Why it isn't evolution - proof against Darwin

Great Debates
1

Many people on the board continually argue that there is no proof for Creationism while there is plenty of proof for Evolution. While there isn’t any way to prove Creationism, evolution certainly has very little proof for it and a good deal of proof against it.

First, get this book: Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution - Michael J. Behe

This book has a lot of put Biochemistry, but it’s also explained in more laymen’s terms.

The main point of the book isn’t that natural selection doesn’t occur but that interspecies change doesn’t occur.

Most people use the England moths as an example of evolution, with their changing colors due to pollution. Which moth is more evolved, however? The white ones before the pollution, black ones during pollution, or the white ones after the air has been cleaned again? None of these are evolutionary changes, just physical changes that were naturally occuring already. When the black moths blended better, they had more of a chance to multiply. The same thing happened later with the white moths.

You could put this idea to people, also, as there are dark and light humans. Who is more evolved here? I say neither, as both black and white people have the ability to have opposite colored children, and they also have the ability to mate with eachother.

Onto another common evolutionary argument: it’s easy to see how a light sensitive cell turns into an eye. Think about each step of this process;

More and more photosensitive cells are placed in a much more tightly packed matrix. As each generation of animal is born, there are more cells in the matrix and a finer resolution. You can equate this to LCD screens, even, as calculators have big cells, but your kid’s Gameboy has a bunch of little cells.

At what point does the ‘LCD’ turn into a cathode ray tube, however?

There are several parts to the human eye that are required for it to work properly: the lens, the cornea, the focusing, the ability to open and close the iris - this ignores the fact that your brain is able to not only flip the image, but compute what you’re actually seeing.

Without any of these, the eye does not work. What mutation will cause a bunch of cells stacked together to simultaneously grow a lens, pupil, optical nerve and everything else needed for a simple eye?

This argument ignores the fact that there is NO similarity chemically to the two reactions of photosensitive cells and eyes.

I’m not arguing that Creationism is what happened but I am arguing against the Darwin theory that a few million years ago we were all rats (or monkeys, or clams depending on religion) scurrying around after all the dinosaurs all died.

I would suggest that anyone who says that evolution as been proven read the above listed book.

John

2

Natural selection as asserted by Darwin is a theory, i.e. it cannot be proved; however, much evidence exists which supports the hypothesis. How does your argument constitute proof against the possibility of Darwinian evolution?

3

The proof is that that in Biochemistry, there IS no relation between these things that Darwin could easily see happened (photosensitive cells to eyes, single celled organisms to humans). The actual chemistry of it is complex, but I will dictate it when I grab the book from home if it will help.

The author puts in a good analogy: Say you have a 20,000 lane highway with heavy traffic zipping along at 100mph. Suppose a tortis is at one end and crosses the road. Theoretically, the tortis will make it…

4

What the hell does this have to do with anything?

5

Wow, HideoHo, I’ve never heard those arguments before. I’m sure that proponents of the theory of natural selection have no adequate answers, just as I’m sure the author of this book is non-religious and unbiased. Thanks for pointing out that evolution uses a scale reflecting what living things are “more” or “less” evolved - I had no idea! You’ve completely convinced me that the “fact” of evolution is really a farce! :rolleyes:

6

I fail to see how the concepts of natural selection, genetic drift, mutation and gene flow are incongruous with the nature of biochemistry. Perhaps you can provide some specific examples (not analogies) or a detailed theory pertaining to precisely how biochemistry dictates evolution is impossible.

7

well, I am 6,000 years old and was there at the beginning of the world. Every creature was already there and I personally installed all of the dinosaur fossils.

While I am here, I would like to point out the so calle scientific method is crap. Obsevation based on a very small “n” is the only reliable source of truth.

Oh, and I am sending you all to hell.

8

As a matter of fact, this book is non-religious. Sorry to burst your bubble.

