that pretending that the news did not exist worked best. I cannot blame him, since the genome can be downloaded from the internet. What Johnson did not mention - past veiled references - is that all but 300 of the 30,000 genes in the human genome have counterparts in the mouse genome. And those working on the analysis currently predict that when the chimpanzee genome is sequenced, we will find that almost every one of our genes has its counterpart there. I cannot imagine more direct proof of evolution. And it is possible that Johnson could not imagine a more devastating disproof of his theories. Therefore, silence.”

Thanks to Joel LeFevre for the numerous links to ICR papers. It would take a long time to read them all. Reading the two links about the earth’s magnetic field, I have no immediate rebuttal, as the issue was only dealt with in a two paragraph section in Ross’ book, and I will have to search out other sources.

I wonder if Joel has read the single link provided concerning meteoritic dust accumulation on the moon and the earth. It is extremely lengthy, consisting of a chronological exposition of what has been measured and interpreted by scientists at different points in time from the 1950’s through the 1980’s. I had to skim parts of it. I recommend that Joel read the abstract at the top and the two summary and conclusion sections (one for the earth and one for the moon) which state unequivocally that creationist should NOT use these arguments any more. That is the gist of the article.

This confirms one of my original points: A young-earth argument circulates for many years after its refutation, like an urban legend.

Thanks to Thrasymachus for the links. Very enjoyable to peruse. It’s obviously too much to go back and forth on every argument, but we can touch on one or 2.

In the Flood section for instance we read: “Why is there no evidence of a flood in tree ring dating? Tree ring records go back more than 10,000 years, with no evidence of a catastrophe during that time.”

But again, ICR has an interesting take on this question:

http://www.icr.org/pubs/imp/imp-252.htm

There’s a question of premises in a few of the objections. For instance on argument against Noah being able to bring the animals together is that the near proximity of certain animals with others would have been impossible because of predation.

But the Bible teaches that all animals, (and man,) were created to be herbivorous. There is no indication of this changing BEFORE the Flood — it certainly didn’t for man. (The change of certain animals to carnivores/herbivores would of course involve structural changes, but I think God could manage that.) This renders that whole section moot.

There are many interesting questions for which I certainly have no answer, not being a scientist. And I have no problem with seeing them asked — along with others, and seeing possible theories advanced to explain them.

One comment made at the start was laughable: “If the number of popular books written, lectures delivered, and debates staged conferred any degree of truth to an idea, “scientific” creationism would be taught today in every science classroom in America!”

Not. The liberal elite are against any attempt to introduce alternative theories, regardless of whether God is mentioned, using the Establishment Clause as their excuse. We live in an era where, on any number of fronts, “truth is no defense.”

In reply to Mr. Coleman, as I understand it creationists do not assert that young-earth creation can be ‘proven’ in the modern scientific sense. What they state is that NEITHER view can be so proven. Regardless of what model is being used, attempting to assess unobservable, unrepeatable events in the past by the present evidence must involve a speculative approach.

You use a model and you test it in various ways and see if it works or doesn’t work. Some arguments might tend in one direction, and others not.

On your point about the meteoritic dust on the moon, I noted that I had selected that for the reference to nickel in the earth’s crust, found near the beginning. (It was the first that came up.) It is that specific point, in regard to earth’s crust, that I find interesting.

Your point that, “A young-earth argument circulates for many years after its refutation, like an urban legend” is not well taken for several reasons.

First, haven’t evolutionists had to drop old arguments as new data became available? Whatever happened to the old steady-state theory? Why is Nebraska man, touted as a missing link at the Scopes Trial, no longer held up as evidence? (Building a whole fossil around a single tooth was desperate enough, but when it turns out to belong to an extinct pig…) How did National Geographic look after they showed the fossil of the dinosaur bird in 1999, boldly declaring “It’s a missing link, which was exposed as a hoax within a couple months? (That’s even worse than an ‘urban legend.’ To be fair, a small number of evolutionists had expressed doubts, but they were drowned out in all the excitement.)

Would any evolutionist concede that changes in their interpretations of data over time somehow disproves their overall theory? Are there not disagreements within the evolutionary community over such things ‘punctuated equilibrium’? What about the old ‘ontology recapitulates phylogeny’ which is now considered largely discredited among embryologists? Are there no weaknesses in evolutionary theory, such as the conspicuous absense of transitional forms between species?

Look how many scientists today tout the global warming catastrophe scenario, (which ICR rejects,) and how entrenched it is in global politics while ‘heretics’ like Bjorn Lomborg are held up to scorn? Does this ‘prove’ global warming?

Now let’s look at the moon dust quote you refer to:

“Should creationists then continue to use the moon dust as apparent evidence for a young moon, earth and solar system? Clearly, the answer is no. The weight of the evidence as it currently exists shows no inconsistency within the evolutionists’ case, so the burden of proof is squarely on creationists if they want to argue that based on the meteoritic dust the moon is young. Thus it is inexcusable for one creationist writer to recently repeat verbatim an article of his published five years earlier, maintaining that the meteoritic dust is proof that the moon is young in the face of the overwhelming evidence against his arguments. Perhaps any hope of resolving this issue in the creationists’ favour may have to wait for further direct geological investigations and direct measurements to be made by those manning a future lunar surface laboratory, from where scientists could actually collect and measure the dust influx, and investigate the characteristics of the dust in place and its interaction with the regolith and any lunar surface processes… . While there are some unresolved problems with the evolutionists’ case, the moon dust argument, using uniformitarian assumptions to argue against an old age for the moon and the solar system, should for the present not be used by creationists.”

How about that! Creationists are often charged with outright dishonesty in their approach. Here we have a creationists acknowledging frankly that one of the arguments that had been made is not supported by the current state of knowledge and evidence and ought not to be used.

Creationists, like evolutionists, sometimes end up dropping previous arguments. Here a creationist frankly acknowledged, in very forthright terms, such an instance. Perhaps speaking in such frank and honest terms about shortcomings within specific arguments in creation science, (which I would expect along the way,) puts creationists at a disadvantage regardless of how true their overall position is, when opposing a theory misrepresented as fact, but I would hope that’s not the case.

At the very least, no one should accuse them of trying to distort the data to advance their position, as has been not infrequently charged.

I notice that in one of my links, Mr. LeFevre, I sent you to the introduction when I should have sent you to the Contents page. I am sorry about that. You may have wondered what I was talking about. Here is the correct page. It should be far easier to navigate now:

http://talkorigins.org/faqs/hovind/howgood.html

Here is also discussion of the tree ring data which explains some of the problems with the ICR article:

http://talkorigins.org/faqs/hovind/howgood-yea2.html#proof27

Regardless, the tree ring data is confirmed by ice core samples in Greenland which can similarly record yearly rainfall.

As for why scientists believe in an old earth, no media conspiracy theory is necessary. Radiometric dating gives a very good estimate for the age of the Earth and it stacks up well with everything we know about stellar formation and geology. There is a tremendous amount of data out there in support of an old 4.55 billion year old Earth and a universe 3 times that age.

(I notice on preview that you have made another post. I would quickly point out that steady-state is not an evolutionary theory, but a physical one dealing with the universe, not life on Earth. Moreover, Nebraska Man was never a widely accepted primate skeleton, and was not mentioned at the Scopes Trial: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/a_nebraska.html)

Sorry, should have been a space before the closing parenthesis:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/a_nebraska.html

Thanks to Thrasy for the correction, noted also on ICR’s page on this, which had some interesting points:

“John Scopes, on trial for teaching evolution (contrary to Tennessee law), didn’t actually do so until after the charges had been filed. Then he did so in the back seat of a car, just to be sure he had committed the proper crime.

“The newly formed ACLU, supposedly defending Scopes, had in reality recruited him and set the whole thing up. At trial’s end, they asked the jury to convict him, desiring to appeal to a higher court. John Scopes was only a means they used to strike at Christianity and creation. Their goal was to eradicate the influence of Christianity in the public arena.”

As to the arguments entered into the record, though not presented before the jury:

“As we look back, we see that each one of the arguments for evolution are now known to be wrong. Featured prominently were supposed vestigial organs, like the appendix or tonsils, once touted as leftovers from an evolutionary past, but now recognized as functioning. Embryonic recapitulation, the idea that the human fetus goes through various evolutionary stages in the mother’s womb, surfaced, but this whole idea was disproved decades ago.

“Most memorable were the fossil ape-men, but consider the list of evidences: Neanderthal man, known to be fully human; Piltdown man, later discovered to have been due to a fraudulent combination of human skullcap with an ape’s jaw; Java man, consisting of an ape skull and a human femur, found separated by many meters, and later disavowed by its discoverer; and Australopithicus africanus, the skull of an infant ape which typically bore a slight resemblance to a human child’s skull. Not entered into the trial, but aired in the press, was Nebraska man, America’s own ape-man and thus very popular. This fossil consisted of only one tooth, later discovered to be that of a pig.”

http://www.icr.org/pubs/btg-b/btg-080b.htm

Of course, when I learned about this case in school, we were always told that Scopes ‘lost’ the case rather than having pleaded guilty as a strategy for appeal. So it was in the first issue of the Old “Discover” magazine where I first read about the trial as a kid around 1980. “Creationism On the Rise” I vividly remember the title.

As I have since understood it, much was made over the hardcore examination of Mr. Bryan by Mr. Darrow. But this had been part of a deal whereby Mr. Bryan could subsequently return the favor — but that wasn’t permitted to happen. Something about concerns over Mr. Darrow’s safety. How clever. Never heard that part in school either.

If I’m wrong on that one, please do correct.

Nevertheless, in respect of the section above where I had made the misstatement, I think the point still stands. Evolutionists have certainly had to drop and or modify previous arguments over the years, and this never taken as a concession that evolutionary theory on the whole is wrong or that their previous arguments are considered ‘urban legends.’

I think creationists should be allowed the same luxury.

And yes, steady-state isn’t about life on earth. It relates more to things like the Big Bang Theory. A little juxtaposition. ;-)

Thrasy’s other point about ‘media conspiracy’ not being required begs a response too. Whether you think it’s required or not isn’t the point.

I’m sure that a global warming adherent would confidently insist to us that there is overwhelming evidence of it and what it will do to us, etc. And he would dismiss ‘heretics’ like Mr. Lomborg as ignorant and naive. And he would say the same thing about the media.

But the media IS along for the right.

It still remains that for those who want to deny the existence of God, the most comprehensive way of removing any notion of accountability to a transcendent authority, evolution is a very important factor. (Notwithstanding the existence of old-earth creationists or theistic evolutionists.)

Liberals love evolution and what it represents to their view of how human society should or should not be. Evolution is of course an indispensible underpinning of Marxist thought. And those who hate Biblical morality love evolution.

I have myself made a point of separating motive from fact in previous posts I realize. But I wouldn’t discount motive either. Man, overall, hates God and will do away with Him anyway he can.

I think it’s entirely correct to begin with a presumption that mankind is willing to make huge leaps of logic, and place incredible interpretations on observable data, and entertain the most far-fetched notions, and defend them vehemently, if such notions can replace God as Creator.

And Thrasy: “Moreover, Nebraska Man was never a widely accepted primate skeleton”

OK, what about the dinosaur bird and all the hoopla around that? There’s more than one example to be found I’m sure about how utterly desperate evolutionists are to find these ‘missing links,’ and the ease with which even manufactured ‘evidence’ can be received with such eagerness as to be blinding.

It is certainly true that our understanding of biology has improved since the Scopes trial – and it’s the same for other sciences like physics and chemistry, certainly. But I will pick apart this paragraph:

“Most memorable were the fossil ape-men, but consider the list of evidences: Neanderthal man, known to be fully human; Piltdown man, later discovered to have been due to a fraudulent combination of human skullcap with an ape’s jaw; Java man, consisting of an ape skull and a human femur, found separated by many meters, and later disavowed by its discoverer; and Australopithicus africanus, the skull of an infant ape which typically bore a slight resemblance to a human child’s skull. Not entered into the trial, but aired in the press, was Nebraska man, America’s own ape-man and thus very popular. This fossil consisted of only one tooth, later discovered to be that of a pig.”

Neanderthal man is still being argued over on whether or not it represents a separate species. The skeletons certainly differ a great deal from modern humans. Recent DNA tests show that it is probably a separate species. There was a lot of hubbub in news about that, I recall.

Piltdown man was a hoax, but even at the time it was treated with suspicion, being quite different from other, real, fossils.

