15 Answers to Evolutionist Nonsense

[Dayton]

This is a response to the biased Scientific American article, "15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense".


15 Answers to Evolutionist Nonsense

(emphasis mine)

Rennie is wrong in many of his opening statements. He accuses Philip Johnson of wanting to inject "God" into the science classroom. Phil is interested in injecting truth into the classroom; yes, even the kind that questions Darwinism. If that truth leads some to wonder about God, then so be it.

Rennie’s overall approach is a two-faced one. His "fact of evolution" falls directly out of his faith in methodological naturalism. Can there be any observation that contradicts the fact of evolution? No, his faith forbids the thought. So when he claims that evolution also sits atop a huge pyramid of observational evidence, he should forgive readers like me who question his objectivity.

Point 1.

The fact of evolution? I like facts. Show me.

If Rennie is really unafraid of "indirect evidence" as he claims, then why object to the possibility of an "intelligence" behind biology? The connection between information and intelligence is well documented, as even Carl Sagan, the inspirer for the SETI Project, acknowledged. Yet the origin of the information on the DNA molecule is without a naturalistic explanation. Why not regard it as "indirect evidence" for an intelligent source?

Point 2.

Natural selection, a concept first expressed by a creationist who preceded Darwin, really does occur. So what? Does variation in beak size among a population of finches really tell us anything about the origin of the finch in the first place? Rennie does not answer this question.

Point 3.

Microevolution. Big deal. You breed dogs and get different varieties of dog. When has this ever been an issue for creationists? But try to turn a fish into a human ("macroevolution") and you’ve got some real problems. Why not discuss them?

Rennie claims a "succession of hominid creatures with features progressively less apelike and more modern". When I look at the fossil record I see apes (including australopithocines) and I see humans (including all in the genus Homo, that are hardly more diverse than today’s tribes), side-by-side, in deposits that are embarrassingly "old" [3] for the evolutionist. To the uninitiated, it looks a lot like apes have always been apes, and people, people.

Point 4.

The reason creation scientists don’t submit papers on Creation Science to most scientific journals is the same reason black-skinned people don’t attend KKK meetings. They are not welcome and they know it. Rennie also knows that he will quickly flag for rejection any draft to Scientific American that so much as questions the sufficiency of natural causes in the origin of the entire universe. Will Rennie deny this? He seems to admit as much.

Point 5.

A beauty pageant that features only the assets of its contestants, and not their liabilities, can produce a winner of only superficial beauty. In the same way, Rennie eschews a public airing of disputes among evolutionists such as those between the late Stephen J. Gould and Richard Dawkins, lest "the fact of evolution" suffer a loss of credulity. Yet if Gould’s revisionism and Dawkins’ fundamentalism really do exhaust the evolutionary possibilities, and their debate raises some unflattering facts that leave both contestants looking like hags, then the whole pageant looks bad. Rennie wishes to avoid this.

Point 6.

Rennie does Darwin an injustice. His book had more to say about competition and obsolescence than about "splinter groups". New creatures arise, in part because old ones die out due to obsolescence, according to his theory. So, if it is true that greater cleverness had something to do with Homo out-competing the apes for a given food supply, then the question of why there are still apes is not such a stupid one. (Note: Rennie uses "monkeys" to make his straw man easier to knock down).

Point 7.

It is arbitrary for Rennie to throw up his hands regarding the origin of life, and to be dogmatic regarding the "fact" of macroevolution. Why abandon so quickly the tenet of methodological naturalism? The reason is plain. Naturalists frequently abandon their philosophy at this point, because they themselves know the shabbiness of the "just so" stories of how life arose from non-living chemicals. Rennie, poor chap, is no exception.

Point 8.

Rennie makes a masterfully unsupported statement, "As long as the forces of selection stay constant, natural selection can push evolution in one direction and produce sophisticated structures in surprisingly short times". If he could produce one example of this, he could silence all creationists very easily.

To claim that natural selection is governed by something other than chance is to suggest it is somehow a directed process. What shadowy entity would he propose? "Selective forces" are ultimately subject to either chance or intelligence. Rennie can’t have it both ways.

