John Farrell Versus Isaac Newton

Guess Who Wins?

The title of John Farrell’s article in Commonweal from earlier this year is a dead giveaway. When writing about the interaction between faith and science, as Farrell does in the piece, the title “The Conflict Continues” is like a flashing red light that the mythological Warfare Thesis is coming at you.

Sure enough, Farrell does not disappoint. He informs his readers that the fear that science could “make God seem unnecessary” is “widespread today among religious believers,” particularly in the US where “opposition to belief in evolution remains very high.”

Indeed, this fear has “haunted the debate over the tension between religion and science for centuries.” Farrell notes that Edward Larson and Michael Ruse point out in their new book On Faith and Science, that the “conflict model doesn’t work so well. But that seems to be a minor speed bump for Farrell. He finds that:

The idea that the world operates according to its own laws and regularities remains controversial in the evolution debate today, as Intelligent Design proponents attack the consensus of science on Darwinian evolution and insist that God’s direct intervention in the history of life can be scientifically demonstrated.

Farrell also writes that Isaac Newton, driven by concerns about secondary causes, “insisted God was still necessary to occasionally tweak the motions of the planets if any threatened to wander off course.”

Farrell’s piece is riddled with myths. Secondary causes are not nearly as controversial as he would have us believe. He utterly mischaracterizes ID, and Newton said no such thing. It is true that Newton suggested that the Creator could intervene in the cosmos (not “insisted”).

And was this the result of some radical voluntarism?

Of course not. Newton suggested God may intervene in the cosmos because the physics of the day (which by the way he invented), indicated that our solar system could occasionally have instabilities. The fact that was running along just fine, and hadn’t yet blown up, suggested that something had intervened along the way.

Newton was arguing from science, not religion. But that doesn’t fit the Epicurean mythos that religion opposes naturalism while science confirms it. The reality is, of course, the exact opposite.

New Book: The Fossils Prove Evolution

Upside Down

We have seen here and here that a new book co-authored by evolutionist Dennis Venema is influenced by the mythical Warfare Thesis. The book, for example, informs readers that the basic issue of the seventeenth century Galileo Affair was “the veracity of the new science, and its perceived threat to biblical authority.” As we saw, this is the false, evolutionary rendition of history. The Warfare Thesis is a myth, and the Galileo Affair is perhaps the favorite example for evolutionists.

After framing the discussion with this bit of Whig history, Venema introduces scientific evidences which he believes make evolution to be compelling. He begins with the fossil record. This is a bit surprising given how badly the theory fares on the fossil evidence. Later in the book Venema will state that according to evolution truly new features should be rare:

One of the things evolution predicts is that seldom will any feature in an evolutionary lineage be truly “new.” [37]

This is an example of an evolutionary prediction that has gone terribly wrong, and the fossil record gives a plethora of examples. As we have explained many times, the general character of the fossil record is precisely the opposite of what evolutionists had expected. Rather than the traditional evolutionary tree pattern of new species gradually appearing over time, the fossil record reveals the exact opposite. The strata show several bursts of new species appearing on the scene, followed by a winnowing.

This is upside down.

Like a Christmas tree, you have a wide berth of branches and twigs at the bottom, or beginning, and over time there is a narrowing as the species are lost to extinctions. Rather than a tree becoming increasingly wider over time from narrow beginnings, the strata often reveal the opposite pattern. Of course it is far more complicated than this simple analogy, but what is important is that the fossil record reveals so many “explosions” of new species. The so-called “Cambrian Explosion,” (yes, it is called an “explosion”) is the most famous, but there are several others. In these events, new species appear abruptly in the fossil record. Not only do a great many “truly new” features appear, entirely new lineages appear as well.

Clearly, the fossil record repeatedly falsifies this prediction of evolution.

In a great example of confirmation bias, evolutionists often downplay the importance of these fossil data and the falsifications they present. In fact, sometimes these are ignored altogether.

And so it is with Venema’s treatment of the fossil record. He appeals to the general pattern of the fossil record, and to the specific example of the evolution of cetaceans.

His primary example of why the fossil record is such strong evidence for evolution are the cetaceans.

A collection of fossils can be arranged from land mammals to whales, which is precisely what evolution needs since whales are mammals. The idea is that mammals first evolved on land, and then certain species made their way back into the water, thus introducing mammals to marine environments.

Venema agrees that some of these fossil species may not be in the actual lineage leading to modern whales. That is good because the literature often illustrates these species as forming a clean, simple, lineage, from ancient mammals to modern whales.

While one may draw a line between the fossil species, the fact is there are many species suggesting more of a bush than a branch, and any such line is imposed onto the data rather than read out of the data.

And if these species did arise from evolution, and if the modern whale did arise from such a land-to-sea transition then, as usual, it would be quite a mystery. For a great transition, including the loss of hind limbs, grinding teeth and pelvises and developing a host of new features must have occurred relatively quickly.

The new features include the fluke tail with its unique vertical propelling motion, the huge filter-feeding jaw, and the ability to give live birth and raise its young in the marine environment. The latest entry to the community could swim, dive and feed better than most fish and sharks. All sorts of evolutionary scenarios can explain why the whale acquired such advanced skills, but they are speculative. The whale’s aquatic prowess does not refute evolution, but it raises the question of how we can be so sure about the purported evolutionary change that is supposed to have created the whale.

Why then are evolutionists so taken with the patterns of the fossil record, and examples such as the fossil sequence that is supposed to lead to the whale? Yes, it provides a good sequence, but there are many questions of just how random mutations could accomplish such heroics. And there are the many other aspects of the fossil data that are problematic, such as the many “explosions.”

These are serious evidential problems, and it would seem the fossils would be the last thing to which evolutionists would appeal. What’s going on?

The answer is, as usual, that the evolutionist’s certainty comes from metaphysics, not science. The idea is not that the whale-like fossils prove evolution directly, but that they disprove any notion that God created them independently. Therefore they must have evolved. Venema makes several such arguments. Here is one of his passages:

Of course, some might argue that it simply pleased God, as Creator, to create a series of unrelated species at this time in earth’s history that happen to suggest an evolutionary relationship. Many Christians find this plausible; but note how this type of argument cannot ever be ruled out by additional evidence. Any additional such species we find in the fossil record would then merely be more separate species that God elected to create at this time. This explanation also leaves scientists bereft of a hypothesis to test with further research. If the species we observe in the fossil record are the direct, special creations of God, then we will not necessarily find a pattern in the fossil record. Faced with such an explanation, a scientist would not have the ability to make predictions about what should be found in the fossil record at certain times. [13]

Here Venema makes two strong arguments. First, the text highlighted in blue above is the classic argument from the intellectual necessity of evolution. Science, as Venema argues, won’t work with creationism. Venema explains that such creationism (i) is not vulnerable to the evidence, (ii) makes it impossible to form testable hypotheses, and so (iii) leaves scientists unable to make predictions.

These are arguments from the philosophy of science that mandate evolution. We must have evolution in order to do science properly. Creationism must be ruled out, regardless of the scientific evidence.

These metaphysics render the scientific evidence irrelevant and, ironically, make evolution (rather than creationism) untestable and not vulnerable to the evidence. Fossil species appearing abruptly in the strata don’t matter when your philosophical argument makes creation untenable. As usual, the evolutionary argument is guilty of the very criticism is casts.

Second, the text highlighted in red above is theological. It is an age-old argument about how God would create the world. Rather than using patterns which appear arbitrary to us, God should fill the design space randomly.

Venema goes on to make the usual evolutionary arguments that the patterns we observe are unlikely. The evolutionary premise here is that the alternative to evolution is a random design of the species. For example, Venema writes:

The probability of mammalian characteristics (such as having hair and feeding their young with milk, as well as a number of defining skeletal characteristics) arising in a separate, unrelated lineage is a pretty big stretch. [14]

This argument hinges entirely on random design being the sole alternative to evolution. Either the species are designed randomly, or it’s evolution. This reasoning dates back centuries and, as Venema has explained, entails beliefs about how God would create the world. In other words, it is religious.