The problem with evolution as going from monkeys to men is what I’m arguing, not changing colors, or getting bigger or smaller. People have known how to breed horses to get exactly what they wanted, but is this isn’t evolution, it’s just changing the percentages of certain traits. There are tall people in the world. If all the short people stop reproducing, but the tall people continue to reproduce, there will be a whole lot more tall people. This isn’t evolution, it’s selective breeding.

The idea of life being simple is what’s wrong with the theory of evolution. 138 Chain Protiens can change their chemical makup with just a slight change of their matrix. It can go from being a protein for your eye to a protein for your gall bladder without ever changing what it’s made up of. This is why evolution, or what people call Macroevolution isn’t feasable. It’s not flipping one or two random switches then breeding those animals with the superior gene. It’s flipping 20,000 switches that are all carefully placed in making what evolutionists call a simple step.

The reason that you don’t have an argument against the biochemistry of it is because Darwin didn’t KNOW about this part. It was Darwin’s black box (get it?). I would like to hear some new arguments for evolution based on the new knowledge of cells and protiens that we have now, though.

9

Please please please someone explain that tortise analogy to me. I’m very confused

10

From Amazon.com’s Editorial Review, first sentence:

'nuff said?

11

Having read the book, I do know that it’s not religous, but scientific in nature. As it appears, I’ve come to an argument that’s met with rebuttles that I’m just a religious nut and therefore have no say.

Fine with me, and I will post the actual quotes from the text later if anyone would like to see - why evolution isn’t possible from a Biochemical stance. Biochemistry is Science, taught in college and everything (hey, maybe THIS’ll give it some substance), for those people who say that this is just a religious arument. I was just hoping to see a view point that wasn’t just blowing me off.

Oh well.

12

This simply displays your ignorance of the issue.

From a review quoted at amazon.com: “Behe (biochemistry, Lehigh U.) looks at evidence in biochemistry pointing toward the limits of evolutionary theory, arguing that the complexity and interdependence of biochemical systems make it harder to envision Darwin’s gradual changes. He asserts that biochemical machines must have been designed by some type of higher intelligence. Includes an appendix explaining basic concepts in the chemistry of life.” (emphasis mine)

This is compelling evidence? The old “argument from design” red herring is just an expression of inability to understand, and an illogical leap based on that inability. It is in no way a scientific approach to the issue. Being unable to visualize the link-to-link progression of the development of the eye is not a statement about evolution; it’s a statement about the capacity of the human mind to understand extremely complex processes.

From another review: “Examining the evolutionary theory of the origins of life, [Behe] can go part of the way with Darwin–he accepts the idea that species have been differentiated by the mechanism of natural selection from a common ancestor. ”

Apparently, HideHo, you need to read the book.

This is a fallacy: evolution is not about “more evolved” or “less evolved”; the ladder imager commonly associated with it is not accurate. Evolution tends toward greater diversity, not toward some abstract goal of “better” (Keep in mind that some organisms don’t adapt quickly enough and may die out). So your objection is irrelevant.

How do these examples of the continuing nature of evolution and the fluid boundaries between the groups of animals arbitrarily dubbed “species” or “races” for the linguistic convenience of scientists in any way contradict Darwin?

I would suggest that anyone who is swayed by this book’s thesis that evolution is just too complex a process to understand should read a few other books.

13

but it’s too good to pass up.

HideoHo, how do you explain protein homology from a creationist standpoint?

14

It is selective breeding. It is also known as artificial selection. Regardless, it will yield a change in gene frequency. Over a period of several generations a tall phenotype will emerge. By definition, it is evolution.

Where is the proof in that paragraph? The allegations that anthropologists deem the steps in evolution to be simple is preposterous. I doubt you have an understanding of the nature of evolution. Evolution happens to a population, not an individual. The “switch flipping” you describe, if I understand the aim of the analogy, occurs over great periods of time among a population. Essentially, your argument is void of relevant content.

