-Caveat Lector-
I am perplexed that so many educated people are so reluctant to
subscribe to any sort of religious explanation of the origin of life. Rather
they blandly assume that life began through a random series of
coincidences. The contemplation of the abstruse complexities of the human organism
lends itself poorly to the theory that, at a primordial instant in time, a
congenial cluster of amino acids and other organic chemicals
concatenated into a living and self-replicating creature, which by chance
eventuated into a complex and intelligent life form. I marvel at such faith!
Surely, as an unbiased observer, a scientist may begin to suspect the presence of
a supreme and existential Intelligence behind it all, especially after attempting
to unravel the labyrinthine interstices of the human genome.
On the other hand, while it does seem absurd to imagine that a god created the
universe in seven earth days, could it not have been a Master Celestial Biologist
who did the job over billions of years, through the calculated overcontrol of
evolution? Science may one day assemble all of the chemical ingredients of
protoplasm, but they shall never find a way to breathe the spark of life into dead
organic matter. That, my friends, is the domain of the Gods!
Is it not more reasonable to entertain the probability that evolution was
overcontrolled by the “gods” to produce sudden mutations via genetic engineering?
This would better explain the sudden appearance of new species in the fossil
record. One here might postulate that extraterrestrials took a hand in creation.
But they would not have the means or the vast knowledge of unfamiliar DNA
aggregations to breath the breath of life into an entirely new organism without
making bad mistakes, which would be shown in the fossil record. To me, it is more
reasonable to believe in the divine overcontrolling hand in evolution. Only the
original Creator would possess the foreknowledge and the exquisite understanding
of process to enable the creation of new species.
Byron T. Weeks, MD
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Gavin Phillips wrote:
> -Caveat Lector-
>
> http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/rossuk/Johnson.htm
>
> Darwinists Squirm Under Spotlight
> Interview with Phillip E. Johnson
>
> This article is reprinted from an interview with Citizen Magazine, January
> 1992.
>
> Phillip Johnson has been a law professor at the University of California at
> Berkeley for more than 20 years. As an academic lawyer, one of Johnson's
> specialties is "analyzing the logic of arguments and identifying the
> assumptions that lie behind those arguments." A few years ago he began to
> suspect that Darwinism, far from
> being an objective fact, was little more than a philosophical position
> dressed up as science--and poor science at that. Wanting to see whether his
> initial impression was correct, Johnson decided to take a closer look at the
> arguments, evidence and assumptions underlying contemporary Darwinism. The
> result of his investigation is
> Darwin on Trial, a controversial new book that challenges not only Darwinism
> but the philosophical mindset that sustains it.
>
> When did you first become aware that Darwinism was in trouble as a scientific
> theory?
>
> I had been vaguely aware that there were problems, but I'd never had any
> intention of taking up the subject seriously or in detail until the 1987-88
> academic year, when I was a visiting professor in London. Every day on the
> way to my office I happened to go by a large bookstore devoted to science. I
> picked up one book after another and became increasingly fascinated with the
> obvious difficulties in the Darwinist case--difficulties that were being
> evaded by tricky rhetoric and emphatic
> repetition. I then began delving into the professional literature, especially
> in scientific journals such as Nature and Science. At every step, what I
> found was a failure of the evidence to be in accord with the theory.
>
> What was it that initially made you suspect that Darwinism was more
> philosophy than hard science?
>
> It was the way my scientific colleagues responded when I asked the hard
> questions. Instead of taking the intellectual questions seriously and
> responding to them, they would answer with all sorts of evasions and vague
> language, making it impossible to discuss the real objections to Darwinism.
> This is the way people talk when they're trying very hard not to understand
> something. Another tip-off was the sharp contrast I noticed between the
> extremely dogmatic tone that Darwinists use when addressing the general
> public and the occasional frank acknowledgments, in
> scientific circles, of serious problems with the theory. For example, I would
> read Stephen Jay Gould telling the scientific world that Darwinism was
> effectively dead as a theory. And then in the popular literature, I would
> read Gould and other scientific writers saying that Darwinism was
> fundamentallyhealthy, and that scientists had the remaining problems well
> under control. There was a contradiction
> here, and it looked as though there was an effort to keep the outside world
> from becoming aware of the serious intellectual difficulties.
>
> What are some of the intellectual difficulties? Can you give an example?
