Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Richard Dawkins and the Spectacle of Evolution

Richard Dawkins' new book about evolution is aptly titled The Greatest Show On Earth, for evolution is an incredible show. In fact it is a spectacle. Evolutionists routinely make false claims, commit logical fallacies, and contradict themselves, all with the air of absolute confidence. But this is not all. This spectacle has been on stage for centuries now, and the players have remained oblivious to their blunders. We may as well be watching a group of belligerent teenagers for some sign of intelligence. Here are some of the latest absurdities from this greatest show on earth.

Overwhelmingly powerful evidence

In a Reuters interview last week, Dawkins explained that the genetic differences and similarities between the different species are precisely as evolution would predict.

You can actually plot a picture of the pattern of resemblances and differences between every animal and plant and every other animal and plant, and you find out that it fits on a beautiful, hierarchical, branching tree, which can only sensibly be interpreted as a family tree. When you do the same thing with a different gene, you get the same tree. Do the same thing with a third gene, and you get the same tree. It’s overwhelmingly powerful evidence. And by the way, it also works for pseudogenes, which don’t do any work at all but which are still recognizably there and still readable. They too fall on the same hierarchical tree pattern.

This claim is typical but there is only one problem: it is false. From a scientific perspective it simply is not true. Evolutionists repeat this mantra so often one would think it would lose its shock value. But I still squint in disbelief as I read the words: "you find out that it fits on a beautiful, hierarchical, branching tree. When you do the same thing with a different gene, you get the same tree."

This is unequivocally, unquestionably, false. There's no nice way to put it. The scientific data are available for all to see, but evolutionists continue their march to the sea. The spectacle here is that, despite the obvious evidence, evolutionists continue to shout this absurdity ever louder, as though the problem is that their message is not being heard.

But now for the real problem. Evolutionists follow this scientifically false claim with a philosophically false claim. They misinterpret the scientific data and they then claim it proves evolution.

As Dawkins puts it, the pattern is "overwhelmingly powerful evidence." What is worse, false science or false philosophy? For even if the scientific data are as they claim, it would not be overwhelmingly powerful evidence for evolution. Yes, it certainly would be evidence, but it certainly would not be overwhelming. Not, that is, unless one brings religion into the picture. As Darwin put it, such patterns are "utterly inexplicable if species are independent creations."

Now the logic becomes clear. The failures in the pattern don't matter to evolutionists, for the species would never have been created with even a hint of a pattern. Today this remains a key argument for evolutionists.

The DNA code

At the University of Virginia this week, Dawkins issued another standard evolutionary blunder. As the university newspaper reported, Dawkins cited the fact that DNA code is universal among all living things as another obvious and compelling evidence for evolution.

But beyond vague cartoons evolutionists have little idea of how the code could have evolved. Indeed, what we do know is that the code is difficult to change--not a very good candidate for a narrative of gradual evolution.

Such scientific conundrums, however, are not part of the evolutionary reasoning. Once again, evolutionists know that if the species were independently created there would be no such consistency. There would be many codes, not a single universal code. As usual, it is religious reasoning that provides the certainty.

The fact of evolution

Also this week Dawkins was interviewed by Hugh Hewitt. Unlike most interviewers, Hewitt understands the importance of the claim that evolution is a fact. He asked Dawkins about his equating of evolution skeptics and Holocaust deniers. If informed people doubt evolution and yet Dawkins demonizes them as such extremists, then doesn't Dawkins' judgment come into question?

No, Dawkins assured that the evidence for evolution is airtight. Anyone doubting evolution really is an extremist. This overreach by evolutionists is a key to understanding the genre and Hewitt rapidly homed in the target.

It quickly became a Bogey Moment which reached its climax when Dawkins became aghast upon learning that Hewitt believes in miracles. "Do you realllllllyyyy believe that Jesus turned water into wine?" Dawkins incredulously asked. "Oh my god," exclaimed the evolutionist, "now I realize the type of person I've been dealing with."

