Question 91
True or False question: The fact that the DNA in chimps and in humans is 96 percent similar proves that they have a common ancestor? Comfort answers “False.” He then adds a quote “The DNA in bananas is 50 percent similar to human DNA, but no one would speculate that we are 'half-bananas.' Although the field of comparative genetics has revealed some interesting facts about the similarities (and differences) of DNA among different species, it says nothing about the origin of our DNA or the historical relationship between species.”(Source: Michael Matthews, “Apes are our brothers: just ask the Post Office,” April 17, 2003 www.answersingenesis.org/docs2003/0407apes.asp)
Non-Academic
Source
Answers in Genesis is not an academic
source or organization. It is a organization promoting
pseudoscientific young earth creationism based on their literal
interpretation of the Bible.
Not a
qualified biologist
Comfort said in the Introduction of
this book he would be quoting "evolutionary experts" and
right here, Comfort provides a quote from a non-biologist. Matthews
is not a scientist. He is a writer with degrees in English.
*B.A. in English (first two years at
the University of Chicago, USA) Bob Jones University, Greenville,
South Carolina, USA (1984)
*M.Ed. in English Education, Bob Jones
University (1988)
It should be noted, Bob Jones
University is a Christian college in Greenville, South Carolina. The
institute is infamous for taking the most extreme fundamentalist
positions imaginable. Until 2005, Bob Jones University held the
position that accreditation was a compromise with the sinful world of
academia. As such, the university was an unaccredited one for most of
its history, in effect conferring degrees that might as well have
come from a diploma mill.
Distortion
of Science
DNA does indeed prove that we and
chimpanzees share a common ancestor. You share more traits in common
with your siblings than you do with your cousins due to the recent
ancestors you share with them, your parents. Deeper down, you share
more in common with those in your extended family than you do with
neighbors and classmates, etc., people you don’t recognize as part
of your biological family. But you must realize that on some level
you’re still related. Deeper down, one could likely recognize
subtle indications of cultural demes which most people will still
agree all descend from one common ancestral lineage –despite their
current apparent diversity and unfamiliar ways.
Deeper down, we've seen that new breeds
of barnyard birds, domestic pets, livestock, corn, even bananas have
to some degree been engineered by human intervention via artificial
selection, and new sub-species have occurred in the wild via natural
selection. In both cases, these stem from common ancestry, be that
hundreds of breeds of dogs coming from one strain of wolves, or
dozens of commercial bovines being derived from the now-extinct
European Aurochs. Likewise, we stem from a common ancestry with
chimpanzees.
In-Depth Comments
“For many years, evolutionary scientists—and science museums and zoos—have hailed the chimpanzee as 'our closest living relative' and have pointed to the similarity in DNA sequences between the two as evidence. In most previous studies, they have announced 98-99% identical DNA. However, these were for gene coding regions (such as the sequence of the cytochrome c protein), which constituted only a very small fraction of the roughly 3 billion DNA base pairs that compromise our genetics blueprint. Although the full human genome sequence has been available since 2001, the whole chimpanzee genome has not. Thus, all the previous work has been based on only a portion of the total DNA.
Last week, in a special issue of Nature devoted to chimpanzees, researchers reported the initial sequence of the chimpanzee genome...So what is this great and overwhelming 'proof' of chimp-human common ancestry? Researchers claim that there is little genetic difference between us (only 4%). This is very strange kind of proof because it is actually double the percentage difference that has been claimed for years!...
Further, the use of percentages obscure the magnitude of the differences. For example, 1.23% of the differences are single base pair substitutions. This doesn't sound like much until you realize that it represents ~35% million mutations! But that is only the beginning, because there are ~40-45 million bases present in humans and missing from chimps, as well as about the same number present in chimps that is absent from man. These extra DNA nucleotides are called 'insertions' or 'deletions' because they are thought to have been added in or lost from the sequence. This puts the total number of DNA differences at about 125 million. However, since the insertions can be more than one nucleotide long, there are about 40 million separate mutation events that would separate the two species.
To put this number into perspective, a typical page of text might have 4,000 letters and spaces. It would take 10,000 such full pages of text to equal 40 million letters!”(Source: David A. Dewitt, Ph.D., “Chimp Genome Sequence Very Different from Man,” September 5, 2005 www.answersingenesis.org/docs2005/0905chimp.asp)
Non-Academic
Source
Answers in Genesis is not an academic
source or organization. It is a organization promoting
pseudoscientific young earth creationism based on their literal
interpretation of the Bible.