Java man was reclassified by Dubois as a species related to Gibbons, as you say. However, it is remembered as one of the great mistakes of human anthropology. Since the 1930’s more Homo Erectus fossils have been discovered, and Java man is clearly a Homo Erectus. Lake Turkana boy is an especially complete skeleton whose skullcap matches Java man.
(Here is a picture of Turkana Boy: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/15000.html )

Australopithicus africanus is certainly not an infant ape. Its large brain case and bipedal nature set it apart, for one, not to mention the teeth. Moreover, many examples of Australopithecines have been found since the Scopes Trial, namely “Lucy.” Here is a rather interesting analysis of Creationist arguments on that score:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/a_piths.html

As for the “Dinosaur Bird,” Archaeopteryx, a number of specimens have been discovered:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/archaeopteryx/info.html
Hoyle and company’s claims of forgery are discussed here:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/archaeopteryx/forgery.html
There is really nothing to the allegation.

Mr. LeFevre wrote: “On your point about the meteoritic dust on the moon, I noted that I had selected that for the reference to nickel in the earth’s crust, found near the beginning. (It was the first that came up.) It is that specific point, in regard to earth’s crust, that I find interesting.”

OK. Tell me how the amount of nickel in the earth’s crust is an indicator of the young age of the earth, GIVEN that the article establishes that our best estimates of the influx of meteoritic dust per year to the earth’s surface have been revised downward by several orders of magnitude since the late 1950’s. Using the late 1950’s number combined with an old earth would have produced a seemingly excessive amount of nickel (more than actually exists on earth). Reducing the influx estimate by about a factor of 1000 eliminates that problem. That is why the author of that article never returns to the subject of nickel; after establishing the general point using various other metals, such as osmium, he probably thought it was obvious to the reader that the same logic applied to nickel.

Mr. LeFevre wrote: “Your point that, “A young-earth argument circulates for many years after its refutation, like an urban legend” is not well taken for several reasons.

“First, haven’t evolutionists had to drop old arguments as new data became available? Whatever happened to the old steady-state theory? Why is Nebraska man, touted as a missing link at the Scopes Trial, no longer held up as evidence? “

You seem to be making my point. When the evolutionists embarrass themselves, they stop talking about the “evidence” that has proven to not be evidence. That is probably because they are making their pronouncements in public. Young-earth creationists sometimes continue to repeat discredited arguments, often to audiences that are not aware of the status of the arguments. I have had members of my church excitedly tell me about the human footprints next to dinosaur footprints in Glen Rose, Texas, etc. The distributor of a film about those footprints actually stopped making the film after the whole story was discredited, but the problem is that you cannot keep the story from circulating through a community that basically fears science and therefore does not read contrary viewpoints and thus never finds out that the story has been refuted. As a Christian apologist, my concern is for what that kind of gullibility does for our witness to the world.

Mr. LeFevre wrote: “How did National Geographic look after they showed the fossil of the dinosaur bird in 1999, boldly declaring “It’s a missing link”, which was exposed as a hoax within a couple months? “

They looked like people who had made a big mistake. They also did not keep telling the story for 10 years after it was refuted, did they?

What is the point of your questions? Do you think that I am an evolutionist? I never even believed the original National Geographic story, for technical reasons that I will not outline here.

I am an old-earth creationist who is concerned that Christians have repeatedly believed things that were not explicit in the Bible, but were mere ly possible interpretations of selected verses in the Bible (e.g. geocentrism). As I have pointed out in unrelated political threads, if you claim too much and some of your claims are refuted, you look worse than if you had never made those claims at all. Thus, it behooves us as Christians to be careful when we consider making a public claim. An earth that is only about 10,000 years old is an ill-advised public claim and should not be confused with the central tenets of the faith that we should all confess and defend.

Finally, you quoted from the ICR article: “Thus it is inexcusable for one creationist writer to recently repeat verbatim an article of his published five years earlier, maintaining that the meteoritic dust is proof that the moon is young in the face of the overwhelming evidence against his arguments.”

You then cite this as some great act of honesty. By the ICR writer, yes; by the creationist writer he is criticizing, no. Having been a young earth creationist in my earlier years, with many of their books still in my collection, I can attest that the practice he criticizes is common. It misleads innocent readers, who then repeat outdated and refuted arguments. Your continued citation of the amount of nickel on the earth is an example.

Mr. Coleman writes: “That is why the author of that article never returns to the subject of nickel.” It also explains why I didn’t see any other articles come up on it! ;-)

I stand corrected on that one. I was caught a little flat-footed on this topic. I haven’t read up on it in years. When I mentioned evolution on the previous thread, I hadn’t intended to get into a debate which I’m not qualified for. I mentioned it only in terms of its effect on our society and our degrading morality. On this, we are evidently in agreement.

I agree with you to a large extent as to how and whether claims should be made in Christian witness to the unsaved. And I would not divide with other Christians over things like the age of the earth. What I would contend is that groups like ICR consist of some well-credentialed scientists who have different views than what is currently mainstream, who deserve a fair hearing in open and spirited debate. Currently the liberal class won’t hear of this.

As to the fact that some creationists have cited outdated information. Some, (like me in my nickel) have not kept adequately abreast of the latest news. Others may simply be careless or less than honest. There will always be such people anywhere. I was still learning that ‘ontology recapitulates phylogeny’ in college long after it was discredited. Same difference. ICR rightly condemns such conduct. So do I. So I’ll spend my nickel and have done with it. ;-) BTW, thanks for the note on the footprints. I was never sure what to make of that one.

I was really only making a narrow point here, simply that, yes, certain hypotheses, theories, arguments, will eventually be found not to work. Whether evolutionist or young-earth creationist. If the former still retain the benefit of the doubt, so should the latter. Creationists certainly should try to better organize themselves in ensuring that such information is circulated as needed.

I cite the dinosaur bird only to show how the eagerness of evolutionists to find the missing evidence for their theory can lead to the quick acceptance of data that is materially false, even as they claim that creationists are prone to the same behavior.

“Do you think that I am an evolutionist?”

I’m not one to make hurtful accusations. ;-) I’m just writing in an interesting thread on a topic that is not my forte’, but hoping to learn a little as I go anyway. And I have.

Perhaps Mr. Auster would consider running a thread on Internet routing protocols or something. Then I’d be more in my element. ;-)

Thrasymachus wrote: “As for the “Dinosaur Bird,” Archaeopteryx, a number of specimens have been discovered …”

I believe that Mr. LeFevre was referring to the recent Chinese fossil and the National Geographic fiasco, not to Archaeopteryx. As soon as I read about it, I said, “Well, that it very interesting, but it has nothing to do with modern birds. A short time after this creature existed, the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs also wiped out all creatures bigger than small mammals, and this fossil is far larger than anything that survived that event, so it is a dead end on the family tree of reptiles.”

I thought this was obvious at the time, and I was surprised at how eager evolutionists were to grasp at this weak straw. Even I was surprised by the short lifetime of this heralded fossil, though. I figured I was going to hear about it the rest of my life, logic about body sizes be damned. I will have to agree with Joel that it works that way sometimes with macroevolutionary topics.

Also, while Neandertals are still being argued over as to Linnaean classification, there is very little argument left about the fact that they were an evolutionary dead end, not an ancestor of modern men.

Homo erectus is problematic as a human ancestor. Consider that, in a proposed lineage through an australopithecine, then perhaps Homo habilis and on to Homo erectus and then Homo sapiens, we start with no brow ridges above the eyes, then progress to creatures (Homo erectus) with VERY prominent brow ridges, then suddenly terminate the line with Homo sapiens, sans brow ridges. You might want to try out Ockham’s Razor on that sequence and see what you get.

The whole problem here is that there is really a holdover from the relatively prescientific ideas of the 19th century. If a feature is “primitive” or “brutish”, then it is considered acceptable in a proposed human ancestor. Modern gorillas and some other large primates have prominent brow ridges; this fossil does as well; let’s label it an “ape-man”. The problem is obvious when we get out of this primitive thought pattern and realize that the modern theory has humans (no brow ridges) and other primates (brow ridges) evolving from a common ancestor (no brow ridges). Picturing that hypothetical family tree (whicb I reject anyway, of course, but just for the sake of discussion …), we would expect brow ridges to appear on the ape side of the tree AFTER the split from a common ancestor. Homo erectus then looks like a dead end line with a brow ridge mutation, no more significant to human evolution than Neandertals. This approach requires the brow ridge mutation to happen twice: once on the ape side, and once for Homo erectus. The alternative is to have it happen twice AND be undone at least once. Similar problems can be noted about fossils that were once proposed as human ancestors (because they looked properly brutish) but are now universally deemed irrelevant to our lineage, such as Australopithecus robustus / Australopithecus bosei / Zinjanthropus.

In my opinion, this should be as obvious as the fact that a large heavy-bodied reptile that lived just before the asteroid hit us 60+ million years ago has nothing to do with the lineage of modern birds.

Thank you Mr. Coleman, I did not realize that Mr. LeFevre was referring to Archaeoraptor.

I would like to first point out that the Archaeoraptor fraud was carried out by a Chinese peasant seeking to pretty up a fossil before selling it to a collector. The find was published in the popular press, not in a peer-reviewed journal. The main author was National Geographic’s art editor, not a scientist. Nature and Science both rejected papers describing it. And there was an outcry within days of the National Geographic publication by paleontologists, not Creationists, denouncing National Geographic for publishing the fraud without first checking the facts.

On the other hand, there are numerous real feathered dinosaur finds (which is why National Geographic was receptive to the hoax above), most notably, Sinosauropteryx (1996), Protoarchaeopteryx robusta (1998), and Caudipteryx zou (1998). The dinosaur-bird connection is very well established. These recent finds startlingly bear out the prediction that evolutionists have made ever since discovering the bird Archaeopteryx and noticing its reptillian features missing in modern birds.

As for brow ridges, I will point out that Australopithecus did have substantial brow ridges. Here are some photos so you can compare:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/specimen.html

Perhaps we should look at “Intelligent Design” which might be a little safer. ;-)

What think ye of this? The assertion that there are certain processes or functions that can be reduced to a level of ‘irreducible complexity.’ That down to a certain point all the factors needed to effect such things as sight must be present and that no model can be contrived that would have led to all these factors somehow managing to get there apart from an outside intelligence.

Imagine: nobody had ever seen anything, but there was a need to see. So nature created eyes, 2 of them in our case set next to each other that can even see in 3-D.

I just read an interestig dialogue between an ID advocate and an ACLU rep:

http://www.intelligentdesignnetwork.org/JohnCalvertvACLUTranscript.PDF

Along with a few other interesting sites…

Mr. LeFevre wrote:
“Perhaps Mr. Auster would consider running a thread on Internet routing protocols or something. Then I’d be more in my element.”

I’ve stayed out of this latest round on evolution for much the same reason, but I’ll chime in here with my own view on a few things just for the heck of it:

0) I think that neodarwinian evolutionary theory is crap as science. I’ve read a bunch of stuff that supposedly refutes Michael Behe’s _Darwin’s Black Box_ and Gerald Schroder’s _The Science of God_ but the supposed refutations are manifestly full of holes.

1) I think that the truth is unitive, so _true_ science and _true_ religion are always coherent with each other.

2) I think we are definitely living on an old earth, several billion years old. God doesn’t play tricks. I am not absolutely certain of this, but then there is no absolute certainty in anything. Even my vivid unitive experience of _right now_ (Descartes _cogito_, or what Kant referred to as the “unity of apperception”) could in principle be an illusion. You can’t know _anything at all_ without trusting God. Faith and reason are not separate things.

3) God does, however, play dice. There is this notion out there that if _randomness_ or _indeterminacy_ (two different things) are part of a process that the process cannot have a _purpose_ directed toward a _definite outcome_. I know this to be incorrect as a matter of fact, because I have personally designed and built systems that use random noise generators as inputs and yet produce exactly the results that I have designed them for my very own self. I can’t say how God views those things epistemically, but from a human standpoint it is a trivial matter to produce a definite, planned outcome using a random input.

4) Belief in evolution, even neodarwinian evolution (which I believe is crap as science, recall) is not incompatible with Christianity. Darwinian thought is riddled with logical problems, though, which make it tend toward philosophical naturalism (for example “survival of the fittest” is a tautology - Who are “the fittest”? Why, those that survive, of course).

5) The belief that is incompatible with Christianity is _naturalism_: the belief that immutable laws and randomness, taken in combination and expressed mathematically or linguistically, comprehensively explain _everything_. Naturalism is so obviously, manifestly false (exhibit A: consciousness, love, rational understanding, communication, moral agency, beauty) that only a religiously fundamentalist self-involved moron (exhibit B: Richard Dawkins) could possibly force himself to claim that he believes in it, even though in practice he obviously does not believe in it.