What if God would not necessarily create the species randomly? In that case, the evolutionist’s powerful argument absolutely fails. It would be fatal to the entire position.

In other words, the evolutionary argument entirely hinges on a silly, strawman claim about God.

In my studies of the arguments for evolution, I find they fall into two broad categories: philosophical arguments about man, knowledge, and science; and religious arguments about God. In typical fashion, Venema has appealed to both these long-standing categories of strong arguments for evolution.

If the evolutionist’s premises are correct, then evolution is a no-brainer. We must be evolutionists—regardless of the scientific evidence. The species arising from random causes, such as mutations, makes no sense scientifically, but would be a must. As usual the religion and philosophy steer the science.

This new book is yet another example, in a long line of works going back to Darwin and before, of how evolution is our modern day mythology. New species appearing out of nowhere. Fantastic designs arising from random mutations. And all of this mandated to be a fact. If you cannot see a problem with this, then you must be an Epicurean.

Religion drives science, and it matters.

Another Warfare Thesis Tidbit

The Hits Just Keep on Coming

In his recent Washington Post opinion piece, Harvard astrophysicist Howard Smith began with yet more Warfare Thesis history:

There was a time, back when astronomy put Earth at the center of the universe, that we thought we were special.

Actually we “put Earth at the center of the universe” as a consequence of Aristotelian physics, not because of any anthropomorphism. That is the imaginary history, foisted on us by the Warfare Thesis, which can be traced back to Voltaire, but rose in prominence in the 19th century.

The BBC on Why Evolution is Fact

A Series of Mistakes That Build Up

Last year science writer Chris Baraniuk wrote an article for the BBC that began with this: “Evolution is one of the greatest theories in all of science.” Baraniuk quoted liberally from several leading evolutionists, such as Steve Jones, Nancy Moran, Richard Lenski, and Chris Stringer, and he discussed the work of several others. The purpose of the article was to explain how we know evolution is a fact, as evolutionists claim. And by “fact,” evolutionists are not trying to apply a nuanced or artful spin to their claim. Quite the opposite, by “fact” evolutionists intend that their idea is beyond all reasonable doubt. Baraniuk well explains the claim:

For scientists, evolution is a fact. We know that life evolved with the same certainty that we know the Earth is roughly spherical, that gravity keeps us on it, and that wasps at a picnic are annoying.

Baraniuk appropriately reflects the certainty of evolutionists.

Baraniuk also makes several other good points. For instance, he doesn’t shy away from the heroic levels of Darwin’s idea. Baraniuk explains that under evolution humans must be descended from worms—an ancestor with more biblical allusions than Wilberforce’s “mushrooms.” Either way, such examples quickly reveal the sheer magnitude of the claim. It is, as Wilberforce winsomely put it, a “most unsuspected cousinship.”

Natural selection as creator

It is all the more unsuspected today given that it is supposed to have occurred by strictly random mutations. Natural selection, in contradistinction to how it often is presented, does nothing to induce these mutations. Selection doesn’t guide the evolutionary process like a Plastik Nature, it merely kills off the lesser designs. Death, in evolutionary theory, becomes the engine of progress and here Baraniuk correctly understands that selection “weeds out” those lesser organisms, but Baraniuk unfortunately also slips in the requisite teleological cover, stating that much of evolution is “driven by natural selection”:

Descent with modification, which is caused by random mutations in genes, ultimately leads to gradual changes and the formation of new species – much of it driven by natural selection, which weeds out those organisms that are less suited to their environments.

But evolution is not “driven by natural selection,” it is driven by random mutations. Their metaphysics require a random creation narrative, but for public consumption—and their own sanity—evolutionists quickly replace chance with natural selection.

Everyone knows that the Epicureans’ randomly swerving atoms—or randomly mutating nucleotides, as evolutionists would have it two thousand years later—do not a world create. Chance doesn’t work. Random mutations do not create millions of species, let alone a single protein. And so not too surprisingly evolutionists fall back on Aristotle’s teleological, goal-oriented, narrative. Natural selection is said to “drive” the evolutionary process. (You can see examples here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here,)

Darwin’s genius, if such banality can be described as genius, was in his formulation of natural selection as a concept that would simultaneously allow for the needed chance while providing the needed direction.

Natural selection was the director. Endless just-so stories have been told since 1859 about how natural selection drives the evolutionary process and its resulting biological wonders, producing X for the purpose of Y. But like the Emperor’s new clothes, it was all a fiction. Natural selection does not “drive” anything. A more accurate image is that of a weed out mechanism. Natural selection, stripped of its teleological gloss, merely kills off the failed or less prolific designs, leaving the more prolific designs as the evolutionary winners.

But stripping natural selection of the smuggled in Aristotelianism leaves the evolutionary process with nothing but those random mutations to create the species. Every organism, every structure, and every metabolic pathway, must have been constructed by an unimaginably long series of strictly random events occurring in an unimaginably high-dimensional design space. The curse of dimensionality, and the rugged, flat, fitness landscape both conspire to make clear what was obvious to the Stoics—this is absurd.

Baraniuk doesn’t understand this and his evolution informers have left him none the wiser. Baraniuk rightly explains that natural selection “weeds out those organisms that are less suited to their environments,” but he then applies the same old teleological gloss when he informs his readers that much of the evolutionary process is “driven by natural selection.”

The creature discovers the creator

An interesting consequence of evolutionary theory is that not only did it create the species, but it created a species which, in turn, discovered evolution. That is, evolution created a biological world including humans who eventually repaid the favor by discovering their chance creator. Baraniuk explains:

Given enough time, these changes mount up and lead to the appearance of new species and new types of organism, one small change at a time. Step by step, worms became fish, fish came onto land and developed four legs, those four-legged animals grew hair and – eventually – some of them started walking around on two legs, called themselves "humans" and discovered evolution.

But this doesn’t make sense. For if humans are the creation of a randomized world of matter and motion, then the result is no better. We are simply the result of a big long chemical experiment where the products have a lower free energy than the reactants. Our minds—which evolutionists will explain as nothing more than an emergent property which deceives us into thinking that our consciousness is something real and distinct from the moving molecules encased in our skulls—would have no knowledge of truth. In fact they would have no knowledge, period. It would be remarkable bit of luck if those moving molecules happened to formulate thoughts corresponding to reality. As Darwin stated in a letter:

But then with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?

This is one of the greatest own-goals of all time. Darwin’s point was that we should not trust the conclusion that chance is an insufficient creator. But the Sage of Kent was apparently oblivious that his argument was simultaneously circular and devastating to his own theory. If we are created rather than evolved from the lower animals, then Darwin’s “horrid doubt” is erased and poses no problem for creation. Yet if we are not created but rather evolved, then Darwin’s argument demolishes his own theory. As usual, the evolutionist’s criticism points right back at himself.

The evidence

It’s downhill from there as Baraniuk presents the scientific evidence for this new brand of Epicureanism. For example, Baraniuk’s survey of the fossil evidence, aided and abetted by Steve Jones, is a case study in fallacies. There is the equivocation that “the fossil record makes it clear that life has changed over time,” and the false history, from Steve Jones, that Darwin “knew that [the fossil record] was an irrefutable case that evolution had taken place.” (Darwin mostly apologized for the fossils which clearly showed abrupt appearance). And while Baraniuk correctly explains that the fossil record is characterized by the wrong pattern and so must be viewed as full of gaps:

The fossil record is only so much help here, because it is incomplete. "If you look at most fossil records, what you actually see is one form that lasts quite a long time and then the next bunch of fossils that you've got is quite different from what you had before," says Jones.

