If you’ve never visited the Answers in Genesis website, don’t worry. You’ve missed little.
But this little gem caught my eye. Apparently, a creation believer wrote in to their feedback asking a rational question: why is it whenever I repeat one of the “facts” I learn in creationist literature in internet forums do I get my ass handed to me.
Okay. I’m paraphrasing a bit. But the question is basically saying just that. The person writing in to AiG was specifically concerned with the creationist claim that mutations are not beneficial and do not add information to an organism. The person was also upset that his/her son wrote a paper for school, which was criticized by the son’s geology teacher as “full of inaccuracies.” And the answer provided by this creationist nut site is very telling. Their response was to say the following:
1) people interpret evidence based on presuppositions
2) historical sciences cannot be tested or shown to be repeatable
3) the sciences that give us MRIs, planes, and vaccines are “here and now” sciences
4) historical sciences are laden with “presuppositions” but not “here and now” sciences
5) natural selection provides no new information
6) thus, evolution, is not supported by science
Here’s my comments to these points:
1) The first point is interesting. AiG concedes that bias and preconceived conclusions cloud rational thought and the ability to evaluate evidence. The difference between creationists and those that embrace science over superstition is that they’re open to being swayed by evidence. Creationists are concerned only with that evidence that supports their conclusions. After all, the Bible says its true, and the Bible is right because it’s God’s word, which we know because the Bible says it’s so. Therefore, any evidence obtained through observation and testable hypotheses must be mis-interpreted by mere mortals who call themselves scientists. Indeed, the superstitious will simply toss out such evidence, dismissing it out of hand. And this isn’t a trait found only among creationists. Superstitious people the world over exhibit the same type of behavior whether they be the Fulani of West Africa or the pitcher of a major league baseball team.
2) And this brings us to the second point that evolution cannot be tested or repeatable. In fact, it’s no unimportant fact that AiG specifically mentiones “historical science” as being without any testable or repeatable properties. This, by default, would include their own “creation science,” which is, by their definition, “historical.” Creationists consistently use this fallacy but I think its due to ignorance more than deceit. They simply have a low grasp of how science works and have already separated so-called “historical sciences” from the rest of science.
Geologists, archaeologists, paleontologists, biologists, chemists, geneticists and so on all work with scientific principles and methods and they are each sciences that explore evolution. The most obvious historical science among them is, perhaps, archaeology and it is replete with testable and repeatable science. If not, much of what we know about ancient cultures would be non-existant. Luckily, there are more questions than answers in every science (otherwise science would be boring), but no scientist is sure he has all the answers. The superstitious, however, begin their day with a belief that they already have an answer and if science comes along and challenges that belief then it obviously must be wrong. Testing evolution happens all the time and a simple example is the prediction that reptile arms when seriated in the fossil record shows a steady progression from arm-like to wing-like. Which is what we see. Moreover, the prediction can be made that we will not find wings where they shouldn’t be (potential falsification) such as on oysters or horses. Nor would you see arms where they shouldn’t be, such as a bird with both wings and arms. And these predictions (tests) are reproducible time and again (repeatable).
3) While there are some different methods utilized by different sciences (archaeology might employ different methods of science than astronomy), in general, they are all performing science -that is to say, they all value rational observation of the natural world and do not entertain superstitious and supernatural explanations. So the MRIs, planes and vaccines that creationists are so fond of were developed by the same sort of science used in biology, geology, chemistry, and astronomy. Indeed, some of the exact same principles are involved.
4) Therefore, “historical sciences” are no more subject to “presuppositions” than any other science if the scientist is willing to accept evidence, test hypotheses, and accept that falsification is possible. The “presuppositions” (a.k.a. preconceived conclusions) exist nearly exclusively with the superstitious who aren’t willing to re-evaluate their beliefs in the face of evidence. Mountains upon mountains of it.
5) This completely unfounded and unscientific claim has been busted time and again. So much that there simply isn’t reason to do more than provide a few links:
Apolipoprotein AI Mutations and Information
The Nylon Bug
Are Mutations Harmful?
6) Evolution is almost entirely comprised of science. To say otherwise is to reveal ignorance, a failed education, deceit, or a fear of learning the truth.
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Email: Yenald Looshi
“The farther you go back the less evidence remains”…
How convenient. Slap another inconceivable amount of time on the age of the earth/universe and you can rationalize anything from irreligious belief to ethical approach to anything.
And for all of those who keep making potshots about my lack of intelligence…I agree with you–I’m not smart.
Insults have yet to prove your theory. If you were really confident about it then you wouldn’t need to resort to insults.
Ed, I’m going to rely on you to tell me. So these transitional fossils have wing nubbies or are they in full functional form?
Clint “How convenient.”
Unfortunate, yes. Uncomfortable (for some), yes. Convenient, no. The history of the universe and the history of life on Earth are incomplete puzzles. Beautiful, fascinating, complex puzzles. Slapping “In the beginning…” on it and pretending they’re solved does not solve anything.
“Slap another inconceivable amount of time on the age of the earth/universe…”
14 billion years for the universe and 4.5 billion years for the Earth (dates subject to change pending new evidence) are not inconceivable. They’re merely really big. Really, really big.
“…and you can rationalize anything from irreligious belief to ethical approach to anything.”
Slap Genesis on the age of the earth/universe and you have to rationalize everything.
“And for all of those who keep making potshots about my lack of intelligence…” & “Insults have yet to prove your theory.”