His Shakespeare-writing computer program that "generated phrases randomly" did so by "preserving the positions of individual letters that happened to be correctly placed". That can only be done if the computer is first programmed to recognize "correctly placed" letters. His computer is rigged, in other words. Evolution must operate without the benefit of such an intelligent programmer.

Point 9.

Mineral crystals grow by mere repetition of the symmetry that already exists at the molecular level. This involves no new information. Brute energy alone cannot produce a mousetrap, because, unlike a snowflake, a mousetrap contains purposeful information. So do all organisms. Rennie does not address how information can arise in a non-intelligent way. He could convince a lot of creationists if he could.

Point 10.

"Biology has catalogued many traits produced by point mutations". Since when has this been contested? Show me one mutation that has ever introduced an innovative design change into an organism that actually benefited the organism. Now that would be a change worth talking about, but such a thing is unheard of in biology today. The mixing and matching of Hox genes does nothing to bring about the kind of net information increase needed to drive evolution. Where does the needed information come from? Darwinism will go shipwreck without an answer to this question.

Point 11.

Natural selection might explain the origin of new species, depending on how the term species is defined. However, a new population of creatures that has lost its will or ability to reproduce with its parent population (i.e., a new species), is no problem for the creationist. It would represent a loss of function, not a gain. Such change does nothing to establish the truth of macroevolution, for the traits that typify the new population were also a part of the original gene pool. Nothing new is created, in other words.

Point 12.

Creationists are not afraid to discuss the evidence for speciation. So what if foxes, wolves and coyotes are species derived from a common genetic dog stock? Does this do anything to justify the extrapolation that dogs are descended from tapeworms?

Point 13.

At the risk of being impudent, I would challenge Rennie with the following. Show me a single sedimentary rock outcrop with a succession of fossil creatures, in which an organism in the lower part can be traced through perhaps a half-dozen intermediates into a fundamentally different kind of creature in the upper part. Given the billions of fossils discovered, this should not be an overbearing request if macroevolution is really true. Archeopteryx and the other examples of intermediate forms cited by Rennie are convincing only to the already convinced, but not to a skeptic.

Point 14.

William Paley may have actually stated, "the complex structures of living things must be the handiwork of direct, divine intervention". Paley was widely respected at the time, and he could have afforded to use the word "must". How refreshing it would be to hear so much as a "maybe" out of one of today’s PBS nature programs.

Point 15.

It is my understanding that Behe is not opposed in principle to macroevolution, and so it is wrong for Rennie to portray him in militant terms. Rather, Behe seems to argue his case for "irreducible complexity" in the same way as Sherlock Holmes, who once said, "when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.". In suggesting intelligent design, Behe is certainly guilty of violating the tenet of methodological naturalism. But is he in violation of truth?

In conclusion, Rennie rails on his opponents by saying, "intelligent design theorists invoke shadowy entities that conveniently have whatever unconstrained abilities are needed to solve the mystery at hand" I don’t think so. Rather they invoke the necessity of a sufficient cause. The identity of that "cause" can be discussed on another day.

http://www.icr.org/news/rennie.html

 

[Arikay]

I have a question, can you give us your own opinions and not ones that we have already read?
Maybe you can give your own opinions about the article. Or maybe pick an evolutionist article and show us what they got wrong. Etc. Anything else than just copy and paste posts. Especially since when someone responds you just ignore the response and find another article to copy and paste.

I find it interesting that you have changed the link in your Sig to "christian answers" which just Parots AIGs ignorance or lies (depending on what you think).

 

[Jet Black]

many of these are replications, so I am chopping some.

15 Answers to Evolutionist Nonsense

(emphasis mine)

Rennie is wrong in many of his opening statements. He accuses Philip Johnson of wanting to inject "God" into the science classroom. Phil is interested in injecting truth into the classroom; yes, even the kind that questions Darwinism. If that truth leads some to wonder about God, then so be it.

Rennie’s overall approach is a two-faced one. His "fact of evolution" falls directly out of his faith in methodological naturalism. Can there be any observation that contradicts the fact of evolution? No, his faith forbids the thought. So when he claims that evolution also sits atop a huge pyramid of observational evidence, he should forgive readers like me who question his objectivity.