Baraniuk nonetheless claims that transitional fossils have more or less filled the gaps (they haven’t).

Baraniuk next presents the mandatory poster-child example of Darwin’s Finches, dramatically misrepresenting the evidence, which shows rapid, directed response to environmental challenges—the opposite of what evolution expects.

Baraniuk then moves on to Richard Lenski’s long-term evolution experiment (LTEE) at Michigan State University, an experiment which for several decades has revealed how little change comes about in laboratory bacteria, E. coli. The biggest observed change was the utilization of citrate in aerobic conditions (normally E. coli utilizes citrate only in anaerobic conditions). That adaptation has been represented as an important example of evolutionary change observed in the laboratory. Unfortunately Baraniuk swallowed it and the result is more pseudoscience.

Baraniuk informs the reader that E. coli cannot digest citrate (false, it cannot digest citrate under certain conditions), and that the observed change represented “a huge leap forward” and “radically new abilities.”

These are ridiculous pseudo science lies.

Evolutionists want so badly for evolution to be true they will pervert science to make their case. Baraniuk also explained that “This would be like humans suddenly developing the ability to eat tree bark.” That is an absurd analogy. E. coli expanding its citrate utilization to include aerobic conditions is nowhere close to humans developing the ability to eat tree bark. Statements such as these reveal an agenda rather than a search for truth.

In fact it is worth mentioning that this same, minor, adaptation has been observed to occur in a matter of weeks (this was not fully appreciated until after Baraniuk’s article). Lenski has tried to dismiss those findings as inconsequential because three weeks were required rather than merely a day or two:

While that’s a lot faster than 15 years, it’s still much longer than typical “direct selections” used by microbiologists where a readily accessible mutation might confer, for example, resistance to an antibiotic after a day or two.

This is an astonishing statement. Lenski did not elaborate on why three weeks versus two days is an important distinction because, well, it isn’t. What these short term experiments suggest is that E. coli can expand its citrate utilization using mechanisms other than evolution’s random mutations. Instead, it looks to be yet another example of directed adaptation—exactly the opposite of what evolution expects. The fact that E. coli can develop aerobic citrate utilization in a matter of weeks rather than years renders Lenski’s LTEE finding a big fat “So what?”

Lenski attempted to cast this LTEE finding as a significant evidence of evolution in action. This is not true simply because the magnitude of the change is tiny (an existing capability was now enabled when it ordinarily would be disabled). Beyond this, the fact that the change can occur in weeks further negates the claim of evolutionary significance. What Lenski and evolutionists should be asking themselves is not “How can we ignore this finding?”, but rather, “How did organisms, such as E. coli in this case, get the ability to respond directly to environmental challenges?” This makes no sense under evolution.

It also confirms another lesson.

Whenever adaptation is observed in a living organism, it should not simply be assumed it is due to the evolutionary concept of random mutations and natural selection. This view has failed repeatedly as so many adaptations have been found to be not due to the action of chance events, but directed mechanisms responding to the environment. This is yet another example of how evolutionary expectations have failed, and failed badly. It is inappropriate to interpret adaptations in living organisms as signs of evolution in action, yet evolutionists continue to do this.

Lost function

One example of change is apparent lost function. These are terrible evidences for evolution because evolution requires new functions to be created. The losing of existing functions does nothing to resolve the basic conundrum that evolutionists struggle with: How could biology’s wonders have evolved? Yet evolutionists, in a sign of how weak the evidence is, consistently resort to these examples of lost function, such as cave animals losing their vision, as one of their key evidences. Not surprisingly, but unfortunately, Baraniuk follows along, aided by Nancy Moran:

"It really shows the process of evolution," says Moran. "It's not all just adaptation and things getting better, there's also this big potential for things to get worse."

This is pathetic. Evolution has failed to show how the species and their many designs could have evolved, yet they claim the loss of such complex functions is evidence for evolution.

Baraniuk’s article is yet another good example of how ludicrous evolution is. Evolution is nothing more than our modern-day Epicureanism, and it is pathetic. Perhaps the best explanation for evolution comes straight from the evolutionist himself:

"That's what evolution is," says Steve Jones of University College London in the UK. "It's a series of mistakes that build up."

Of course what Jones means here is that the evolutionary process is the accumulation of a series of mistakes. That alone reveals the scientific absurdity. And so, a more accurate interpretation of Jones’ statement is the it is not the process of evolution, but the theory of evolution, that is a “series of mistakes that build up.”

So true.

The New Epigenetic Lie: How Easily a Failure Becomes a Friend

Phony History

In graduate school I had an evolution professor who made the absurd claim that he had solved the protein folding problem—one of the most challenging conundrums in molecular biology. And did he have any examples? No, that was left to the student. It was embarrassing. At another time he referenced a proof of evolution. But again, it was a hollow claim. Unfortunately this sort of phony science is what evolution is all about. The latest example is in how evolutionists are handling epigenetics.

As the old proverb has it, first they'll reject the truth and then they'll appropriate it and say they knew it all along. In the case of epigenetics, after resisting and rejecting it for a century—and holding back science in the process—evolutionists are now entering the “we knew it all along” phase.

In this latest version of Whig history evolutionists have a two-pronged canard. First, they say Darwin proposed Lamarck’s inheritance of acquired characteristics. It was temporarily set aside later due to a lack of scientific evidence, but now in the emerging field of epigenetics, we see Darwin was right all along.

Second, as more and more cases of directed adaptation can no longer be denied, evolutionists are now suddenly referring to it as a new version of evolution. Their old enemy is now their new toy. In fact it resolves so many quandaries. How did new species appear so suddenly in the fossil record? Well now we see evolution occurring before our eyes.

My gosh, evolution works even better than we ever imagined.

For example, one paper concludes that the directed adaptations brought about by a genetic modification “have clear evolutionary implications,” for “this mechanism can give rise to a selectable, coordinated set of mutations under particular environmental stresses that can result sizeable, rapid, adaptive evolutionary responses.”

An evolutionary response? How easily a failure becomes a friend. Never mind that it refutes evolutionary theory. We solved the protein folding problem didn’t we?

As for the other prong, it is a good lie because, like all good lies, it contains a grain of truth. Yes, Darwin proposed Lamarck’s inheritance of acquired characteristics, but only under duress. Darwin’s relationship with Lamarckism was complex. He privately castigated the French biologist’s ideas, but publicly employed them at his convenience.

One problem for Darwin was that the blending inheritance idea he used in his theory of evolution were being demolished, for example by Fleeming Jenkin. The problem was sufficiently troubling that Darwin resorted to giving a nod to Lamarck’s inheritance of acquired characteristics.

Darwin did not accept or advocate inheritance of acquired characteristics; rather, Lamarck’s idea was Darwin’s backup plan. The Monday morning claim that Darwin’s proposing of the inheritance of acquired characteristics was a serious theoretical move is absurd. It is Whig history all over again. You can read more about this here.

But that now is becoming the ever more popular claim of evolutionists. As epigenetics becomes increasingly undeniable—an idea that is the polar opposite of evolution—evolutionists increasingly are resorting to this two-prong canard: We knew it all along, and after all it’s actually just another mode of evolutionary change.

Nothing strange here, move along.

Consider a new paper out of Johannes Beckers’ group on transgenerational epigenetic change in mice. The research used in vitro fertilization to confirm that epigenetic inheritance of obesity and diabetes in mice is transmitted via the gametes, and not via other factors such as behavior of the parents or lactation.

It is yet another confirmation of how epigenetics works, and another opportunity to advance the canard. As Beckers absurdly claims:

From the perspective of basic research, this study is so important because it proves for the first time that an acquired metabolic disorder can be passed on epigenetically to the offspring via oocytes and sperm--similar to the ideas of Lamarck and Darwin.