Evolutionary thought is about as sophisticated as a pile of rocks and Dawkins' transparency revealed all. Hewitt unmasked Dawkins and the charade of Dawkins dispassionately evaluating scientific evidence for evolution was revealed.

In the first half of the eighteenth century a massive debate over miracles took place in England. Later in the century David Hume collected the arguments and for many made a persuasive case against miracles.

By Darwin's day miracles were increasingly viewed as myths and not becoming of advanced thinkers. It was one of several trends that formed the religious foundation of and mandate for evolutionary thought. Dawkins is squarely in this tradition and is astonished that anyone not in the backwoods could believe in miracles.

Of course Darwin must be right--one way or another the species must have evolved, regardless of the empirical evidence may say. Religion drives science and it matters.

14 comments:

  1. Cornelius,
    How is Dawkin's statement any more or less of a lie than your thylacine-wolf slide? in the previous thread you accused me of lying about it. how so? it has been extensively discussed. can you explain the details, for example your thought process in putting that slide together, that might mitigate it? it really is a public relations disaster and an easy way to discredit you, so it's probably in your best interest to just address it. you might also want to address your own thoughts about the origin of species. all signs point to you being an old earth creationist, but you are incredibly slippery whenever anyone asks you about it. if you think you have a scientifically defensible position, i don't see why you have so much trouble talking about it.

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  2. ps what Dawkins said is a vast oversimplification. however, when you say it's false, you are also oversimplifying. in some cases, gene trees from different genes match very well. for example, primate phylogenies from cytochrome B and from ERVs produce identical trees. in some cases, it doesn't work, for example in some Drosophila. so neither of you is correct.

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  3. Khan:

    Wow, what a Bogey Moment. I wish you had told me this earlier. Do you really mean that I have lost credibility with evolutionists? Whatever shall I do. I guess I underestimated the prowess of evolutionists. I once screwed up on a slide -- yes a slide... -- and evolutionists were not to be fooled.

    I spent all of about a minute making the slide since it utterly uncontroversial (or are evolutionists now in denial about convergence also?), and now you are telling me it has been extensively discussed. I can just imagine the scene (were there any ball bearings?). I should have known I couldn't fool you sleuths.

    Utterly incredible. Evolutionists can repeatedly misrepresent the evidence in books, interviews, etc, but that is no different than a mistake on an unpublished slide I once made, which I openly admit to.

    "in some cases, gene trees from different genes match very well"

    Unbelievable. Of course they do in some case -- that is *not* what Dawkins said. The levels to which evolutionists will manipulate the data and their rhetoric is astonishing. To the public they make uncategorical claims that are nowhere close to being true, for example:

    "You can actually plot a picture of the pattern of resemblances and differences between every animal and plant and every other animal and plant, and you find out that it fits on a beautiful, hierarchical, branching tree, which can only sensibly be interpreted as a family tree. When you do the same thing with a different gene, you get the same tree. Do the same thing with a third gene, and you get the same tree. It’s overwhelmingly powerful evidence. And by the way, it also works for pseudogenes, which don’t do any work at all but which are still recognizably there and still readable. They too fall on the same hierarchical tree pattern."

    But they don't. There are plenty of genes (and traits in general) that don't cooperate, including pseudogenes. And so when challenged, they respond: "in some cases, gene trees from different genes match very well." How disingenuous can you possibly get?

    But it is all OK because of a mistake on a slide. As if the theory wasn't absurd enough, just look at how they defend their theory. Khan, do you have a mirror?

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  4. Cornelius,
    so it was a "mistake" now. why did you say it was a "lie" on my part in the other thread?

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  5. Dr. Hunter,

    I applaud you for actually opening up comments in this forum. I know that if it was my blog, I would not waste my time with rediculous comments from evolutionists. You can lead the horse to the water, you cant make them drink it.

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  6. So you want to "discredit" Hunter?How was the mistake he made any more important than a spelling error? Can I post some comparative photos of a wolf and a thylacine on here? While a fool like dawkins discredits himself every time he opens his mouth. Not interested in getting at the truth are you? Now we know what kind of religious nuts we're dealing with. I asked this once before and I'll ask it again- what's the point of wasting time with internet warrior like khan? Boring.

