The unfortunate about being a Christian is that I tend to go to church with a bunch of fundies. And I’m usually okay, but there’s just some times where I end up fighting tooth and nail with a whole horde of people who are not quite bright enough to think about things.
The unfortunate part of this is that I’m not a science major. I’m an English major. My knowledge of science is minimal, at best. So when I get into evolution debates, I don’t know all that I should.
Fortunately, I have at my fingertips a batallion of people who, between them, possess the sum total of all knowledge.
Here’s some arguments a friend of mine made. Please, if you have the time, retort.
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The fossil record is unreliable because to date a fossil you must identify the rock layer it’s in, and to date a rock layer, you must identify the fossils that are in it.
Darwin himself admitted that the makeup and complexity of the human eye posed a problem to the theory of evolution.
I’m just going to quote this one, because it doesn’t quite make sense:
I can give you more than just a few retorts – I can give you a whole website full of retorts. http://www.talkorigins.org. You’ll have to dig a little while but every single “standard” creationist argument is addressed and trounced, thoroughly, somewhere on that site.
This one’s easy. Rock layers are not dated by the fossils they contain. The usual methods for dating geological layers are completely independent of any fossils they may or may not contain. The most common method is to count each of the smallest stripes as one year, the same way that each ring in a cut-down tree represents one year. One narrow geological layer is usually one year for the same reason that one tree-ring is one year – a year is one long wet season (with rain, mud, run-offs, etc.) followed by one long dry season (with plenty of baking time for the topmost layer of dirt). Other methods include the radioisotope dating of the volcanic deposits in a given layer.
Incidentally, radioisotope dating can also be used to gauge the age of fossils – a dating method that does not require any knowledge of what geological layer the fossil was discovered in.
And Richard Dawkins himself has shown that this “problem” can be solved, in one chapter of Climbing Mount Improbable. Basically, the first light-sensitive cell to evolve gave its owner a competitive advantage, since it could sense when a predator cast a shadow on it. A curved array of light-sensitive cells gave one of its descendants an even greater advantage, since now it could sense which direction the shadow was coming from and move in the opposite direction. A clear protective membrane over the curved array of cells was another advantage, since it kept the dirt out. A lenticular shape to the protective membrane later allowed better resolution in the images the proto-eye could receive. Muscles to control the lenticular shape add to the precision, an iris protects the light-sensitive cells from overexposure, etc., etc… Each of these little steps is advantageous to its possessor, and each one could arise via a simple, random mutation.
You’re right, this one doesn’t make sense. How does the notion that the human species is still evolving (and always will evolve, so long as we reproduce) imply a belief that any race of humans is inherently superior to any other race?
If a frog egg ever hatched into a fish, or vice-versa, this would be evidence against evolution, not for it. There were bazillions of steps on the road from fish to frogs. Even under the punctuated equilibrium theories of Gould et al., the periods of “rapid” evolution in the history of any taxonomic branch still required hundreds of generations to complete – they are “rapid” only in a geological sense.
Furthermore, fish DNA and frog DNA are still much more similar in structure and content than, say, fish DNA and oak tree DNA. Some of their genes are even similar enough to be interchangeable; some parts of, say, a salmon egg’s DNA can be replaced with the homologous parts of a frog’s DNA, and the creature that hatches will still be a fully functional salmon by all the criteria that we use to define what a “salmon” is.
He most certainly did not. If you read the entire quote, as your friend most certainly has not, you’ll see that it goes something like this:
The idea that the eye with all of its intricacies could have evolved seems absurd, I admit. *But[i/] (and here’s the part the fundies never quote), this isn’t true. Common sense isn’t always right. In fact, if we look at nature, we see examples of partial eyes everywhere. It’s entirely possible for the eye to evolve.
I’m sure somebody will come along to provide the entire quote. Show it to your friend along with Ex. 20:16 and Lev. 19:11 and Lev. 19:16.
The racism one makes no sense. Ask your friend if evolution also implies heightism, or eye-color-ism. Whatever twisted reasoning he can come up with to show that evolution implies that people of a certain skin color are better or worse than those of another skin color could also be used to show that people of a certain height or eye-color are better than those with a different height or eye-color.
Correct. But this is not what evolution says happens. Small changes caused by mutations accrue over millions of years.
Finally, here are some questions for your friend:
Is there any evidence whatsoever that would falsify creationism?
Is there any evidence whatsoever that would convince you that evolution is true (short of God splitting the Heavens and announcing it to be so)?
If the answer to either of these is “no,” tell him that you have no interest in arguing against someone who has no intention of changing his mind, but that there are plenty of masochists who don’t mind continually banging their collective heads into the block wall that is creationism in the newsgroup talk.origins.
I can see people have already answered but I cant help but reply too.
The first problem I see with the racism one is they are assigning positive attributes to evolution, something which it does not have. Evolution is not progress towards an end goal, it is the slow random drift of genetic make-up. Sometimes evolution can do things that you might say is a step backwards. The first thing that comes to mind are crabs living at the bottom of the ocean have lost there eyes. Species of fish and shrimp have also lost eyes in caves. Whales and dolphins have reverted back to the ocean. The list goes on and on. So to argue that evolution implies racism is invalid because evolution is arbitrary. And as far as I can tell no reputable scientist has argued that the genetic differences between the ‘races’ today are anything but physical, and even then only slightly so.