There you have it—Darwin knew it all along.

Religion drives science, and it matters.

When I Explained Darwin I Got Pushback about Biogeography

Full Queeg

I recently explained that Darwin, as well as evolution co-discoverer Alfred Wallace, came to believe in transmutation and so they then sought a suitable mechanism. That comes straight from leading Darwin historian Janet Browne. And why did Darwin and Wallace “believe in transmutation” in the absence of a known mechanism? Both Darwin and Wallace made it clear in their writings that their reasoning was metaphysical. The biological world did not meet with their creationist expectations. God would never have created this world and so evolution was the answer, even though they didn’t know how it could occur. Again, this is well recognized by historians. Darwin’s books, papers and notebook entries were chocked full of religious arguments.

This is the motivation and template for evolution and it has continued ever since Darwin. Evolution is not about science, it is about God. But evolutionists are in denial about this. They insist there is no religion here, right after making religious arguments. It is a fascinating study in denialism. You can see examples here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

So it is not surprising that an evolutionist gave me pushback when I wrote that Darwin and Wallace were driven by metaphysics:

This is, basically, crap. If anything, it was biogeographical observation that led Darwin to evolution:

In fact, not only did Darwin’s arguments for evolution hinge on religious premises, that includes his biogeographical arguments. Evolutionists are ahistorical. They imagine their mandate for a spontaneous origins is a scientific finding. Let’s look at some examples.

The Swedish botanist Carl Von Linne, or Linnaeus (1707-1778), was one of the greatest naturalists of the eighteenth century. He is most famous for the universally-accepted hierarchical method of classification that today bears his name. But Linnaeus’ popularity and influence spread beyond just classification. One of his most famous and influential beliefs was that of the fixity, or stability, of species. His proclamation Nullae Species Novae—no new species—idealized species as perfect forms created by the wise Creator.

Linnaeus was later troubled when he discovered hybrids—species that are produced by the crossing of two related species—and he later softened his doctrine of the stability of species. But this was inconsequential—his system with its conception of species became deeply rooted and the nineteenth century began with the notion of species as immutable still strongly in place.

But in his travels around the world in the 1830s, Darwin saw species on various islands that did not quite match the species on the nearby mainland. It was practically an epiphany for Darwin when he began to consider that the different types of finches he saw on the Galápagos Islands might not simply be variants of a species, but instead might actually be different species. If there was the slightest foundation for this idea, Darwin wrote in his famous notebook entry, it “would undermine the stability of species.”

The finches did not suddenly reveal to Darwin how fish could change to amphibia, or how amphibia could change to reptiles, or how reptiles could change to mammals. Rather, the revelation was that the idea of creation was suddenly becoming untenable. The crucible for Darwin was not full of positive evidence for evolution but rather negative evidence against creation. Evolutionist Ernst Mayr has pointed out that Darwin’s conversion from creationist to materialist was not due to a loss of religious faith but rather initially due to three key scientific findings and then later reinforced by several additional findings. And what were these scientific findings? They were all findings against creation. In other words, the key evidence that swayed Darwin was not direct evidence for evolution but rather evidence against creation that indirectly argued for evolution. And as Mayr further points out, the doctrine of fixity of species was a key barrier to overcome in order for evolution to flourish:

Darwin called his great work On the Origin of Species, for he was fully conscious of the fact that the change from one species into another was the most fundamental problem of evolution. The fixed, essentialistic species was the fortress to be stormed and destroyed; once this had been accomplished, evolutionary thinking rushed through the breach like a flood through a break in a dike.

The preDarwinian metaphysic was that species were fixed and essentialistic. Evidence for small-scale change argued against the old view and in so doing became important evidence for evolution.

This is one example of how Darwin interpreted the biogeographical evidence according to religious premises. These arguments became even stronger when the evidence did not merely fail to align with religious expectations, but rather made no sense on the theory of creation. These are much more powerful arguments for evolution and are evident in Darwin’s earliest notes and writings on evolution. For instance, in 1842 and 1844, almost two decades before publication of Origins, Darwin wrote two lengthy essays on his emerging theory. These eventually were published by his son Francis in 1909 in a book entitled The Foundations of The Origin of Species.

In the 1844 essay Darwin discussed the biogeography evidence. Darwin argued that certain species existed over narrow geographical ranges, and that there was “no reason” for this “On the ordinary theory of the separate creation of each species.” Also, Pacific islands closer to the Americas had plants with more of an “Asiatic character.” That too was “not obvious on the ordinary theory of creation.” Or again, the same species of plants had been found on immensely remote mountain summits, but:

we ought to be very slow in admitting the probability of double creations. In the case of plants on mountain summits, I think I have shown how almost necessarily they would, under the past conditions of the northern hemisphere, be as similar as are the plants on the present Arctic shores; and this ought to teach us a lesson of caution. But the strongest argument against double creations may be drawn from considering the case of mammifers in which, from their nature and from the size of their offspring, the means of distribution are more in view. … On the idea of double creations it would be strange if the same species of several plants should have been created in Australia and Europe; and no one instance of the same species of mammifer having been created, or aboriginally existing, in two as nearly remote and equally isolated points.

Then there was the problem of plant diversity, or lack thereof, on islands:

Why on the theory of absolute creations should this large and diversified island only have from 400 to 500 (? Dieffenbach) phanerogamic plants? and why should the Cape of Good Hope, characterised by the uniformity of its scenery, swarm with more species of plants than probably any other quarter of the world? Why on the ordinary theory should the Galapagos Islands abound with terrestrial reptiles? and why should many equal-sized islands in the Pacific be without a single one or with only one or two species? Why should the great island of New Zealand be without one mammiferous quadruped except the mouse, and that was probably introduced with the aborigines? Why should not one island (it can be shown, I think, that the mammifers of Mauritius and St Iago have all been introduced) in the open ocean possess a mammiferous quadruped? Let it not be said that quadrupeds cannot live in islands, for we know that cattle, horses and pigs during a long period have run wild in the West Indian and Falkland Islands; pigs at St Helena; goats at Tahiti; asses in the Canary Islands; dogs in Cuba; cats at Ascension; rabbits at Madeira and the Falklands; monkeys at St Iago and the Mauritius; even elephants during a long time in one of the very small Sooloo Islands; and European mice on very many of the smallest islands far from the habitations of man2. Nor let it be assumed that quadrupeds are more slowly created and hence that the oceanic islands, which generally are of volcanic formation, are of too recent origin to possess them; for we know (Lyell) that new forms of quadrupeds succeed each other quicker than Mollusca or Reptilia. Nor let it be assumed (though such an assumption would be no explanation) that quadrupeds cannot be created on small islands; for islands not lying in mid-ocean do possess their peculiar quadrupeds

Finally, Darwin went “full-Queeg” with this extended rant:

