Hi, guys.
I just want to share a piece of usefull info with you. If you are in any way interested in (disproving) Darvinism, the best information a lay person can get what it is from books of Richard Dawkings.
Reading is extremely enjoyable due to his style and wit and ability to render subtle issues clearly and without math.
Start with
"The Blind Watchmaker" and then check other books.
If you read one book on D-sm, it should be that one. And I do urge creationists or Lamarckians, etc. to read it too - if only to know what to oppose - like I enjoyed reading a few books that oppose Darwinism by smart and educated people. I might not agree with everything they say but I benefitted from following their logic.
In many debates I see on Darvinism, most people have very wrong idea what it actually is and argue for/against something that is not and never was Darvinism.
In fact, many darwinist scientists have major misconceptions about the way evolution works according to Darwinism - incluing the rabid pro-darvinist S.L. Gould.
I am not starting a debate here, it is just a book recommendation but I will proveide a couple of examples of supposed Darwinist statements that have nothing to do with Darwinism at all.
You are all welcome to comment and argue here, but please - not on the virtues of D. or C. but on how we should talk about them and what is ment by certain concepts before thay are argued about.
1. "Complexity came to being through random chance of events." There is a major misconception here. Random in darwinism content does not mean that a thing may or may not occur - it just means that we do not know exactly when it occurs.
- Every traffic death in US is random but the number of traffic death per year is an incredibly stable number around 50,000.
- A gene A in a certain location of DNA has a chance to mutate into previously non-existing genes B, C or D with a probability once in a million years.
While it is a "random" chance that a gene B, C or D will come into existance (we do not know where/when), we can be sure that in, population of 10,000 over 100,000 years (a blink in evolutionary terms) we can be sure that ~500 instances of each appear spontaneously - to be inherited and spread.
The chance of those genes never appearing is like a chance that somehow by lucky coincidence nobody gets killed in a car accident next year.
So evolution theory does not rely on a "random" or "lucky" appearance of the gene. It relies on certainity that every possible gene appears many times to be selected for fitness (most mutations with major effect are not compatible with life - about 10% of human pregnancies spontaneously abort).
There is an explanation how a complex structure like an eye could arise from a patch of skin through many cumulative improvements of the previous model each one only improving (hence selectable) one feature of the old one by 1%.
2. "Organisms gain complexity due to very unlikely mutations that improve their genes chances of spreading". Not true at all. Darwinist view of evloution relies on
cululative effect of multiple mutations (each of which is inevitably appears many times, see 1.) subjected to the selection process.
Any mutation with major effect practically always is not compartible with life. A chance that a major effect mutation would improve fitness of a working organism is like a chance that a major adjustment of a working vehicle will improve it rather then break it completely - imagine randomly adjusting a position of any part of a car by one feet?
In reality most of the mutations have no or extremely minor effect. There are many versions of haemoglobin different in one or two amino-acids. They all work well enough though their efficiency may differ slightly. If your gene responcible for haemoglobin generation mutates, your progeny may die outright or it may get a slightly better or worse version to pass to your grandchildren.
Now consider this - what is a chance to improve your car performance if you adjust the position or a random part by 0.001 millimeter? Since no working car is "perfectly" tuned, there is about 1/2 probability that it will end up slightly better "in tune" and 1/2 probability that it will end up slightly worse in tune but still working. After that a selection over millions of years on millions of individuals will ensure a gene for better tuning will spread faster then a gene for worse tuning.
So there is no randomness in providing material (new mutations) for natural (or any other) selection - it is pretty much guaranteed, and the chance of a survivable mutation being beneficial is not extremely rare, but close to 1 in 2!
According to Darwinism, rise of complexity out of simplicity is not a random unlikely process but as unavoidable as any such process in physics or chemistry (origination of complex stable atoms like iron out of simpler ones or complex molecules out of simple ones) provided appropriate environment exists (inside of a collapsing star, for example.
So whatever side you argue, take this as your starting point - not some non-existing caricature.
Also, Darwinism is not a theory about evolution of species or individuals though it claims to explain how those came to being in their present state.
Darwinism is a theory of differential propagation of genes. Genes evelove and those genes that have whatever properties in tehir current environment are favorable to propagation to a greater extent tend to do so to a greater extent. The difference may be subtle but many first top biologists are confused by that.
3. Evolution does not explain origin of life. There are several reasonable explanations for appearance of self-replicating entities with variable to persist in environmamt that pass their ability to the "offspring" with small but definite probability of mutation that would ensure new variants that can be acted upon selection process.
Reasonable meaning that they do not violate known laws of chemistry or physics and some can be reproduced.
They mostly do not involve complex thinmgs like DNT but start with much simpler entities that were abundant at the alleged time - simple proteins, inorganic substances, even crystals, clays, etc. Each of them, once started, led to increasing complexity that could have ended up with producing DNA - which took over from there.
We will never know which one (if any) was the one. But they are possible or at least conceivable without divine intervention.
4. Human perception of probability. That is an extremely complex issue having to do why we are evolved (or created) to perceive probabilities in such way - has to do with logevity of our life, BTW.
"Highly unlikely" does not mean "do not bother considering it". Some "spontaneus apeerance of a complex molecule" event with highly unlikely probability (once in a million years in a 100 gallons of water) may have been unlikely to be reproduced by scientists over the last three decades even if they did everything right. If you do have a billion years and millions of cubic miles of water, the occurence of such an event (multiple times) is practically certainit. Or it may have been created by a deity nevertheless...
5. "Darvinism is just a theory". That does not have anything to do with Darwinism but with bad terminology many people use.
For a lay person
theory may mean a statment that rates in confidence below
fact but above
assumption,
hypothesis and
guess.
For a scientist the word theory has no confidence connotation.
It is closer to this:
"Theory: scientifically acceptable general principle or body of principles offered to explain phenomena"
Theory can be treated as fact (theory of aerodynamics) or as requirig further elaboration (theory of relativity).
The statement "darwinists call Darwinism 'theory/ - they are not even sure of it themselves, otherwise they would call it a fact" - makes no sence.
For Darwinists their theory is a fact.
BTW, any fact is still not absolute confidence - since it is not possible to disprove the negative. So it is a fact that there are no flying cows but if I argue otherwise, you could not logically prove me wrong. For certain things though we place such a high confidence that it is wastefull to dedicate equal amount of time considering both probabilities, so we call them facts.
If you include an explanation why you think the Sun will raise, the resulting set of statements will be clumsy to call a fact, so you call it theory without sacrificing the confidence.
Upon re-reading this post I am affirmed in my conviction that R. Dawkings is much more eloquent then I am.
Again, I amn not stating preference in this thread for any version and ask you not to do so - because I would ratehr have a chance to hear something new.
Does Darwinian-proposed mechanism work - definitely. It is observed, reproduced, simulated, used, etc.
Does it mean that some other method was not actually responcible (creation, etc.) that left it look likely as a result of evcolution - maybe, just with very low confidence on some people's part.
Was Creator's intervention necessary for the proceeding of Evolution? Absolutely no. Does it mean that the Creator was not involved? Not really - He may have been. Since it is theoretically impossible to prove the negative, the answer is "maybe".
So we will never know for sure. Of course personally if I see a leaf on my desk I act on the assumption that it was blown in by wind from a tree rather then created right there by deity. But I will never know.
Creationist guys - you are probably sick and tired of ignorant "darwinists" refuting "creationist statements" which they never ever read and which were never ever made (or were discarded long ago). If you know of such, please enlighten us.
miko
