A Different Door: More of Evolution’s Religion, This Time Aimed at p53, Masquerading as Science

The leading evolutionist of the twentieth century, Ernst Mayr, once wrote that evolution achieved its predominance “less by the amount of irrefutable proofs it has been able to present than by the default of all the opposing theories.” Or as Stephen Gould put it:

Odd arrangements and funny solutions are the proof of evolution—paths that a sensible God would never tread but that a natural process, constrained by history, follows perforce. No one understood this better than Darwin. Ernst Mayr has shown how Darwin, in defending evolution, consistently turned to organic parts and geographic distributions that make the least sense.

Indeed, evolution’s proof texts are always religious.

I’m not sure which is more disgusting, evolution’s hypocrisy or its self-promotion. Evolutionists proclaim their religious lies and hypocrisy as though the world will be impressed. And we hear it again and again.

I recently mentioned a protein named p53 that is yet another example of how science contradicts evolution. An evolutionist responded with the usual phony scientific arguments:

Well, one could predict that if TP53 is involved in so many systems / pathways that are fundamental to a host of cellular processes including (but probably not limited to) cell cycle regulation, apoptosis and senesence, then it had to have originated around the time that the simplest forms of multi-cellular life emerged and therefore would be present in the simplest of life forms as well as the most complex. One could also predict that the separate genetic changes that may have affected this gene as different lineages diversified would allow scientists to generate some sort of phylogeny maybe? Perhaps, TP53 may even be part of a larger 'super-family' of genes that have homologs and orthologs throughout multi-cellular life forms that also, through genetic analyses, appear to form some sort of hierarchy... If only scientists could find such a thing huh.

Oh yeah, the p53/p63/p73 superfamily. Highly conserved genes found all the way up from C.elegans to H.sapiens.

http://cshperspectives.cshlp.org/content/2/7/a001131.full

I'd post more links but don't see the point. The info is out there for those who wish to see it. No amount of linking to primary data or peer-reviewed journal articles will help those that don't want to.

CH, p53 is not a good example if you want to poke a stick at the ToE.

When I explained the scientific problems he responded with the usual religion:

Problem I have Mr. H is that even if I were to accept your points I still can't think of any credible alternative. The OT/genesis/creation is obviously a fairytale, or at best an allegory. I don't see how ID is anything other than a kind of anthropomorphic projection that will probably be as guilty of everything you claim is wrong with ToE.

In other words, scientific problems don’t count. Evolutionists are religious fundamentalists who must have evolution. They bring their religion into science and their religion requires a naturalistic creation story, regardless of how absurd. So they will spin whatever scientific-sounding arguments they can to prop up evolution.

Evolution is a religious Trojan Horse that has penetrated science and gone viral. Evolutionists have entered science though a different door. They abuse science, manipulating and perverting the obvious evidence as the need arises.

Anthropomorphic Terminology: Obstacle or Enabler?

As Bioessays Editor-in-Chief Andrew Moore reports, the lack of public acceptance of evolution is a fundamental misunderstanding of its core concepts. In fact, in the latest Bioessays Jacques Dubochet contends that many people think of evolution as producing modifications with an aim. They think of eyes as having evolved in order to see, and legs having evolved for walking, rather than in terms of directionless variation, and natural selection without motivation, design or strategy. “It is about time,” warns Moore, “that we stopped such anthropomorphic terminology and thinking, and confronted the likelihood that – far from being ‘excusable shorthand’ – it is an important contributor to a false impression of evolution among many non-scientists.” But Moore has it backwards.

Moore laments the use of anthropomorphic terminology in the evolution literature and rightly points out it misrepresents evolutionary theory:

There have even been meetings organized under titles such as “Molecular Strategies in Biological Evolution.” This and other examples impose a fallacious sense of direction of causality in evolution, and that is completely consistent with a common misconception of evolution facilitating organisms towards certain aims or goals. Another concept that arises from the “anthropomorphisation” of evolution is the “problem”: in other words, an organism or system evolves towards what we, retrospectively, identify as a barrier, or “problem” that had to be “solved,” and we wonder how it was overcome. Nature doesn’t solve anything. “Evolved towards” is another trap: we can only say “towards” in retrospect. The system cannot actually evolve towards anything.

But why would Moore think that such an error has led to the lay public rejecting evolution? I know people who are skeptical of evolution, and believe me this misconception (whether they hold it or not) is not the reason.

In fact, quite the opposite, it is precisely non evolutionary language that makes evolution more palatable. Anthropomorphic and Lamarckian terminology allows us to escape evolution’s foundational claim, and ultimate absurdity, that the biological world spontaneously arose by itself. Indeed, that very phrase, spontaneously arose by itself, while a scientifically accurate description of evolutionary thinking, is almost universally rejected by evolutionists as a straw man rendition of their theory. It is always interesting to see how evolutionists react when confronted with their own ideas, sans the euphemisms.