Shall we then allow that the three distinct species of rhinoceros which separately inhabit Java and Sumatra and the neighbouring mainland of Malacca were created, male and female, out of the inorganic materials of these countries? Without any adequate cause, as far as our reason serves, shall we say that they were merely, from living near each other, created very like each other, so as to form a section of the genus dissimilar from the African section, some of the species of which section inhabit very similar and some very dissimilar stations? Shall we say that without any apparent cause they were created on the same generic type with the ancient woolly rhinoceros of Siberia and of the other species which formerly inhabited the same main division of the world: that they were created, less and less closely related, but still with interbranching affinities, with all the other living and extinct mammalia? That without any apparant adequate cause their short necks should contain the same number of vertebræ with the giraffe; that their thick legs should be built on the same plan with those of the antelope, of the mouse, of the hand of the monkey, of the wing of the bat, and of the fin of the porpoise. That in each of these species the second bone of their leg should show clear traces of two bones having been soldered and united into one; that the complicated bones of their head should become intelligible on the supposition of their having been formed of three expanded vertebræ; that in the jaws of each when dissected young there should exist small teeth which never come to the surface. That in possessing these useless abortive teeth, and in other characters, these three rhinoceroses in their embryonic state should much more closely resemble other mammalia than they do when mature. And lastly, that in a still earlier period of life, their arteries should run and branch as in a fish, to carry the blood to gills which do not exist. Now these three species of rhinoceros closely resemble each other; more closely than many generally acknowledged races of our domestic animals; these three species if domesticated would almost certainly vary, and races adapted to different ends might be selected out of such variations. In this state they would probably breed together, and their offspring would possibly be quite, and probably in some degree, fertile; and in either case, by continued crossing, one of these specific forms might be absorbed and lost in another. I repeat, shall we then say that a pair, or a gravid female, of each of these three species of rhinoceros, were separately created with deceptive appearances of true relationship, with the stamp of inutility on some parts, and of conversion in other parts, out of the inorganic elements of Java, Sumatra and Malacca? or have they descended, like our domestic races, from the same parent-stock? For my own part I could no more admit the former proposition than I could admit that the planets move in their courses, and that a stone falls to the ground, not through the intervention of the secondary and appointed law of gravity, but from the direct volition of the Creator.

Evolution is motivated by the perceived failures of creation. Darwin had no idea how the species could evolve, and neither do evolutionists today. But this is man’s assessment of creation. Evolution must be true. There is nothing wrong with religious arguments and beliefs. But let’s not confuse it with science.

Why the Narrative Trumps the Facts

What Evolution is All About

Greg Conterio, echoing Robert Bidinotto, makes the point that culture war differences often pit the facts versus the narrative. The facts can win every battle but the narrative wins the war. As Bidinotto puts it, “One of the most valuable insights I discovered in recent years is how Narratives trump everything else — including what most of us would call concern for ‘practical results.’” Conterio and Bidinotto are mainly concerned with political issues, but what lies behind their insight is our beliefs about origins.

A predetermined narrative is what influenced Darwin in concluding that the species must have arisen as a result of the blind actions of natural processes. As Darwin historian Janet Browne explained, Darwin, as well as evolution co-discoverer Alfred Wallace, came to believe in transmutation and so they then sought a suitable mechanism. The reason they came to believe in transmutation was the biological world was too gritty, too unseemly, and lacking in elegance. In a word, too evil.

Such rationalistic thinking (starting with preconceived ideas of what to expect, rather than exploring the data to see where it leads) about origins by no means began with Darwin and Wallace. They were handed these ideas from leading Christian thinkers from the previous centuries. Evolution was not a scientific finding, it was a religious conclusion.

From a scientific perspective, the spontaneous origin of the biological world makes little sense. Darwin and Wallace had no idea how such wonders actually could have sprung up all by themselves. Nor do evolutionists today. As Browne put it, they first believed—then they sought a scientific mechanism. That’s backwards, but this is precisely what they, and their followers today, are committed to.

The result is that evolution has introduced into science the art of story-telling. Evolution is a narrative, not an appeal to scientific principles and laws. Evolutionary events are “unique, unrepeatable, and irreversible” in the words of famous evolutionist Theodosius Dobzhansky. Or as Harvard’s Ernst Mayr wrote, “Laws and experiments are inappropriate techniques” for explaining evolutionary events and processes.

Evolution is a narrative. And it is not just any narrative—it is the world’s creation story. The most important fundamental of a culture is its creation story. Tell me where you think you came from, and I’ll tell you everything else about you. At least everything that is important.

So what Conterio and Bidinotto are observing is the fruit of evolutionary thought. Evolution is not merely a scientific theory. It is the most influential theory in areas outside of science, in the history of science.

One now classic example of this is how evolutionary theory influenced historiography. In the nineteenth century evolutionists began constructing the history of ideas from their perspective. It became known as the Warfare Thesis, or Conflict Thesis, because it cast religious people as resisting, and in conflict with, science and its objective truths.

Even though historians agree that the Warfare Thesis is a strong dose of Whig history, it nonetheless often informs our culture’s views today. Anyone questioning evolution is cast as the fundamentalist, opposing the objective, truth-seeking scientists.

The poster child for this mythical retelling of history is Inherit the Wind, a play and movie that is a fictionalization of the famous 1925 Monkey Trial. Evolutionists today heavily promote this film as a cogent insight into our culture. It casts evolutionists as the white-hat good guys, and skeptics as ignorant, religious zealots.

Many evolutionists are unaware that Inherit the Wind is a fictionalization. And when told about this, they don’t really care. Because the narrative trumps the facts.

Judge John Jones explained, for example, he wanted to see Inherit the Wind a second time in preparation for the 2005 Dover case, over which he presided, because the film puts the origins debate into its proper “historical context.” Jones later reminisced about the trial, explaining that “I understood the general theme. I’d seen Inherit the Wind.”

But a federal judge’s profound ignorance and prejudice over a case in which he presided does not bother anyone—he was exalted as one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People of the Year. So what if Inherit the Wind takes a few liberties with the truth, it is the narrative that counts.

Unfortunately evolution’s influence didn’t stop with a silly screenplay. With evolution life has no divine spark, we weren’t made in the image of any Creator, and things like facts and laws, both scientific and otherwise, don’t really matter. In politics, as well as evolution, it’s all about the narrative, not following the law.

Taede Smedes on Special Divine Action

More Warfare Thesis

If you attend Taede Smedes talk at Trinity College this Thursday on “Why is Special Divine Action a Probem?” beware that his use of the term “theological naturalism” falls into the Warfare Thesis category. As Smedes explains:

As I will argue in this lecture, the problems surrounding the plausibility of SDA are mainly theological and philosophical in nature. The main problem is what I will call “theological naturalism” and that depicts the tendency to conceptualize theological ideas using ideas and ways of thinking taken from the natural sciences, which results in a distortion of the theological concepts involved. Rather than defending a particular view or even “theory” of SDA, this lecture aims at a philosophical diagnosis that aims at clarifying some of the conceptual confusion surrounding the concept of SDA. Perhaps SDA remains a problematic concept, but not for the reasons that are so often given.

It would be interesting to know what are the reasons from the natural science against SDA “that are so often given” because, in fact, I don’t know of any. There are, on the other hand, a plethora of reasons against SDA, that are often given, from theology. Here is how I discussed “theological naturalism” in Science’s Blind Spot:

There are, as it were, theological ground rules imposed on science. And although these theological concerns are varied, they all funnel toward a similar consequence. Put simply, the primary theological ground rule is that scientific explanations must be purely naturalistic. The term naturalism can take on different meanings when used by historians and philosophers of science. Here it is used to refer to this restriction of science to naturalistic explanations for religious reasons. I use a new term, theological naturalism, to clarify this and avoid ambiguity.
This term theological naturalism reminds us that the assumption of naturalism in science is neither a result of atheistic influence nor an empirically based scientific finding. It is a consequence of metaphysical reasoning, and the implications for science are profound. Theological naturalism provides science with well defined universal criteria to which it conforms. Instead of merely following the data where ever it may lead, science has a framework already in place. The answer, to a certain extent, is already in place.

Nonetheless the Warfare Thesis continues to attract adherents from all sides.

Evolution Professor Praises Andrew Dickson White’s Whig History

Self-Destructing

The winners, as they say, get to write the history, and nowhere is this more obvious than with evolution. Evolution has long since won the battle of who gets to tell our creation story, and so evolution also gets to tell the history of that battle. And tell it they do. The problem is that, as with the science, evolutionists misrepresent the history as well.