Is God Falsifiable? if not, then he does not belong in a science classroom. along with truth, beauty and other such niceties.

Point 1.

The fact of evolution? I like facts. Show me.

If Rennie is really unafraid of "indirect evidence" as he claims, then why object to the possibility of an "intelligence" behind biology? The connection between information and intelligence is well documented, as even Carl Sagan, the inspirer for the SETI Project, acknowledged. Yet the origin of the information on the DNA molecule is without a naturalistic explanation. Why not regard it as "indirect evidence" for an intelligent source?

because a prior design would predict things that are not seen. the algorithmic design predicts things too, and these things are seen. of course the prior intelligent designer could be a liar. if so, this does not paint God in a good light.

Point 2.

Natural selection, a concept first expressed by a creationist who preceded Darwin, really does occur. So what? Does variation in beak size among a population of finches really tell us anything about the origin of the finch in the first place? Rennie does not answer this question.

the tired microevoltion vs macroevolution argument. there is plenty of fossil evidence and so on behind the development of birds.

Point 3.

Microevolution. Big deal. You breed dogs and get different varieties of dog. When has this ever been an issue for creationists? But try to turn a fish into a human ("macroevolution") and you’ve got some real problems. Why not discuss them?

Rennie claims a "succession of hominid creatures with features progressively less apelike and more modern". When I look at the fossil record I see apes (including australopithocines) and I see humans (including all in the genus Homo, that are hardly more diverse than today’s tribes), side-by-side, in deposits that are embarrassingly "old" [3] for the evolutionist. To the uninitiated, it looks a lot like apes have always been apes, and people, people.

a repitition of point 2, with dogs and humans replacinf finches.

Point 4.

The reason creation scientists don’t submit papers on Creation Science to most scientific journals is the same reason black-skinned people don’t attend KKK meetings. They are not welcome and they know it. Rennie also knows that he will quickly flag for rejection any draft to Scientific American that so much as questions the sufficiency of natural causes in the origin of the entire universe. Will Rennie deny this? He seems to admit as much.

this is conspiriacy theory talk. If there was any real empirical evidence against evolution it would have come to light by now. it has not. scientists are often willing to accept that they are wrong... sometimes not often enough, but if they weren't, we wouldn't have Quantum Mechanics and modern day physics.

Point 6.

Rennie does Darwin an injustice. His book had more to say about competition and obsolescence than about "splinter groups". New creatures arise, in part because old ones die out due to obsolescence, according to his theory. So, if it is true that greater cleverness had something to do with Homo out-competing the apes for a given food supply, then the question of why there are still apes is not such a stupid one. (Note: Rennie uses "monkeys" to make his straw man easier to knock down).

it is not a matter of out-competing for food though. it is a matter of surviving in a particular niche that other apes were incapable of surviving in.

Point 7.

It is arbitrary for Rennie to throw up his hands regarding the origin of life, and to be dogmatic regarding the "fact" of macroevolution. Why abandon so quickly the tenet of methodological naturalism? The reason is plain. Naturalists frequently abandon their philosophy at this point, because they themselves know the shabbiness of the "just so" stories of how life arose from non-living chemicals. Rennie, poor chap, is no exception.

evolution is not abiogenesis. I will address this later.

Point 8.

Rennie makes a masterfully unsupported statement, "As long as the forces of selection stay constant, natural selection can push evolution in one direction and produce sophisticated structures in surprisingly short times". If he could produce one example of this, he could silence all creationists very easily.

To claim that natural selection is governed by something other than chance is to suggest it is somehow a directed process. What shadowy entity would he propose? "Selective forces" are ultimately subject to either chance or intelligence. Rennie can’t have it both ways.

His Shakespeare-writing computer program that "generated phrases randomly" did so by "preserving the positions of individual letters that happened to be correctly placed". That can only be done if the computer is first programmed to recognize "correctly placed" letters. His computer is rigged, in other words. Evolution must operate without the benefit of such an intelligent programmer.

the direction of natural selection points in the direction of survival. It is widely acknowledged that evolutionary programs such as this do indeed set false goals, however there are many that do not. they are of course limited still by the smallness and simplicity of the artificial world that is constructed for them.