Consider this example conclusion from research involving the third eye:

A G_o-mediated phototransduction pathway might already be present in the ciliary photoreceptors of early coelomates, the last common ancestor of lizard (vertebrate) and scallop (mollusk), because both have this pathway. Later, the ancestral vertebrate photoreceptor acquired a second G protein, either gustducin or transducin, for chromatic antagonism and perhaps other purposes. The parietal photoreceptor evolved subsequently and retained these ancestral features.

This anthropomorphic and Lamarckian language is important in the evolutionary genre. Imagine if evolutionists reported that random biological variation produced a phototransduction pathway, and then produced myriad new proteins, which fortunately just happened to include a second G protein, which fortunately just happened to ... well you get the point.

Andrew Moore is correct that anthropomorphic and Lamarckian descriptions are misleading accounts of evolution. But he underestimates their important role as a necessary literary device to suppress the underlying absurdity. Far from an obstacle, they help enable acceptance of evolution.

Evolution's Anti Intellectualism Reaching Fever Pitch

Steven Pinker, Harvard professor of psychology, is the latest evolutionist to become unglued over Stephen Meyer's op-ed piece in the Boston Globe. Pinker writes:

SHAME ON you for publishing two creationist op-eds in two years from the Discovery Institute, a well-funded propaganda factory that aims to sow confusion about evolution. Virtually no scientist takes "intelligent design’’ seriously, and in the famous Dover, Pa., trial in 2005, a federal court ruled that it is religion in disguise.

Where do we begin? We could reassure Pinker that the Discovery Institute surely is not a "propaganda factory that aims to sow confusion about evolution." Or we could politely explain to the evolutionists that Meyer's op-ed is not "creationist" as Meyer's claims and the creationist's claims do not line up. And we could point out that federal courts, while very good at ruling on interstate trade and kidnapping cases, are not always equipped to deal with more nuanced cases involving the history and philosophy of thought, as was abundantly revealed in the Dover case.

Such responses would be intended to clear the air of the false notions evolutionists carry around. The responses would be made under the assumption that evolutionists are interested in facts and objective inquiry into such matters. Unfortunately, that is typically not the case. Evolutionists are certainly not interested in understanding intelligent design--then the evolutionists wouldn't be able to brand ID proponents as creationists.

Of course such explanations and reassurances would never be considered. They would never open the mind of an evolutionist like Pinker. But what is worse is they would mask the more serious problem. Trying to explain errors of logic or erroneous assumptions would miss the utter hypocrisy that fuels the evolutionist's vitriol.

Intelligent design is an inference from the data. Agree or disagree with it, there are no religious assumptions. It may be all wrong, but its arguments are based on the evidences of nature, logic, mathematics, and so forth. In other words, it is a scientific argument.

Evolutionists have always branded skeptics as guilty of being driven by religious motivations. Surely there must be religious convictions behind anything the skeptics say. If the skeptics don't admit to their sin, then they are liars as well.

But while evolutionists stand in self-righteous judgment of anyone who disagrees, it is in fact the evolutionists who have founded and promoted a religious theory. Their hypocrisy is plain for all to see. For they commit the very crime for which they castigate others. There is no scientific argument for their claim that evolution is a fact just like gravity--it is a religious argument based on deep metaphysics. Consider Pinker's very next paragraph.

The judge referred to the theory’s "breathtaking inanity,’’ which is a fine description of Stephen Meyer’s July 15 op-ed "Jefferson’s support for intelligent design.’’ Well, yes, Thomas Jefferson died 33 years before Darwin published "The Origin of Species.’’ And Meyer’s idea that the DNA code implies a code maker is just a rehash of the ancient "argument from design’’ - that an eye implies an eye maker, a heart implies a heart maker, and so on. Darwin demolished this argument 150 years ago.

And how did Darwin demolish the argument from design? How did Darwin show that the eye evolved rather than was designed? Did Darwin demonstrate a reasonable evolutionary pathway leading to the eye? Did he convince us that vision plausibly arises on its own? Of course not.

Darwin had no such evidence. But he did have something more powerful--religion. In Chapter 6 of Origin Darwin argued that the evolution of vision is the superior view because otherwise we must say that "the Creator works by intellectual powers like those of men." Have we any such right?

This anthropomorphic warning was straight out of the theological pronouncements of Enlightenment philosopher David Hume. And it was one of hundreds of religious arguments that mandated evolution, one way or another.

Religion drives science, and it matters.