Two classic examples are (i) Andrew Dickson White’s nineteenth century mythical tome, A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom and (ii) Jerome Lawrence’s and Robert Lee’s cartoon rendition of the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial, Inherit the Wind. The latter is slightly complicated by the fact that Lawrence and Lee made no attempt to represent accurately the events in Dayton, Tennessee in the summer of 1925, but rather liberally adapted the story to fit their purpose of criticizing McCarthyism and its witch hunts. But that only makes matters worse for evolutionists, for they have no excuse for coopting the screenplay as an important and insightful historical reference point in the twentieth century origins debate. Indeed, if you compare the history with the script, you can see Lawrence and Lee altered the former in order to sanitize and exalt the evolutionists while slandering their opponents.

Likewise evolutionists have no excuse for adopting White’s contrived Warfare Thesis based on his silly misrepresentations of the history of thought.

The fact that evolutionists do enlist both Inherit the Wind and White’s Warfare Thesis is just another sign of the anti intellectualism at the heart of evolution. Notable examples in recent years include Judge John Jones of Dover fame hilariously revealing that he actually wanted to see Inherit the Wind a second time in preparation for the Dover case because, after all, the film puts the origins debate into its proper “historical context” (Jones later unbelievably explained that “I understood the general theme. I’d seen Inherit the Wind”), and legal expert Andrew Cohen not only giving high praise to Inherit the Wind, but absurdly calling it “one of the great trial movies of all time.”

Now arch evolutionist Jerry Coyne joins in with his laughable approbation of White’s Warfare Thesis, revealing that he is reading through White’s “famous 840-page anti-accommodationist book.”

Famous?

If White’s book is famous for anything it is for the immediate debunking of its mythical content. No historian takes it seriously. Or perhaps it is famous for serving as a keystone of evolution’s false history.

Evolutionists are making public spectacles of themselves with their blatant misrepresentations of both science and history. They insist it is a fact that the biological world arose spontaneously and they insist that skepticism of their “fact” comes from parochial, anti-intellectualism. This is like a bad dream.

More Warfare Thesis Lies, This Time From CNN

The Battle Continues

When nineteenth century evolutionist Andrew Dickson White constructed a false history of science, casting evolutionists as the latest in a long history of heroic truth seekers who faced religious intolerance and opposition at every turn, he set in motion a powerful genre that would be difficult to stop. From White’s A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom to the mythical Inherit the Wind, a fictional account of the famous 1925 Monkey Trial that evolutionists use to indoctrinate students such as Judge Jones, to today’s pundits and even President Obama, the false Warfare Thesis, which pits religion against science, is too powerful and alluring to allow the truth to get in the way. And so it is no surprise that with all the news surrounding the new Pope taking charge, evolutionists would be sure to reinforce and remind everyone of their whig history we are supposed to believe. Enter Florence Davey-Attlee and her recent CNN piece where she wrote, among other things that:

Italian astronomer Giordano Bruno, an Italian philosopher who argued that the universe was infinite, was burned at the stake.

The key to a good lie is to leverage the truth as much as possible. In this instance, we have two truths juxtaposed to make a lie. You see Bruno did argue for an infinite universe, and he was burned at the stake. But those are two distinct and separate facts. The implication is that the Church burned Bruno at the stake because of his scientific investigations about the universe—a perfect example of the Warfare Thesis. And it is a perfect example because it is false, as is the Warfare Thesis. But that doesn’t mean evolutionists won’t teach it.

The Evolution of Circular RNA: A Marshall McLuhan Moment

“You know nothing of my work”

[Update: William Jeck has kindly responded and provided an explanation for how circular RNAs may have arisen.]

In the movie Annie Hall Woody Allen is trapped in a long theater line right in front of a rather loud-mouthed fellow. What’s worse, the fellow is pompously expounding on the work of Marshall McLuhan even though he’s all wrong. Allen finally runs out of patience but the fellow won’t back down. So amazingly Allen produces Mr. McLuhan himself, right then and there, who authoritatively informs the fellow of his ignorance (click to view the video). That funny scene sometimes plays out in evolution discussions for there are a great many evolution experts who, like Mr. McLuhan, may drop in at any moment and smash the critic. But the denouement is not always quite as Allen scripted it.

Occasionally evolution researchers such as university professors and graduate students visit this blog to set the skeptics straight. This happened last week in response to our post on circular RNA. That post pointed out the challenge for evolution posed by circular RNA, but an evolution researcher decided he had heard enough. Like Marshall McLuhan he would authoritatively inform us of our ignorance. Here is what he wrote:

I am one of the scientists working on circular RNAs (See Jeck et. al. 2012 in RNA), and probably ought to know better than to respond here, but the willful ignorance is just baffling. In fact my article points to a possible mechanism of circular RNA formation and evolution (through transposable elements, in particular the ALU repeat element). Science is complicated, and before you say that something CANNOT be explained, perhaps you should read up about it to see if, in fact, it already has been.

Wow. That is a big-time slam. The evolutionist explains that he is one of the few scientists working on this very topic of circular RNAs and that, in no uncertain terms, we don’t know what we’re talking about.

Can you imagine what bypassers must have thought. While average readers fill the room with noise, here a real evolutionary scientist rises above the din and easily disposes of the entire post as meaningless.

There was only one problem. What the evolutionist said so authoritatively is, well, not even wrong.

It is difficult to criticize this evolutionist and his paper because it is not that his explanation for how circular RNAs evolved is weak, fallacious or even absurd; it is that his explanation for how circular RNAs evolved is nonexistent.

That’s right. After all the bluster about our “willful ignorance” and how his paper has already explained the evolution of said circular RNAs, the fact is the paper provides no such explanation. So here is our response:

Thank you for pointing us to your 2012 paper on circular RNA that explains how it evolved:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23249747

Just to be clear, we did not say that the evolution of circular RNAs “CANNOT be explained.” We did point out that (i) the fact that exons code for circular RNAs constitutes yet another genetic information layer, making protein evolution even more challenging, and that (ii) evolutionists have no scientific explanation for how circular RNAs could have evolved.

Now that you have pointed us to your paper we can retract that latter statement. One question for you though: Why do you think your 2012 paper provides such a scientific explanation of circular RNA evolution?

Your paper said nothing about how exons could have evolved to include the circular RNA information layer. That would be on top of all the other information exons code for, such as for the protein and its multiple functions, instructions for transport and other interactions, for mRNA stability, mRNA editing, DNA copy error correction, the speed of translation, avoiding an amyloid state, for any other genes that overlap with the gene, and for controlling tRNA selection which can help to respond to different environmental conditions.

You did cite another study that found circular RNA in Archaea so you concluded that “the production of RNA circles is evolutionarily ancient.” But that just aggravates the problem, since that means that the circular RNA signals must have evolved early, long before there were multicellular organisms, for instance.

You also found circular RNA similarities between humans and mice, including the ALUs in the flanking introns. But aside from stating that these similarities reveal an evolutionary relationship, you again said nothing about how the circular RNA could have evolved. You seem to be saying that the observation of similarity implicitly constitutes a scientific explanation for how circular RNAs evolved.

In fact you mention evolution only four times, and in each instance you simply are making the assumption that circular RNA similarities reveals an evolutionary relationship.

So we’re happy to retract our statement, but need a little guidance first. Thanks again.

Not surprisingly, there has been no response.

Unfortunately this is a typical example of how these discussions go. The confidence is exceeded only by the lack of evidence. I’d like nothing more than to acknowledge the strong evidences for evolution. I can go with evolution being true, false, or anywhere in between. But I can’t go against science.

The Warfare Thesis is Not Going Away

Historians We Need You

Julian Savulescu’s recent comments suggesting that parents have a “moral obligation to select ethically better children” were more than just another move in the on-going eugenics revival. The Oxford professor’s misrepresentation of the science, and castigation of opponents, was another entry in the growing list of uses of evolution’s Warfare Thesis which is at the heart of today’s culture wars.