Does
not damage evolutionary theory
Question 92
True or False question: Archaeopteryx has been found to be the evolutionary missing link between dinosaurs and birds? Comfort answers “False.”
Comfort adds “the Field Museum in Chicago displayed what was believed to be an Archaeopteryx fossil on October 4-19, 1997. It was hailed as “Archaeopteryx: The Bird That Rocked the World.” However, Dr. Alan Feduccia (world authority on birds and evolutionary biologist at the University of North Carolina) said, “Paleontologists have tried to turn Archaeopteryx into an earth-bound, feathered dinosaur. But it's not. It is a bird, a perching bird. And no amount of 'paleobabble' is going to change that.”(Source: “Archaeopteryx: Early Bird Catches a Can of Worms,” Science, Vol. 259, 5 February 1993, pp. 764-765)
Distortion
of Science
Archaeopteryx is indeed a transitional
fossil. Notice how Ray Comfort (as well as other quote-miners) only
quote Feduccia's conclusion, and not his evidence. There is no
mention that that his opinion is a minority opinion. Feduccia's peers
in the field of bird evolution are "authorities" too. In
short this creationist is saying that Feduccia is an authority and
that he says that birds are not descended from dinosaurs, therefore
birds are not descended from dinosaurs. It is a classic "argument
from authority." It is also very inconsistent. Feduccia also
says that evolution occurs, so if this argument is to be followed to
its logical conclusion, this creationist must accept the evolution of
birds from non-birds! One could also cite many more authorities that
say birds are descended from theropod dinosaurs. This is why one
should not pick and choose authorities. If Feduccia does turn out to
be correct and his views become established within the scientific
community, then the evolution deniers will probably become fond of
quoting what Kevin Padian and other proponents of birds being
descended from dinosaurs had to say about Feduccia's views.
Comfort not only did not quote the
experts with other views than Feduccia, the creationist did not
mention the views of Feduccia that are contrary to his own case.
Consider that the antievolutionist article quoted above is called “Is
Archaeopteryx a 'missing link'?” and argues that Archaeopteryx is
not a transitional form. It uses the Feduccia quote to support this.
A reader might be fooled into thinking that Feduccia does not think
that it is not a transitional form between reptiles and birds. Here
is what Feduccia2 had to say in a chapter he called "Feathered
Reptiles":
“...The creature thus memorialized
was Archaeopteryx lithographica, and, though indisputably
birdlike, it could with equal truth be called reptilian.... The
Archaeopteryx fossil is, in fact, the most superb example of a
specimen perfectly intermediate between two higher groups of living
organisms--what has come to be called a “missing link,” a Rosetta
stone of evolution....”
Thus from one quote we see a whole
range of problems that resulted from an attempt to “prove” a
point with a quotation. The moral is that quoting someone is not a
substitute for researching details and providing details to the
reader. Without those details, it is simply saying that it is so
because so-and-so said so. Without those details it becomes an
"argument from authority.
That evolution deniers have to resort
to quotes to make their case shows just how little of a case they
have.
In-Depth Comment
“In Eichstatt, Germany, in 1984 there was a major meeting of scientists who specialized in bird evolution, the International Archaeopteryx Conference. They disagreed on just about anything that was covered there on this creature, but there was very broad agreement on the belief that Archaeopteryx was a true bird. Only a tiny minority thought that it was actually one of the small, lightly built coelurosaurian dinosaurs [small lightly framed dinosaurs]...If, of course, it's a true bird, it is not the half-way, half-reptile, half-bird like we've often heard.”(Source: Dr. David Menton, “Bird evolution flies out the window” www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v16/i4/birds.asp)
Non-Academic
Source
Answers in Genesis is not an academic
source, it is a biased young-earth creationist organization with a
history of purposely distorting science to fit their literal biblical
worldview.
Distortion
of Science
Contrary to Menton's claims,
Archaeopteryx is indeed a transitional fossil.
Question 93
Comfort makes a statement and asks a question: “The theory of evolution depends on the concept of random mutations accumulate to create new body parts and functions. Does the evidence show that this is possible? Comfort answers “no” and quotes Stephen J. Gould to explain why, “But how do you get from nothing to such an elaborate something if Evolution must proceed through a long sequence of intermediate stages, each favored by natural selection? You can't fly with 2% of a wing...ow, in other words, can natural selection explain these incipient stages of structures that can only be used (as we now observe them) in much more elaborated forms?...One point stands high above the rest the dilemma of incipient stages. Mivart identified this problem as primary and it remains so today.”(Source: “Not Necessarily a Wing,” Natural History, October 1985, pp. 12-13)
Quote
Mine/Distorted message of author
The quote is taken from an essay by
Gould entitled “Not Necessarily a Wing.” The full text can be
found
[http://www.stephenjaygould.org/library/gould_functionalshift.html
here]. To quote another passage from the essay:
“...believe that Darwinism has, and
has long had, an adequate and interesting resolution to Mivart's
challenge (although we have obviously been mightily unsuccessful in
getting it across). Second, a paper recently published in the
technical journal Evolution has provided compelling experimental
evidence for this resolution applied to its most famous case—the
origin of wings.”
