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The Darwinian comedy continues
Mark K. writes:
At first I thought the following stuff was a joke. But it ain’t:
How Bambi evolved into Moby-Dick
A small deer-like animal that evaded predators by hiding underwater may have evolved into today’s whales.
Seriously. There are several news websites reporting this.
This is too funny. Just how much longer are we seriously to tolerate these “scientific” buffoons before we all start laughing hilariously? At some point all this become ludicrous, no? Consider the stupidity at which we have arrived. We can’t accept that God created the deer and he created the whale. No, the deer appeared and then turned into a whale while staying a deer (yes I know I’m simplifying).
Here’s my analysis (from the second Psalm) inspired by the foolishness above.
Verse 1: “Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? ”
- heathen (unbelievers)
- imagine (mind conjuring up a theory)
- vain thing (useless thought)
Verse 2: “The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord, and against his anointed, saying,”
- kings (intellectual royalty)
- of the earth (materialism)
- set themselves (on their own authority)
- rulers (government & educational authorities, especially the liberal elite in Europe)
- take counsel together (create academic and government controls in concert)
- against the Lord and against his anointed (anti-God, anti-theist, anti-Christ, anti-Christian)
Verse 3: “Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us.”
- break their bands asunder (remove the forms that define our essence)
- cast away their cords from us (remove the moral bounds that control us)
* as Hitchens says, society must actively destroy this thing called Christianity
Verse 4: “He that sits in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision.”
- he that sits in the heavens (he sees all this from the highest perspective)
- he’s laughing … I’m laughing!
* * *
Here’s another funny story.
The scientist approached God and said, “Listen, we’ve decided we no longer need you. Nowadays, we can clone people, transplant hearts and do all kinds of things that were once considered miraculous.”
God patiently heard him out, and then said, “All right. To see whether or not you still need me, why don’t we have a man-making contest?”
“Okay, great!” the scientist said.
“Now, we’re going to do this just like I did back in the old days with Adam,” God said.
“That’s fine,” replied the scientist, and bent to scoop up a handful of dirt.
“Whoa!” God said, shaking his head in disapproval. “Not so fast. You go get your own dirt.”
LA replies:
These people are too much. They find a fossil of a cat-sized animal, and they do not merely say that they think that this may be the ancestor of the whale, which would be ridiculous enough. No, they (or rather their media allies) definitively announce:
Fossil hunters have discovered the remains of the earliest ancestor of the modern whale: a small deer-like animal that waded in lagoons and munched on vegetation.
The landmark finding represents a long-sought “missing link” in the 10m-year journey that saw ancient land mammals evolve into modern cetaceans, a group that includes whales, dolphins and porpoises.
Scientists have long known that whales are mammals whose ancient ancestors walked on land, but only in the past 15 years have they unearthed fossils that shed light on the creatures’ dramatic evolutionary history. The latest discovery, named Indohyus, is the first whale ancestor known to have lived on land.
A team led by Hans Thewissen at the Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine reconstructed a near-complete skeleton of the animal, close in size to a domestic cat, dating from 48m years ago.
And what is this ancestral relationship between the whale and the cat-sized Indohyus based on, according to the scientists? A resemblance in the bone surrounding the ear. But my gosh, don’t they also tell us that the human genome is 15 percent, or 50 percent, or 80 percent (I forget which) identical to that of the fruit-fly? Does that mean that humans are 15 or 50 or 80 percent the same as the fruitfly, let alone that they are descended from the fruit fly? The basic structure of the insect wing, the bat wing, and the bird wing are the same, yet no one concludes from this that the bird wing evolved from the insect wing. Winged flight has appeared over and over again in unrelated animals. Similarly, a certain shape in the bone surrounding the ear appeared in the domestic cat-sized Indohyus and in the whale But the “scientists” can’t stop with that interesting discovery. They have to leap to the assertion that the whale “evolved” from the Indohyus!
I AM laughing.