6) The most interesting question to me personally isn’t what we can come to know about the origin and construction of the _hardware_ of life. The most interesting question is what we can learn about the _software_.

7) If we found a 747 on the moon we would rationally conclude that it was a product of intelligent design. Lots of folks have claimed to have refuted Paley’s old argument, but all of the supposed refutations miss the mark because they assume that in order to claim _knowledge_ of something we have to be able to assert _absolute certainty_ (see #2).

8) Just because something was designed, that doesn’t mean that it came off the factory floor in exactly the form you see it in now. A database is designed, but the one at First Data doesn’t look at all as it looked when it came out of the Oracle shrink-wrap.

9) God exists and made us. Nobody has a _rational_ excuse not to know at least that much. “Rational atheism” is ultimately an oxymoron, but human beings do have the freedom to wander around in intellecutal cul-de-sacs that lead nowhere. That is part of our created nature.

It seems this debate is largely between creationists and evolutionists. However, it seems possible to me to address the question of the credibility of Darwin’s theory of natural selection without any reference to religion. While it is interesting to read all the evidences and rebuttals touched on in this thread, it seems to me there is a more fundamental problem with Darwin, as pointed out by the late Australian philosopher David Stove. At Darwin’s time, many had observed the similarity of forms which suggest some sort of connection between species. It was on reading Malthus however, that Darwin got his theory: populations would always be at the limits of the food supply, and hence be under pressure for survival, such that the fittest would survive. Now obviously this has never been true in human history (there have been isolated famines here and there, but the theory requires that there be pressure at all times). It is not enough to say there was pressure at times: the theory requires that for all species at all times there be pressure so as to produce selection. If that is ever not the case with respect to any species at any time, then it might be the case over huge stretches of time of which we have no actual knowledge. It is no theory at all to say that “sometimes there is selection.” So without getting into all the details, it seems to me there is a killer problem right at the start.

I am sorry that I did not reply yesterday, but I have been without an internet connection until now. Although there is a lot of good evidence for evolution, some of the best evidence has been found only lately. When the genomes of different organisms are compared, it turns out that genes are shared just as evolution predicts. We share genes with yeast, bananas, fruit flies, mice, and chimpanzees, all in the manner that evolution predicts. More importantly, organisms never share genes that have evolved after divergence. The mathematical probability of all that having happened by chance is extremely small. God could have created organisms like that, certainly, but I cannot think any reason for Him to fake scientists into believing in evolution.

Matt and Thucydides make similar points which I would like to answer, because they go to the heart of the mechanism of evolution. First Matt claims that survival of the fittest is a truism. This is plainly not so, because the ‘fittest’ are not always the ones that survive. Random chance will often kill off the fittest member of a group. It is only after a sufficient amount of time that the randomness cancels and selection wins out.

Thucydides brings up David Stove, whose paper on evolution I came across while reading other material by him. I believe that I even have a link to it on my website somewhere, though without comments. In answer, it is enough to say that as long some members of a group produce more offspring than others, you have selection. This has been true throughout human history, is still true now, and is almost certainly true of every other organism in existence. Stove’s other points do not impress me, as they are mainly built around misunderstandings that even a basic knowledge of the theory should clear up.

thucydides writes:
“However, it seems possible to me to address the question of the credibility of Darwin’s theory of natural selection without any reference to religion. […] So without getting into all the details, it seems to me there is a killer problem right at the start.”

Agree. There is also the problem that what is meant by Darwinism can’t be pinned down, even when you are talking to the same person. In one sentence he will mean one thing, and then in another he will mean something different, sometimes subtly so, but will draw conclusions as if he meant the same thing. Equivocation of this sort absolutely saturates modern discourse: when one meaning fails, simply plug in a different meaning and continue the argument as if that never occurred.

Conservatives tend to see this as “dishonest”. I think it is often more pathological than that; a disease of the modern mind that allows it to play a shell game with meaning under a discursive cover of consistency. I’ve had too many conversations with people who seemed to genuinely believe their own BS to chalk it up to dishonesty of the ordinary sort, and I remember my own acute “I’m the bad guy?” sense when I discovered it in my own political thought as a lukewarm libertarian.

Some different things that are meant by “Darwinism” or “Evolution”, often shifting around between meanings for a given speaker in a particular conversation:

1) The origin of life is comprehensively explained as a combination of randomness and laws of nature; life therefore has no purpose.

2) Life develops adaptations from one generation to the next.

3) The fittest survive and pass on their characteristics to offspring.

4) Radioactice particles randomly knock loose a base pair on occasion in DNA. The software in DNA uses this as an input in an adaptation algorithm.

5) The process in #4 produces new species.

6) The origin of the software in DNA is comprehensively explained as a the action of randomness and natural laws.

7) The earth is 5-ish billion years old. Prokaryotic life originated about 4.5 billion years ago in an unknown event. Every living body you see today is descended from that original prokaryotic life.

These are all very, very different claims and they are only a sampling of what is meant when someone invokes the word “evolution”.

The basic problem is that the evolution edifice is an attempt to create an ateleological mythology of origins so that naturalists can deny God, or in its milder form can deny the intellectual or political _relevance_ of God. It is quite true that it fails on its own terms, so its followers take on a fundamentalist attitude of denial in the face of contrary evidence. But evolution-qua-evolution can’t be understood without recognizing its status as an attempt to deny the relevance of God, and therefore the _binding authority_ of all of the correlates of God, e.g. clerics, sacraments, scriptures, etc. Evolution represents an attempt to set naturalist explanations off in a uniquely authoritative category of truths trumping all other truths, and thus to elevate the modern day clerics that we call “experts” to the status of final authority.

Some of the minor claims of evolution may well be quite true (#4 for example, and even #7 - the Bible doesn’t specify exactly HOW in detail God made the bodies of Adam and Eve from the dust). But in general the evolution edifice is refutable on scientific terms, on philosophical terms, and on theological terms. If you don’t like how it fails in one of those ways you can always apply one of the others, since it fails independently in each domain.

Well, I am not sure in what sense Thrasymachus is using the term “evolution”. The fact that software running on different platforms shares a great many polymorphisms of the same objects is evidence that the software all came from the same programmer. It is not evidence that there was no programmer.

I sat next to Freeman Dyson at lunch several years ago, and while we didn’t discuss his clay-matrix theory of origins it is clear that the same old divisions are there: are we understanding how God’s creation works, or are we assuming no God, no purpose, no love, no consciousness, etc?

“Survival of the fittest” is a tautology even though Thrasy points out that it is a statistical claim. A statistical tautology is still a tautology: “on average the fittest survive; the fittest are the ones that survive on average.”

Just to be clear, I think that my statement above:

“The earth is 5-ish billion years old. Prokaryotic life originated about 4.5 billion years ago in an unknown event. Every living body you see today is descended from that original prokaryotic life.”

is true, or that the evidence is very strong that it is true. So I don’t tend to get invited to either evolutionist or creationist parties.

Matt, I would make a distinction between the science of evolution, and the philosophies of those who write about it – some of them biologists even. There is the same problem in quantum theory. Quantum mechanics makes a specific set of predictions about the movement of particles. This does not keep certain physicists (and many others) from saying silly things about consciousness and realism based on that.

Accepting #4 and #7 is more or less all of the science of evolution. To be clear, though, I would restate both to make myself understood.

#4) When DNA is randomly altered due to some process such as the one you mention (commonly called ‘mutation’), those changes in DNA are passed down to offspring. Changes which help offspring survive are preserved, changes that do not are culled out.

#7) The earth is 5-ish billion years old. Prokaryotic life originated about 4.5 billion years ago in an unknown event. Every living body you see today is descended from that original prokaryotic life – through the natural means of statement #4.

So if Matt accepts both of those as I have stated them (somewhat altered I know), I would consider him at least a provisional supporter of evolution. And anyone who claims that evolution says something substantially different than those two statements is not talking about the science of evolution.

Moreover, as Matt says, a similarity between DNA in different species does not disprove a designer. Which is why the divergence I mentioned was my main point. For example, from a hypothesis of design, one could expect that a bat, being a flying creature and somewhat similar in form to both birds and mammals, would share the genes of similar mammals, but also those of birds to a greater extent than other mammals. According to an evolution hypothesis, a bat would share at maximum only the number of genes that the last common ancestor of both birds and mammals had. In the last several decades, the evolution hypothesis has been supported overwhelmingly. Again, it is possible that a Creator could create species in such a way that the divergence evidence is there, but there appears to be no reason for Him to do so.

And finally, I accept Matt’s amended statement about the Survival of the Fittest. It is a tautology – something which is not based on other statements but is true in and of itself. In this instance, a definition of terms.

Well, I think one has to adopt random mutation and genetic transfer from surviving parent to child as the ONLY mechanism of change in order to be an evolutionist. A neo-Darwinian evolutionist believes that the ONLY AND SUFFICIENT explanation of how the prokaryotic single-celled creatures of 4 billion years ago became modern human beings and all the other creatures around us is random mutation and natural selection, leaving only that initial single-celled life form as a reluctantly acknowledged mystery. Now it is true that a neo-Darwinist may shy away from that claim expressed so starkly; but as a matter of practice RM/NS will be considered the only mechanism we know about, and therefore as the de-facto comprehesive explanation.

Now RM/NS may well be a part of the mechanism of physical life in my view, just as a gaussian noise generator can be part of the mechanism in a music synthesizer, which is itself part of the mechanism used in producing a particular rendition of Mozart’s Requiem. The main difference is in what exactly is purported to be explained, and the degree to which the theory is asserted to explain it. Random mutation and natural selection explain just about nothing about life, as far as the actual evidence I am aware of is concerned. They don’t even explain speciation. To the extent they “explain” life mechanisms at all it is to no more an extent than the theory of a vibrating string “explains” Mozart. And indeed, by evolutionary theory RM/NS _does_ explain Mozart’s Requiem.

So no, I’m not really a Darwinist because while Darwinism may well explain some small and rather insignificant things, it most certainly does not explain things to the degree that it claims to. One might as well say that one who supported the Iraq war is thereby a neocon ;-) .

Oh, and the QM analogy is a good one. QM actually _does_ very nearly comprehensively explain small-scale phenomena. Evolution most assuriedly does NOT explain its domain - all of the physical aspects of life and its development into different species, etc - in that same comprehensively accurate and testable way. So _as science_ QM is quite respectable and authoritative, while _as science_ neo-Darwinism is crap. All in my humble opinion, of course!

Matt, you would be surprised about what we do not know about Quantum Mechanics (actually Quantum Field Theory nowadays). Even for modeling atoms, there is no Hamiltonian that can be used to describe the bigger ones. Part of that is mathematical complexity, but another part is that we do not yet exactly understand the weak and strong nuclear forces. But combined with a bit of empirical data, we do know a lot, I will grant you. (You can tell that this is far more my subject than evolution is.)

And no, there is no reason to shy away from your claim “that the ONLY AND SUFFICIENT explanation of how the prokaryotic single-celled creatures of 4 billion years ago became modern human beings and all the other creatures around us is random mutation and natural selection, leaving only that initial single-celled life form as a reluctantly acknowledged mystery.” There are theories about the last bit, though nothing testable about abiogenesis as yet. It is certainly not beyond the Creator to have engineered His universe to give rise to self-replicating molecular structures through natural law – indeed, in Medieval times, the pious (falsely) thought that maggots self-generated in much the same way.

Now, I personally think that speciation is well-explained by evolution, as are many other things. If you would like to hear my understanding of the mechanism of speciation, I would be happy to oblige. I would first like to hear your definition of speciation, as my own is “a separation of one population into two non-interbreeding sections.”

Thrasy’s position is that as long as some members of a group have more offspring that others, there is natural selection. But that is not what Darwin’s theory is. Most species have litters of an average fixed size. Most humans have about 2 children. It would be impossible to show that those who have more or fewer differ in fitness. Stove’s point is that what Darwin contributed that was significant was the explanation that pressure on population produced selection. If there is no pressure, there is no selection, and no mechanism to explain the origin of species. At this point, the idea of evolution simply becomes a matter of faith, not of science, and those committed to the materialist point of view cannot admit this. The idea of evolution seems highly plausible, it explains a lot, but we are left with no theory to explain how or if it occurred.

Thrasy says a tautology is something that is true in itself. Not so. It is a statement that purports to say “A, therefore B,” but B is really nothing more than a paraphrase of A, so it truly says, “A, therefore A.” A tautology is a statement that purports to prove something, but does nothing more than restate the premise in a different form. Survival of fittest is a tautology if it is based on nothing more than a showing that something survived.

Thucydides, none of that matters. Even a tiny exception is enough for selection.