As you can see, the quote is clearly
taken out of context.
In-Depth Comments
“The reasons for rejecting Darwin's proposal were many, but first of all that many innovations cannot possibly come into existence through accumulation of many small steps, and even if they can, natural selection cannot accomplish it, because incipient and intermediate stages are not advantageous.”(Source: Embryologist Soren Lovtrup, Darwinism: The Refutation of a Myth (Beckingham, Kent: Croom Helm Ltd., 1987), p. 275)
Quote
Mine/Distorted message of author
Does
not damage evolutionary theory
Despite his melodramatic book title,
Lövtrup accepts evolution, but disagrees with the mechanisms of it
and the historicity of Darwin's role in proposing
it.
http://home.planet.nl/~gkorthof/kortho28.htm
http://www.amazon.com/review/product/0709941536/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_acr_txt?%5Fencoding=UTF8&showViewpoints=1
http://www.intelligentdesign.net/literature.htm
Lövtrup's ideas would likely be considered "out of the
mainstream" by most scientists.
“The evolutionary process faces constraints far more severe than anything impeding human designers. We biologists recognize these constraints, but we don't often rise above our natural chauvinism and make enough noise about them. Every organism must grow from an initially smaller to an ultimate larger size. Nature in effect must transmute a motorcycle into an automobile while providing continuous transportation. The need for growth without loss of function can impose severe geometrical limitations.”(Source: Steven Vogel, Cats' Paws and Catapults (London: Penguin, 1998), p. 23)
Does
not damage evolutionary theory
Question 94
Fill in the blank: Prof. Robert H. Peters, when referring to evolutionary theory, said “The essence of the argument is that these 'theories' are actually tautologies [empty statements] and, as such, cannot make empirically testable predictions. They are not ____________.” Comfort answers “scientific theories at all.”(Source: American Naturalist, Vol. 110, 1976, p. 1).
Comfort then states “there is nothing 'scientific' of evolution—it is a chosen belief about the historical origin of life.”
Outdated
Source
Peters full paper
[http://indiana.edu/~curtweb/L567/readings/Peters%20RH%201976%20AmNat.pdf
can be read here].
Does
not damage evolutionary theory
His main argument is that evolution
cannot make predictions. However, he bases this on the low amount of
geological and fossil data from the 70's. Evolution does indeed make
predictions, and they have turned out to be very accurate and/or confirmed.
In-Depth Comments
“For evolution to be a fact, you must have two things, minimally. First, you've got to have life coming from non-life—abiogenesis. Second, you've got to have a change in that life from simple forms to complex forms over time. You must have the kick-off, and you must have the rest of the game.
Now, here is my question: How did life come from non-life? How did the game get started by evolutionary means? Does anyone know? Guess what? Nobody knows. Oh, there are some ideas and people have suggested some possible ways, but nobody has sketched out any way that really answers the question. There are so many problems and complications. There are competing models that have been suggested, but they're just starting places. They're just ways of saying, 'Let's start here, and we'll see where it leads.' There are possibilities, but no one knows how it happened, or even how it could have happened in enough detail to be compelling.
Now, here's the kicker. If you don't know how it happened by naturalistic, evolutionary processes, how do you know that it happened by naturalistic, evolutionary processes? Evolution is claimed to be a fact, but you cannot have the fact of evolution unless you have the fact of abiogenesis. Yet nobody knows how such a thing could ever take place. And if life can't be shown to have come from non-life, then the game can't even get started.
Then why do we call evolution a fact when evolution can't even get off the ground, based on the information we have right now? The answer you get is always the same: Because we're here. It must have happened. That's called circular reasoning, friends, based on a prior commitment to naturalism that won't be shaken by the facts. Which proves that this is not about science, it's about philosophy.” (Source: Gregory Koukl, “Evolution—Philosophy, Not Science” www.str.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5494)
Not a
qualified biologist
Comfort said in the Introduction of
this book he would be quoting "evolutionary experts" and
right here, Comfort provides a quote from a non-biologist.