Point 9.

Mineral crystals grow by mere repetition of the symmetry that already exists at the molecular level. This involves no new information. Brute energy alone cannot produce a mousetrap, because, unlike a snowflake, a mousetrap contains purposeful information. So do all organisms. Rennie does not address how information can arise in a non-intelligent way. He could convince a lot of creationists if he could.

abiogenesis argument again. the reason mineral crystals grow, is not repetition of symmetry, it is what is energetically favourable. this is the reason that there are such things as flaws and dislocations in crystals, because the energy favourability is not a perfect process. when proteins fold, they fold into the most energetically favourable shape (hence why all proteins of a given type fold into the same shape from a long string of amino acid) life is fundamentally, an energetically favourable process.

Point 10.

"Biology has catalogued many traits produced by point mutations". Since when has this been contested? Show me one mutation that has ever introduced an innovative design change into an organism that actually benefited the organism. Now that would be a change worth talking about, but such a thing is unheard of in biology today. The mixing and matching of Hox genes does nothing to bring about the kind of net information increase needed to drive evolution. Where does the needed information come from? Darwinism will go shipwreck without an answer to this question.

the ability of bacteria to eat nylon. now nylon never existed before humans, so it really is a case of adapting to a changing environment.

Point 11.

Natural selection might explain the origin of new species, depending on how the term species is defined. However, a new population of creatures that has lost its will or ability to reproduce with its parent population (i.e., a new species), is no problem for the creationist. It would represent a loss of function, not a gain. Such change does nothing to establish the truth of macroevolution, for the traits that typify the new population were also a part of the original gene pool. Nothing new is created, in other words.

I fail to see this conclusion.

Point 12.

Creationists are not afraid to discuss the evidence for speciation. So what if foxes, wolves and coyotes are species derived from a common genetic dog stock? Does this do anything to justify the extrapolation that dogs are descended from tapeworms?

repetition of macroevolution argument again, with the introduction of a pointlessly large gap between species that followed two entirely different branches from a very very very old common ancestor.

Point 13.

At the risk of being impudent, I would challenge Rennie with the following. Show me a single sedimentary rock outcrop with a succession of fossil creatures, in which an organism in the lower part can be traced through perhaps a half-dozen intermediates into a fundamentally different kind of creature in the upper part. Given the billions of fossils discovered, this should not be an overbearing request if macroevolution is really true. Archeopteryx and the other examples of intermediate forms cited by Rennie are convincing only to the already convinced, but not to a skeptic.

I leave the presentation of extensive evidence to others.

Point 14.

William Paley may have actually stated, "the complex structures of living things must be the handiwork of direct, divine intervention". Paley was widely respected at the time, and he could have afforded to use the word "must". How refreshing it would be to hear so much as a "maybe" out of one of today’s PBS nature programs.

how this contributes to the argument, I do not know.

 

[Jet Black]

Especially since when someone responds you just ignore the response and find another article to copy and paste.

true... I shouldn't have bothered should I?

I was actually going to include that at the end of my reply.... that he should not post lists of things like that, but focus on one thing that he can make a conversation of... the problem with that though is that the analysis of his argument will inevitably be very detailed and far more likely to expose flaws his (borrowed) reasoning.

 

[Arikay]

Nah, its good to post a reply. Until the forums started counting those who arent registered, I never realized how many non registered readers come through here. It seems to be double the amount of normal posters. So posting information that educates them is good.

Unfortunatly our friend here seems to have a pattern, he posts an entire article taken from a site (one that normally is vague and has many unfocused points), says that it shows evolution is false. Either when questioned or when the article is refuted, he posts something along the line of "I follow god and know I am right" and then that thread is dropped for another one, with another large article from another site that we have all seen and refuted a thousand times.

I would be very interested in his own opinion, both about creationism and Evolution. But so far I have only gotten short answers that dont contain much information.

true... I shouldn't have bothered should I?

I was actually going to include that at the end of my reply.... that he should not post lists of things like that, but focus on one thing that he can make a conversation of... the problem with that though is that the analysis of his argument will inevitably be very detailed and far more likely to expose flaws his (borrowed) reasoning.

