The Fallacy Of Evolutionary Thinking In America

Survival of the fittest- a predominant thought and prevailing theme in our modern society (especially in the scientific world) - or at least it seems to be.

Do we really live this way, though?

No. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have homeless shelters, orphanages, food kitchens, etc.

However, if survival of the fittest is true, we should just dismiss all the programs, right? Leave the people to fend for themselves.

They either make it or they do not. That’s the teaching of evolution, right?

One species adapts and survives, and those that don’t are weak and die off.

However, in America, individuals, celebrities, etc. are praised for their humanitarian work.

If we did not have these programs, we would come across as cruel and uncaring.

And that’s the fallacy of evolutionary thinking in America.

Today’s Interesting Stuff - December 3rd, 2007

As this years begins winding to a close, we have one of those news days which just makes me happy.

Hugo Chavez, the communist thug who wanted to run things forever in Venezuela, has been told he can’t hang around any longer than 2012, his original term limit. Students formed a coalition and grassroots campaign to fight his power grabs, and because he’s still constrained by a constitution he must abide by the law. The Communist News Networks print mouthpiece, Time Magazine, had the temerity to call Chavez’ power grabs “reforms“.

They cannot stand the thought of not using murdered babies to try to improve lives. And they aren’t afraid to lie about it. There has not been a single case of successful treatment of any condition using human embryonic stem cells. The only reason the government is being petitioned to fund this research is because private industry will not.

And what of the propriety of the government funding research anyway? Is it the responsibility of the government to do such things? Consider another expensive project: space travel. Now consider such programs as the Ansari X Prize which encouraged the production of vehicles which can enter space and return with a usable payload twice in two weeks. Using private money and initiative. Can the space shuttle do that? Can the government do that?

The State of Texas School Board fired their science curriculum coordinator for sending around an article critical of Intelligent Design. And the ruckus begins. With baited headlines such as “Hey Science, Don’t Mess With Texas” from the Huffington Post (which is apparently a major Yahoo Op/Ed outlet now) and “Evolution: Don’t even talk about it in Texas” the frenzied crowds cry foul. However, where is the issue? I’m not going to make a judgment on whether the coordinator ought to have been fired, there may have been other issues which led up to this. It would be unwise to fire someone just for sending around a document such as this. But a common thread through this hue and cry is that Intelligent Design and Creationism are some super heavy-weights in the world stage which have dominated Evolutionary theory in education and elsewhere.

Now tell me this: which theory has had the greater part of the last 50 years to indoctrinate our youth, guide our scientific inquiry, and silence any and all public debate? It’s not Creationism or Intelligent Design. No, evolution, a theory without proof or even a preponderance of evidence beyond that offered by the need for man to be able to define himself apart from an omniscient God, has enjoyed all formal and official public support. Evolution is no spunky underdog in this fight, it is instead the 800 pound gorilla which has dominated all arguments and quashed all dissent. Evolution is a flighty, sensitive thing too, which does not allow argument or dissent.

Further joy from the religion of Peace. Thank God she has been pardoned and is back in the UK now. Though with the ‘peaceful’ nature of British Muslims, her safety may not be guaranteed at this point.

The hurricane season is over. It was average, low average. And less than was predicted.

If they can’t predict a single season, why do they think they can predict the end of the world?

Anyone, Anyone?

Ben Stein is Expelled.

The Masterful Watchmaker

With a shout to Mom loves being at home, this is a simple but powerful telling of the watchmaker argument for intelligent design and creationism.

The Masterful Watchmaker

LoveStein

For all those doubters and phobics out there, we have Stein.

I’m not sure if he’s doing this tongue in cheek to get attention or if he’s really serious, but comic Ben Stein is producing a movie on the close-mindedness of the scientific community who without reason or resort forbid even the consideration of alternatives to their own closely held ideologies.

Ben Stein is Expelled.

Evolution: The Lie Disbelieved

It would seem, after decades of required teaching of Evolution in America without any balance or criticism, that the majority of people in America today would believe that Evolution is enough to explain the origin of man. But a series of Gallup polls show this not to be true, indeed a full 2/3rds of Americans believe to some extent that God created the world in it’s present form in the last 10,000 years.

The article is quick to point out how Republicans tend to believe a literal Creation more readily than Democrats, implying a mental deficit. But the ability to question ones own belief is a sign of mental maturity, and I would submit that it is the close-minded Democrats who are at a deficit here, if any exists. And I would further submit it is no mental deficit to disbelieve, but a spiritual one, and that is all the more dangerous.

Medical Theory Affected By Evolution Hypothesis

Reading this article I was struck by how different the views of medicine are now that so much of scientific theory is based on the evolutionary hypothesis. For any who don’t believe that how you understand the origins of life determines how you view the nature of life, let this be fact enough to convince you.

The entire concept of useless organs is based on the idea that we are the result of random evolutionary processes bereft of design or purpose. Besides the statistical and factual errors which are never addressed by the hypothesis of evolution, the ideological errors are just as glaring. The difference in perspective between one who believes that God designed man at once in a whole, complete unit versus one who believes that man is the result of natural selection regardless of whether or not it was divinely directer (theistic evolution) is nothing short of colossal in its effect on how we live.  If random chance defined our beginnings and our mortal lives, there is no right besides might (tyranny of the majority), and there is no purpose beyond personal pleasure (why deny when this is your only chance to satisfy?). Conversely, if we were designed and created on purpose by an intelligent being we live for Him and His purpose, or we live without reason in a world where reason is available.