Again, what gets me the most is that they don’t just say that the scientists have a hypothesis that this cat-sized creature is the ancestor of the whale. They declare that it is so. I don’t believe that the media were so credulous regarding scientific claims 20 years ago. It was understood that there is a difference between a hypothesis and an experimentally established fact. But that sort of distinction has gotten too “high IQ” for today’s college graduates. For them, if someone says that he thinks something is true, then it is true, because, after all, everyone has his own truth and there is no right and wrong. Or, rather, everyone has his own truth if he is a liberal and a materialist.
I qualify what I just said. It’s not that they are relativists, or even relativists with a double standard. They are dogmatic believers in the religion of Darwinism, and so any claim advanced under the rubric of Darwinism by a recognized cleric of the Darwinian faith is simply true.
Mark K. replies:
You wrote:
Again, what gets me the most is that they don’t just say that the scientists have a hypothesis that this cat-sized creature is the ancestor of the whale. They declare that it is so. I don’t believe that the media were so credulous regarding scientific claims 20 years ago. It was understood that there is a difference between a hypothesis and an experimentally established fact. But that sort of distinction has gotten too “high IQ” for today’s college graduates. For them, if someone says that he thinks something is true, then it is true, because, after all, everyone has his own truth and there is no right and wrong.
This is an important commentary by you for two reasons.
1. Darwinists are fond of saying that while Darwinian evolution has not been empirically proven in a lab, it is a theory that is more than just a hypothesis. For them this “theory” has gained a set of “explanations” that border on fact, though these “facts” may have not yet been experimentally proven. In their minds, all their explanations cohere into a unity that gives the theory structure and coherence. Thus the “theory” appears to have a comprehensive set of cause and effect explanations, and while not empirically provable, by hanging together they constitute an acceptable knowledge base. Notice what a subjective approach Darwinians have taken.
2. Because of point #1, this theory has gained a critical mass of scientists who accept this set of explanations. Thus a certain quantity of social or human acceptance counts as “truthful” underpinning for a theory. We’ve heard many times the accusation against Intelligent Design or Creationism, “How many professional scientists, especially biologists and palientologists, accept these theories—most of them are evolutionists?” Once again notice what a subjective approach this is. No wonder there has to be a major thrust in schools to “objectify” this theory through classroom instruction (also known as propaganda—the mind to mind strategy).
So your commentary about the media in this case is quite sharp!
LA replies:
Yes. In reality it is their religion, it is absolute truth, beyond question. But obviously they can’t call it a religion. So they call it a theory which is so satisfactory in so many ways (even though vast key areas of it remain undemonstrated and vanishingly improbable) that they all agree to treat it provisionally as true. So, technically and superficially they’re acting as though it’s a theory, while in reality they’re treating it as absolute truth. They are using scientific-appearing language to advance what is in fact their religion.
John B. writes:
Maybe I have not read Mark K.’s comment carefully, but I gather he rejects the view that whales have land-based ancestors. If I may ask: Do you?
Mr. K.’s apparent belief that “God created the deer and he created the whale” is a rejection of more than speciation by natural selection of random mutants—i.e., a rejection of more than the Darwinian scheme you have questioned. It is a rejection of evolution itself—i.e., a rejection of speciation by accumulated change over generations.
Do you reject the view that, for instance, mammals have a common mammal ancestor? Do you reject, in other words, not merely Darwin’s hypothesized mechanisms of evolution but evolution itself?
Permit me to remark that you have not enhanced VFR with Mr. K.’s attempt at satire:
“No, [say the evolutionists,] the deer appeared and then turned into a whale while staying a deer (yes I know I’m simplifying).”
No—he doesn’t know he’s simplifying; simplifying isn’t what he’s doing. Attempting to ridicule things whose basics he apparently does not even understand is what he’s doing. When evolutionists say that, for instance, humans branched off from the chimpanzee line (which, if I’m not mistaken, is the prevailing view), they are not idiotically suggesting that the chimpanzee evolved into man and yet stayed a chimpanzee. They are saying that, were the ancestries of humans and modern chimpanzees to be traced, the lines would converge at a chimplike creature—or a proto-chimp—something closer to a modern chimpanzee than to a human. (Any uncertainty in this explication is my own.) They are saying, to state it in reverse, that two types of beings—humans and modern chimpanzees—have descended from that being. If Mark K. finds that absurd, maybe he can explain why he had to distort it to discredit it.