Oh, I see. We can’t provide arguments because someone else lacked exposure to a specific realm of knowledge. You’ve made that very clear.

15

First of all, while the book itself may be fairly religiously neutral, Behe himself is not, and aligns himself with such Creationist apologists as Philip Johnson.

Second of all, Behe’s primary argument involves “irreduceable complexity,” often in completely inapplicable ways. (As in, “We haven’t yet found a biochemical explanation for X, therefore there isn’t one.”)

Third, Behe’s arguments are addressed by several evolutionary biologists, most notably by Brown University biologist (and devout Christian) Kenneth Miller in his book Finding Darwin’s God. He pretty much puts to rest Behe’s objections on the grounds of irreducible complexity.

Fourth, the eye argument is clearly and concisely addressed by Richard Dawkins in Climbing Mt. Improbable

Fifth, the phrase “more evolved” is a non sequitur, containing no semantic content whatsoever in a discussion of Darwin or natural selection.

16

The most frustrating thing about debating evolution is that even the most spurious arguments have to be refuted again and again. PLEASE take a look and then a second one at http://www.talkorigins.org/

On this particular issue of the eye: yes, it has lots of parts. It’s simply not true that all those separate developments would have had to come together at once for an organism to have an eye that would provide some survival advantage.

To take the simplest example, think of cataract surgery. The ancient Babylonians were removing cloudly lenses from eyes long before there were glasses or lens implants. What would the point of that have been if an eye without a lens is useless? It certainly suggests that an eye without a lens is a heck of a lot better than no eye at all.

17

HideoHo said “I would like to hear some new arguments for evolution based on the new knowledge of cells and protiens that we have now, though.”

Well…maybe if you read any of the recent sciece journals or literature…you would find that evolution is being explained…using genetic information, biochemical make up and cell structure. Even taxanomy has been traced back using genetic make up of organisms…general or mere physical obervations of species are.and haven’t been the norm for a long long time.
Here is a great example of evolution theory…worked into a feasable hypothesis.
The evolution of early prokaryotes, who had no mitchondria or chloroplast, into the modern form of cell structure. This proto-eukaryote absorbed or formed a symbiotic relationship with a prokaryote(mitochondria or chloroplast), and thorugh several generation these organisms become one.

18

I said:

HideoHo responded:

Sorry to burst your bubble, but you are responding to a statement I didn’t make. My point is that the author is religious (he is Catholic, and a proponent of Intelligent Design theory), and therefore biased. He need not make his bias obvious in this “scientific” book for it to influence his research and theory. For someone arguing about what a book says, you seem to have remarkably low reading comprehension.

Here’s a critical review of Darwin’s Black Box: http://www-polisci.mit.edu/bostonreview/br21.6/orr.html

Here’s an explanation of the evolution of irreducibly complex systems: http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~lindsay/creation/evolve_irreducible.html

And here’s a page compiling many arguments pro and con Behe’s theories: http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/science/creationism/behe.html

19

Now is that really what we said?

I just think that some of us are naturally suspicious of the author’s premise and scientific methodes.

20

This goes slightly to your point about eyes, and how some parts of our bodies require sophisticated structures to work the way they do.

I saw a documentary once about biologists who were studying flies. They wanted to know how non-winged insects could evolve into winged insects, since evolution is supposed to operate by small, incremental changes and wings have to be fairly large to be useful. IIRC, they took some flies of some sort and clipped their wings (simulating a step in their evolution), then watched how they behaved. It turned out that even though they couldn’t fly, they used their wings to propel themselves around on the surface of a pond. Presumably, this helped them avoid predators. And since bigger wings could move faster than smaller wings, that trait was selected for until the wings were large enough to leave the ground entirely.

Our eyes are marvelously sophisticated, no question. But does that book leave no possibility that they developed through subtle stages, each a tiny improvement over the last? And even if we don’t know all the details of that process, that doesn’t disprove evolution.