For the fish-frog one I feel compelled to point out that DNA is not the slightest bit exclusive. DNA is made up of genes that have come from ancestors. The immediate ancestors of frogs were fish. Most of the genes in the DNA of frogs are exactly the same as genes in the DNA of fish <unsubstantiated claim of my own but it should be true.> And you can really see this by looking at the early stages of a frogs life, namely the tadpole stage. What is a tadpole? It is a fish, a fish that undergoes a physical transformation to become a frog, but it is a fish for the first part of it’s life. Not because it’s frog DNA tells it to resemble a fish but because that is a time in its life in which its leftover fish DNA are preeminent. You can see this in basically every species, even us. When we are still in the womb we have tails, tails that eventually disappear into our body. I remember reading a few years ago one scientist’s theory that the forms creatures take while a fetus were good indicators into their ancestry. A good ending to this is a quote from Dr. John Long, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Western Australian Museum in Perth “we are merely highly advanced fish.”
Good Point. All theories of “transmutation” (read “evolution”) before Darwin saw change in a linear direction. Surprise! Darwin didn’t “invent” evolution. The phenomenon of transmutation had been observed for years and by the beginning of the 19th century was a very strong theory. Indeed, Darwin’s grandfather Erasmus Darwin was a famous “evolutionist”. (And, by the way, ever heard of Lamarck?)
Most theory at the time saw the change as a linear one, driven by some “force” of will for species to become better. Darwin not only dismissed the idea that evolution had a direction (replacing the “ladder” with a “tree”) but also found a possible “force” other than some abstract idea of animals “wanting” to improve. This idea turned out to be pretty much correct and is called Natural Selection.
Mysphyt, why bother? Fundies are Fundies because they refuse to accept any source of information outside their little book of myth and lore. No amount of logic, rational thought, facts or explaining will convince them. In fact, it will only entrench them more, reinforcing their bunker mentality.
Just go to a more rational church. I believe there are some out there someplace, aren’t there?
Index fossils are used to date certain rock strata, but it is a relative date not an absolute date. If you find a rock layer with certain fossils, you know it was formed at the same time as another formation with the same fossils.
Here is a question back at your friend: Why are these fossils organised well enough to be used as index fossils? They are all the same size and shape so they could not be “hydrodynamically sorted” by the flood, yet they are obviously different from strata to strata. If all the strata were laid down during the flood, they should all be jumbled up. (The sequence is so obvious that index fossils were first established in the early 1800’s – before they had any other means of dating rocks.)
Also, there are only a few formations that have yearly “rings”, mainly varves – fossilized lake bottoms. Most rock layers are dated using volcanic ash deposits with Potassium Argon dating.
Actually IANAG, but all I know I learned from the talk.origins website. Of course coral’s show yearly and daily variations, so they used fossil corals to show that the day used to be shorter, about 400 to the year IIRC.
Mysphyt, I don’t think that using the resource of the dopers will help you make useful arguments to the fundies. Someone used to have a great sig about not being able to use logig to argue against a position that wasn’t arrived at logically. I don’t believe my salvation is contingent on believing the universe was created in 144 hours. Some do.
You didn’t say what denomination you are but I could venture some guesses. Not all Christians are cut of the same cloth as Jack Chick. You might give a look at denimination like the ELCA (Evangelical Lutheran Church of America) that I am a member of which doesn’t force feed biblical literalism. Just be careful to not confuse us with the Missouri Synod Lutherans which as as fundie as Southern Baptists.
And be warned that not all Southern Baptists churches are Fundamentalist, either. One Southern Baptist young lady on an old newsgroup I used to frequent was a Southern Baptist, and she did her darndest to put all sorts of distance between her Southern Baptist church and “those” Southern Baptist churches.
So, the makeup and complexity of the eye points to an omnipotent creator?
Let’s say I designed a microscope. Someone inspected it and noticed a problem with the lens, where you couldn’t see clearly.
Q: This one seems to have a problem
Me: Yeah, some of them do
Q: Can it be fixed?
Me: Each microscope has a different problem. You have to fix it after you buy it. You cannot tell if it is imperfect until you use it.
Q: Is it easy to fix?
Me: No, you have to take it to a specialist. Only they know what the problem is and how to fix it. If it can be fixed
Q: Is there a warranty?
Me: No. The specialist and the new lens will be rather expensive. Perhaps some people can take out insurance policies for them.
Q: Then it will be fixed?
Me: Some of them will work fine with the new lens. Some of them may need a new, different lens after a while, or may stop working altogether. Then, there are a few you will not be able to see out of no matter what you do.
Would you conclude I was an efficient designer?
Been there, done that. Was actually raised Roman Catholic until mom decided we didn’t want to be Catholic and pulled me out of catechism. By the time I graduated high school were Missouri Lutheran, Pentecostal, Assembly of God and finally Southern Baptist. I like to think I have a broader perspective on various deniminations because of it.
Tracer, mea culpa for painting all Southern Baptists with the same brush.
We have a great deal in common–we’re both Christians who are surrounded by Fundies, we’re both English majors, and we both have an interest in evolution.
Others have addressed your specific questions, so I’ll just give you a list of sites that have proven valuable to me in the past.