Koukl is a licensed Pentecostal
minister and founder of Stand to Reason, a Christian apologetic
ministry dedicated to promoting "clear thinking Christianity
that can compete in the marketplace of ideas."
Non-Academic
Source
Not
relevant to evolutionary theory or biology
Distortion
of Science
Creationists habitually misdefine their
terms, and commonly insist that evolution means “life from
non-life”. But of course that’s not right either. Evolution
explains how life diversifies, not how it began. Since evolution at
every level is -by definition- limited to the variation of allele
frequencies inherited over generations of living organisms, then it
obviously can’t operate where no genomes yet exist. The
evolutionary process starts with genetics and can’t start before
it. So how the first genes came about may seem similar to evolution,
and may even involve a form of natural selection in some way, but it
is in fact a very different chemical process called 'abiogenesis.'
but nobody has sketched out any way
that really answers the question. Actually, the scientific
perspective of the development of life is surprisingly intricate
multi-stage sequence. Creationists will use any parody they can to
link it to evolution, and make both sound ridiculous, and that isn’t
surprising considering how ridiculous their own position is—that a
living cells can magically poof into being out of thin air.
Since the validity of evolution does
not rest upon abiogeneis, and in fact it never did, Koukl here is
simply wrong. How do we know that it came about via naturalistic
means? Koukl states we have never seen life come from none life, when
in fact we have tested and proven that life can arise naturally given
the required materials are provided. The Miller-Urey experiment has
revealed that amino acids and many other materials required for life
can form naturally – this has been confirmed in nature and also
seen on meteorites. Also, no scientist claims it must have happened
because we are here, rather they must demonstrate how. As it stands,
evolutionary theory gives the best and thorough explanation.
Finally, how do we know evolution is a
fact. In order to be a fact, it must be testable and observable, and
evolution fits both. It is a fact that evolution happens; that
biodiversity and complexity does increase, that both occur naturally
only by evolutionary means.
It is a fact that alleles vary with
increasing distinction in reproductive populations and that these are
accelerated in genetically isolated groups.
It is a fact that natural selection,
sexual selection, and genetic drift have all been proven to have
predictable effect in guiding this variance.
It is a fact that significant
beneficial mutations do occur and are inherited by descendant groups,
and that multiple independent sets of biological markers exist to
trace these lineages backwards over many generations.
It is a fact that birds are a subset of
dinosaurs the same way humans are a subset of apes, primates,
eutherian mammals, and vertebrate deuterostome animals.
It is a fact that the collective genome
of all animals has been traced to its most basal form, and that those
forms are also indicated by comparative morphology, physiology, and
embryological development.
It is a fact that everything on earth
has definite relatives either living nearby or evident in the fossil
record.
It is a fact that the fossil record
holds hundreds of definitely transitional species even according to
it’s strictest definition, and that both microevolution and
macroevolution have been directly-observed.
Evolution is a fact!
Question 95
Fill in the blank question: “Most modern biologists, having reviewed with satisfaction the downfall of the spontaneous generation hypothesis, yet unwilling to accept the alternative belief in special creation, are left with nothing. I think a scientist has no choice but to approach the origin of life through ________.” Comfort answers “a hypothesis of spontaneous generation”(Source: Dr. G. Wald, “The Origin of Life,” Scientific American, August 1954, p. 45).
Comfort adds, “Even though Louis Pasteur (1860's) scientifically proved that life could not spontaneously generate from non-living matter, today's evolutionists are willing to believe that it did.”
Not
relevant to evolutionary theory or biology
Distortion
of Science
Louis Pasteur only proved that fully
formed life (bacteria, maggots, mice, etc.) could not spontaneously
generate. Pasteur disproved a form of creationism. There is no
biological law that says that very primitive life cannot come from
increasingly complex molecules.
In-Depth Comments
“This thing [a scale model of our solar system] is but a puny imitation of a much greater system whose laws you know, and I am not able to convince you that this mere toy is without a designer and maker; yet you, as an atheist, profess to believe that the great original from which the design is taken has come into being either designer or maker! Not tell me by what sort of reasoning do you reach such an incongruous conclusion?”(Source: Sir Isaac Newton (The Minnesota Technolog, October 1957)
Appeal
to authority
Not
relevant to evolutionary theory or biology
While Newton was an important
scientist, he never heard Darwin's theory or its explanatory power,
so he cannot be used to attack Darwin.