 

[Jet Black]

Nah, its good to post a reply. Until the forums started counting those who arent registered, I never realized how many non registered readers come through here. It seems to be double the amount of normal posters. So posting information that educates them is good.

Unfortunatly our friend here seems to have a pattern, he posts an entire article taken from a site (one that normally is vague and has many unfocused points), says that it shows evolution is false. Either when questioned or when the article is refuted, he posts something along the line of "I follow god and know I am right" and then that thread is dropped for another one, with another large article from another site that we have all seen and refuted a thousand times.

I would be very interested in his own opinion, both about creationism and Evolution. But so far I have only gotten short answers that dont contain much information.

indeed, and one other thing about these sorts of posts, is that they are far more interesting than Mavis Beacons Typewiter Tutorials

humour aside, you raise an interesting point though... why does he feel the necessity to post huge lists of things, when by his own argument it does't matter anyway if that is his true position, then he does not need to say anything else as his own philosophy and belief system cannot be attacked with data and theory. however the second he says it doesn't matter, and then starts trying to demonstrate someone else is wrong, then suddenly it seems like it does matter... It seems to me that while he claims that what the world says is unimportant, there is an underlying insecurity there because he is trying to combine his world view with the facts of nature, just in case it is.

 

[samiam]

Sigh. Another list of points refuted a thousand times (PRATTs).

Point 4.

The reason creation scientists don’t submit papers on Creation Science to most scientific journals is the same reason black-skinned people don’t attend KKK meetings. They are not welcome and they know it. Rennie also knows that he will quickly flag for rejection any draft to Scientific American that so much as questions the sufficiency of natural causes in the origin of the entire universe. Will Rennie deny this? He seems to admit as much.

Keep in mind that every single crackpot with a unscientific theory complains that the scientists are somehow in a conspiracy to cover up their "correct" beliefs.

Let me give you a story:

Back in the 1970s, my father had, as an acquaintance, someone who had a wonderful new propulsion method. One minor problem: It broke Newton's third law: "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction". So, the device wouldn't work.

Now, instead of realizing that this device doesn't work, this person wrote a long rant about how scientists were repressing his wonderful invention because they believe in Newton's third law. In fact, I just did a Google search, and this particular crackpot has a web page; I'm surprised he hasn't given up after over 25 years.

Extraordinary facts require extraordinary evidence. If you want to come up with a theory which breaks established scientific theory, you better have really good support for the theory.

It took extraordinary evidence to believe in a round earth; It took extraordinary evidence to believe that the Earth is not the center of the universe; and, yes, it took extraordinary evidence to falsify the theory of creationism.

Just about every single creationist "theory" has been refuted; everything on your list has been refuted.

The list consists mainly of "I can't understand Evolution, so it must not be true!"-style arguments.

A lot of creationists have a bad case of "I can't understand Evolution, so it must not be true!". Creationism is not a scientific problem; it is a psychological problem. It is a classic example of a denial mechanism in place. A denial mechanism which makes it impossible for a creationist to understand evolution, because they have this mental denial gate which no evolution evidence can pass. Since their denial mechanism causes them to reject any evidence for evolution, they, naturally, can not understand evolution.

Let me give you just one example: Using evolution to solve an optimization problem. I've done it; you can see my work here.

Now, real evolution has a different optimization parameter: Survival. However, in both cases, an evolutionary system can and does decrease the entropy of a system.

- Sam

 

[samiam]

There is a rule against plagarism here; cutting and pasting from web sites may work for term papers at your college, but it doesn't work here.

In other words, don't quote http://www.icr.org/headlines/rennie.html without proper attribution.

Instead, place a link to the web page in question, and, use the QUOTE parameter to make it clear you are quoting another source.

Why shouldwe bother refuting you if you do not bother writing your own original material.

- Sam

 

[pudmuddle]

Good post, Dayton
The fact is that they are attacking you personally after presenting a few feeble arguements. They don't want posts like this because it makes people aware that there are other veiws than theirs.

 

[Pete Harcoff]

Good post, Dayton
The fact is that they are attacking you personally after presenting a few feeble arguements. They don't want posts like this because it makes people aware that there are other veiws than theirs.

puddle, wholesale copying and pasting of articles is frowned upon in these forums. Plus, as others have pointed out, these arguments have been continually discussed here. Why not bring something new to the table?