In the nineteenth century evolutionists such as Darwin confidant Thomas Huxley, chemistry professor John Draper and Cornell University cofounder Andrew White constructed a false history, casting evolutionists as the latest in a long history of heroic truth seekers who faced religious intolerance and opposition at every turn.

History, as they say, is told by the winners. This is nowhere more true than in evolution’s contrived war between religion and science where evolutionists wrap themselves in virtue. Historians have long since recognized the Warfare Thesis as flawed, but that is for the halls of academia. In the real world the Warfare Thesis rhetoric has proven to be far too powerful to reign in.

And that is the problem here. Ever since its foundation was laid in the nineteenth century, the Warfare Thesis has found increasing application. It can be recognized by its two basic components: an attack on science and an attack on scientists.

The science is manipulated and misrepresented and said to make evolution a fact beyond all reasonable doubt. And scientists who do harbor reasonable doubts that the world spontaneously arose are cast as the antagonists. The codeword here is “denier,” as in Holocaust denier. It conjures up images of willful ignorance of the obvious scientific facts to advance an ulterior motive. Ironically this is, in fact, an accurate description of the evolutionists themselves.

The most prominent application of the Warfare Thesis is in the play and movie, Inherit the Wind, which evolutionists use to falsely frame the origins debate. You can read more about this here, here, here, here and here. Ironically the script was originally intended to combat the anti intellectualism of the McCarthy era. It now advances the anti intellectualism of evolutionary thought, complete with blackballing of scientists.

What is even more alarming, however, is the growing use of the Warfare Thesis even outside of evolutionary circles. Savulescu’s new eugenics is not based on solid science (sorry, but there is scant evidence that genetic tinkering can lead to ethically better children). Nonetheless, we should offer genetic selection because “To do otherwise is to consign those who come after us to the ball and chain of our squeamishness and irrationality.” In other words, if you disagree it is not out of concern for the rather obvious bioethics issues, but out of cowardice and irrationality.

Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) is another theory that has been cast in the Warfare Thesis template. The science is certainly better than evolution’s, but AGW is nowhere near as certain as its proponents declare. And scientists who do not sign on are routinely disparaged. Recently President Obama lent his voice to the Warfare Thesis:

We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that failure to do so would betray our children and future generations. Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms.

There, in one rhetorically-charged phrase, is the Warfare Thesis: “Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science.” It would be difficult to conjure up a more succinct summation of the Warfare Thesis template.

AWG may well be true, it may be false, or it may be somewhere in between. But there is no such “overwhelming judgment of science.” That is an abuse of science.

And so once again, it is not the theory that is the problem, but the Warfare Thesis template into which it is cast. One might hope that, with all the good historical scholarship, we would be moving beyond such sophomoric rhetoric. But even President Obama, who once encouraged us so when he called for more understanding and dialog in our heated public debates, is resorting to the Warfare Thesis. Unfortunately, rather than moving toward more understanding and dialog, the Warfare Thesis seems to be just warming up.

Evolution Professor Continues With Historical Revisionism

Inherit the Wind Not Enough

We recently reported on Mohamed Noor’s Introduction to Genetics and Evolution course offered through Coursera, and how the Earl D. McLean Professor and Associate Chair of Biology at Duke University presented both whig history and false science in his attempt to convince students that evolution is true. It was one manipulation and fallacy after another but with the class now wrapped up we now realize we did not know just how far evolutionists would go. Perhaps we still don’t, but we do now know that there apparently is no manipulation of history that is beneath Noor, not even this howler that the evolutionist presented to his class with a straight face: Hitler believed in Intelligent Design. And alongside this gem the students also learned from Noor that Hitler was not influenced by Darwin.

Apparently the Inherit the Wind myth, which Noor referenced early in the course, was not enough. It seems evolutionists now need to expand their whiggish story telling about the history of evolutionary thought in order to prop up their scientific story telling about evolutionary theory.

Religion drives science, and it matters.

Mohamed Noor: Evolution is True Because We Say So

Today’s first set of lectures in Mohamed Noor’s Introduction to Genetics and Evolution course would seem downright bizarre to anyone not familiar with evolutionary thinking. Noor is teaching this course via through the coursera on-line service and the Earl D. McLean Professor and Associate Chair of Biology at Duke University is maximizing accessibility to his material by minimizing the course prerequisites. Non specialists are welcome and many newcomers to evolutionary thought, now seeing what it is—or should we say what it isn’t—have sunk back in their chairs with blank stares wondering what in the world evolutionists such as Noor are thinking.

Framing the debate

This first day of class was mostly about evolution and why it is a no-brainer. Noor repeatedly and triumphantly declared evolution to be true. With such a startling claim students naturally had their interest piqued and expectations raised. What secrets would the confident professor unveil to make good on his incredible claim. How does he know evolution to be true?

Things turned strange however, at least for those not familiar with evolution, when Noor attempted to justify his heroic claim. Noor began with the usual equivocation when he defined evolution as “change through time” that occurs over multiple generations. We’ve seen this fallacy many times before as it is standard amongst evolutionists (see here, here, here and here and here). So red flags were raised as students sensed a canard. Was Noor’s celebration merely about “change through time”?

As if to confirm suspicions Noor next used an absurd example of a population of light and dark colored moths. Due to industrial pollution the predominant color in the population shifted from light to dark due to predation by birds. Eyes rolled as even newcomers could see this had nothing to do with evolution’s claim that millions of species arose from a warm little pond or deep sea vent.

Next Noor took the absurdity one step further. Noor claimed confidently and unequivocally that evolution is “a mathematical inevitably.” There is no way to avoid having evolution by natural selection, Noor assured the students, if some very simple conditions are met.

And what are those simple conditions? Students were astonished as Noor presented a cartoon example of a population of squirrels, some of which feared asphalt and so avoided being run over by automobiles, and the rest which did not fear asphalt and so were not able to leave as many offspring. In all seriousness Noor worked through this trivial example as though it actually proves evolution to be “a mathematical inevitably.”

Things turned from bad to worse when the students next had to endure yet another round of evolution’s whig history. Noor began with the mandatory retelling of the mythical 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial which the professor was only too happy to propagate. And it ended with Noor’s scolding of the people of Kansas who have had the audacity to request that the science be taught in their schools without first presuming evolution to be true.

Noor’s next canard was the typical equating of evolution with antibiotic resistance. Harmful bacteria gain resistance to antibiotics so new antibiotics are then designed and the bacteria then follow in turn, gaining yet more resistance. For evolutionists such as Noor, it is all part of the evolutionary lore. How could we possibly understand this critical public health issue without his truth that all of biology spontaneously arose?

It’s called framing the debate. Before evolutionists present their evidence, they frame the theory and its evidences in a cultural mandate. First and foremost, evolution is true from the start. Next evolution is cast as objective science in pursuit of the good. And skeptics are cast as forces of ignorance and darkness. It is the standard presentation of evolution that is full of bad science and bad history.

The evidence for the truth of evolution

When professor Noor finally arrived at the evidence for evolution it was, not surprisingly, a let down. In fact, Noor did not even attempt to show that the evidence demonstrates evolution to be true.

He simply continued to insist it is true while proceeding through a list of evidences, making various unscientific and fallacious claims as he went and ignoring monumental scientific problems.

For instance, Noor claimed that evolution’s prediction that early life should be simple has been confirmed. The professor is apparently unaware of life science research showing the enormous complexity that must have existed in early life if evolution is true. From our brain to vision, DNA repair mechanisms, the last universal common ancestor (LUCA), the genome and the proteome, high complexity is ubiquitous and must have existed early in evolutionary history. As one report explained:

Simple cells like bacteria are supposed to be, well, simple. They might have transformed Earth because of their unimaginable numbers, but they’re little more than tiny, solitary bags of chemicals. Or so we thought. Here, New Scientist looks at the growing number of exceptions to the rules. The most recent discoveries are challenging our ideas about the nature of early life.