While Sir Isaac Newton was a brilliant
scientist, he was a man of his time. Science has brought forth vast
amounts of knowledge since Newton's time, and many things have come
to light that Newton never knew about. We now know of things like
quantum mechanics, atomic theory, evolutionary theory, and the Big
Bang theory. Newton did not know better, we do. And to quote Newton
to reinforce a century old ignorance known as “god of the gaps”
is foolish on many levels.
Newton explored and searched through
the mysteries of the universe and matter. Like all humans, the human
brain seeks patterns wherever it looks. No doubt Newton saw patters
in the universe that resembled human design. However, we know know
that many things in nature appeared design but come about through
purely natural processes (such as crystals, clouds, snowflakes, etc.)
“What has closed the doors of the Academy to Mr. Darwin is that the science of his books which have made his chief title to fame—the Origin of Species, and still more the Descent of Man, is not science, but a mass of assertions and absolutely gratuitous hypotheses, often evidently fallacious. This kind of publication and these theories are a bad example, which a body that respects itself cannot encourage.”(Source: A prominent member of the Academy, on why the Zoological Section of the French Institute denied Darwin's membership in 1872; quoted in Life and Letters of Charles Darwin (London: D. Appleton and Co., 1911), 2:400, footnote)
Distortion
of Science
We have no idea who wrote this letter
or their reasons. We do not even know if this letter was
intentionally serious. Regardless, whoever wrote this is simply
wrong. Darwin's theories presented in the Origin of Species
and Descent of Man are indeed scientific books that do include
mass scientific data.
Question 96
Who said the following: “I have said for years that speculations about the origin of life lead to no useful purpose as even the simplest living system is far too complex to be understood in terms of the extremely primitive chemistry scientists have used in their attempts to explain the unexplainable. God cannot be explained away by such naïve thoughts.” Comfort answers “Sir Ernest Chain.”
(Source: Ronald W. Clark, The Life of Ernest Chain [New York: St. Martin's Press, 1985], pp. 147-148.)
Not
relevant to evolutionary theory or biology
The
theory of evolution is not concerned with the origin of life.
In-Depth Comments
“We don't understand how a single star forms, yet we want to understand how 10 billion stars form.”(Source: Carlos Frenk, as quoted by Robert Irion, “Surveys Scour the Cosmic Deep,” Science, Vol. 303, 19 March 2004, p. 1750)
Not
relevant to evolutionary theory or biology
This question is in regards to the
formation of stars, not the theory of evolution or biodiversity of
life. At best, this reference shares our scientific curiosity and
desire to learn more about the natural world and how the universe
works. Ray Comfort and his worldview offers nothing, just "God
did it" -- an answer that answers everything while explaining
nothing.
Does
not damage evolutionary theory
Unable to understand or know how stars
form does not invalidate all the biological and geological evidence
proving the theory of evolution.
“[T]he earliest known representative of the major kinds of animals still populating today's seas made a rather abrupt appearance. This rather protracted 'event' shows up graphically in the rock record: all over the world, at roughly the same time, thick sequences of rocks, barren of any easily detected fossils, are overlain by sediments containing a gorgeous array of shelly invertebrates: trilobites, brachiopods, mollusks.
...this sudden development of rich and varied fossil record where, just before, there was none...Indeed, the sudden appearance of a varied, well-preserved array of fossils...does pose a fascinating intellectual challenge.”(Source: Niles Eldredge (Paleontologist, American Museum of Natural History), The Monkey Business: A Scientist Looks at Creationism (New York: Washington Square Press, 1982), p. 44)
Quote
Mine/Distorted message of author
Here is the full quote; (words omitted
in bold)
“Creationists have made much of
this sudden development of rich and varied fossil record where, just
before, there was none. Ignoring its extreme antiquity and
accepting, for the moment, the principle that overlying rocks are
younger than those lying beneath them (a point creationists deny in
other contexts), creationists are fond of asserting that the
so-called Cambrian proliferation of life is an instance of grand
episode of Creation. where is the slow, steady evolution of one life
form to another? they ask. Where are the “intermediate forms?” To
creationists, the Cambrian episode falsifies the very notion of
evolution and bespeaks, instead, the separate acts of a Creator.
Indeed, the sudden appearance of a
varied, well-preserved array of fossils, which geologists have
used to mark the beginnings of the Cambrian Period (the oldest
division of the Paleozoic era), does pose a fascinating
intellectual challenge. Early geologists simply documented the
pattern. But, in the years following Darwin's convincing argument
establishing "descent with modification," the sudden advent
of complex life in the fossil record demanded some sort of
explanation. The creationists today, as in so many of their
pronouncements, are merely echoing a solution to an intellectual
problem current in science several generations ago: If
life has evolved, as Darwin has said, how can such a proliferation of
vastly different life forms appear so suddenly? Doesn't this
“Cambrian explosion” flatly falsify the very idea of evolution?
