Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Back to School Part IX

Share
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Flipboard
Print
Email

We continue to examine the work of authors George Johnson and Jonathan Losos in their biology textbook, The Living World ((Fifth Edition, McGraw Hill, 2008). In their chapter on evolution and natural selection, these accomplished evolutionists begin by (1) misrepresenting the relationship between microevolution and macroevolution and biological variation here, (2) making a non scientific, metaphysical, truth claim that just happens to mandate the truth of evolution here, (3) making the grossly false statement that the fossils themselves are a factual observation that macroevolution has occurred here and here, (4) making a series of misrepresentations by carefully selecting the evidence to provide to the student and protecting it with circular reasoning here, (5) misrepresenting the molecular evidence here, (6) presenting the student with a blatantly false history of evolutionary theory here, (7) introducing the usual if-and-only-if evolutionary reasoning here, (8) repeating the centuries old religious argument that bad design proves evolution here, and (9) making a fallacious argument that evolution’s low probability events are not actually low probability after all hereRead more

Comments
notes: “Whatever we may try to do within a given species, we soon reach limits which we cannot break through. A wall exists on every side of each species. That wall is the DNA coding, which permits wide variety within it (within the gene pool, or the genotype of a species)-but no exit through that wall. Darwin's gradualism is bounded by internal constraints, beyond which selection is useless." R. Milner, Encyclopedia of Evolution (1990) Evolution? - The Deception Of Unlimited Variation - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4113898 As well, materialists never mention the fact that the variations found in nature (such as peppered moth color and finch beak size) which are often touted as solid proof of evolution are always found to be cyclical in nature. i.e. The variations are found to vary around a median position with never a continual deviation from the norm. This blatant distortion/omission of evidence led Phillip Johnson to comment in the Wall Street Journal: "When our leading scientists have to resort to the sort of distortion that would land a stock promoter in jail, you know they are in trouble." At one of her many public talks, she [Lynn Margulis] asks the molecular biologists in the audience to name a single unambiguous example of the formation of a new species by the accumulation of mutations. Her challenge goes unmet. Michael Behe - Darwin's Black Box - Page 26 Natural Selection and Evolution's Smoking Gun, - American Scientist - 1997 “A matter of unfinished business for biologists is the identification of evolution's smoking gun,”... “the smoking gun of evolution is speciation, not local adaptation and differentiation of populations.” Keith Stewart Thomson - evolutionary biologist “The central question of the Chicago conference was whether the mechanisms underlying microevolution can be extrapolated to explain the phenomena of macroevolution. At the risk of doing violence to the position of some people at the meeting, the answer can be given as a clear, No.” Roger Lewin - Historic Chicago 'Macroevolution' conference of 1980 Evolution - Tested And Falsified - Don Patton - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4036803 All examples of speciation put forth by materialists all turn out to be trivial examples of reproductive isolation: "The closest science has come to observing and recording actual speciation in animals is the work of Theodosius Dobzhansky in Drosophilia paulistorium fruit flies. But even here, only reproductive isolation, not a new species, appeared." from page 32 "Acquiring Genomes" Lynn Margulis. Selection and Speciation: Why Darwinism Is False - Jonathan Wells: Excerpt: there are observed instances of secondary speciation — which is not what Darwinism needs — but no observed instances of primary speciation, not even in bacteria. British bacteriologist Alan H. Linton looked for confirmed reports of primary speciation and concluded in 2001: “None exists in the literature claiming that one species has been shown to evolve into another. Bacteria, the simplest form of independent life, are ideal for this kind of study, with generation times of twenty to thirty minutes, and populations achieved after eighteen hours. But throughout 150 years of the science of bacteriology, there is no evidence that one species of bacteria has changed into another.” http://www.evolutionnews.org/2009/05/selection_and_speciation_why_d.htmlbornagain77
December 13, 2010
December
12
Dec
13
13
2010
03:34 AM
3
03
34
AM
PDT
you said "making a non scientific, metaphysical, truth claim ... " This is perhaps the most irritating aspect of dealing with "atheists", they simply refuse to stick with rules dictated by their own framework.cstirlingbartholomew
December 12, 2010
December
12
Dec
12
12
2010
10:46 PM
10
10
46
PM
PDT

Leave a Reply