It’s as though we choose to be apes when sentience has been offered to us.

It is true that there are times when organs are damaged or infected or in other ways causing more harm than good, but to the extent that we label organs useless we only underline our own ignorance of the body and its functions. In the same way a phone has a distinct and designed purpose, whether or not we know what it is or understand its purpose, an Appendix may be inflamed and must be removed but it does have a purpose, regardless of whether or not we know or understand it.

Einstein On The Mysterious

The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed. It was the experience of mystery — even if mixed with fear — that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds: it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity. In this sense, and only this sense, I am a deeply religious man… I am satisfied with the mystery of life’s eternity and with a knowledge, a sense, of the marvelous structure of existence — as well as the humble attempt to understand even a tiny portion of the Reason that manifests itself in nature.”

Einstein, in a brief essay on his philosophy of life, claims the mysterious is the most beautiful thing we finite beings can experience. And there is plenty mysterious around us to observe. It has been said that man fears what he does not understand, but this cannot be completely true. The sense of the mysterious is not a sense of fear but of smallness, of incompletion. It is a longing for that which is larger, fairer, truer.

Many people study to diminish the impact of the mysterious because they do not appreciate the feeling of being small, utterly insignificant. They become scientists and they observe the mysterious until to them it no longer seems mysterious. It is the hopeless dream of those who hate dreams that they can understand the infinite, or even the colossally finite. I believe that many of the crack-pot claims by egotistical scientists setting dates on the doom of the world, whether the destruction is to be by heat or cold, or wind or rain, or shaking, or melting, are based on their dismissal of the mysterious, their idea that by stint of study and expansion of knowledge they can predict the unpredictable.

The largest computer cannot compute even simple predictions of weather over just one local area with any accuracy at any distance of time or space, yet there are those who believe we can predict such monstrous disasters as planet-wide fatal warming trends at the distance of hundreds of years. We cannot observe a single case of documented cross species evolution, but there are those who know that all organic life has come from single-celled bacteria in some ancient primordial soup. We cannot understand the complexities of life at the bottom of the oceans of the planet some say we’ve inhabited for millions and billions of years, but there are those who claim to have grasped the intricacies of the planetary system and the entire universe.

Every scientist must keep rein on his own ego with a healthy dose of the mysterious. There are things we already understand, thanks to the toil and work of our predecessors. There are things we can understand, by the sweat of our own brows. There are things our children will understand, by standing on our shoulders. And there are things that will never be understood, because we are limited finite creatures.

Instead of chafing over our inability to understand the amazing or plumb the depths of the esoteric, let us be grateful to simply bask in the glow of the mysterious. Look up to the stars and think how small you still are and revel in the fact that you will never run out of things to learn.

Cameron And Comfort Face-Off Against Atheism On NBC Nightline

I know this news is a week old, but better late than never. Besides, considering the ratings network news shows receive and their plunging viewer numbers, maybe most of you didn’t see the debates either. I haven’t yet.

Kirk Cameron, the actor, and Ray Comfort, the preacher, debated two atheists from the Rational Response Squad on national television on NBCs Nightline TV show. NBC has posted videos of the debate online as well.

I’ve heard some of the information put out by Cameron and Comfort, it’s top class. Well explained and yet very deep, full of truth and information which Christians can use to defend their faith and show others the validity of the Christian worldview and it’s superiority compared with philosophies today. I find it humorous that the duo not only claim they can prove God exists without using arguments based on faith or the Bible, but that they can prove atheists do not exist.

I get a mental picture of a plucky underdog battling a massive and lethargic yet vicious conglomerate of evil.

Today’s Interesting Stuff

Beginning with a quote from the gibbon, I mean a quote from Gibbon:

In the end, more than freedom, they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life, and they lost it all – security, comfort, and freedom. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again. – Edward Gibbon

How salient to our current situation in America is that statement. I definitely want to read Gibbon now, though I’ve heard his tomes (Rise And Fall Of The Roman Empire is his most famous) are quite, ummmm, thick.

Iterations of Complexity: The Continuing Argument for Intelligent Design

You’ve heard of single layer dependencies between various creatures in the kingdoms of nature. One beastie hitching a necessary ride on some unsuspecting host beastie. These dependencies befuddle evolutionary biologists who cannot explain methods by which these organisms evolved separately or the chances necessary for them to have evolved together.

Now see this:

As the sun rises over a grassy pasture, and the morning light glints from the countless clinging drops of dew, a single snail resolutely inches toward a mound of steaming nourishment. But unbeknownst to the armored gastropod, this seemingly ordinary heap of cow dung conceals a legion of tiny Dicrocoelium dendriticum eggs, each of which contains the embryo of a sinister mind-controlling parasite. As the snail gorges itself on the fibrous feast, it unwittingly sets the collection of unborn lancet flukes on a miniature adventure which will lead them through slime, zombies, and bile to ultimately find their own unique kind of utopia

These Flukes will live consecutively in the Snail, in an ant (which they will control to suicide through its nervous system), and finally in a cow. Catch that, at least four separate organisms in a dependency cycle, each step a necessary part of the growth process and life cycle of this Fluke.

My bet is the chance is impossibly slim that this cycle evolved.