For example, imagine a population where all members have exactly two offspring (two per couple – no cheating ever occurs – no untimely death). In this case there could be no selection.

But now, let us imagine that just one member of the population had a version of a gene that causes a twin or triplet birth once out of every 2 births. When two parents have this gene, it is inevitably passed on, when one has it, there is a half chance.

Eventually, the twin gene would swamp out the normal gene. That is selection.

In modern human populations, there are many genes being acted on. Just from my personal acquaintances, I know some families which have no children and never will. I know one family that has four children, another that has five, and another that has seven. The family which I come from had three. In some cases – certainly that of one of the families with no children – that is genes. As long as there are genes that code for strength, beauty, intelligence, impulsiveness – and a million other things – those genes will be acted on by selection. The random factors cancel out over time – for every strong, brilliant, Uncle Harry who gets hit by a bus before having children, there will by a stupid, weak, Cousin Ted that gets sucked into a jet engine. Over time, the genes win out.

As for the definition of tautology, I come to that from a mathematical background. In logic, a tautology would be something like: “Either it will rain today or it will not.” That statement is always true, no matter whether it rains or not. Regardless, as I told Matt, being fitter means being more capable of survival – it does not mean that an organism necessarily survives. Chance is always a factor. In fact, were a meteor to wipe out all life on Earth tomorrow, we could still say some organisms were fitter than others, even though nothing survived. Matt’s amended statement had a closer appearance to a tautology, but I will still ask that it be viewed as a definition.

Thrasymachus wrote:
“It is certainly not beyond the Creator to have engineered His universe to give rise to self-replicating molecular structures through natural law – indeed, in Medieval times, the pious (falsely) thought that maggots self-generated in much the same way.”

Indeed, I have no problem with it at all as a theological matter. God quite obviously DOES use natural laws and ontological randomness for SOME purposes, so who am I to say to what degree He can use them and where?

For speciation I would take “cause a reptile to become a bird” or something like that; or even a reasonable explanation for how the prokaryotes became the Cambrian fossils, frankly. White moths to black, no. Horse and donkey to mule, even if it could breed, would be a mechnism other than RM/NS. The fact that RM/NS might usefully explain what happens to some bacteria in response to antibiotics, or something like that, only tranforms it into an adequate story about everything with some really, really creative storytelling.

Of course “speciation” is one of the right things to try to pin down, because once we’ve defined it and pinned it down we can wave our hands and say “it all happened this way”. So it ought to be ambitious enough to warrant the explanatory leap.

Does RM/NS happen, and explain some phenomena? Well, yes it certainly seems to. I’ve written computer programs that do similar successive approximations for some things. Is the idea that it is an adequate explanation in itself of all of life from the prokaryotes to now a mite optimistic given the data? Yep.

I can imagine some alien scientist “explaining” a computer by the fact that a crystal drives an electrical signal used as a clock. Do you find the mechanism comprehensively everywhere? Yes (much more so than RM/NS within physical life). Does than mean “an electrical signal toggles as a clock” _explains_ all of digital electronics? Uh, no. Don’t try to write that as a way of testing out of an electronics degree.

So again, the issue isn’t whether RM/NS occurs at all. The issue is what observing its occurrence _explains_. The answer to that is, as far as I can tell, not much. It is like explaining a computer by saying “it works by plugging it into the wall socket”. Is that an explanation of sorts? Sure. Is it an _adequate account_? Uh, no.

The point about “survival of the fittest” being a tautology is that it cannot be used to select one theory as more accurate than another. It is an unfalsifiable tautology precisely because “fittest” and “survived” mean the same thing. Whether one survived because of God’s grace, or God’s whimsy, or because of the right DNA doesn’t come into it. Saying that Darwinism is the theory that asserts the survival of the fittest is no different from saying that Darwinism is the theory that A=A. The fact that it is “survival of the fittest population” rather than “survival of the fittest individual” doesn’t make it less of a tautology and more of a definition, it seems to me.

Finally, shame on you for using the word “Hamiltonian” in the mathematical sense on a political site! Heisenberg just got shot by Aaron Burr.

In science, it is probably best to approach it with a lot of humility. It appears there is a 99.99% probability the laws of natural selection will never be discovered. But I also did not know a kind of order can be found in chaos until I read Chaos. Nor did I know, before reading Taming of the Atom, that an electron can be in two places at the same time. Nor did I know one could travel into the future until I studied the fundamentals of Relativity Theory.

Last time I noticed, direct evidence of life in the form of a microfossil was at 3.8 billion years. The evidence now indicates 4.5 billion? This must be a mathematical or statistical extrapolation? I am intrigued by the new date.

Thrasymachus wrote: “As for brow ridges, I will point out that Australopithecus did have substantial brow ridges.”

First, I will apologize in advance for the length of this posting, because this discussion is technical, and things that have been said long ago by eminent paleontologists, such as the Leakeys, are presently being ignored and forgotten, and must be restated.

Let me clarify what I meant by my previous posting. I was not saying that australopithecines had no brow ridges; in fact, if you reexamine what I wrote, I mentioned that the more apelike australopithecines, with heavy brow ridges, have been read out of the human lineage over time because they were so ape-like, e.g. robustus, bosei, etc.

Here is the point: If we were living in the early days just after Darwin wrote, we would have almost no fossils to use as data. We would have modern humans and modern apes/gorillas/chimps, etc. If we then found a fossil, e.g. Neandertals, that had some characteristics that seemed more ape-like than the corresponding human features, we would be tempted to declare it an “ape-man” that was an ancestor of man. This, in fact, is what happened repeatedly throughout the century after Darwin.

After we have collected many fossils of premodern apes and we think we have reached the point of a common ancestor, either the branching point in the family tree or just before that branching point, then we have a much clearer picture of what to expect in the human lineage. For example, Louis Leakey pointed out long ago that Miocene era apes, such as Proconsul about 20 million years ago, were very much like humans in several characteristics, and very unlike apes in those same characteristics, namely ratio of arm length to leg length, no or almost no brow ridges, and the absence of the “simian shelf”, a reinforcing bone that crosses from one lower jaw bone to the lower jaw bone on the other side. Humans also have a low ratio of arm length to leg length, no prominent brow ridges, and no simian shelf, while the converse is true of all modern apes. (There are plenty of characteristics related to bipedalism and brain size and structure in which a Proconsul would be much unlike a human and very like a modern ape.)

Leakey’s point was that we need to get past the 19th century instinct of declaring every attribute of MODERN apes to be a likely attribute of the hominid ancestors of man, because it appears that our (supposed) common ancestors did not have some of these attributes. If Proconsul did NOT have a high ratio of arm length to leg length, and we find an australopithecine that seems to be moving in the direction of modern apes in this regard, then his conclusion was that this australopithecine was in the lineage of modern apes but not in the lineage of humans. Hence, he eventually rejected ALL australopithecines as being part of the human ancestry, because each new fossil species discovered, and measured, suffered from one or more of these problems (brow ridges indicating it is on the ape side of the human-ape branch, or limb ratios, or a simian shelf). Other paleontologists agreed and disagreed with Leakey, but I have never seen any convincing rebuttal.

When we find a “hominid” fossil with a developing simian shelf, we either conclude that it was not part of the human lineage, or else we had to lose that characteristic (apply Ockham’s Razor here) later. If brow ridges develop that Proconsul and other Miocene-era apes lacked, and which humans lack, ditto. If the arm/leg ratio gets higher than both Proconsul and modern humans, then the development has to be reversed later in order to keep that fossil in the human lineage. This seemed illogical and unlikely to the Leakeys (Louis, Mary, and their son Richard) and to me as well. Rather, he proposed that either australopithecines were a dead end, or perhaps some species became an ancestor of modern apes and other species were dead ends. In that regard, some of the attributes that so excite the pro-australopithecine crowd, such as almost-bipedal features, made the same species look like a dead end to Leakey; either they lost the bipedalism as they developed into modern apes, or they lost several other features as they developed into humans. He chose the third, less convoluted alternative: they never found their lasting niche and died out. He was especially critical of those scientists who did not even acknowledge the reversals and convolutions that their proposed human ancestors implicitly introduced, because these scientists were fixated on the 19th century notion of “ape-like characteristics imply ape-man status”, or “halfway between MODERN ape and MODERN human means it occupies a certain point in the COMMON ancestry.”

Great examples of that, by the way, are found on the talk.origins web page to which you referred me. Clicking around on the various australopithecine pages, you see many comparisons to modern apes and modern humans, e.g. the pelvic bones comparison pages. The lateral comparison across the leaves of the family tree are irrelevant and scientifically primitive.

If you choose the convoluted alternative, in which attributes appear only to disappear soon thereafter, you have to explain why ADVANTAGEOUS developments should disappear over time. Brow ridges are an aid to long distance vision. If your line never happens to benefit from that mutation, then that would explain why your kind does not have them; but once you have them, why get rid of them? A simian shelf provides advantageous jaw strength. To a lesser extent, so does the human chin, which results from a changed jaw bone shape that is stronger for chewing, biting off food, etc. Proconsul had neither. Shall we believe that the BETTER adaptation for jaw strength (the simian shelf) evolved in the human lineage, then disappeared, then the LESSER adaptation (the chin) evolved later to replace it?

Again, sorry for the length of this post.

I remember really enjoying the book _Bones of Contention_ by Roger Lewin (not the creationist book of the same name, I haven’t read that one). Few topics are at the same time as sociologically interesting and as scientifically interesting as Darwinism in all of its facets. Also _Sudden Origins_ by Jeffrey Schwartz was a page-turner.

My own view of things is largely summed up in Gerald Shroeder’s _The Science of God_. If you read only one book in your life on the relation between science, religion, and truth it ought to be that one.

Thrasy, I believe you are not properly defining tautology. It comes from to auto, Greek meaning “the same thing.” “It will rain today or it won’t” is not a tautology though it is a banally true statement. “Survival of the fittest” is, if it says nothing more than “these survived, therefore they were the most fit to survive.” I don’t believe I got my point across: before Darwin, many people saw the similarity of forms, it was only when Darwin (and Wallace) read Malthus that they found an explanation - natural selection caused by constant pressure on survival by limitation of food supply. This is a general theory to account for origin of species. If it is untrue anywhere, it is untrue period. Let us concede it may be true for fish, plants, etc. It pretty clearly has never been true for humans. If there is no real pressure, we have no issue of fitness and no natural selection. Variations are fitter for survival only by some measure of “fit for what purpose.” Mere random variation results in nothing, unless we have some standard of fitness. Finally, note that most people we would admire have few or no children (in music, Beethoven, Mozart; Bach was an exception). Or will we now consider poorer, less intelligent people who have more children as therefore being “fittest?”

It seems the answer to Thucydidesm’s last question is possibly yes. But since we can never understand natural selection (unless maybe if humans live for several hundred thousand years and have species to observe) we can’t answer the question.

On the matter of natural selection, there is another name that is not often mentioned, that of Edward Blythe. From one ICR article:

———————————————
According to Loren C. Eiseley, Benjamin Franklin Professor of Anthropology and the History of Science at the University of Pennsylvania before his death, “the leading tenets of Darwin’s work — the struggle for existence, variation, natural selection, and sexual selection — are all fully expressed” in a paper written by creationist Edward Blyth in 1835. Unlike Darwin, however, Blyth saw natural selection as a preserving factor rather than as “a potentially liberalizing” one. According to this under-appreciated naturalist, the conserving principle was “intended by Providence to keep up the typical qualities of a species.” Atypical variations, to use Eiseley’s words, led to the animal’s “discovery and destruction.”

On the same page, Eiseley also affirmed that “Darwin made unacknowledged use of Blyth’s work.”

Editor Kenneth Heuer concluded, “this is Eiseley’s discovery.” Darwin had “failed to acknowledge his obligation to Blyth.” He did acknowledge others (and even Blyth peripherally), but, as Eiseley demonstrates persuasively, Darwin for some reason chose not to credit creationist Blyth with the key element in his theory — natural selection.

http://www.icr.org/pubs/imp/imp-283.htm

I have my own, synthetic theory of evolution that I wrote in the 1980s. Perhaps I will post it at some point.

My internet connection has been down again, and seeing all the posts written here leaves me feeling somewhat overwhelmed. To answer every point would take several pages — and probably be unpersuasive due to length — so instead I will try to answer some main points quickly.

Matt, paleontology reveals quite a lot about the progression from dinosaurs to birds — especially due to the feathered dinosaur discoveries of the past several years. For a readable introduction about what is known, and theorized, about the progression to the Cambrian fossils, I would recommend Fortey’s book “Life” which has a description which would probably interest you.