>
> The most important is the fossil problem, because this is a direct record of
> the history of life on earth. If Darwinism were true, you would expect the
> fossil evidence
> to contain many examples of Darwinian evolution. You would expect to see
> fossils that really couldn't be understood except as transitions between one
> kind of organism and another. You would also expect to see some of the common
> ancestors that gave birth to different groups like fish and reptiles. You
> wouldn't expect to find them in every case, of course. It's perfectly
> reasonable to say that a great deal of the fossil evidence has been lost. But
> you would continually be finding examples of things that fit well with the
> theory. In reality, the fossil record is something that Darwinists have had
> to explain away, because what it
> shows is the sudden appearance of organisms that exhibit no trace of
> step-by-step development from earlier forms. And it shows that once these
> organisms exist, they remain fundamentally unchanged, despite the passage of
> millions of years-and despite climatic and environmental changes that should
> have produced enormous Darwinian evolution if the theory were true. In short,
> if evolution is the
> gradual, step-by-step transformation of one kind of thing into another, the
> outstanding feature of the fossil record is the absence of evidence for
> evolution.
>
> But isn't it possible, as many Darwinists say, that the fossil evidence is
> just too scanty to show evidence of Darwinian evolution?
>
> The question is whether or not Darwinism is a scientific theory that can be
> tested with scientific evidence. If you assume that the theory is true, you
> can deal with conflicting evidence by saying that the evidence has
> disappeared. But then the question arises, how do you know it's true if it
> isn't recorded in the fossils? Where is the proof? It's not in genetics. And
> it's not in the molecular evidence, which shows similarities between
> organisms but doesn't tell you how those similarities came about. So the
> proof isn't anywhere, and it's illegitimate to approach the fossil record
> with the conclusive assumption that the theory is true so that you can read
> into the fossil record whatever you need to support the theory.
>
> If Darwinism has been so thoroughly disconfirmed, why do so many scientists
> say it's a fact?
>
> There are several factors that explain this. One is that Darwinism is
> fundamentally a religious position, ot a scientific position. The project of
> Darwinism is to explain the
> world and all its life forms in a way that excludes any role for a creator.
> And that project is sacred to the scientific naturalist-to the person who
> denies that God can in any way influence natural events.It's also an
> unfortunate fact in the history of science that scientists will stick to a
> theory which is untrue until they get an acceptable alternative theory-which
> to a Darwinist means a strictly naturalistic
> theory. So for them, the question is not whether Darwinism is true. The
> question is whether there is a better theory that's philosophically
> acceptable. Any suggestion that Darwinism is false, and that we should admit
> our ignorance about the origin of complex life-forms, is simply unacceptable.
> In their eyes, Darwinism is the best naturalistic theory, and therefore
> effectively true. The argument that it's
> false can't even be heard.
>
> Surely there are some skeptics in the scientific world. What of them?
>
> Well, there are several, and we can see what happened to them. You have
> paleontologist Colin Patterson, who's quoted in my first chapter. He made a
> very bold statement, received a lot of vicious criticism, and then pulled
> back. This is a typical pattern. Another pattern is that of Stephen Jay
> Gould, who said that Darwinism is effectively dead as a general theory-and
> then realized that he had given a powerful weapon to the creationists, whose
> existence cannot be tolerated. So now Gould says that he's really a good
> Darwinist, and that all he
> really meant was that Darwinism could be improved by developing a larger
> theory that included Darwinism. What we have here is politics, not science.
> Darwinism is politically correct for the scientific community, because it
> enables them to fight off any rivals for cultural authority.
>
> Darwinists often accuse creationists of intolerance. But you're suggesting
> that the
> Darwinists are intolerant?
>
> If you want to know what Darwinist science is really like, read what the
> Darwinists say about the creationists, because those things-regardless of
> whether they're true about the creationists-are true about the Darwinists.
> I've found that people often say things about their enemies that are true of
> themselves. And I think Darwinist science has many of the defects that the
> Darwinists are so indignant about when they describe the creationists.
>
> Across the country, there has been a growing trend toward teaching evolution
> as a fact-especially in California, your own state. What does this say about
> science education in America?
>
> This is an attempt to establish a religious position as orthodox throughout
> the educational establishment, and thus throughout the society. It's gone
> very far. The position is what I call "scientific naturalism." The scientific
> organizations, for example, tell us that if we wish to maintain our country's
> economic status and cope with environmental problems, we must give everyone a
> scientific outlook.