The trick, here is in the phrase “as Darwin said.” Creationists
confound Darwin's assertion that life has evolved with Darwin;s
specific ideas on how life evolved, and the
sorts of patterns he consequently expected to fin in the fossil
record.
Eldredge goes on the next page to
explain that the Cambrian explosion was not a sudden event, due to
evidence from detailed explorations of thick Siberian deposits,
thereby refuting the concept of “sudden” held by scientists and
creationists alike. Eldredge even provides a hypothesis to explain
the Cambrian proliferation. Eldredge does not once state that Darwin
was wrong or there is no evidence for his theory or the fossil
record, what he does say that creationists have “exploited” the
situations of the pace of Darwin's theory "to the hilt."
Question 97
Which scientist was happy believing in evolution without evidence? Ray answers “Richard Dawkins.” Comfort sources Dawkins in a speech at Washington University in St. Louis, saying “We do not need evidence. We know it is to be true.”(Washington Magazine, 22 March 1997, p. 10)
I could not find the quote by Richard
Dawkins, anywhere. Without the whole interview provided, how can we
tell that Dawkins may be referring to something besides evolution?
In-Depth Comments
“Even if all the data point to an intelligent designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from science because it is not naturalistic.”(Source: Dr. Scott C. Todd, Immunologist at Kansas State University, Nature, 30 September 1999, p. 423)
Quote
Mine/Distorted message of author
Outdated
Source
Regarding the quote from Scott Todd, it
comes from what is essentially a “letter to the editor” about the
Kansas Board of Education's 1999 decision to eliminate the required
teaching of evolution in public schools. It was not from a formal
scientific or philosophical
paper.
Creationists quote the above but leave
out the very next sentence:
"Of course the scientist, as
an individual, is free to embrace a reality that transcends
naturalism."
In that next sentence, Dr. Todd
correctly identifies the basis of the exclusion of the design
hypothesis from science as methodological, not philosophical,
naturalism. While it might be quibbled that Dr. Todd could have put
it better, science, contrary to the fondest wishes of creationists,
is still not metaphysics. To suggest that Dr. Todd was expressing a
commitment to philosophical Naturalism is the height of
disingenuousness.
Also, the text which immediately
precedes the quotation is:
“Most important, it should be
made clear in the classroom that science, including evolution, has
not disproved God's existence because it cannot be allowed to
consider it (presumably).”
That is hardly dogmatic anti-theism on
Dr. Todd's part.
“Charles Darwin presented On the Origin of Species to a disbelieving world in 1859—three years after Clerk Maxwell [a creationist] had published On Fafaday's Lines of Force. Maxwell's theory has by a process of absorption become part of quantum field theory, and so a part of the great canonical structures created by mathematical physicists. By contrast, the final triumph of Darwinian theory, although vividly imagined by biologists, remains, along with world peace and Esperanto, on the eschatological horizon of contemporary thought.”(Source: David Berlinksi, “The Deniable Darwin,” Darwinism, Design, and Public Education (Mich. State, 2003), p. 157)
David Berlinksi is a senior member of
the Discovery Institute.
Question 98
Fill in the blank. Evolutionists Paul Ehrlich and L. C. Birch wrote, “Our theory of evolution has become...one which cannot be refuted by any possible observations. Every conceivable observation can be fitted into it. It is thus ___________ but not necessarily false. No one can think of ways in which to test it.” Comfort answers “outside empirical science.”(Source: “Evolutionary History and Population Biology,” Nature, Vol. 214, 22 April 1967, pp. 349-352).
Comfort goes on to say, “Evolutionists admit that the theory is not scientific, but is actually an explanation of origins. This shows that evolution is not a science, but a religious belief about the origin of life.”
Outdated
Source
Distortion
of Science
Evolution is not a religious belief any
more than gravity or atomic theory. As already explained, evolution
does not explain the origin of life. Likewise, cell theory states
that all living things are made of cells, but no creationist argues
against cell theory for not explaining how cells developed naturally.
The only reason why creationists focus on the theory of evolution is
for one sole reason; it contradicts their literal narrow
interpretation of the Book of Genesis.
Quote
Mine/Distorted message of author
In-Depth Comment
“[Evolution] must, they feel, explain everything...A theory that explains everything might just as well be discarded since it has no real explanatory value. Of course, the other thing about evolution is that anything can be said because very little can be disproved. Experimental evidence is minimal.”(Source: Bryan Appleyard, “You Asked for It,” New Scientist, Vol. 166, 22 April 2000, p. 45)
Not a
qualified biologist
Appleyard is not a scientist or biologist, he is a freelance
journalist.