Since you have used the analogy of computers, I will use it also. Understanding life without understanding evolution is like understanding a computer without Maxwell’s laws. Sure, the laws do not tell you much immediately, but they are the basis for everything a computer does. And there is no better way to explain the genetic information content of organisms (their DNA) than evolution.

Mr. Coleman, I would suggest that any primate species that has a large brain and walks on two legs is probably at least a side branch to the human line.

As for tautologies, I pulled my earlier example from my basic concepts of mathematics textbook. Regardless, I think anyone seriously advocating the idea that the concept of natural selection is fallacious is buried in a logical morass. For example, attempt to explain the phenomenon of differing disease resistance between separate populations without it.

Thucydides, I must again point out that the concept of selection which you have advocated is fallacious. Anything which leaves one individual with more descendants than another due to genes is selection. This can be food shortages, sexual competition, or any number of things. And remember that ‘descendants’ is not just defined as children, but will also include children’s children and so on.

Thrasy writes:
“Matt, paleontology reveals quite a lot about the progression from dinosaurs to birds — especially due to the feathered dinosaur discoveries of the past several years.”

Paleontology reveals absolutely nothing about the role of random mutation and natural selection in that progression, though. It is simply assumed - without any evidence whatsoever - that that is the mechanism. Fossils exist, and point toward a lot of phenotypical changes in the composition of the biosphere. But the assertion that RM/NS is involved mechanically in whatever caused the different sorts of fossils to appear in different ages is just that: a bald-faced assertion. There is no evidence whatsoever directly tying the putative mechanism to the facts, as far as I can tell.

(Incidentally, the novel “Darwin’s Radio” tells a naturalistic story that doesn’t involve random mutation at all. An interesting read, and no more fictional than the one considered nonfiction. The bottom line is that Darwinists don’t want to admit the extent of our ignorance).

“Understanding life without understanding evolution is like understanding a computer without Maxwell’s laws.”

If speciation via RM/NS were as pervasive as Maxwell’s laws I would think the hundreds of thousands of scientists with hammers looking everywhere for that nail for centuries would have turned up more nails. I don’t rule it out as a possibility, mind you, but it seems pretty implausible after such relentless pursuit and unmitigated failure.

“…I think anyone seriously advocating the idea that the concept of natural selection is fallacious is buried in a logical morass.”

I never said that natural selection was a tautology. My original assertion was that “survival of the fittest” is always a tautology, which it is. “Selection” may or may not be logically problemmatic depending on how it is used.

The mark of a falsifiable discriminand is that it can decide between one theory and another. Perhaps if Thrasy were to show us what a reasonable theory that did NOT involve natural selection would look like we can conclude that it is a falsifiable discriminand that doesn’t assume the conclusion or equivocate. The fact that a theory that selects descendents involves natural selection might be tautological and it might not; even if a not-tautological version of it exists there is a great deal of equivocation to the tautological version.

There is this notion in the air that if one can show a single rational application of a concept that that vindicates the concept in all of its applications. Human beings, especially the modern evolved type, are far better at equivocation than that implies.

Matt, I am confused by what you mean. You say “it seems pretty implausible after such relentless pursuit and unmitigated failure.” Fossils again and again show a clear picture of gradual change. Genetics show exactly the branching pattern evolution predicts. Living species show the clear similarities that evolution predicts.

Where do you see failure exactly? Maybe you could point out evidence does not conform to the theory, or maybe a theory that explains the evidence even better. Lacking that, evolution is an extraordinarily successful theory.

Thrasy writes that I have a fallacious view of selection. But I do not deny that there is selection, only that Darwin’s version of it, namely pressure on food supply, is untrue in the case of humans, and probably many other species as well. Clearly there is large variability among and within species, and instances in which new species appear. Before Darwin, this was ascribed to God. Darwin sought a more satisfactory rational explanation. His problem was that there was no explanation of why all the variations simply didn’t persist forever, barring accident. The answer was that pressure (in his case, from Malthus’s theories) on food supply would force a competition and result in a survival of only those who had the fittest variations, and these would eventually differentiate to the point that they would constitute new species. Now if you remove ruthless competition for survival, what is left? There is no longer any explanation for new species. You seem to say that any sort of difference in adaptability in an environment with no ruthless competition, and one that is presumably constantly changing, will eventually produce the same effect, but why should it? At the very least, you have watered down Darwin to pretty thin stuff, if not discarded him altogether. The whole excitement caused by Darwin was from his putting forth an explanation that seemed to solidly explain, indeed make necessary, the appearance of new species. If we show that for certain species, such as man, there is no ruthless competition, but only a chance that some variations might persist more than others, but with no reference to any specific environmental condition that we can point out, we are not left with much. That said, I do believe the theory to explain much, at least where such competition exists, but I believe we are left with a situation wholly unsatisfactory to the rationalists ( among whom I count myself ) - the origin of species has become a matter only of faith, differing only in details from traditional religious perspectives.

Thrasy writes:
“Fossils again and again show a clear picture of gradual change.”

1) No, they don’t. See “Sudden Origins” referenced above (written by a Darwinist) or anything by Stephen Jay Gould (also a darwinist).

2) “Gradual change” isn’t evolution. “Descent with modificatoin” isn’t evolution. Evolution is the claim that random genetic mutation combined with natural selection comprehensively explains the fossil record from the prokaryotes until now. I am not aware of any evidence whatsoever of _that specific mechanism_ anywhere in the fossil record. It is simply assumed.

Has Thrasy read Michael Behe’s book _Darwin’s Black Box_?

“Genetics show exactly the branching pattern evolution predicts.”

Would any apparent branching pattern whatsoever among fossils that have similarities constitute evidence for what Thrasy means by “evolution”? What sorts of branching patters and similarities would weigh against the neo-Darwinian mechanism?

“Maybe you could point out evidence does not conform to the theory, or maybe a theory that explains the evidence even better. Lacking that, evolution is an extraordinarily successful theory.”

I could be wrong, but Thrasy seems to be adhering to a philosophy of science in which any explanation whatsoever, even if there is no evidence for it, is _more true_ than no explanation at all. That is in fact the central fallacy of neo-Darwinism.

Francis Crick, Nobel Prize winning co-discover of the DNA double-helix and an avowed atheist, has said that he thinks that life was planted on Earth deliberately by extraterrestrials (i.e. through _directed transpermia_). He says this because there is no good earth-centric naturalist explanation for life’s origins and the development of the mechanisms of change within the biosphere; and unlike most naturalists Crick doesn’t find convincing the notion that any naturalist explanation is better than no explanation.

I’ll give Thrasy a theory that has just as much evidence in the fossil record as neo-Darwinism. Pink Unicorns came to earth 4 billion years ago from another planet. They engineered the first prokaryotes and put software inside them that was smart enough to terraform the earth. The prokaryotes spent 3.5 billion years tranforming the earth’s atmosphere to be oxygen rich, at which point the sofware started up the multicellular subroutines and produced the Cambrian body plans. (Anyway, you get the idea).

I’ll give you yet another theory. God created the universe in such a way that after a sufficient amount of time the stardust would coagulate in such a way as to produce and adapt life with some mechanism that has nothing to do with random mutation and natural selection, but rather is a self-organizing mathematical property (a la Stuart Kaufmann) that arises from the way molecules form. Speciation isn’t caused by random mutations at all, but in fact arises from some little understood mathematical properties of protien folding (we can’t know the feasibility of this, because on present-day computers if we took the entire lifetime of the universe we still couldn’t simulate a protein folding operation that takes one second to occur in nature).

The pink unicorn theory, the mathematical inevitability theory, and the random mutation/natural selection theories are all supported by the exact same amount of fossil evidence: that is, none. In each case they are simply assumed to be true.

Thucydides, no species can continue to grow at its maximum rate for more than a few generations. There really is not enough food for that. Bunnies, I believe, are the classical example.

Here is a thought experiment that I would like you to try. Take humans, which you keep bringing up. Look at their rate of growth in the twentieth century. Calculate what the population would be if that rate of growth had been the rate of growth from 900 A.D. to 1900 A.D.

Now look for explanations of the increased growth in world population experienced in the twentieth century.

Matt, I have read Gould and you are mischaracterizing him if you claim that fossils never show a picture of gradual change. They do. Again and again. Follow this link:
http://talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-transitional.html

Here is a discussion of Gould’s Punctuated Equilibria:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/punc-eq.html

I do not advocate “any explanation whatsoever, even if there is no evidence for it, is _more true_ than no explanation at all.” As I have said there is an astounding amount of evidence for evolution. Here is some more:
http://talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/

I have already answered the question on branching patterns when I talked about bats earlier on this page. Also look at the above link for some better discussions.

Your theories all add complexity without any added explanatory content. They are more in the character of conspiracy theory than scientific theory. I would point out the similarity between your Pink Unicorn theory and the Global Planetarium theory of astronomy. (There are not really stars. The universe is actually the size of the solar system, and everything else is a huge lights show meant to trick us.)

Thrasy, the article you linked to states outright that the fossil evidence for common descent doesn’t implicate any mechanism whatsoever. Precisely, I say.

Francis Crick - atheist and Nobel winning discoverer of DNA - seemed to think directed panspermia is a reasonable alternate theory, so I’m not exactly out among the kooks. It isn’t a conspiracy theory any more than a theory of origins for the 747 is a conspiracy theory. If Ockham’s Razor is made into a religion then the only viable theory of anything is “Om”. Ockham’s Razor is supposed to apply to selection of testable, falsifiable and sufficiently explanatory theories.

(Incidentally, when Gould published his Punk Eek theory some of his colleagues referred to it as “evolution by jerks”. Classic.)

Matt, the fossil evidence conforms to the predictions of evolution. If the fossil evidence were all we had, you might be correct about the possibility of other theories. But as I said more than once before, it is just one piece of evidence among many others.

I am sorry, I did not mean to mean to refer to panspermia with the others. (Though I do consider it crackpottery). I have been trying to keep my posts short, and I am cutting out a lot. Panspermia is simply not a theory that has anything to do with evolution, which is a theory of descent, not ultimate origins.

I take it that you were unmoved by the places in the fossil record that are very complete?

Thrasy: I am already a believer in descent with modification (like Behe and Schroeder), so naturally I am unmoved by arguments either way over the fossil corpus. What is relevant is whether we know anything definitive about mechanisms. It appears to me that we do not. I am not a believer in RM/NS as a reasonable explanation of the sufficient mechanism of descent with modification. As far as mechanism goes, I think science is more or less comprehensively ignorant: RM/NS is no more or less known to be involved than directed panspermia, or something like Kaufman’s emergent complexity, or pink unicorns. Intuitively DNA looks quite a bit more like intelligent software (and wildly innovative hardware) to me than like an accident. If we found a 747 on the moon we would conclude that it was a purposeful product of agency, quite rationally and indeed consistently with Ockham’s Razor. That provisional conclusion can only be avoided by assuming it away.

I suppose I ought to address this one directly:

“Panspermia is simply not a theory that has anything to do with evolution, which is a theory of descent, not ultimate origins.”

Darwinism cannot be separated from the problem of ultimate origins, any more than a theory of how the First Data database evolves can be separated from theories about software programming, or a physical theory can be constructed with no notion of the forces and objects in nature. You might be able to predict (with limited certainty) such mundane things as how much storage space will be needed by the database, knowing nothing about software, by observing its behaviors; but you can’t _explain_ it.

Let me put it yet another way: saying that Darwinism explains the composition of the biosphere is like saying that thermodynamics explains Microsoft Windows. Darwinists act as though a major explanatory gap has been bridged, a wildly successful theory constructed and verified, etc. It hasn’t though. The emperor has no clothes.

May I recommend that anyone who is interested in the “how” of the evolution of life-forms read “God Speaks,” by Meher Baba. Baba explains how evolution is a matter of the unfolding of the consciousness of the soul. It is driven by the soul’s desire to know itself, and ultimately to know God. And so the soul takes on increasingly complex forms, from gases to stone to vegetable to lower animals to higher animals, gaining a larger and larger sense of who it is. In the human form, physical evolution is complete, because now all the organs of consciousness exist with which the soul can know God. But there’s a catch. In the eons of evolution the soul has taken on all the impressions of animal and human life; it experiences these impressions instead of experiencing God. And so now begins the involution of consciousness, ridding the soul of the lower, separative impressions of anger, fear, greed and lust, until it comes to see God.

You don’t have to accept all the details of this scheme to appreciate the basic idea of it: evolution is the unfolding of a potential which is there from the beginning in God, but more and more complex physical forms are needed to gain this experience, and so the evolution of consciousness, and the evolution of biological forms, proceeds hand in hand.