> But the "scientific outlook" they have in mind is one which, by definition,
> excludes God from any role in the world, from the Big Bang to the present. So
> this is fundamentally a religious position-a fundamentalist position, if you
> like--and it's being taught in the schools as a fact when it isn't even a
> good theory.
>
> Why should Christians be concerned about a scientific theory? Why does it
> matter?
>
> Well, not only Christians should care about it. Everyone should. It is
> religion in the name of science, and that means that it is misleading people
> about both religion and science.
> Copyright © 1997 Phillip E. Johnson. All rights reserved. International
> copyright secured.
> File Date:2.22.97
>
> Edited book review by Johnson of Michael Behe's book "Darwins Black Box"
>
> Biochemist Michael Behe answers that the blind watchmaker thesis is a relic
> of a nineteenth-century science which lacked the understanding of biological
> mechanisms that recent advances in molecular biology have provided. The
> biologists who established the still-dominant Darwinian orthodoxy thought of
> the cell as an undifferentiated blob of
> "protoplasm." Like a child imagining he might construct an airplane out of
> cardboard boxes and pieces of wood, they could blithely propose materialist
> evolutionary scenarios for biological systems because they had no idea of how
> those systems actually work.
> The organism (and especially the cell) was to them a "black box"-a machine
> that does wonderful things by some mechanism nobody knows.
>
> Behe explains that biochemists are now able to explore part of the insides of
> that black box, and what they find inside is "irreducible complexity." A
> system is irreducibly complex if it is "composed of several well-matched,
> interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal
> of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning."
> Life at the molecular level is replete with such systems, and biochemists do
> not even attempt to explain how any one of them
> could have come into existence by the Darwinian mechanism. The result of
> biochemical investigation of cellular mechanisms, according to Behe, "is a
> loud, clear, piercing cry of 'Design!'"
>
> Dawkins insisted in The Blind
> Watchmaker that his position is falsifiable:
> One hundred and twenty-five years [after the publication of On the Origin of
> Species],
> we know a lot more about animals and plants than Darwin did, and still not a
> single
> case is known to me of a complex organ that could not have been formed by
> numerous
> successive slight modifications. I do not believe that such a case will ever
> be found. If it
> is-it'll have to be a really complex organ, and . . . you have to be
> sophisticated about
> what you mean by "slight"-I shall cease to believe in Darwinism.
>
> Dawkins agrees that even a single irrefutable case of irreducible complexity
> would be fatal to Darwinism. Behe argues that there are many cases of
> irreducible complexity to be found at the molecular level, with more being
> discovered as the science progresses. What is more, he argues that the
> existence of irreducible complexity is implicitly accepted by the entire
> worldwide community of molecular biologists.
>
> many of whom will proclaim to every journalist in sight that their discipline
> confirms Darwinism in every detail. What molecular biology has to say is
> determined not by what the biologists say to a popular audience, however, or
> even to each other in conversation,
> but by what they publish in the leading scientific journals. Behe reports
> that what they do not ever publish in those journals is detailed scenarios of
> how even a single complex molecular system could have evolved by a Darwinian
> process.
>
> If the blind watchmaker thesis is true, there must be a gradually ascending
> staircase from the base all the way to the summit. To restate the metaphor in
> biological language, there must have existed a continuous series of viable
> intermediate forms between the first replicating organism (whose origin is
> another subject) all the way to every complex type of organ system and
> organism that has ever existed. Each step upwards in complexity has to be at
> least slightly fitter (at leaving descendants) than
> its predecessor, and the gap between the steps must be no wider than can be
> bridged by random mutation. On the whole that means tiny mutations because,
> according to Dawkins, mutations large enough to have visible effects are
> nearly always harmful. The gradual steps have to be virtually omnipresent; a
> few plausible sections of staircase here and there up the face of the
> mountain are not enough. As Dawkins concedes, even a single unclimbable
> precipice spoils the theory-although the difficulty in proving that any one
> precipice is truly unclimbable means that a great many examples will have to
> be considered.