A quick scan of this page shows precious little along that line. If you want people to insult you, may I recommend Gods4suckers? Your mild Creationist tropes thus far, like “theory” and “transitional fossils” would be like throwing meat to the wolves there. Here, we’re more civilized. I, for one, have a monocle and a tophat and everything. Later, we’ll be ballroom dancing, sniffing ether, and talking about the Crimean war.
“Ed, I’m going to rely on you to tell me.”
Admittedly, I’m not Ed (I know this because Ed has better hair than me), but if you’re looking for transitional fossils the line for whales is fascinating. Plus, it’s fairly complete (moreso than dinosaurs to birds, IMO) and, interestingly, most of what we know has only been found in the last twenty years or so (land mammals-to-whales used to be one of the evolution-denier’s favourite tropes. They’ll still be using it twenty years from now, probably. They stopped paying attention to new discoveries just after the Snopes trial, I think, and prefer repetition as a form of argument, no matter how badly the argument failed). Fish to amphibians is even cooler (with new finds like Tiktallik).
But you’re not looking, are you? You want us to find for you the things that you would be looking for yourself if you really wanted to know, right? Try the library, if you really want to learn. Not just “hear”, but “learn”. They’re full of books on such things, if memory serves (some, it must be mentioned, will be out of date. Scientific discovery is like that, you know, what with the adapting to and incorporating new data and all). I don’t go there myself, as the librarians were always shushing me. “No! Shush you!” I would reply wittily, but they were quite insistent on me not cheering every time I flipped a page.
For a start, read Your Inner Fish. It’s a bit lite, IMO, but insightful and amusing. It’s just like me, except that I’ve got eyebrows. Well, I’ve only got the one, but it does go all the way across. I’m classy like that.
I just left another long, link-bound reply. Again, it appears to have not done so. Appear, I mean.
A spam detector that things Wikipedia and Amazon are spam isn’t much of a spam detector, y’know? It’s a bit like a speedometer that only functions when the parking brake is not. Granted, that’s a terrible analogy, but I majored in terrible analogies (with a minor in rambling) in University and rarely get to use them out in the real world. Talk about a useless diploma…
Also, you guys need a preview button, if only to save me the embarrassment of putting “not” where “on” should be and, on occasion, failing to close a tag.
You know better, don’t you? Birds don’t start out as snakes with no ancestors, and then have to “grow” everything. Evolution theory doesn’t predict that, evolution theory doesn’t require that, and that’s not at all what the fossils show. So, I’m curious, and my question remains: Have you looked to see how birds evolved?
Birds evolved from creatures that had fully developed forelimbs. A key question is how and why feathers came along, and there are two serious schools on the origin of flight. The fossil evidence shows feathers developed first, probably providing the advantage of insulation to keep the little beasties warm. The different of opinion is over whether a climbing, tree-dwelling or tree-hunting creature then learned to glide — the method that flight developed among squirrels, for example — or whether feathers on the forelimbs grew elongated, selected for some other purpose (catching prey?), and then proved useful for producing lift.
You’ll note, of course, that in neither of these scenarios are there “nubs” of wings. Your use of that old canard suggests to me that you are not a serious student of science, and I’m interested to hear whether you’re genuinely curious and ill-informed, or trolling for testimony.
Dr. Gary Ritchison at Eastern Kentucky U has an upper-level ornithology course that deals with these issues, and his class website details the two chief theories of the evolution of flight, and from which lizard-like branch. You can see it here:
http://people.eku.edu/ritchisong/554notes1.html
I gather the spam filter is nervous about links. I’ll leave this post at one, to try to make sure it gets through.
Clint, look at these charts, too:
http://www.geol.umd.edu/%7Etholtz/G104/10424arch.htm
Giving you the benefit of the doubt, assuming you’re just under-informed, these sources should provide you with enough grist and material to point to other sources. There have been dozens of exciting finds in the past 20 years that fill in the picture of bird evolution, even if they leave open the question of just how flight evolved and in which line, or whether flight in birds might have evolved more than once.
Is this the only point that troubles you about evolution? You can get a great background at the Berkeley gateway to evolution site, or at the PBS site for the series “Evolution.”
Here’s a link to the Berkeley site on evolution of Aves:
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/diapsids/birds/birdfr.html
Shoulda been “difference of opinion” of course.
“And for all of those who keep making potshots about my lack of intelligence…I agree with you–I’m not smart.
Insults have yet to prove your theory. If you were really confident about it then you wouldn’t need to resort to insults.”
It’s not insulting you. It’s merely pointing out that you lack the conceptual and theoretical foundation to truly understand the processes we’re talking about.
Creationism is, at its heart, an ignorant belief, whereas one does not believe in evolution so much as understand it. Every experiment by every biologist, chemist, and physicist concerning every theoretical underpinning has borne it out, time and time again. People who ask for demonstrations of “wing nubbins,” on the other hand, don’t actually understand what they’re asking for. Anyone who asks for a “transitional fossil” doesn’t actually understand how evolution works.
Go to college, study some science, come back when you’ve learned something.
All this talk about things, stuff, and whatnot is making me hungry. I don’t know about you guys and gals, but I sure could go for a basket of wing nubbins right now.
Somehow i missed the point. Probably lost in translation
Anyway … nice blog to visit.
cheers, Fondue.
Clint got served..
*Trollface.jpg*