If you reject not merely Darwin’s hypothesis but speciation by evolution, you should carefully state so, I think, in response to a comment like Mark K.’s. My quick review of your response to him gives me the impression that, in an attempt to humor him, you have merely suggested that the writer of the news story he linked might better have been skeptical about the announcement that the whale’s land-based ancestor was deerlike. (I haven’t read the article carefully.) If you believe in evolution, you are unwise, in my view, to leave a correspondent such as Mark K. with the impression you do not.
LA replies:
First, Mark’s argument is Mark’s argument, not my argument. why don’t you ask him what he believes? It is seriously annoying to be made responsible for another person’s opinions.
Second, if you mean, do I think that whales had land-based ancestors from whom they descended and “evolved” by a process of random mutation and natural selection, then yes I reject the view that whales have land-based ancestors. I have no idea how whales came into being. What I am sure of is that they did not come into being by Darwinian random mutation and natural selection.
You write: “Do you reject the view that, for instance, mammals have a common mammal ancestor? Do you reject, in other words, not merely Darwin’s hypothesized mechanisms of evolution but evolution itself?”
As I’ve indicated many times, I reject the Darwinian mechanism as an explanation of how new and higher species and life forms have appeared. This appearance of new and higher forms is what is meant by evolution. Obviously life on earth has evolved in the sense that there has been an unfoldment of new and higher forms. For tens of millions of years, there were mammals, but no hominids. Then at a certain point there were hominids. Then for four million years there were hominids, but no homo sapiens. Then at a certain point there were homo sapiens. That is evolution. How that evolution took place I do not know. In my view the scientific position is that we do not know how this happened. That has been my consistent position, and it is wearying for you to keep asking me about it as though I have never addressed these issues before.
Do all mammals have a common mammal ancestor? I don’t know. Possibly yes, possibly no. It depends on entirely speculative scenarios about matters the truth of which I don’t think humans will never be able to know. Maybe the rejected theory of inheritance of acquired characteristics is true after all, and there is a common ancestor. Maybe the appearance of new species occurred by sudden leaps resulting from previously untriggered higher programs in the genome, so that (as weird as this sounds) an individual of one species was born from a mother of a different species, in which case we could speak of a common ancestor. Or maybe at certain points new life forms popped into being out of the mind of God, which sure seems to be the case with the Cambrian explosion, in which case they would not have a common ancestor.
“Permit me to remark that you have not enhanced VFR with Mr. K.’s attempt at satire.”
Permit me to reply that I don’t like your censorious tone. To say that VFR does not enhance its reputation because I posted Mark’s comment is really just too full of it. If Mark K. misstated what the Darwinian theory says, or if he misstated an established fact about hominid evolution, then you’re free to correct him. The overall point is that Mark believes that God created the various life forms and that the Darwinian explanation is ridiculous. That’s his view. We don’t know how the life forms came into being, but Mark’s view that God did it is at least possible, while the Darwinian view that it happened by random tiny genetic mutations is inherently absurd.
I must say that I perceive an attempt here to wear me down by continually questioning me on matters I’ve already addressed over and over again.
Hannon writes:
You are right that science does not consider evolution to be “mere theory.” It is recognized—though you may have to nudge them in case they forgot—that much desired empirical data are entirely missing from the stories of how various organisms have purportedly developed over time. And so evolution is “provisionally true” or effectively true at best. The scientist might meet you skepticism—and I see yours as thoughtful if profound skepticism rather than complete rejection—by asking “What is realistically the chance that evolution will be proved largely untrue?”
