Category: Epistemology

It never issues a retraction, never apologizes, no matter how wrong the “experts” turn out to be.

In our last blog, we talked about radiometric dating, which we called into question. So many people, though, accept radiometric dating as little-understood, yet (somehow) factual. They make decisions about all kinds of things–including their belief systems and worldviews—simply accepting Science’s truth-claims, but at the same time scientific consensus changes so often today that one can’t help but wonder why.

The problem is that Science keeps moving the goal-posts.

"moving the goal-posts" = "to alter the rules or parameters of a situation in such a way as to suit one's needs or objectives, making it more difficult for someone else to succeed, keep pace, or achieve an opposing objective." (The Free Dictionary)

Have you ever realized that evolutionary theory–no matter how complicated anyone tries to make it–is just a simple three-legged stool?

The three legs are:

1. millions of years (see our last blog)
2. adaptation
3. natural selection (Darwin called it “survival of the fittest”)

adaptation = "a change or the process of change by which an organism or species becomes better suited to its environment.." (Bing)

natural selection = "the process whereby organisms which are better adapted to their environment tend to survive and produce more offspring. The theory of its action was first fully expounded by Charles Darwin and is now believed to be the main process that brings about evolution." (Bing)

No one has a problem with the concepts of adaptation and natural selection. Together, they combine in what is called microevolution.

microevolution = "evolutionary change within a species or small group of organisms, especially over a short period"

The problem comes in when we talk about macroevolution. That’s really the point of contention.

macroevolution = "evolution that results in relatively large and complex changes (as in species formation)." (Mirriam-Webster)

Evolutionary theory asserts that microevolution + millions of years = macroevolution.

This is where the bizarre and ridiculous claims come from:

“Whales, like all mammals, evolved from reptiles, amphibians, and fish. Thus, over hundreds of millions they left the sea, grew legs, grew fur, and evolved lungs. Then they returned to the sea, lost their legs and fur, but kept their lungs.”

Proof-of-Evolution.com

“Archaeopteryx seemed to emerge fully fledged with the characteristics of modern birds,” said Michael Benton, a paleontologist at the University of Bristol in England… To explain this miraculous metamorphosis, scientists evoked a theory often referred to as “hopeful monsters.” According to this idea, major evolutionary leaps require large-scale genetic changes that are qualitatively different from the routine modifications within a species.”

Scientific American

“Charles Darwin believed that evolution was a slow and gradual process…  Darwin assumed that if evolution is gradual then there should be a record in fossils of small incremental change within a species.  But in many cases, Darwin, and scientists today, are unable to find most of these intermediate forms… However in 1972, evolutionary scientists Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge proposed another explanation for the numerous gaps in the fossil record… They termed this mode of evolution ‘punctuated equilibrium.’ This means that species are generally morpholgically stable, changing little for millions of years.  This leisurely pace is ‘punctuated’ by a rapid burst of change that results in a new species.  According to this idea, the changes leading to a new species don’t usually occur from slow incremental change…”

“Evolution 101,” University of Vermont

In other words, Darwin was wrong, right?

Nope!

“The modern theory of evolution—little more than a contemporary restatement of basic Darwinism—does not require gradual change. In fact, the operation of Darwinian processes should yield exactly what we see in the fossil record. . . . Our model is fully consistent with Darwin’s central postulate that natural selection controls evolutionary change. Natural selection requires continuity and intermediacy, for selection must create the fit by steadily increasing the frequency of favorable variants. It does not require exceedingly slow and gradual transformation of entire populations.

Stephen Jay Gould

But isn’t that completely in contradiction to what Darwin said?

“The more I work, the more I feel convinced that it is by the accumulation of such extremely slight variations that new species arise”

Charles Darwin

But they just can’t admit being wrong!

Let’s be real. For a long time now, many people–including many of us—have been capitulating to Evolution, surrendering our religious convictions in favor of “expert” testimony.

Isn’t it time to question that stance, to recognize the inadequacy of Science as an epistemological position–as the basis for your worldview?

Scientific “experts” are just people, like you and me. They are not above the fray of the dog-eat-dog aspects of eating every day. They are tempted in all the ways that other people are.

“Today’s intense competition greatly increases incentive to produce the maximum number of publications and to have one’s name on as many papers as possible. This in turn produces temptation to engage in a number of questionable practices, such as ‘beautifying’ data and developing biased research designs in order to produce desirable results…”

American Association for the Advancement of Science

We found another website filled with clever ideas for ascertaining tenure and grant money…

Consider, in closing, the following quotes:

“It is repeatedly said that science is intolerant of theories without data and assertions without adequate evidence. But no serious student of epistemology any longer takes the naive view of science as a process of Baconian induction from theoretically unorganized observations… (Richard Lewontin, eminent evolutionary geneticist and Harvard professor)

“There can be no observations without an immense apparatus of preexisting theory.

Richard Lewontin

“Before sense experiences become ‘observations,’ we need a theoretical question, and what counts as a relevant observation depends upon a theoretical frame into which it is to be placed. Repeatable observations that do not fit into an existing frame have a way of disappearing from view, and the experiments that produced them are not revisited.” (from “Billions and Billions of Demons,” Richard Lewontin, New York Review of Book, January 9, 1997)

“For an institution to explain the world so as to make the world legitimate, it must possess several features. First, the institution as a whole must appear to derive from sources outside of ordinary human social struggle. It must not seem to be the creation of political, economic, or social forces, but to descend into society from a supra-human source. Second, the ideas, pronouncements, rules, and results of the institution’s activity must have a validity and a transcendent truth that goes beyond any possibility of human compromise or human error. Its explanations and pronouncements must seem to be true in an absolute sense and to derive somehow from an absolute source. They must be true for all time and all place. And finally, the institution must have a certain mystical and veiled quality so that its innermost operation is not completely transparent to everyone. It must have an esoteric language, which needs to be explained to the ordinary person by those who are especially knowledgeable and who can intervene between everyday life and mysterious sources of understanding and knowledge.”

Richard Lewontin