Do Darwinists acknowledge flaws in Origin of Species?

_{Dave S.
January 18, 2009

Intelligent Design

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Steve Fuller, in the preceding article, begins by saying that Darwinists acknowledge the flaws in Darwin’s Origin of Species and seek to correct the flaws and expand on it. He further says this separates the Darwinist reading of Origin from the Christian reading the Bible.

Well, I for one would like to know exactly what flaws in Origin of Species Fuller thinks are acknowledged. Furthermore, I know plenty of Christians who believe much of the bible is methaphoric. They don’t think the earth and life was created in 6 days. They don’t think Lot’s wife was literally turned into a pillar of salt. They don’t think the entire earth was flooded and all the animals were saved in pairs on a wooden ark.

What say you?

Comments

One problem with the fallibility of the Bible is that is suggests the fallibility of God. If only God had known that people would change bits and pieces of his book, or that the original languages would become obscure. But he didn't see that coming, so his efforts to produce a book of truth for mankind failed. All we have left are a bunch of stories that can't be taken seriously. To me it paints God as incapable or unsure of his intentions, and I don't believe He is either.ScottAndrews_{January 18, 2009
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"but there is no teaching of Christ that ever directs us to interpret the scriptures literally" Ah, yeah, there sure is, plenty. Jesus quoted the OT very often and when he did so ALWAYS quoted it as being literally true. If Jesus set the precedent, I'm following it.Gods iPod_{January 18, 2009
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In the Origin of Species, Darwin embraced Lamarck's "theory of use and disuse." This is no dirty little secret that mainstream evolutionists sweep under the rug. For instance, Ernst Mayr wrote of it in The Growth of Biological Thought (1985).Sal Gal_{January 18, 2009
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Terry Mirll wrote in #4:
"Most Darwinists that I’ve ever come across utterly reject the idea that Origin of Species is flawed to any extent at all."
Interesting; I teach evolution at Cornell, where many of my colleagues are members of departments whose research is either directly or indirectly related to evolutionary theory. None of the evolutionary biologists I know would agree with this statement. On the contrary, looking back 150 years, there are numerous places in the Origin in which Darwin makes statements that, with a century and a half of further research, we can say he got it mostly wrong. That's the way science is; it changes, as new information comes in from the field and the laboratory. Rather than write a long list, let me give just one example. On page 104 of the first edition of the Origin of Species, Darwin suggests that whales could have evolved from bears. However, it is clear from what we know about whales today that they almost certainly evolved from a common ancestor of modern Artiodactyls (even-toed ungulates). This conclusion is reinforced by multiple lines of evidence from paleontology, genetics, and development. So, Darwin got this one wrong. In many cases, Darwin also lacked an explanation for the processes that he described in the Origin. Perhaps the most obvious is his lack of any theory of genetic inheritance. There was no science of genetics in 1859, and wouldn't be until Mendel's work was rediscovered in 1900. Consequently, Darwin simply proposed that traits could be inherited from parents to offspring, without proposing any mechanism by which this could happen. Does this mean that Darwin's theory was "wrong", and that the "modern synthesis" in which Mendelian genetics was integrated into Darwin's theory is "right"? No and no. As I constantly stress with my students, beginning with my very first lecture and continuing to the last, science is neither "right" nor "wrong". Instead, our explanations are either "consistent with the observable information" or not. Furthermore, nothing in science is "True", nor can science "prove" anything, at least in the common uses of those terms by most people. Rather, scientists are relatively confident that their explanations are consistent with their observations (indeed, we use mathematical statistics to precisely calculate to what degree we may have such "confidence"). And nothing in the natural sciences is "proven" the way Pythagorus's theorem relating the sides of a right triangle are "proven". Indeed, had Pythagorus never stated his theorem, the relationship between the sides of right triangle would still exist. By contrast, our understanding of what nature is like is constantly changing as we find out more and more about it. The point is, many individual ideas in science turn out in hindsight to be "wrong". That is, they are not supported by the empirical evidence. When this happens, scientists alter their theories to accommodate the new evidence. This is why the theory of evolution today is not identical with the theory as presented by Darwin in the Origin of Species, in the same way that our current understanding of gravitation is not the same as that proposed by Newton in Principia Mathematica. Terry Mirll, in other words, is not talking about the "Darwinists" who actually practice the science of evolutionary biology, at least not any with whose ideas I have any familiarity.Allen_MacNeill_{January 18, 2009