The evident faith in evolution you talk about, as if it were the new religion, deserves attention if only because we should never have blind faith in any output of science, applied or theoretical. I think evolution is the best explanation yet as the principle on which life has diverged, recombined, morphed and speciated. “The best explanation yet” is not a dogma but certainly many have taken it along such a path and that is unfortunate.
What you seem to say, sometimes, is that the evolution of species (or species from other older species) is a patently false and ridiculous idea. But then you appear to vacillate between this absolute rejection and saying that there are simply gaping holes in our knowledge—the absence of a sufficient fossil record or a time machine—that render the theory unworthy of any serious consideration. Allowing for your belief that a sort of minor evolution can account for short term infraspecific modifications, is it your belief that evolution could not possibly account for earth’s biodiversity or are you upset that science perceives evolution to be a virtual truth in spite of missing evidence? Or is it both?
How much supporting evidence is enough? After all, a man can be convicted of murder without a dead body and sometimes even without physical evidence. For most who have considered the ideas of the theory of evolution, especially in the context of familiarity with actual living organisms, the concept is an entirely reasonable one. It is intellectually satisfying as well. It does not have to be proved to some impossible absolute degree to be a valuable and insightful tool for research and understanding.
LA replies:
First, to avoid confusion and ambiguity it is essential always to speak of “Darwinian evolution” or the “Darwinian theory of evolution” or “Darwinism” rather than just “evolution.” The latter word is elastic and varies between Darwinism and just some general idea that life changed and progressed, and then the discussion becomes hopelessly confused. If we say the former, it has a definite meaning that cannot be played with.
As to what my real position is, there is no mystery here. There are many problems with Darwinian evolution and I use arguments directed at all of them. Using different arguments in response to different positions is not “vacillation,” but normal argumentation. Thus I think that the appearance of new species and life forms by Darwinian random genetic mutation and natural selection is inherently impossible and I have said so many times. But that argument is not relevant in regard to every possible topic and it’s not necessary for me to insist on it all the time. When I talk about the gaps in the fossil record, I’m not talking about my view of Darwinism, but the Darwinists’ view of it, based on their own theory. Their own theory requires that the gaps be closed. Similarly, when I criticize the Darwinians for taking a finding beyond where the facts justify it, as when they declare that a similarity in the structure of one bone shared by a cat-sized creature that lived 48 million years ago and modern whales establishes that whales “evolved” from that creature, I am responding to the falsity of that particular claim.
If I were “consistent” in the way you seem to expect me to be, I would virtually have to stop discussing the topic, since my reply to every possible Darwinian statement would be, “This whole Darwinian thing is impossible, there’s nothing to discuss.”
Finally, I reject your notion that I disagree with Darwinism because it fails to prove itself to some superhuman standard of proof. If you believe that that is my position, you have misunderstood me all along. Anti-Darwinists such as myself reject Darwinism, first, because its most basic claims lack the most basic evidence—the fossil record—to support them. So, it’s not an impossible standard that the Darwinians fail to live up to, it’s the minimal standard that they fail to live up to. As Ann Coulter says in a brilliant passage in Godless, it’s not that there are just some gaps in the fossil record, it’s that the entire fossil record is a gap. Even if you don’t agree with what I just said, I’m frankly surprised that you don’t even understand that anti-Darwinian position and are saying that the anti-Darwinian position consists of demanding some impossible level of proof.
Second and more fundamentally, anti-Darwinists reject Darwinism because its most basic claims are inherently impossible. You cannot get to a highly complex organ or a whole new life form by means of random mutation and natural selection.
As I said to John B., I say to you, I think there is a tendency here to keep wearing me down by challenging me on points that have already been made time and time again.
Mark K. writes:
John B. keeps asking do I reject this or that theoretical construct as if the theoretical constructs he enumerates are factual and have been proven.
For example, he asks, “Do you reject the view that, for instance, mammals have a common mammal ancestor?”
How relevant is it whether I reject it or not? His supposition that mammals have a common mammal ancestor is strictly a supposition. Has he travelled back in time to see that this occurred or is this a reconstruction (a story) by a mind?