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  7. anonymous,
    if there's no point, why are you wasting time with me? do you really think that taking a picture of a thylacine, photoshopping it to make it look like a wolf (or at least less recognizable as the same picture) and then presenting that as evidence of convergent evolution is the same as a spelling error? that kind of "mistake" would get his funding yanked if he was an actual scientist.

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  8. "This is unequivocally, unquestionably, false. There's no nice way to put it. The scientific data are available for all to see, but evolutionists continue their march to the sea. The spectacle here is that, despite the obvious evidence, evolutionists continue to shout this absurdity ever louder, as though the problem is that their message is not being heard."

    Then show the data, Dr. Hunter. The most you can do with
    Dawkins' statements is quibble, as he's only wrong on a technicality: the phylogenies overlap on the main, while individual ones from different sequences can disagree (particularly in prokaryotes). That's hardly a strong position to be arguing his terrible wrongness about (although *I* had to get more specific than you, for your claim...).

    "But now for the real problem."

    And now you move on, again having demonstrated nothing while merely claiming factual accuracy.

    "What is worse, false science or false philosophy? For even if the scientific data are as they claim, it would not be overwhelmingly powerful evidence for evolution. Yes, it certainly would be evidence, but it certainly would not be overwhelming."

    Yes, it would. It's overwhelming evidence for common descent. Common descent predicts, predicted, and explains these patterns, no other testable hypotheses do. The fact that it keeps working and has kept working through the discovery of mechanisms of heredity and the molecular revolution (and the evidence derived from them) is important. Naturally, you dismiss it (again sans demonstration).

    "Not, that is, unless one brings religion into the picture. As Darwin put it, such patterns are "utterly inexplicable if species are independent creations.""

    How does that even make sense? Are you arguing that ID is religious? Are you yet again insinuating (rather than clarifying) that treating a proposition from a religious source as a testable alternative hypothesis is religious? Dawkins knows the religious crowd, he knows the answer many of them prefer and its predictive failure.

    "Now the logic becomes clear. The failures in the pattern don't matter to evolutionists, for the species would never have been created with even a hint of a pattern. Today this remains a key argument for evolutionists."

    The failures don't matter to "evolutionists"? First, let's be clear: by failure, you are indicating the places where phylogenies do not match up or do not match up perfectly. Rather than not mattering, scientists set out to explain why they do so given the pre-existing, *overwhelming* evidence for common descent. Horizontal gene transfer is one of those explanations and as one might expect, phylogenies are more difficult for prokaryotes. Differences (or similarities) in selection are also often suggested as testable hypotheses.

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  9. Next, you imply that there are alternative hypotheses for the data. Go ahead and list them, Dr. Hunter. Where are these ideas which call for "a hint of a pattern" (lol)? For now I won't and hopefully don't need to explain the difference between overlapping phylogenies from independent lines of evidence and 'a pattern'.

    "At the University of Virginia this week, Dawkins issued another standard evolutionary blunder. As the university newspaper reported, Dawkins cited the fact that DNA code is universal among all living things as another obvious and compelling evidence for evolution.

    But beyond vague cartoons evolutionists have little idea of how the code could have evolved. Indeed, what we do know is that the code is difficult to change--not a very good candidate for a narrative of gradual evolution."

    Dawkins was referring to evidence of common descent, you're arguing against him by placing the onus on biologists to demonstrate the way in which DNA arose. I know this is a common attempt at argumentation by ID proponents, but was it only me who noticed the subject change?

    "Such scientific conundrums, however, are not part of the evolutionary reasoning. Once again, evolutionists know that if the species were independently created there would be no such consistency. There would be many codes, not a single universal code. As usual, it is religious reasoning that provides the certainty."

    Many codes would be conceivable under any system of descent or creation. A single code, however, makes sense through common descent (it was inherited).

    Hugh Hewitt. Hugh Hewitt. LOL.

    "Evolutionary thought is about as sophisticated as a pile of rocks and Dawkins' transparency revealed all. Hewitt unmasked Dawkins and the charade of Dawkins dispassionately evaluating scientific evidence for evolution was revealed."