For instance, evolutionists have been forced to conclude that the last common ancestor of eukaryotes must have had not only the vast majority of the complex DNA replication, RNA splicing and interference, and protein translation machinery, it was also capable of advanced movement and was equipped with versatile energy conversion systems. Or as one evolutionist conceded, it is the “Incredible Expanding Ancestor of Eukaryotes.” Incredibly, evolutionists now view the origin of the amoeba as a giant step, and of man a small step.

Indeed, even the LUCA must have possessed incredible complexity. As one evolution admitted, “In short, then, the last common ancestor of all life looks pretty much like a modern cell.” Or as another report explained:

It is commonly believed that complex organisms arose from simple ones. Yet analyses of genomes and of their transcribed genes in various organisms reveal that, as far as protein-coding genes are concerned, the repertoire of a sea anemone—a rather simple, evolutionarily basal animal—is almost as complex as that of a human.

You can read more about these here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

But Noor’s blunder did not stop there. Not only has the science falsified evolution’s prediction that early life is simple, Noor next explained that “only later would more ‘modern’ forms appear.” That, of course, is a tautology. Species that come later are more “modern” to evolutionists because they come later.

From there Noor moved to naïve falsificationism, explaining to the student that “There are no rabbits in the Precambrian era.” This is a famous low hurdle that evolutionists like to set for themselves, and Noor used it to commit the fallacy of affirming the consequent as he explained:

That [the rabbit] has not been found, so there has not been an observation to refute the truth of evolutionary common ancestry.

There are no rabbits in the ancient strata so therefore “there has not been an observation to refute the truth of evolutionary common ancestry”?

Evolutionists are known for sloppy logic and fallacious reasoning, but with this statement jaws were dropping. “Refute the truth of evolutionary common ancestry”?

Noor next wanted to demonstrate evidence of species gradually changing. Amazingly the best he could do was to show the horse lineage—an example that has endured much evolutionary abuse. Indeed, what the horse lineage shows is long periods of stasis and abrupt appearance of new species—precisely the opposite of what Noor sought to demonstrate.

For transitional forms Noor showed a feathered dinosaur and the whale lineage, ignoring the actual data and instead showing a clean, sanitized lineage of creatures leading to the modern whale. The empirical evidence looks more like a bush, but evolutionists carefully draw the best lineage they can and carefully edit out the rest of the bush, giving the student an entirely false impression of the scientific data.

Next the professor proclaimed that vestigial organs are “very difficult to explain except in the context of common ancestry.” What he didn’t explain is that the term “vestigial” presupposes that said organs are evolutionary leftovers. In other words, evolution is assumed in the very interpretation of the organs. Noor’s question-begging did not stop there as his next topic was “vestigial” genes.

Noor followed this with examples from biogeography. Oceanic islands have many native birds and insects, but lack native mammals, amphibians, and freshwater fish. And new species introduced to the islands competed very well. Also, these islands often have species that are similar to those on the nearest mainland.

At this point Noor’s presentation was increasingly incoherent. He didn’t attempt to provide predictions or otherwise explain how this biogeographical evidence confirmed evolution as he claimed it did. He finished up with an equally bizarre discussion of inefficient designs, using the laryngeal nerve as his example.

There was no explanation of how inefficient designs and the other evidences prove evolution to be a fact. There were no prior or conditional probabilities, no treatment of contradictory evidences, not even a discussion of how one would, in principle, prove evolution to be a fact.

It was all just an obvious truism to Noor for which the details could be left up to the student. Noor simply threw up a sequence of evidences—oblivious to their warts and fallacies—and at the end was as certain evolution is true as he was at the beginning. The evidence really didn’t matter. If it did Noor wouldn’t be an evolutionist.

And what are we to learn from this exercise in banality? A top professor at a top university gave a lecture on how something comes from nothing and how he knows it is true. In the process he exposed evolutionary thought for all to see. There were fallacies and misrepresentation galore and it was downright embarrassing. Students who wanted to understand the gist of evolution got what they paid for.

Of Gaps, Fine-Tuning and Newton’s Solar System

New research is providing a fascinating new perspective on fine-tuning and a three hundred year old debate. First for the context. When Isaac Newton figured out how the solar system worked he also detected a stability problem. Could the smooth-running machine go unstable, with planets smashing into each other? This is what the math indicated. But on the other hand, we’re still here. How could that be?

According to the Whig historians, Newton, a theist, solved the problem by invoking a divine finger. God must occasionally tweak the controls to keep things from getting out of control. It explained why the solar system hasn’t come to ruin, and it provided a role for divine providence which, otherwise, might not be needed for the cosmic machine that ran on its own.

About a century later, Whig history tells us, the French mathematician and scientist Pierre Laplace solved the stability problem when he figured out that Newton’s bothersome instabilities would iron themselves out over the long run. The solar system was inherently stable after all, with no need of divine adjustment, thank you.

Newton’s sin was to use god to plug a gap in our knowledge. What a terrible idea. First, using god to plug gaps is a science-stopper. Why investigate further if god fixes the tough problems? And second, it damages our faith when science eventually solves the problem and the divine role is further diminished. The key to avoiding this problem is to sequester religious thinking to its proper role. Science and religion must be separated lest both be damaged.

That’s the Whig history. Now for what actually happened. Instead of Newton being wrong and Laplace being right it was, as usual, the exact opposite. Newton was right and Laplace was wrong, though the problem is far more complex than either man understood.

And Newton was not the doctrinaire and Laplace was not the savior as the Whigs describe. Again, the truth would be closer to the exact opposite. Newton was more circumspect than is told, and Laplace didn’t actually solve the problem. True, he thought he had solved the problem, but his claim may indicate more about evolutionary thinking than anything to do with science.

And Newton’s allowing for divine creation and providence never shut down scientific inquiry. If that were the case he never would have written the greatest scientific treatise in history.

After Newton, the brightest minds were all over the problem of solar system stability (though it is a difficult problem and would take many years to even get the wrong answer). And no one’s faith was shattered when Laplace produced his incredibly complicated calculus solution because they were banking on some Newtonian interventionism.

But what did raise tempers was the very thought of God not only creating a system in need of repair, but then stooping so low as to adjust the controls of the errant machine. The early evolutionary thinker and Newton rival, Gottfried Leibniz found the idea more than disgraceful. The Lutheran intellectual accused Newton of disrespect for God in proposing the idea the God was not sufficiently skilled to create a self-sufficient clockwork universe.

The problem with Newton’s notion of divine providence was not that it is a science stopper (if anything such thinking spurs on scientific curiosity) or a faith killer when solutions are found. The problem is that it violates our deeply held gnosticism, which is at the foundation of evolutionary thought.

Darwin and later evolutionists have echoed Leibniz’ religious sentiment time and again. Everyone knew what the “right answer” was, and this was the cultural-religious context in which Laplace worked.

Indeed, Laplace’s “proof” for his Nebular Hypothesis of how the solar system evolved came right out of this context and was, not surprisingly, metaphysical to the core. You can read more about that here.

Today the question of the solar system’s stability remains a difficult problem. It does appear, however, that its stability is a consequence of some rather fine-tuning. Fascinating new research seems to add to this story. The new results indicate that the solar system could become unstable if diminutive Mercury, the inner most planet, enters into a dance with Jupiter, the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest of all. The resulting upheaval could leave several planets in rubble, including our own.

Using Newton’s model of gravity, the chances of such a catastrophe were estimated to be greater than 50/50 over the next 5 billion years. But interestingly, accounting for Albert Einstein’s minor adjustments (according to his theory of relativity), reduces the chances to just 1%.

Like so much of evolutionary theory, this is an intriguing story because not only is the science interesting, but it is part of a larger confluence involving history, philosophy and theology.