Creation, ID, Evolution: Which is Science?

3 thoughts on “Creation, ID, Evolution: Which is Science?”

1. Although he makes sense at times, he states falsehood when he says there is no evidence for speciation (how new forms come about). There is abundant fossil evidence for speciation. Also, he doesn’t use good scientific logic when he uses the lack of wholesale change in bacterial species as evidence against evolution. This isn’t evidence against evolution. Can’t be, since it is an absence of evidence (which is not evidence of absence, if you ever learned logic). It can be explained much more simply. For example, it could simply suggest how successful bacteria are at what they do. He is right when he says we don’t know how life came about, but wrong when he says science teaches young people that we know. Every scientist admits we don’t know how life came about yet. We do know that once it did originate, it evolved. It seems he was confused about the difference between speciation and origin of life. He is also confused about the nature of scientific evidence. The fact we don’t observe speciation is most easily explained by the fact we have only been observing life for an eye blink in the history of life. Again, we do observe speciation in the fossil record, where the evidence is abundant. Exactly how speciation takes place is still not known (though there are good theories). I do like how he skewers Dawkins, but that is pretty easy to do, since the man is dogmatic at times.

2. mflahertyphoto,

   Thanks for the comment! There’s a lot of ambiguity out there it seems around the terms “evolution” and “speciation”. What I find interesting is that there seems to be two distinct processes which are both called “evolution”. The first is what Darwin observed and is readily evident, which is that certain subsets of a larger population will have broken away from others and over time, through adaptation to the environment, will develop distinctive characteristics. This is almost always due to the fact that in the new environment, certain genetic traits become deleterious. For example, dogs with short hair freeze to death in the arctic, so over time, all arctic wolves “evolve” long hair. We’ll call this “microevolution”. It is important to note that this process always involves the loss of genetic information (DNA code) that was once present in the population as a whole, and can explain how a prototypical dog-like ancestor can have spawned wolves, African wild dogs, dingoes and domestic dogs.

   The second process which is often called “macroevolution” is the one whereby random mutation, or some other process, somehow inserts new genetic information into a population, allowing them to develop completely new characteristics never before seen. This is what would be necessary for a single celled organism to grow into a multi-celled organism. This would be necessary for a fish to grow legs and develop lungs instead of gills. Namely, this process is required for “molecules to man evolution” which is what is postulated by science as the explanation for the origin, not of life, but of the human species and all other species. The theory that we all share one common, single celled ancestor is contingent on this process. However, I am not aware of any scientific evidence which demonstrates this. Are there any studies that have been done to show this process? Have they found concrete proof of it happening? If there is any such solid evidence, I would like to know. Having never seen any (which does not prove that it doesn’t exist), I am forced to conclude that it remains and unproven hypothesis and should be treated as such.

3. You’re right, we know much more about the process of micro-evolution than we do macro-evolution. Note I said process. Abundant evidence tells us that speciation has occurred; we just don’t know for certain exactly HOW it’s occurred. There are details of micro-evolution as well that are troublesome. Biologists continue to peck away at the issue. This is essentially a deductive conundrum. We have already used deduction to suggest how a process we observe in the fossil record as having taken place actually works. Now we’re trying to peel away more details. All the while we don’t know exactly how genes translate into the totality of an organisms features and behavior (they even have a name for the study now, called protenomics). Once we know exactly how the process works (I think by creating life ourselves) we will be able to use induction to circle back to how speciation takes place. By the way, random mutations take out the small “letters” that make up genes, thus they can create new genes. And even if a gene is made inoperative by mutation (which is most likely), that doesn’t mean that the stub of a limb can’t grow longer, or that short hair could not grow longer, as a result. After all, that gene’s job could have easily been to inhibit growth of a limb or hair. It’s complex how genes work with proteins to control growth of an organism. But you’re right, the evolution of multicellularity is a tough little scientific problem.

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