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The difference, surely, is that the Bible, if not dictated directly, is held to be the divinely inspired words of God. As such, it is supposed to embody absolute and eternal Truths that are a gift to - not the creation of - humanity and to which it is subject by God's will. Darwin, other other hand, was just a mortal man who proposed a theory of how life on Earth had changed and diversified over time after it had appeared. What he wrote was never thought to be in any way complete or perfect, least of all by him, it was just the best he could do at that time with the materials available to him. But, as we all know, he knew nothing of genetics or molecular biology, obviously, what has been discovered in fields like paleontology or geology since his time. He is venerated, like Newton, for what he achieved but those achievements are far from being thought to be the last words on those subjects. Perhaps there are some who have an exaggerated veneration of Darwin which amounts to worship but are they any more representative of mainstream evolutionary thought than the Westboro Baptist Church is representative of Christianity as a whole?Seversky_{January 18, 2009
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Most Darwinists that I've ever come across utterly reject the idea that Origin of Species is flawed to any extent at all. Any attempts that I've ever made to point out any flaws is usually refuted by the assertion that I'm just one of those nutty IDiots who has never read OoS. (And when I counter that I've read it, more than once, the assertion swiftly shifts into "well, then, you didn't understand it.") Many Christians hold that the Bible is the infallible Word of God, but there is no teaching of Christ that ever directs us to interpret the scriptures literally. My parents would argue that the Genesis account is a history; I would argue that it is an allegory. What most religious critics fail to realize is that Christian doctrine is not monolithic. The scriptures may be the infallible Word of God, but it has been left to fallible men to interpret them. Thus we should distinguish between Truth and truth. The Truth is that objective reality known only to God; truth is that which men believe to be so.Terry Mirll_{January 18, 2009
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whoisyourcreator @2
Considering that there is an utter lack of scientific evidence for common descent, the “flaws” of the Origin of Species are too many to mention.
I fear you are greatly overstating your case, to the possible detriment of ID. While we may disagree with the conclusions drawn by evolutionary biologists, there is considerable evidence for common descent. Wikipedia, while obviously not an acceptable primary source, does provide references to good sources showing evidence of common descent from genetics, paleontology, comparative anatomy, geographical distribution, comparative physiology and biochemistry, and numerous other areas. I am reminded of Aquinas' famous quote:
Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. . . . If they find a Christian mistaken in a field in which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason?
Can we interpret the evidence differently? Of course! Can we claim there is no evidence for common descent? Not without looking misinformed, at best. JJJayM_{January 18, 2009
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I would agree that many, if not MOST, ‘Christians’ don’t take the Bible as the literal and infallible word of God. However, Truth has NEVER been subject to consensus … and the natural man prefers to create a god to his own liking. Concerning the “flaws”: Considering that there is an utter lack of scientific evidence for common descent, the “flaws” of the Origin of Species are too many to mention. http://www.whoisyourcreator.com/common_descent.html http://www.whoisyourcreator.com/how_does_evolution_occur.htmlwhoisyourcreator_{January 18, 2009
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For starters, there's a very good reason they don't think that Lot was turned into a pillar of salt. The Bible doesn't say so. It does, however, state that Lot's wife suffered this fate. But yes, there are in fact a lot of people who regard themselves as Christians who nonetheless have bought into the secular idea that the miracles of the Bible didn't really happen; but that doesn't have much to do with ID so I'll leave it at that.EvilSnack_{January 18, 2009
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Let's see, we know whales didn't evolve from bears running around in streams w their mouths open, as Darwin proposed. we know genetics is the cause of heredity, not the vague Lamarckian mechanism used by Darwin. we know evolution doesn't have to always proceed by gradual accumulation of slight mutations- lateral gene transfer during endosymbiosis is a good example of another process.Khan_{January 18, 2009
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