 

[LorentzHA]

It took extraordinary evidence to believe in a round earth; It took extraordinary evidence to believe that the Earth is not the center of the universe; and, yes, it took extraordinary evidence to falsify the theory of creationism. Just about every single creationist "theory" has been refuted; everything on your list has been refuted. The list consists mainly of "I can't understand Evolution, so it must not be true!"-style arguments. A lot of creationists have a bad case of "I can't understand Evolution, so it must not be true!". Creationism is not a scientific problem; it is a psychological problem. Sam

VERY well said!!....but ya know what?, like evolution..not sure if it will be comprehended by some. When you speak of extraordinary evidence, are saying "because" or "I just do" or "That is what I believe because I feel like it" and "You're all wrong" is not extraordinary proof?????

 

[Nathan Poe]

This is a response to the biased Scientific American article, "15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense".


15 Answers to Evolutionist Nonsense
(nonsense snipped)

What amuses me here is that not only is the list plagiarized from ICR, but in what I assume is a futile attempt to be clever, modeled the very title of "his" article from the Scientific American article which evicerates it.

The article itself is a PRATT list.

Is there an original thought to be found here?

 

[goat37]

What amuses me here is that not only is the list plagiarized from ICR, but in what I assume is a futile attempt to be clever, modeled the very title of "his" article from the Scientific American article which evicerates them.

The article itself is a PRATT list.

Is there an original thought to be found here?

Well the creationist campaign camp isn't exactly booming with new evidence and findings that support their position. So I would assume that everything that we would see from these folk is rehashed, regurgitated, and recycled from 1 of 5 websites that all basically say the same wrong things.

When it gets to the point that it has though, blatant copying and pasting directly from the websites, it is just plain sad.

 

[revolutio]

The original isn't actually up on the net yet. It is in the most recent edition of SA, I will see if I have it. My subscription to SA seems to be on a 'when-it-feels-like-it' delivery policy.

 

[Dayton]

It's not plagiarism, I posted the link to the article.

 

[revolutio]

No, you posted a link to the website and dropped off the author's name as well as all his bibliographic sources. Considering you made no attempt to state that it wasn't your work, I would call that plagiarism.

 

[goat37]

It's not plagiarism, I posted the link to the article.

Plagiarism... not plagiarism... it's really irrelevant because it doesn't change the fact that the information given is still false.

 

[Nathan Poe]

No, you posted a link to the website and dropped off the author's name as well as all his bibliographic sources. Considering you made no attempt to state that it wasn't your work, I would call that plagiarism.

And posting the website was only done after the fact. Or don't you know that when you edit a post, it says so at the bottom, including the time you edited it?

 

[Arikay]

I do find it interesting that some people seem to have different ideas of honest behavior. Like bad citations of works, or just recently I was talking to another person who refused to fix a quote that was misrepresenting Dawkins.

Im starting to realize why the "errors" that places like AIG try to pass off as truth, dont seem to bother some.

But like goat said, how it was posted doesnt change the fact that it is false information, not just false information but Old false information.

I wonder if our friend can break his pattern and give us something better, like his own comments on an article or maybe a refutation of an evolutionist article, instead of just a plain copy and paste Job.

 

[goat37]

I do find it interesting that some people seem to have different ideas of honest behavior. Like bad citations of works, or just recently I was talking to another person who refused to fix a quote that was misrepresenting Dawkins.

I read that one... at least I think so... Does the person's name rhyme with mo.mentum?

What creationists don't get, or at least most... Even if by some weird twist of fate Evolution was to be proven wrong, that still doesn't give any more validation to creationism.
With that being said, while I am an evolutionist, I will be the first one to say that the theory is a little weak in some spots. This is due to the fact that we have not discovered all that needs to be discovered yet. It is still a work in progress so to speak, we have the foundation and some of the structure, but the final building isn't completed yet. I suspect that some parts of the current theory are incorrect, so as soon as we make a few more discoveries and do a little more math, we will end of with just a more refined, more exact theory of evolution.