Distortion
of Science
This quote is full of falsehoods. Evolution does not and is not meant to explain everything. Evolution is only limited to the study of biology, where in fact natural selection ties everything together.
Evolution can be disproven in many ways. Everything in science must be falsifiable. One example: find a fossilized rabbit in the Cambrian layer.
Question 99
Who said it: “The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secrete of paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils.” Comfort answers “Stephen Gould.”(Source: “The Episodic Nature of Evolutionary Change” in The Panda's Thumb [New york: W. W. Norton & Co., 1980], pp. 179-185).
Comfort goes to say, “Since there is no evidence in the fossil record that one species changed into another, Gould came up with a theory called Punctuated Equilibrium. In essence, his theory states that a dinosaur must have laid an egg, and when it hatched, out came a bird.”
Quote
Mine/Distorted message of author
Classic quote mine. This is a favorite
amongst creationists. Here is the full quote (with omitted words in
bold);
“The extreme rarity of transitional
forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of
paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have
data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is
inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils.Yet
Darwin was so wedded to gradualism that he wagered his entire theory
on a denial of this literal record:
The geological record is extremely
imperfect and this fact will to a large extent explain why we do not
find interminable varieties, connecting together all the extinct and
existing forms of life by the finest graduated steps. He who rejects
these views on the nature of the geological record, will rightly
reject my whole theory.
Darwin's argument still persists as
the favored escape of most paleontologists from the embarrassment of
a record that seems to show so little of evolution [directly]. In
exposing its cultural and methodological roots, I wish in no way to
impugn the potential validity of gradualism (for all general views
have similar roots). I only wish to point out that it is never “seen”
in the rocks.
Paleontologists have paid an
exorbitant price for Darwin's argument. We fancy ourselves as the
only true students of life's history, yet to preserve our favored
account of evolution by natural selection we view our data as so bad
that we never see the very process we profess to study.
For several years, Niles Eldredge of
the American Museum of Natural History and I have been advocating a
resolution to this uncomfortable paradox. We believe that Huxley was
right in his warning [1]. The modern theory of evolution does not
require gradual change. In fact, the operation of Darwinian processes
should yield exactly what we see in the fossil record. [It is
gradualism we should reject, not Darwinism.]”
So it would seem that Gould has no
problems with the fossil record. But did he believe that transitional
forms are lacking? Note that in the quote originally presented, the
claim is made that they are rare, not absent. Also, as anyone who is
familiar with Gould's writings will know, the text quoted reflects
his recognition that, while there is a scarcity of transitional
fossils between species, there is no such lack of transitional
fossils between major groups.
In-Depth Comments
“It has through the device of presenting such diagrams [evolutionary trees] with the presumed connections drawn in firm solid lines that the general scientific world has been bamboozled into believing that evolution has been proved. Nothing could be further from the truth.”(Source: Sir Fredrick Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe, Evolution from Space (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1981), p. 87)
Outdated
Source
Distortion
of Science
“What one actually found was nothing but discontinuities: All species are separated from each other by bridgeless gaps; intermediates between species are not observed...The problem was even more serious at the level of the higher categories.”(Source: Ernst Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982), p. 524)
Outdated
Source
Does
not damage evolutionary theory
“The fossil record flatly fails to substantiate this expectation of finely graded change.”(Source: N. Eldredge and I. Tattersal, The Myths of Human Evolution (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), p. 163)
Outdated
Source
Quote
Mine/Distorted message of author
Some creationists include an additional
piece to this quote mine. The extra quote comes from page 59, but
since Comfort did not include it we will not discuss it, but you can
read more about it
here. Here is what Eldredge actually said (with words omitted in
bold);
“We have already argued that that
the fossil record flatly fails to substantiate this expectation of
finely graded change. So too, says Teggart, does the historical
sequence of human events.”
Question 100
True or False question: Darwin's finches demonstrate evolution because the birds have evolved different beaks, which means they are diverging into separate species. Comfort answers “false” and adds the following, “No genetic information has been added to produce the beaks' change, which is what Darwinian evolution requires. Darwin's finches instead demonstrate variety within the strict limits of a single species. This variety within species is what allows for different breeds of dogs, for instance. But since the dogs always remain dogs, and finches always remain finches, no matter how many breeding generation, Darwinian evolution is just not taking place.”(Source: Carl Wieland, “Darwin's Finches,” June 1992 www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v14/i3/finches.asp)
First of of all, Wieland is not a
biologist, taxonomist or genetic scientist, his expertise rests in
medicine and surgery. Second of all, Answers in Genesis is not an
academic source, it is an organization of religious pseudoscientific
charlatans.