“Attempting to ridicule things whose basics he apparently does not even understand is what he’s doing.”
That assumes these “basics” in fact are basically true. If they are not essentially true (and Darwin & Sons Company has not proven these “basics”), then my understanding or lack thereof is irrelevant. Why should anyone invest time and energy trying to understand something that is false? How comes it, John B., that the argument for evolution isn’t so simple and basic that it could not be misunderstood? Does a correct understanding of evolution prove its veracity?
It is almost impossible to misunderstand “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” No one argues that this statement is incomprehensible although they may hate the fact that it is there. So why, John B., is evolution so convoluted that it requires such a precise sequence of words which may or may not be understood anyway?
Josh F. writes:
In the article you referenced, I found this passage:
Fred Spoor, an anthropologist at University College London, said the significance of the latest find was comparable to Archaeopteryx, the first fossils to show a clear transition between dinosaurs and birds. “For years cetaceans were used by creationists to support their views because for a long time the most primitive whales known had bodies that looked like modern whales, so there seemed to be this enormous gap in evolution. But since the early 1990s, there’s been a rapid succession of fossils from India and Pakistan that beautifully fill that gap,” he said.
“The tables are turned now because we have fossils that show that dramatic transition step by step. Cetaceans are almost the only group that has made such a rapid change from a land environment to an aquatic one.
“Unlike sealions and seals, which still spend some time on land, cetaceans are completely committed to the water now, and it had an enormous effect on their physiology. They had to change everything.” (My emphasis.)
Please read Spoor’s last statement again. Is that comedy or what? The whale had a radical, almost inconceivable, evolutionary path. It had transformed almost completely save a few parts that seem not evolved at all. Lack of evolution is the proof of evolution!
LA writes:
That’s a great point by Josh.
Also, this may be because of a typo or something, but as it is written this sentence by Spoor doesn’t make sense:
“For years cetaceans were used by creationists to support their views because for a long time the most primitive whales known had bodies that looked like modern whales, so there seemed to be this enormous gap in evolution.”
If the most primitive whales looked like modern whales, then there was no change from primitive to modern whales and no gap to explain.
Bruce B. writes:
The anthropologist that Josh quotes says:
“The tables are turned now because we have fossils that show that dramatic transition step by step.”
Doesn’t his language suggest an ideological war rather than an attempt to seek objective, scientific truth? They gotta stick it to those retarded Christians.
Also, he says: “they had to change everything.” He suggests will is involved (the whales?!!). They can’t seem to help but speak this way. Funny.
I only quote him because what he says is typical of the Darwinists.
John B. writes:
I was not attempting to wear you down by questioning you on matters you’ve already addressed. From what I know of what you’ve said on the subject, I was unsure whether you reject not only Darwinism (which I defined as the view that evolution is a result of natural selection of random mutants) but evolution (which I defined as the emergence of new species via accumulated change over generations).
In the current debates over evolution, that distinction is one that I am not sure is being maintained. My sense, for instance, is that the original proponents of so-called Intelligent Design accepted evolution and the vast time-scales usually associated with it but were simply denying that the process is in any way random. This would seem to have distinguished them in some sense from Creationists, whose view, as I will characterize it, is that the species are unconnected by biological lineage and were brought into being individually by acts of God in, let us say, a Biblical time frame.
Your own view, as I now understand it, is that the species are possibly unconnected by biological lineage but that their appearance did not occur within a Biblical time frame. It’s possible, on the other hand, that Mark K. rejects connection by lineage altogether. I wasn’t making you responsible for his view; I said that, in responding to his comment, you should have made your own view clear. (He seemed to be suggesting that the view that whales descended from something deerlike is preposterous; you don’t seem to think it is.)
I didn’t say VFR was not enhanced by the posting of Mark K.’s comment; I said it was not enhanced by the posting of the sentence in which he attempted to present evolution, as I have defined it above, as nonsensical. (In excerpting my e-mail, you substituted a period for the colon that preceded my quotation of the said sentence.) That is to say you should not have left unremarked a statement that, regardless of the process in which the various species have appeared, is the work of a blowhard. VFR is reasonably judged by the unchallenged posting of it.
