The National Museum of Natural History has an upcoming exhibit on evolution which will focus on "the significant role that Darwin’s theories have played in explaining and unifying all the biological sciences." That won't be much of an exhibit. The only area of thought in which evolutionary studies has a significant role is evolutionary studies. One could fit into a thimble the important scientific advances made possible by evolution. Evolution is the study of itself--it is, if anything, narcissistic.
The exhibit will also illustrate "how our knowledge of evolution has evolved over the last 150 years." Now that could fill the entire museum and then some. The theory of evolution is constantly evolving because the theory of evolution is constantly upended by what science discovers.
Rarely has evolution provided useful guidance for scientific research, beyond what common sense would provide. That is because important predictions of evolution so often turn out to be false. It is not a good sign that a theory generates so many false predictions. But that's what happens when religion drives science.
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Doesn't evolution predict why putting anitbiotics in every product is a bad idea and explain the rise of superbugs?
ReplyDeleteEvolutionists often claim that small-scale changes we observe (eg, adaptation); the action of pesticides; the action of antibiotics, and so forth are all proofs of evolution, and make sense only on evolution.
ReplyDeleteThese are all false claims. These are all far more complex than evolution would have us expect. See this for example:
http://www.darwinspredictions.com/#_5.2_Biological_variation
Samuel Skinner
ReplyDelete"These are all far more complex than evolution would have us expect."
Evolution does not make any claims about how complex changes would be. It simply states that a population varies with some members hopefully having resistant traits. They live when the others die and the new population is made of them.
It is more complicated as usually the resistance is in degrees and for bacteria they can share plasmids to help speed up the process, but this fits inside evolution easily.