Distortion
of Science
We do know that new species do arise in
a form called speciation. While Wieland argues that different breeds
of dogs will always remain dogs, this is not always so. According to
evolution theory, when a population is separated and after
generations of genetic change, the two species when brought back
together can no longer breed, they have become two new distinct
species. In the case of dogs, who are descendants of wolves, there
are cases when new species arise. For instance, the African dog is
not a real dog at all. The aardwolf may look like a fox, but it is
genetically more related to cats.
In-Depth Comment
“The finch beak variation is merely the result of selection of existing genetic information, while the general theory of evolution requires new information...However, another problem with using these finches is that the variation seems to be cyclic—while a drought resulted in a slight increase in beak size, the change was reversed when the rains returned. So it looks more like built-in adaptability to various climatic conditions than anything to do with the general theory of evolution.
This episode also discusses the change in beak length of hummingbirds, to adapt to changes in the length of flowers where they obtain nectar. But the same points apply—no evidence was produced that any new information is required for these changes, as opposed to selection of already-existing information.”(Source: Jonathan Sarfati, response to PBS-TV series Evolution, Episode 1 www.answersingenesis.org/pbs_nova/0924ep1.asp)
Not a
qualified biologist
Comfort said in the Introduction of
this book he would be quoting "evolutionary experts" and
right here, Comfort provides a quote from a non-biologist.
Non-Academic
Source
Sarfati is not a paleontologist,
biologist or skilled in taxonomy. Here is a site that reveals
Sarfati's fallacious
works.
Sarfati's work has been known as "crude piece of propaganda"by the National Center for Science Education.
Reed A. Cartwright and Dr Douglas L. Theobald, have criticized Sarfati's claims such as one that accuses scientists of continually
changing the definition of vestigial to match the
evidence.
Question 101
True or False question: the geological column presents clear evidence of a sequence of different ages. Comfort answers “false” – Comfort immediately puts the following quote right after his answer, “the geological column does not exist as it is depicted in text book. The global 'stack' of index fossils exist nowhere on earth.”(Source: John Woodmorappe, “The Geological Column: Does It Exist?” Creation Ex Nihilo Technical Journal, 1999, pp. 77-82.)
Not a
qualified biologist
Comfort said in the Introduction of
this book he would be quoting "evolutionary experts" and
right here, Comfort provides a quote from a non-biologist.
Non-Academic
Source
Distortion
of Science
In-Depth Comment
“The intelligent layman has long suspected circular reasoning in the use of rocks to date fossils and fossils to date rocks. The geologist has never bothered to think of a good reply, feeling the explanations are not worth the trouble as long as the work brings results. This is supposed to be hard-headed pragmatism. It cannot be denied that from a strictly philosophical standpoint, geologists are here arguing in a circle. The succession of organisms has been determined by the study of their remains imbedded in the rocks, and the relative ages of the rocks are determined by the remains of organisms they contain.”(Source: J. E. O'Rourke (Evolutionist researcher), “Pragmatism Versus Materialism in Stratigraphy,” American Journal of Science, January 1976, p. 47-55)
Distortion
of Science
The intelligent layman has long
suspected circular reasoning in the use of rocks to date fossils and
fossils to date rocks. The geologist has never bothered to think of a
good reply, feeling that explanations are not worth the trouble as
long as the work brings results. This is supposed to be
hard-headed pragmatism. (Emphasis added)
Notice that O'Rourke certainly has
methods used by geologists as working. That something works is
certainly a justification for using it. O'Rourke continued, but the
article goes down hill from there. It was rambling, confused,
extremely poorly written, more about bad philosophy than about
geology, and filled with extreme left-wing vocabulary. Andrew MacRae,
in his “Radiometric Dating and the Geological Time Scale: Circular Reasoning or Reliable Tools?”, which shows why the geologic column is not circular
reasoning.
| Fallacy | Number of Fallacies |
| Quote Mining | 7 |
| Appeal to Authority | 1 |
| Outdated Source | 7 |
| Non-Academic Source | 7 |
| Not a qualified biologist or scientist | 5 |
| Not Relevant to Evolutionary theory or Biology | 5 |
| Not Damaging to Evolutionary theory | 6 |
| Distortion of Science | 12 |
| Total | 50 |
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