In my own view, the principal forms of life, like the lion, eagle, bull, and man gathered around the throne of God in the book of Revelation, are archetypes existing within God from the beginning of the creation, and brought into physical manifestation when the proper mental and physical environment obtains.

I’m going to chime in again even though I’m mostly the odd-man-out and not well-qualified to present a creationist position. But since this about the relation between modern evolutionary doctrine and ‘religion,’ I’ll mention a few Biblical problems here.

For one thing, the Bible clearly teaches that man existed before woman. Matt for instance said, “the Bible doesn’t specify exactly HOW in detail God made the bodies of Adam and Eve from the dust.” Indeed, it doesn’t say this at all. It says God createn ADAM from the dust of the earth, and then created Eve from a piece of his side.

And it’s not just Genesis. The Apostle Paul affirmed this, and with a practical application: “But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the trangression.” (I Tim 2:12-14) Thus, the fact that man was created first is the basis for the prohibition of women being church ministers, which the Roman Catholic Church, to its credit maintains.

There is no way to posit an evolutionary doctrine that has the male existing for a time without the female.

Jesus Himself affirmed the creation of man and woman: “Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female.” The young earth view of creation was universal among the Jews at the time of Jesus, but was the cause of no rebuke by Him. There’s nothing in His statements that suggests anything other than a literal interpretation of the six-day creation account.

Jesus also affirmed the Noachian Flood. As did the Apostle Peter: “when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein a few, that is, eight souls, were saved through water.”

The geneology given in Luke, (either Mary’s or a very complex record of levirate marriages,) reads, “which was the son of Seth, which was the son of Adam, which was the son of God.” I can think of no way to read this that doesn’t conclude Adam, the man, as a direct creation of God.

We read that at the end of the Sixth Day, after man was created, “God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.” A curious statement to make of a world that already had included death for eons (and this in a situation where all animals were said to be vegetarian.) Paul taught us that, “by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin.” As if no sense of right or wrong had existed and then suddenly did.

Much has been made over the meaning of “days” in the six day creation. As if the phrase “and evening and morning” meant little. But the Ten Commandments give some insight. The Fourth Commandment reads, “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor, and do thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God … FOR IN SIX DAYS THE LORD MADE THE HEAVEN AND EARTH, THE SEA, AND ALL THAT IN THEM IS, AND RESTED THE SEVENTH DAY: WHEREFORE THE LORD BLESSED THE SABBATH DAY, AND HALLOWED IT.”

The context here, as compared with the Genesis account, clearly refers to what we understand to be days. If something exists in the heaven or earth or sea, it was created during that six-day period.

Certainly no one would deny that an omnipotent God had such power. And the notion of ‘deception’ in the appearance of age is meaningless in this context. Only three creative acts are even described in Genesis — creative as in the Hebrew “bara” meaning to create something from nothing. Adam was said to be created a full-grown man. Anyone regarding him a few minutes later would hardly have realized that he hadn’t existed for a number of years. But to accuse God of deception for this belies the fact that He openly stated what He did — the only way any of us could have a clue, notwithstanding all of our vaunted ‘science’ of today.

As to Mr. Auster’s addition, I would point out that the creation of man is stated differently than that of animals, both being creative acts. In the case of animals, it is said that God created living souls, (soul = nephesh.) In the case of man it was said that He formed him out of the dust of the ground, breathed into his nostrils the “breath (also ‘spirit’) of life,” and man became a living soul (nephesh.) This places man on a plane above the animals.

I don’t cite these in the belief that it would convince anyone of what happened, only to point up the problems presented of trying to reconcile the plain teaching of Scripture with the modern doctrine of the evolutionary origins of man. One or the other must be embraced; one or the other must fall.

I agree with Joel that the evolutionary origin of man cannot be reconciled with the various scriptural references throughout both Testaments, even if we were to permit some nonliteral interpretations. However, he really should read “Creation and Time” by Hugh Ross concerning various dogmatic assertions about the age of the earth that have long since been answered.

Gerald Schroeder’s _The Science of God_ is the one book I would recommend on this topic, if you were going to read only one to get the big picture. His earlier book _Genesis and the Big Bang_ is also good, but most of the important ground gets covered again in TSoG. His most recent one (I forgot the title) I would not recommend, as it is of a different genre but not obviously so (in other words look for the title not just the author). The first two are his attempts - I think highly successful - to take both science and the Bible seriously, with _The Science of God_ as the later work in which he learned a great deal from criticism of _Genesis and the Big Bang_.

Most of the stuff written on “science versus the Bible” is either so closed minded that nothing can get in or so open minded that nothing can stay in. Not Schroeder. He is interesting precisely because he takes the various positions seriously and sees where they lead. The result is surprising, or at least it was for me.

I am not dogmatic on the age of the earth, nor do I regard it as something for Christians to divide over. My radio preacher, the late J. Vernon McGee, believed in an old earth based on the Gap Theory. I was sold pretty hard on that theory myself, and would concede it as a possibility but am just not as sure. THAT is my position really — I don’t know how old the earth is, and I don’t think it’s possible for us to know based on the scientific methodologies availabe to us, which depend on making repeatable experiments.

What I do not belive Christians can compromise on however, is that man was created as man, and woman as woman, not ‘descended’ from previous life forms. A differing age of the earth needn’t be an issue as far as the Biblical record, but this is not true for the creation of man. It simply cannot be reconciled with the Biblical message.

As far as the earth’s age. I think there is evidence for a young earth and for an old earth. Not being a scientist, I have to rely on what others say about it. But I would not have the ICR viewpoint dismissed so readily. What is clear is that while the Christian need not rely on a young earth view, the evolutionist ABSOLUTELY DEPENDS on an old earth view. Equally clear is that most evolutionists are in fact seeking to remove God from the equation altogether.

Anyone who rejects God, must embrace evolution in some form. Jesus taught that _most_ of mankind does in fact reject God. The fact that there are more scientists who accept evolution than creation is not unexpected. I realize that there are theistic evolutionists and such, but it really doesn’t matter. Evolution is THE only recourse for those who hate God.

Look at the small number of those who tell the truth about race. Look at the censure and harrassment that Profs. Rushton and Levin have been subjected to — in spite of justifying their view on an evolutionary basis! The Myrdal orthodoxy establishment has tried to get them kicked off their jobs and to discredit them any way possible. They’ve even been physically attacked. Prof. Rushton has faced police investigation and possible criminal charges! What does this prove about the validity of their claims?

NOTHING! Their views on race, in terms of what’s observable and verifiable, are largely correct. And what is especially relevant here is that the OVERWHELMING weight of evidence is so thoroughly on their side!

Creationists of course face the same harrassment. Some have been denied employment because they won’t sign a paper affirming belief in evolution. California has tried to remove ICR’s accreditation. This proves nothing, other than intolerance of the establishment and lack of academic freedom on our campuses. Why not let the evidence for all sides be considered, discussed, and vigorously debated where both sides might learn something? Because there is an agenda here that goes beyond any scientific concerns.

I cannot accept this notion that young earth evolutionists are just dishonest folks trying to bend science to suit an agenda, whiles old earth evolutionists are just honest inquirers going wherever ‘science’ leads them who are completely unaffected by their anti-God views and have no agenda at all.

Of course they have an agenda, and of course it colors their presumptions and how they build on them. Hatred of God underpins this agenda, (which is much more profound than the need to retain our racial egalitarian consensus.)

And this is just as true for the ACLU types who fight tooth and nail to preserve the naturalistic monopoly on education. Check out the link I gave above between an ACLU rep and an Intelligent Design proponent:

http://www.intelligentdesignnetwork.org/JohnCalvertvACLUTranscript.PDF

Judge for yourself whether this not a God-hating agenda at work in the ACLU position or if it’s all just based on a love of scientific inquiry.

Doh. I meant “young earth creationists” in the 5th last paragraph, not “young earth evolutionists,” which couldn’t exist. ;-)

It is an odd modern phenomenon, the naturalistic _assumption of no purpose_. I disagree with Mr. LeFevre though that analysis of unrepeatable events is intrinsically unscientific. A good forensic scientist will analyse a dead body and its surroundings with no preconceptions, objectively looking for signs of agency and signs of accident. Ockham’s razor applies as a good rule of thumb for judging the reasonableness of conclusions, but not a religion - if you see a simple and feasible explanation it is probably true, although there is never absolute certainty (as with all knowledge of all kinds, by the way, or at least I think so). Naturalistic Darwinists have to assume away the forensic scientist’s premeses. If intelligent agency is considered a possibility at all, then the evidence clearly, definitively points to a designer. If it is assumed away then the naturalist has to tell wild, complex, speculative stories about infinitely improbable accidents in order to have any explanation at all.

The other trick is to claim, as Thrasy did above (and in so doing he merely says what most Darwinists will say) that origins are an entirely different subject from evolution. Note what this does to the intellectual structure of the problem, though. Anything that is not immediately explicable can be “pushed back” onto the origins problem, at which point it can be claimed that Darwinism-qua-Darwinism is on rock-solid ground and all that is left is to explain the problem of origins. So the DNA-RNA-protein machinery is an astonishingly intelligent, incomputably complex array of hardware and software? So what, that is an “origins” problem; evolution itself is solved for the naturalist!

One might as well discuss the evolution of a car by discussing tire wear. Evolution-qua-evolution (that is, the neo-Darwinian mechanism of random mutation and natural selection), even if it is perfectly right, just doesn’t explain much.

Good comments from Matt. I’m not sure the forensic case is a good example though. In developing forensic science, there was the possibility of investigating corpses where the cause was already known to see what effect it left, for instance.

Uniformitarianism is based on an assumption that can’t be proven. The further back one goes, the greater the likelihood of other factors having weighed in, about which we may never know.

One thing about evolution, which is what led to this thread, is that it has had a devastating affect on our culture and our morality, and on the dignity of man. It is used to justify abortion, homosexuality, and to disparage Biblical morality. It tears at the foundation of our very liberty.

Evolution has served as an essential foundation to a godless political philosophy and worldview that killed more people last century than all the religious wars going back centuries. Even Mr. Engels recognized the importance of Darwin’s work to their own.

While I recognize that this in itself does not speak to its scientific validity, where ideas have consequences and we reap what we sew, it ought to at least be a ‘clue.’

Mr. LeFevre wrote:
“Good comments from Matt. I’m not sure the forensic case is a good example though. In developing forensic science, there was the possibility of investigating corpses where the cause was already known to see what effect it left, for instance.”

I agree that the greater the distance in time and the less precedent the harder it is to draw forensic conclusions. My position is not that we know with ordinary scientific certainty (the sort that would say conclusively that O.J. killed Nicole and Ron) that life was put here on purpose. If we are to take the life-origins data we actually have and draw any reasonable forensic conclusion from it, though, “on purpose” is a much more reasonable one than “on accident”. Only by assuming away agency can we convince ourselves to start telling radically implausible stories about how the big accident that is the biosphere occurred and evolved. Ockham’s razor strongly favors the case that life was put here on purpose, as even the occasional intellectually honest atheist like Francis Crick will concede. But I am perfectly happy with someone simply pleading ignorance as well; that isn’t unreasonable, it seems to me.

Mr. LeFevre’s comments on the social and moral consequences of Darwinism are worth emphasizing. If something is true it is unlikely to lead one to the conclusion that a few hundred million people are expendable and indeed ought to be actively expended. That isn’t a scientific test of truth of course, but it is a reasonable deontological test of truth.

In lieu of a 10-page post: I think that the only way to actually find out the truth to these sorts of matters is to take a very good look at the actual details. Armchair reasoning is a weak way to proceed.

Thrasy wrote: “Armchair reasoning is a weak way to proceed.”

Hey, it worked for Mycroft Holmes. ;-)

When I wrote that, “[a]nyone who rejects God, must embrace evolution in some form,” I may not have given sufficient acknowledgement to Dr. Crick’s theory that space aliens are to blame for our various life forms. But I guess that still entails ‘some form’ of evolution.

Strange where the recognition that intelligence must be behind our existence leads some. L. Ron Hubbard has little on Dr. Crick. :-)

Thrasy writes:
“In lieu of a 10-page post: I think that the only way to actually find out the truth to these sorts of matters is to take a very good look at the actual details.”

Ah, but even Freeman Dyson will admit that everything about the origins (as opposed to evolution) problem is speculation. I confess that his mud-matrix speculation is innovative and interesting, not to mention congruent with the Genesis account of man being made from the dust!