>
> Because of his philosophical starting point (science goes from simple to
> complex), Dawkins does not regard the existence of the staircase as something
> whose existence needs to be proved, but rather as a logical necessity that
> only needs to be illustrated. The illustrations consist primarily of
> imaginative stories and computer simulations. Here, for example, is a
> synopsis of the Dawkins theory on the evolution of flight:
>
> To begin with, an ancestor like an ordinary squirrel, living up trees without
> any special
> gliding membrane, leaps across short gaps. [It could leap further if it had
> something to
> slow a fall.] So natural selection favors individuals with slightly pouchy
> skin around the
> arm or leg joints, and this becomes the norm. . . . Now any individuals with
> an even
> larger skin web can leap a few inches further. So in later generations this
> extension of
> skin becomes the norm, and so on. . . . It is easy to imagine true flapping
> flight evolving
> from repetition of the muscular movements used to control glide direction, so
> average
> time to landing is gradually postponed over evolutionary time.
>
> Some biologists, however, prefer to see long- distance downhill gliding as
> the dead end
> of the tree- jumping line of evolution. True flight, they think, began on the
> ground rather
> than up trees. . . . There are some mammals such as kangaroos that propel
> themselves very fast on two legs, leaving their arms free to evolve in other
> directions. . . . But bipedal mammals don't seem to have taken the next step
> and evolved the power of flight. The only true flying mammals are bats, and
> their wing membrane incorporates the back legs as well as the arms. . . .
> Perhaps birds began flying by leaping off the ground, while bats began by
> gliding out of trees. Or perhaps birds too began by gliding out of trees. The
> debate continues.
>
> Many biologists call this kind of "explanation" a Just-So Story because it
> belongs to the realm of children's literature, not science. Dawkins is like
> the little boy who thought he could make an airplane by adding something that
> looks like a pair of wings to something that looks like a fuselage. How do
> you make a bat? No problem, boys and girls, and no need to consider the
> complications of biochemistry, physiology, and development. Just wait for a
> squirrel population to grow wings, which it might do one way or another.
>
> Dawkins' computer simulations of evolution have even less connection to
> biological reality. A computer program can be designed (the word deserves
> emphasis here) to do
> just about anything, including to mutate stick figures that look vaguely like
> animals (or trees) into all kinds of shapes. The eminent Darwinist John
> Maynard Smith dismissed the much more sophisticated computer simulations of
> Stuart Kauffmann as "fact-free
> science," because they have no connection to real biological mechanisms.
>
> To move from Dawkins to Behe is like moving from the children's library to
> the laboratory. Do you want to know how vision might have evolved? Because
> the biochemistry of vision is a black box to Dawkins, he can speculate
> without impediment. There are well over forty different types of eyes which,
> because of their fundamentally differing structure, must have evolved
> (whatever that means) separately. Some of these eyes are much simpler than
> others. All an evolutionary storyteller has to do
> is to start with the apparently simplest version, ignore the neural equipment
> that has to be present for an organism to make any use of a "photon
> receptor," and spin a charming tale about how a tiny primitive light-sensing
> cell might grow up to be a full-fledged eye.
>
> That's what Charles Darwin did in 1859, and Dawkins just repackages the same
> story.
> Behe gives us just a bare start towards understanding what a biochemically
> informed evolutionary theory has to explain:
>
> When light first strikes the retina a photon interacts with a molecule called
> 11-cis retinal, which rearranges within picoseconds to trans-retinal. (A
> picosecond is about the time it takes light to travel the breadth of a single
> human hair.) The change in the shape of the retinal molecule forces a change
> in the shape of the protein, rhodopsin, to which the retinal is tightly
> bound. The protein's metamorphosis alters its behavior. Now called
> metarhodopsin II, the protein sticks to another protein, called transducin.
> Before
> bumping into metarhodopsin II, transducin had tightly bound a small molecule
> called
> GDP. But when transducin interacts with metarhodopsin II, the GDP falls off,
> and a
> molecule called GTP binds to transducin. (GTP is closely related to, but
> critically
> different from, GDP.)
>
> ll "hand-waving." The journals of molecular evolution are full of papers
> documenting
> sequence comparisons, showing closer or more distant relationships between
> molecules. What they don't contain is papers documenting the existence of a
> Darwinian staircase up Mount Improbable. Until somebody fills the gap with
> scientific papers rather than stories, the best explanation for this
> situation is that the staircase doesn't exist.
>
> Behe's fundamental principle is that "scientists should follow the physical
> evidence wherever it leads, with no artificial restrictions." Science has
> come as far as it has because scientists of the past were willing to describe
> the universe as it really is, rather than as the prejudices current in their
> times would have preferred it to be. The question is whether today's
> scientists have lost their nerve.
>
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DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
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CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic
screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! These are sordid matters
and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright
frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects
spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL
gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers;
be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and
nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
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