    I think the only appropriate answer here is, again, LOL. After a series of implications of how wrong Dawkins was and right Hewitt was (without, again, directly stating so and demonstrating it), we end with something more specific: because Dawkins got tired of silly argumentation and asked if his interviewer held laughable beliefs (all was then explained!), Dawkins is hardly someone who can dispassionately evaluate scientific evidence. The inanity is hard to believe.

    Finally, Dr. Hunter attempts to put a veneer of historicity on his implications, never missing a chance to tell us how religious evolution is without the petty act of explaining how and why. It's apparently good enough to tell us that correlation is causation and that because reduced religiosity correlated with scientific advancements, evolution in particular is religious. It all makes such perfect sense if you know almost nothing about history and evolution.

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  10. OK I'm totally confused here. Im not keen on Dawkins, he seems arrogant and, well a bit of an arse, but....

    Cornelius,
    I couldnt help thinking as I read your blog that you were suffering from the same lack of proof as you accused Dawkins of. Do you have any links to actual scientific data? Your argument seems more theological than dealing with any actual facts or evidence.

    To be honest, your blog kind of says to me "Dawkins is a big fat liar, so there!" Without a shred of proof, back up or support.

    I have always had issues with evolution, most scientists agree there are problems with it, gaps if you like. I have much bigger problems with miracles however.

    Its one thing to say "Dawkins is a twat cos he believes in evolution and evolution cant explain whats inside a cell."

    Its a whole other thing to say "A guy who (only in his 30's) lived in the desert for 40 days without water or food, who later changed water into wine, cured the sick by touching them, died on the cross and then came back to life as a ghost"

    I agree that Dawkins may not have the whole story right, but I'm not fricking stupid. I just dont buy the walking on water thing, I've never seen it, and I dont know anyone that has.

    I can look up scientific reports about butterflies that are changing their pigmentation to blend into their changing environment, but as yet I have not heard of a verifiable virgin birth.

    Please please please, if you want to argue against evolution, and I hope you do, can you tell me something that isn't based on something as believable as the tooth fairy.

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  11. Eggy:

    ===
    To be honest, your blog kind of says to me "Dawkins is a big fat liar, so there!" Without a shred of proof, back up or support.
    ===

    It is difficult to say what could possibly be going through the evolutionist's mind when they make these sorts of unequivocally false claims. Yes, it might look like a lie, but often I suspect it is just another example of how powerful religious influence can be.

    Such influence became crystal clear in the interview where he was aghast that someone might believe in miracles.

    I think that when you have such an absolute metaphysical mandate, and you are sure that you're right, then one might be susceptible to interpreting the science to fit your view.

    Evolutionists obviously have a metaphysical position that they cannot compromise on. If the evidence doesn't fit, then they'll make it fit.

    Christians have been vigorously promoting this position from long before Darwin.

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  12. Yes bob ofcourse you wouldnt open up your blog to comments because creationists cant take discussion, because they cant support their ideas.

    Cornelius hunter, you said Dawkins was a liar, yet you do not provide a single example of where this gene tree breaks down. Care to give one?

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  13. ''Dawkins was referring to evidence of common descent, you're arguing against him by placing the onus on biologists to demonstrate the way in which DNA arose. I know this is a common attempt at argumentation by ID proponents, but was it only me who noticed the subject change?''

    No Shirakawasuna you werent the only one that noticed the change in topic. It is incredible to me how somebody with a doctarate doesn't even know how to debate a topic without wondering off-topic.

    Must be something common to everyone part of the discovery institute hey Dr Hunter?

    Cant win a debate, so lets distract people from it.

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  14. Oh by the way Dr...

    What do you ID folk actually do all day? I mean, i know evolutionists sit in labs all day an watch bacteria, or go climb some mountain and observe a goat's behaviour. Or dig up fossils and date them and whatever.

    What do you do? How do you do your research?...haha, anyone care to throw in a bet his answer will divert from the question or not come at all?

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