So one thing at least that armchair reasoners can approach without lengthy detailed posts is whether it is intellectually honest to saw origins and evolution in half and treat them as two disciplines, or if they have to be treated as a single intellectual enterprise in order to avoid the “origins-of-the-gaps” problem. Another is whether a forensic approach is scientific, or if we have to assume away agency even though that leads us to claims that not just one but a whole series of wildly unlikely accidents occurred. Those philosophy-of-science presuppositions are independent of the data, I think.

When we get to the origins of life, the biggest problem is a complete lack of evidence for the exact nature of the earliest conditions, and the nature of the earliest organisms, which do not fossilize easily, if at all. Still, there are some interesting things that we do know, though very little of it for certain.

I would suggest to Matt that he take a far more careful look at the details of the unlikely accident argument as used here.

I think that I should mention that I used to be a serious Creationist; I was raised as a Creationist. The serious part was my own inclination.

I have read many of the same texts that everyone else here has. But my opinion on them now is that they are seriously deficient. Texts full of chunked “proof-quotes” are not good enough. The arguments presented have serious counterarguments.

I think perhaps we should try taking a single argument against the view of evolutionary theory as an example – just to show that there are some parts being left out. It may also keep the discussion short and readable. I assume that Matt can make a suggestion on which argument to analyze?

Let’s take the argument that the discovered fossil record does not contain a series of fossils showing a gradual change from a common ancestral species to any two specific species.

Maybe it’s time to move this discussion to “The Struggle Continues.”

Why focus on speciation? It is often difficult to even decide whether two creatures should be considered two subspecies within one species, or two species within one genus. Why not take the argument that the fossil record does not show the gradual origin of the phyla within the animal kingdom? There is very little blurring of definitions there.

Mr. Coleman is illustrating the liberal technique of responding to an argument with “that’s too extreme.” :) If handicapping the pro-Darwinists with phyla will keep the discussion going, I agree. But considering that the evidence suggests the number of phyla has decreased over time, I hope there is enough material to discuss. But since Mr. Coleman seems more informed on the subject than I am, I still agree.

Thrasymachus writes:
“When we get to the origins of life, the biggest problem is a complete lack of evidence for the exact nature of the earliest conditions, and the nature of the earliest organisms, which do not fossilize easily, if at all. Still, there are some interesting things that we do know, though very little of it for certain.

I would suggest to Matt that he take a far more careful look at the details of the unlikely accident argument as used here.”

I have taken a rather close look (though it was a few years ago). I am not speaking as someone working intensively in the field, but neither am I speaking from ignorance. Also while I have never been a professoinal biologist I spent a number of years making a living by designing measurement systems, measuring various things and drawing conclusions (deductive, inductive, probabilistic, and statistical) from those experiments and other activities. In other words I am not a Philip Johnson, a lawyer with a literary/legal background but no mathematical and technological theoretical framework from which to understand scientific claims. (I’ve read most of Johnson’s stuff and it is about half right on most things, as far as I can tell, while dead right on a few and dead wrong on a few others).

“I think that I should mention that I used to be a serious Creationist; I was raised as a Creationist. The serious part was my own inclination.”

I’ve never been a young-earther myself, or a disbeliever in descent-with-modification. As a cradle Catholic born in the 1960’s I didn’t doubt the evolution story until I started reading about it in detail. I have a decent library of material almost all of which I have read and even studied; unfortunately I recently moved and it is not immediately accessible. I rather thought we had agreed that discussing the details of the origins problems - the sudden emergence of the Cambrian body plans, the appearance of the prokaryotes, etc - was beyond what could be accomplished here though.

At most what we can do in limited space here is frame what some of the key philosophical premeses of such a discussion would be. Thus my twofold contention that

1) Evolutionary theory cannot be separated from origins theory.

[Comments: Tracking rudimentary observables of how something changes doesn’t _explain_ it. The DNA-RNA-protein (replication, preservation, construction, folding, and deployment in phenotype) machinery - both the hardware and the specific software - is incomputably complex. The fact that drosphila has all these great software objects in its DNA that can be switched on and off in the laboratory doesn’t explain the software objects and the platform they run on in any meaninful sense, any more than changing the channel explains television. We have lots of disparate facts, but the notion that neo-Darwinism constitutes an overall explanatory _theory_ or even an intellectual framework for such is ludicrous.]

2) The a-priori exclusion of intelligent agency from our forensic analysis is arbitrary (and indeed we would fire the coroner if he adopted the approach that the Darwinist recommends).

[We scientifically explain things all the time with reference to intelligent agency, and if we take something that was done on purpose and try to explain it away as an accident of nature we multiply complexity (against Ockham’s razor) and end up with a false account. The motivation in doing so seems to be to declare that we have achieved a “final theory”. Even a “final theory” that refers to basic causes - randomness, laws of nature, and/or agency - still always begs the question of where those basic causes come from. The exclusion of agency from these allowable basic causes is arbitrary, and indeed is quite contrary to our own vivid experience of causing things to happen ourselves.]

Thrasy, your pointing out the impossibility or improbability of the human species growing at maximum rate for more than a few generations shows that you have not understood my point, which was that the Darwinian concept of natural selection is based on the assumption of a ruthless struggle for survival growing out of pressure on the population from limited food supply. This has obviously never been true of the human species, and is probably not true of a number of others. Now if you acknowledge this, which you seem not to argue against, you are left saying that natural selection will occur absent intense pressure for survival by reason of an assumed better survivability of certain modifications. But why? In the human species, even grossly disabled people lead relatively normal lives, have families, and reproduce. Why should we assume that in such a culture as we have that any and all variations will have differential survival value? Of course whole fields of study, e.g. evolutionary psychology, sociobiology, etc, are based on a blithe assumption of perfectly functioning highly discriminatory natural selection, but in the absence of pressure, why should this be? No, I continue to think that Darwin’s theory here is in deep trouble, and that this should be perfectly obvious.

I had hoped that we could limit our discussion by picking out just one topic and discussing that. It does not look like that is going to happen. So I am left with the 10-page post option. I do not think this accomplishes much as far as persuasion goes, but I will try it. I have tried to lay out every argument that I am replying to with a topic that names the person making it. I am also quickly summarizing each argument before replying to it.

P. Murgos — Gradual Change in the Fossil Record

Is there any part of the fossil record that shows gradual change from a single ancestral species to two specific species?

Yes. Talkorigins.org hosts the Transitional Vertebrate Fossils FAQ which has a lot of good information on the subject, as well as many examples.
http://talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-transitional.html

First, there are relatively few places where the fossil record is complete enough to record species-species transitions, but they do exist. To record actual species-species transitions, what is needed are places in the fossil record where you have examples from specific lineages all a few tens of thousands of years apart. Quoting from the TVF FAQ on this subject:

“Species-to-species transitions are even harder to document. To demonstrate anything about how a species arose, whether it arose gradually or suddenly, you need exceptionally complete strata, with many dead animals buried under constant, rapid sedimentation. This is rare for terrestrial animals. Even the famous Clark’s Fork (Wyoming) site, known for its fine Eocene mammal transitions, only has about one fossil per lineage about every 27,000 years. Luckily, this is enough to record most episodes of evolutionary change (provided that they occurred at Clark’s Fork Basin and not somewhere else), though it misses the most rapid evolutionary bursts. In general, in order to document transitions between species, you specimens separated by only tens of thousands of years (e.g. every 20,000-80,000 years). If you have only one specimen for hundreds of thousands of years (e.g. every 500,000 years), you can usually determine the order of species, but not the transitions between species. If you have a specimen every million years, you can get the order of genera, but not which species were involved. And so on. These are rough estimates (from Gingerich, 1976, 1980) but should give an idea of the completeness required.
Note that fossils separated by more than about a hundred thousand years cannot show anything about how a species arose. Think about it: there could have been a smooth transition, or the species could have appeared suddenly, but either way, if there aren’t enough fossils, we can’t tell which way it happened.”

The places with the best records are generally in the youngest rocks. From the very youngest, the Pleistocene (dates from 2.5MYA), the TVF FAQ claims “of the 111 modern mammal species that appeared in Europe during the Pleistocene, at least 25 can be linked to earlier European ancestors by species-to-species transitional morphologies.”

Anyway, here is Part 2 of the TVF FAQ, which includes lists for species-species transitions for most of the major mammal divisions:
http://talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-transitional/part2a.html You can use your web browser’s “Find” function to look for “species-species” to go straight to the correct places. Make sure to continue on to Part2b, Part2c, etc.

Mr. Coleman has objected that the concept of species used here includes individuals that are too similar, and the evidence presented is actually inner-species change. If this is true, it actually makes my argument much easier to make. We can look at the places in the fossil record that record change at the several hundred-thousand year gradation instead of the several ten-thousand year gradation. And then the entire TVF FAQ is evidence towards the argument.

Other resources that I would recommend:
http://www.aloha.net/%7Esmgon/ordersoftrilobites.htm Lots of pictures of lots of trilobite fossils
http://talkorigins.org/faqs/horses/horse_evol.html Horse evolution, much of which is very complete in the fossil record, including a number of species-species transitions (also listed in the TVF FAQ)
http://talkorigins.org/features/whales/ Whale evolution, not nearly as complete as the horse record, but the whales with legs are a great treat

Clark Coleman — Gradual Origin of the Kingdom Animalia Phyla in the Fossil Record

Mr. Coleman asks us to take a look at what the fossil record shows about the gradual origin of the phyla within the animal kingdom.

http://home.entouch.net/dmd/cambevol.htm Here is a rather good resource with a number of full color pictures of the some of the transitional fossils

It is important to note that the Cambrian was the period where organisms were just developing hard shells — apparently in reactions to biologically induced chemical changes going on in the environment. And we are talking about some very old rocks here. The qualifications about the quality of the stratiographic record as expressed in the reply to Mr. Murgos apply here especially.

Matt — Probability of Abiogenesis

Matt has talked about abiogenesis theories as being “a series of wildly unlikely accidents.”

First, it is important to understand probability. There are only two ways to come up with the probability of an event. The first is the easy way. Observe something happening a number of times and create a statistical chart. The second way is harder. Understand how something works, and postulate a probability from physical theory.

For example, I could toss a coin a few hundred times and come up with a probability based on recorded results. Or I could argue from physics and say that it has to land on either heads or tails, and there is enough uncontrolled randomness in the process of throwing it into the air to make the possibility of both just about equal. (Most of us come to the probability of ½ from the second method — our physical intuition is quite good enough to recognize the answer immediately; no need for charts.)

When it comes to abiogenesis, we cannot calculate a probability from observation, because we have never observed it. There is no fossil evidence to go by. No one has been able to simulate it in a lab.

And more importantly, without a physical model for how it occurs, there is no way to arrive at a probability from the second method either.

Look at celestial events, for example. What is the probability of an eclipse on a certain date? Without knowledge of the celestial charts, there is no way to answer that question. With knowledge, it is either 100% or 0%.

Similarly, if we find a chemical process that was responsible for the first self-replicating molecules (which is enough for evolution to work with), we will then be able to talk about probabilities. And they may well be 100% given early Earth conditions.

The discussions one comes across of the “improbability of life” when we are without an accepted physical theory of how it got started are simply blowing smoke.

Matt — Evolution cannot be separated from Origins

Matt states “Tracking rudimentary observables of how something changes doesn’t _explain_ it.”

And indeed, the theory of evolution is not a simple argument based on the historical fossil record. Paleontology, the historical tracking of fossil changes, can be accomplished equally well with or without evolution. That is simply recording such things on a sheet of paper. Evolution is an argument based on genetic processes which helps us explain why paleontology and other sciences give us the information that they give.

No, evolution does not explain every historical event any more than gravity tells us the history of each collision event in the solar system. But gravity explains what it explains, and evolution explains what it explains.

If Matt is not going to give specific examples of things that he feels needs to be explained by “an overall explanatory _theory_,” or “an intellectual framework,” then his statements make no sense.

Matt — Excluding an Intelligent Agency as an Explanation is Arbitrary

Matt claims that there is no reason to a priori exclude an intelligent agent from the possible explanations for life.

He is correct, it should not be excluded. We should always ask these questions in regards to all historical events:

What evidence is there for an intelligent agent capable of causing these events? What evidence against?

What evidence is there that an intelligent agent did cause these events? What evidence against?

What evidence is there for these events being within the realm of natural process? What evidence against?

What evidence is there that a natural process caused these events? What evidence against?

Thucydides — Natural Selection and the Food Supply

Thucydides claims that natural selection must be based on a “ruthless struggle for survival” which must be based on pressure from a “limited food supply.” Further, “this has obviously never been true of the human species, and is probably not true of a number of others.”

