All Europeans have one common African ancestor?

[sutter]

[sutter]

A piece that reinforces professor Giertych's remarks on the uselessness of Darwinism to the scientific enterprise

[alecto]

The idea that evolution is full of holes that worry most biologists is kind of like the once held belief that the Jews conspired with France to make Germany lose World War I: it's very popular in some places, destructive, and just plain wrong. It's certainly not as destructive, but I wouldn't be surprised that much if the fration of biologists who really doubt evolution is in fact smaller than the fraction of Jews who really did help France defeat Germany in WWI. Let's wake up here. There's some "big lie" propaganda going on. Just because an enterprise isn't perfect doesn't mean it doesn't work at all. Saying that evolution is wrong just because there are some flaws is like saying Christianity is baseless and evil in toto because of schisms, Pat Robertson, and pedophile priests.

[WolfVanZandt]

It's not that evolution is full of holes that worry most scientists - it's that evolution is full of holes that [b]should[.b] worry most scientists but doesn't. Only a few scientists have the sense to be worried about the holes

[sutter]

[WolfVanZandt]

That's pretty much my experience, Sutter. But I consider 10% (or even 20%) few considering the number of people it should be disturbing. Scientists are supposed to be bothered by holes. 20% is a heinously small number.

I've heard scientists make statements like "Even if we knew it [evolution theory] to be false, we are committed to supporting it." To them, evolutionary theory is somewhat of a bastion against superstition, which they consider Christianity and other forms of spiritual religion to be. The 80% can't conscientiously not support evolutionary theory regardless of any amount of holes in it.

To investigate, teach, or debate alternatives to evolutionary theory is academic suicide in many (most?) places.

[sutter]

This might expain a little. . These are the gatekeepers and agenda-setters of the scientific community...

[WolfVanZandt]

Very interesting study.

I don't think greater intellect or scholarship is to blame for the rejection of God by these people. I think that scientists tend to secumb to reductionism. The more scientists retreat into their field the less real other areas of human concern become and the more territorial they become. Their field becomes their world. God simply doesn't belong there.

[alecto]

[WolfVanZandt]

Alecto, I believe that evolution took place as part of creation. But I am a scientists and there are gapping holes in the theory of evolution taken as history. If a person is an honest scientist, they have to recognize that. The 80-90% are betraying science by allowing their emotional envolvement to stand in the way of their objectivity.

Let me say that again: they not only reject Christ, the betray their own field of endeavor.

They also make it impossible for their honest colleagues to function.

[alecto]

[sutter]

[WolfVanZandt]

It doesn't work. Newtonian physics is not full of gapping holes. It is how things work on an every day, observable level. It does not apply on a micro or macroscopic level. It would, on the other hand, be inappropriate to assume, because of the gapping holes, that quantum physics always followed the same laws we see to day (historically).

We can see evolution on a microscopic level but to assume that it always worked (historically) on such a broad range as indicated by evolution scientists is unwarranted. We simply don't know that and have no reason to make the assumption.

The assumption of evolution as a historical factor can be used to predict what will appen to species in the future but we have no way of knowing if those predictions are accurate enough to be used as working theories. Newtoian physics makes useful and accurate predictions; it provides a very useful working theory (unlike historical evolution). In other words, there is no benefit in using historical evolution as a working theory as there is for things like Newtonian and quantum physics.

[alecto]

Biologists don't seem to use the terms "Darwinism" and "neo-Darwinism" much. "Evolution" encompasses a broad spectrum of ideas, some of which have explanitory value and some of which also have had predictive value. "Neo-Darwinism" is supposed to mean Darwin's theory with the two major difficulties resolved: where the hereditary information is stored (genes) and that there are mechanisms of mutation of genes by alteration of DNA. The primary predictions of Darwin can therefore be considered the existence of and mutability of DNA information, though other scientists (e.g. Mendel) deserve credit as well.

The strength of evolution in the minds of modern scientists probably rests on four things:

It simply explains the massive amount of correspondence between structures in different species (e.g. limb structure) and the "family tree" of Linnaeus, as well as the similarity and dissimilarity (in the correct amounts) between the genes of the various species.

It predicted and continues to allow us to assess the change of disease bacteria under the operation of antibiotics.

It predicts what we will dig up from the ground. We dig up intermediary forms of existing species often and with the frequency that would be expected statistically given the tiny amount of land that can be excavated for fossils each year.

Some parts of the theory are mathematically necessary, resting directly on principles of statistics the same way that the Second Law of Thermodynamics does. From these principles, rates of change can be predicted, and these are verified within experimental populations (microevolution). Microevolution is not considered a theory as much as a law or process, within mathematics.

Macroevolution is the theory that says that species today derived from a common ancestor that lived billions of years ago. Microevolution can be "proven" deductively from axioms of mathematics and facts about modern organisms. Macroevolution is not proven, but the differences between species are within the range that could be predicted from microevolution given the time frame of billions of years across which the change is supposed to have occured. This does not mean that microevolution requires this to happen. You cannot prove macroevolution given microevolution.

I should point out that the supposed conflict with Genesis has nothing to do at all with any of this. That comes out of geochronology and depends not at all on evolution. Indeed, evolution requires old earth as a prerequisite and did not arise as an idea until there was already a large community of scientists who believed the world was millions of years old. The conflict with biologists seems to be a kind of historical accident. Thomas Huxley seems to have chosen evolution as a wedge to drive into theology after already deciding he was an atheist. Geology generated a large number of old-Earth Christians in the latter part of the 19th Century. At the same time, there were people in Europe re-interpreting Scripture for political reasons, and they got mixed up in WWI, and this inspired some Americans to challenge that non-literal interpretation of Scripture was a cause of political agression. Since Evolution rested on a geological claim that itself required a non-literal interpretation of Scripture, it got picked up into the politics of the War and its impact on America. I don't know the details of this in terms of what scientists stood where and which theologians said what, but I can't imagine it as a friendly situation for any party.

In any case, the dispute between science and religion far precedes evolution. The business about Galileo and the Catholic Church was famous long before Darwin.

[sutter]