LA replies:
I’ve got to tell you, this really, really annoys me:
I didn’t say VFR was not enhanced by the posting of Mark K.’s comment; I said it was not enhanced by the posting of the sentence in which he attempted to present evolution, as I have defined it above, as nonsensical. (In excerpting my e-mail, you substituted a period for the colon that preceded my quotation of the said sentence.) That is to say you should not have left unremarked a statement that, regardless of the process in which the various species have appeared, is the work of a blowhard. VFR is reasonably judged by the unchallenged posting of it.
If your attitude is that you’re going to “judge” VFR by every comment posted there that I don’t immediately challenge, then forget it, go away, I don’t want to hear from you any more. With all the things I’m doing and the debates I’m involved in, I also have to be responsible for “setting right” every single sentence in every comment I post? Clearly you have a hostile stand toward VFR that puts me under an impossible burden. So don’t write to me any more.
Gilbert B. sends this:
Misconception: “Gaps in the fossil record disprove evolution.”
Response: The fact that some transitional fossils are not preserved does not disprove evolution. Evolutionary biologists do not expect that all transitional forms will be found and realize that many species leave no fossils at all. Lots of organisms don’t fossilize well and the environmental conditions for forming good fossils are not that common. So, science actually predicts that for many evolutionary changes there will be gaps in the record.
Also, scientists have found many transitional fossils. For example, there are fossils of transitional organisms between modern birds and their theropod dinosaur ancestors, and between whales and their terrestrial mammal ancestors.
LA replies:
I recommend you read the section on evolution in Coulter’s Godless. It includes the most incisive discussion of the fossil gap I’ve seen, including the fraudulent way that Darwinians claim the gaps are being “closed” by the discovery of a single supposed transitional form when there would need to be hundreds. She discusses the Cambrian explosion and its significance more vividly and emphatically than I’ve ever seen it discussed before, and makes mincemeat of the Darwinians’ lame attempts to account for it. The Cambrian explosion is the appearance in the fossil record, in an instant of geological time about 600 million years ago, of virtually all the animal phyla after three billion years in which the only creatures in the fossil record were one celled organisms and worms. It underscores Coulter’s point that the problem is not that there are some gaps in the fossil record, the problem is that the entire fossil record is a gap. By focusing relentlessly on the Cambrian issue as she does, she leaves the Darwinians gasping for oxygen like fish stranded on a beach.
A Darwinian author told me that he thought Coulter’s discussion was excellent and that he found nothing major to disagree with in it. He still believes in Darwinism; he holds out hope that new discoveries may yet save Darwinism. But he admits that as the evidence stands the anti-Darwinians have good arguments.
Mark K. writes:
Usually a theory is based on some cause and effect explanation. Y leads to Z as a result of X. Normally a theory doesn’t have an in-built component that undoes the theory itself. Imagine if a car engine had built into it a part that spewed out the fuel (before it was used) just as it was being pumped into the engine. Would make no sense.
So how do Darwinists explain anti-Darwinists? How does the process of evolution engender anti-evolutionists. What cockeyed cause and effect mechanism in the evolutionary process results in anti-evolutionists?
The Darwinist would have to rely on some sort of Hegelian thesis-antithesis-synthesis mechanism to explain this phenomenon. Hegel’s mechanism posits an antithesis to a thesis that through conflict results in a synthesis. In other words A and not-A lead to a super-A. Darwinians would have to state that evolution plus anti-evolution leads to super evolution. But how did A bring about non-A? Eh?
On another note, Hannon writes,
“How much supporting evidence is enough?”
As if there was a mountain of evidence already accumulated. There is none, there is no mountain…only a trough.
“It does not have to be proved to some impossible absolute degree to be a valuable and insightful tool for research and understanding.”
Well it hasn’t been proven to any degree, never mind to any approximation of the absolute.
Hannon accepts a relative degree of proof for evolution—would he accept the same non-absolute standard for a proof of God’s existence?