First, I must explain that Darwin developed the theory of evolution, but science does not hold any of his statements as revealed truth. Darwin wrote before we understood genetics even. Science is in much the same position in regards to Newton. He was the first to discover certain things about gravity. But it is no use using Newton to disprove General Relativity — the modern theory of gravity. What Thucydides must argue is that the modern conception of natural selection is false.

Let me state this yet another time, because it is so important: Anything that causes some individuals to have differing amounts of descendants based on genetic factors is selection.

Thucydides must argue against that statement, otherwise his arguments against the modern science of evolution are meaningless.

While I could stop there, Thucydides is wrong on other points as well. Thucydides never answered my earlier question about why the rate of human population growth was so much higher in the 20th century than today. It has a simple answer. There has always been the pressure of resources. Most human beings throughout history have raised far less offspring than they are capable of. Other resources than food are important, but food is the main one. There is a reason that the Earth’s population was a rather constant 500,000,000 or so throughout the past couple of millennia. Look at the population growth of Africa after the new farming techniques brought by European colonialism. Modern medicine is also important, but does not diminish the importance of food resources.

And yet, without looking at food there are still other “pressures” that influence selection. Beauty, intelligence, impetuousness, sterility, gross mental or physical defects, and a host of others influence the number of descendants an individual might have. And these are all substantially influenced by genetics. Note, however, that some of these characteristics may influence selection in either way. Certainly the less intelligent people in modern society have more offspring. And yes that does mean that we are currently selecting for lower IQ. As far as evolution is concerned, if lower IQ leads to more offspring, the lower IQ individuals are more “fit” for a certain environment than the higher IQ individuals.

Not 10 pages, but 5 anyway. I hope that anyone who makes it to the end of this post appreciates it.

Thrasy’s comments have some interesting points. In the quote he earlier:

“To demonstrate anything about how a species arose, whether it arose gradually or suddenly, you need exceptionally complete strata, with many dead animals buried under constant, rapid sedimentation. This is rare for terrestrial animals.”

So there is a dearth of actual evidence?

“Luckily, this is enough to record most episodes of evolutionary change (provided that they occurred at Clark’s Fork Basin and not somewhere else), though it misses the most rapid evolutionary bursts.”

In other words, it misses what one might reasonably consider the actual transitional process from one species to another?

“When it comes to abiogenesis, we cannot calculate a probability from observation, because we have never observed it. There is no fossil evidence to go by. No one has been able to simulate it in a lab.

“And more importantly, without a physical model for how it occurs, there is no way to arrive at a probability from the second method either.”

In other words, since we don’t have any model available by which life could spring forth from non-life, then we can’t really say what the chances are that it could happen. I never thought of it quite that way. ;-)

So if such a thing were in fact impossible, there’s no way to demonstrate this statistically because, since it’s impossible, no model could be constructed by which to assess the statistical probability of it. Or something. That does strangely make a little sense.

I wonder what a model would be for an omnipotent God having creating life? I guess it would be … an omnipotent God creating life. And what would the evidence be? The creation itself. I wonder how you would ‘prove’ that though if it were so?

I briefly checked the links you provided. If the underlying presumption were correct, I guess they’d be helpful in positing how things happened. But if the presumption isn’t correct … and that’s what’s in question. I think I understood the analogy of evolution with gravity, though it’s strange how the respective analogue to evolution always seems to be something that is actually observable and immediately demonstrable.

Well, give me credit for this at least — I read your whole post. You’ve clobbered my record for overmuch length — and I’ll give you credit for that, begrudgingly. :-)

Thrasy writes:
“When it comes to abiogenesis, we cannot calculate a probability from observation, because we have never observed it. There is no fossil evidence to go by. No one has been able to simulate it in a lab.

And more importantly, without a physical model for how it occurs, there is no way to arrive at a probability from the second method either.”

Those are not arguments in favor of treating earthly abiogenesis as scientific fact, I hope Thrasy will acknowledge.

On occasion someone like Stanley Miller or Freeman Dyson will postulate some model of abiogenesis. Those models can be analyzed probabilistically in Thrasy’s second sense, and I would argue that it is meaningful to do so. The probabilities produced represent some measure of what has been explanatorily left out of the model. No model has been produced from which any reasonable - Hell, not even a wildly unlikely but still physically possible - chance of earthly abiogenesis occurring can be deduced. I call the extremely low-probability models that _have_ been produced “wild speculations”, and I think the name fits despite Thrasy’s objection to it as blowing smoke. I suppose it is blowing Darwinist smoke back at the Darwinists, at that.

Now it is true that at any time someone might postulate a theory that pink unicorns will start appearing spontaneously out of the air next year. It is even possible in principle that the theory would be true. We don’t know what such a theory might look like, and any theory we might construct right now with what we do know would result in extremely low probabilities of such an occurrence. But that doesn’t mean that someone won’t find such a theory that predicts such an event, with certainty or at least with reasonable probability, at any time.

It is odd how Darwinists will use the argument from ignorance in supposed support of Darwinism as a wildly successful and true theory, with earthly abiogenesis assumed despite a century or more of comprehensive failure to find any evidence of it whatsoever. The fact that something as mindlessly mundane as Stanley Miller’s flask of amino acids made him literally world famous is very telling. The argument-from-ignorance is so odd that it led me - and I do tend to be rather ruthlessly scientific and rational - to stop being a Darwinist.

“Matt claims that there is no reason to a priori exclude an intelligent agent from the possible explanations for life.

He is correct, it should not be excluded. We should always ask these questions in regards to all historical events:

What evidence […]”

(Thrasy then goes on to list various kinds of evidence).

If Thrasy will apply this same sort of scepticism dispassionately to the earthy abiogenesis topic he will, I think, see the point.

The absence of any evidence or explanation at all is not the hallmark of an incredibly successful theory that everyone ought to believe.

“…evolution explains what it explains.”

Well, yes. And my argument is that that is not much. Quite possibly scientists have started to learn how to use the remote to change channels on the genetic television set. But they do not understand the set; where it came from, what signals it receives from where; how those signals are produced; what produced the message within the medium and how; etc. etc. etc. Biologists don’t have an overall theory of biological life any more than my wife has an overall theory of television just because she can sometimes use the remote to do the more simple things.

Unlike with mechanics, where very much of what happens is understood and explained by physical theories, Darwinism - even if it is right in its claims as a physical theory, which is not only far from established but by many accounts is becoming less so all the time - explains just about nothing.

I also found this statement by Thrasy odd:
“…if we find a chemical process that was responsible for the first self-replicating molecules (which is enough for evolution to work with), we will then be able to talk about probabilities.”

If we don’t know anything about earthly abiogenesis (including whether it has ever occurred at all) then on what basis does Thrasy assume that any self-replicating molecules - whatever that means in detail, since right now all we know about are self-replicating entire cells - are “enough for evolution to work with”?

Matt, I will answer your last question first, because it is the most interesting. Why do I say that self-replicators are enough for evolution to work with? Because as long as these pseudo-organisms are replicating their own information, we can trust that they will make mistakes. Sometimes those mistakes will be detrimental and sometimes they will be beneficial – I think that you see what I am getting at. Natural selection takes over.

What could the first self-replicators look like? Maybe some protein-like or RNA-like molecule or group of molecules. Or maybe nothing like that. Perhaps these replicators were taking advantage of some highly organized natural structure like clay or crystal. Eventually, perhaps, they colonized the amino-acid soup that was Earth’s early seas. Natural selection pushed them into new, better, forms which completely wiped out all trace of the delicate first self-replictors. After all, all life on Earth today, from microbe to elephant, has been evolving for several billion years; life today bears little resemblance to the earliest origins.

Now that is the barest outline of the thinking on the subject, and is also completely science-free. There are actually some reasonable theories out there, though nothing remotely proven. Biochemistry has come an immensely long way in the past fifty years, and I suggest a look at the modern theories of abiogenesis that have been suggested. Some have interesting pieces of evidence backing them up.

In reference to Matt’s other post, however, I would like to make it clear that language is important. Wherever I have spoken about evolution, I am making no reference to origins. Abiogenesis (or any other kind of genesis for life) is not a part of evolutionary theory.

I therefore take issue with Matt’s constant statements saying that evolution explains nothing. Matt has only stated that evolution does not explain origins, and I have agreed. What evolution does explain is the past several billion years of Earth’s history – not “nothing” by any stretch. I would like to hear what part of that Matt disagrees with.

Mr. LeFevre, first thank you for reading that overly long post. It was certainly not my best prose. You are correct about the “dearth of actual evidence” as far as the fossil record is concerned. A fossil record with an example individual from every generation, for example, would be a record that I would term “complete.” Nothing remotely like that exists.

The fossil record we do have is not the main evidence for evolution. But do not mistake what it is, either. It is incredibly strong supporting evidence for evolution. There are good examples of species-transitional fossils which I have referenced above. There is also tremendous evidence for transitions when groupings higher than the species level are considered.

For most of the Earth’s history we only have a record of a small percentage of the species that walked the Earth. Where our “resolution” is low (or maybe you can think of shutter speed on a camera), it is impossible to get species-transitional fossils. For those places, as evolutionary theory predicts, we get order-transitional and class-transitional fossils. This is no small thing as far as evidence in concerned.

Thrasy writes:
“Matt, I will answer your last question first, because it is the most interesting. Why do I say that self-replicators are enough for evolution to work with? Because as long as these pseudo-organisms are replicating their own information, we can trust that they will make mistakes. Sometimes those mistakes will be detrimental and sometimes they will be beneficial – I think that you see what I am getting at. Natural selection takes over.”

I understand the speculation, but we have exactly no examples of a sophisticated software and hardware platform constructing itself from rudimentary beginnings in this way. The assertion that it is possible at all, let alone that it actually happened on earth, is pure speculation.

My point was that the only replicating biological units we know about are complete machines: cells (and parasites that use the cell’s machinery). The presumption that something less than a cell can survive and replicate at all in an otherwise inorganic environment is pure wild speculation. The further presumption that any such thing that exists can continue to replicate without extinction is also a wild speculation. The further-further notion that such a thing in fact is the ancestor of all of of current life is also a wild speculation.

Earthly abiogenesis isn’t science at all (in fairness Thrasy seems to agree with this). It is a guess built on top of a speculation built on top of a roll of a quadrillion-sided die, all resting on a materialist metaphysics constructed of vapor. And again, the key reason I personally came to reject it (as anything other than wild speculation no better than “it is turtles all the way down”) is because Darwinists continually attempt to turn complete ignorance into an argument for credibility.

“Wherever I have spoken about evolution, I am making no reference to origins.”

And that is precisely why it explains very little. Scientists don’t presume to authoritatively and comprehensively discuss the cosmology of stars without some notion of where they came from and how they work. Evolution isn’t a wildly successful theory that explains everything about life from 5 billoin years ago to now. It is in a state of almost complete ignorance, just like cosmology right around the time of the birth of the telescope. Is that nothing? No. But as I have said, it isn’t much. Only hubris makes it appear to be more. Ask again in a thousand years or so.

1)The presumption that something less than a cell can survive and replicate at all in an otherwise inorganic environment
2)The further presumption that any such thing that exists can continue to replicate without extinction
3)The further-further notion that such a thing in fact is the ancestor of all current life

Matt, the presumption that all three of those statements are false is wild speculation on your part.

Those are exactly the topics addressed by modern theories of abiogenesis. Perhaps you can make a critique of their chemical arguments – I cannot, unfortunately, for chemistry is a wide gap in my education – but you cannot dismiss them without considering them.

“Evolution isn’t a wildly successful theory that explains everything about life from 5 billion years ago to now.”

Matt, again I ask, what beyond origins is left unexplained?

Thrasymachus wrote:

“‘Evolution isn’t a wildly successful theory that explains everything about life from 5 billion years ago to now.’

“Matt, again I ask, what beyond origins is left unexplained?”

I have not been reading this thread, and have no idea of how cogent the arguments have been. But the discussion been going on for quite a long time now (over a week), and if by this point no one has successfully established (at least to Thrasy’s satisfaction) that Darwinian theory leaves at least some things about the evolution of life forms unexplained, then maybe it’s time to wind up this discussion.

Thrasy asks:
“Matt, again I ask, what beyond origins is left unexplained?”

The question is malformed. Suppose we knew how to turn on the TV with the remote and select a few channels, and turn the volume up and down. One could ask at that point “what beyond the origins of the TV is left unexplained?”. The question is equivalent except that the amount left unexplained by Darwinism is many orders of epistemic magnitude larger.

I will respect Mr. Auster’s moderation and make this my last post in the thread; thanks to all who played, light ‘em if you’ve got ‘em.

I will leave my question as is. It has been a fun thread, all.