James M. writes:
Dear Larry,
John B. knows what he’s talking about on evolution. You and Mark K. do not. This is one of the stupidest comments I have read for some time (and I visit liberal websites regularly):
It is almost impossible to misunderstand “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” No one argues that this statement is incomprehensible although they may hate the fact that it is there. So why, John B., is evolution so convoluted that it requires such a precise sequence of words which may or may not be understood anyway?
Why is evolution convoluted? Well, why is astrophysics? Is Mark K. going to argue that thinking of the sun as a giant lamp is preferable to accepting that it generates heat and light by nuclear fusion? It’s a child’s way of viewing the world, as though it must organize itself around his intellectual convenience and ideological prejudice. The left take the same attitude to the question of evolved differences between human races. I again recommend Steve Sailer on the topic:
“Ironically, while the religious right engages in futile attacks on Darwin’s theory of what animals evolved from, the left and center clamps down upon Darwin’s theory of what humans evolved to.”
See this and this by Sailer.
LA replies:
I agree with James about Mark K.’s comment that James quotes. It didn’t make any sense to me. Statements are only true if we can easily understand them? Lots of things about physics, chemistry, organic chemistry, are very difficult to understand. Does Mark say that therefore they’re not true?
I disagree with James and with Sailer that the attacks on Darwinism are futile. Only a person with a, ahem, religious attachment to Darwinism could continue to believe in it after all the inherent problems with it that have been shown.
Mark K. writes:
Since several people have commented upon my ignorance of Darwinian evolution and the stupidity of my statements, so let me address this from an impersonal standpoint.
If Darwinian evolution is true, how can it be misunderstood? Reflect on that for a little while. If we are all products of Darwinian evolution, i.e., if Darwinian evolution is an absolute process from which there is no deviation, how can a product of that process misunderstand the process itself? This condition assumes that the product of evolution (such as I myself) can in fact have a consciousness that negates the process in his own mind. Now how does that arise? How does the negation of a process arise during the unfolding of that process? Please explain my stupidity, ignorance and variance with evolution if evolution is THE process that engenders my being, my mind, and my consciousness. This points to the fact that evolution has built into it a negating factor—which undoes any sense of cause and effect within evolution. Evolution results in anti-evolution? Please explain, oh brights (to use Dawkins’s namefor you guys).
Allan Wall writes:
Regarding Darwinism, notice the religious awe accorded to an incomplete skeleton which has been declared our ancestor:
“They approached her glassy tomb slowly, respectfully, as though it were an altar, speaking mostly in whispers. Some lingered, crouched and hovered, causing a security guard to constantly nudge them back.”
LA replies:
Mr. Wall may be right, but to take the other side of the issue, they’re in a museum, looking at Lucy, the most complete and most famous early hominid fossil in the world, on public display apparently for the first time (previous displays have been of copies). Anything having to do with origins or the ancient past naturally triggers feelings of awe and wonder in people. I don’t think that people expressing wonder necessarily indicates that they’re regarding Lucy religiously. I’m not a believer in Darwinian evolution, but I still feel a sense of wonder looking at hominid fossils.
Josh F. writes:
I think the current belief in Modern Evolutionary Theory is referenced as “descent with modification.” This states that the earth’s biota is in fact one entity that has persisted since the OOL (origin of life). Meaning that each and every organism on this planet has, as its foundation, a material aspect of the original life form. If it cannot be recognized, it is only because of modification. I’m not sure how one is to read such an understanding other than to say that within each and every one of us, according to MET, is a living remnant billions of years old in either original or modified form. I have yet see any scientist bring forth this descended remnant in either original or modified form. Of course, the scientist will tell us that the “descent” is in those ear bones and opposable thumbs while simultaneously castigating one for not seeing the obvious radical modification. I say show us the 4 billion year old living remnant that should reside in ALL of earth’s living things. Some scientists seem to have forgotten that direct observation is the defining feature of science.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 28, 2007 08:53 PM | Send
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