Tom Bethell comments on a recent video effort to persuade the world that women in science endorse Darwinism without question.
The timing was unfortunate for the sponsors. The recent passing of Margulis (and the almost immediate “jealous dog” snarls from Darwinists) have replaced the videographer’s intended soft focus lighting on the many women scientists we see and hear with – a surgery strength mind laser. Here’s Tom:
A few days ago, YouTube posted an interesting video called “Let’s Talk About Evolution.” It lasts for six minutes and I recommend it, although for reasons that its sponsors may not like. I’m guessing that Eugenie Scott of National Center for Science Education put this show together, but maybe I’m maligning her.
It shows sixteen female academics or science writers, mostly young, whose enthusiasm for evolution is so overwrought that they turn themselves into propagandists.
Eager to show how well they have been trained, they are like show mares who trot around the paddock jumping over each gate in turn. All the while they give the camera a look that says: “Aren’t I good?”
“Evolution undergirds everything we know about science,” says one. “Evolution is the unifying idea of biology and life sciences,” says another.
They recite old chestnuts as though they were new: One said:
“Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.” (That’s from Dobzhansky. By the way, nothing in biology made sense before 1859?)
The video is also highly misleading. The strategy is to define evolution so broadly—evolution is a “change in population over time”; a “change in gene frequencies”—that it is trivially true. A change in population over time is confirmed whenever someone is born or dies.
But you continue to harbor doubts about evolution? You are one of those creationists? Well, that shows you don’t understand science itself. And that’s where we see the bait and switch.
The alleged truth of evolution is used to disparage doubters and dismiss them as rubes. Eugenie Scott took the prize when she said:
“Evolution is really a very broad concept that deals with very basic science, and actually undergirds everything that we know about science, or everything that we do in science . . .”
If evolution is something that is so simply confirmed then Jeanne Garbarino, Ph. D, who works in the Laboratory of Biochemical Genetics at the Rockefeller University, could say without fear of contradiction:
“Evolution is not a theory. Evolution is actually an observable phenomenon that is supported by a significant body of evidence.”
I wanted to see if anyone offered any such evidence. Here was Pamela Bjorkman, the Max Delbruck Professor of Biology at Caltech.
“Bacteria in particular are able to mutate to get around antibiotics,” she said. “It’s another example of evolution. It shows bacteria’s “incredible ability to evolve quickly.”
This is perhaps the most cited example of evolution. But confronted by antibiotics, bacteria don’t take evasive action. None other than Richard Dawkins pointed that out in The Greatest Show on Earth. [p. 132] Some varieties are already immune.
After the others are wiped out by antibiotics, the immune ones have access to more nutrients and easily multiply. Nothing new has been created. Some varieties simply become more numerous.
But evolution means making new things, not more of what already exists. So, how does antibiotic resistance illustrate evolution? No other examples of observable are given in the video (if we ignore “change in gene frequencies over time.”
But, hey, such a “change” just is evolution, according to our online ladies (and many others). And that change is obviously real. So antibiotic resistance “confirms” it.
In short, evolution is first trivialized, then used to disparage those who don’t accept it. They are said to be either ignorant of science, or hostile to it.
I’m sorry to see these women in science reciting this propaganda so faithfully. All had “Ph. D” after their name. There’s no sign of a Ruth Hubbard, a Lynn Margulis or a Barbara McClintock in the bunch.
No doubt they’re out there somewhere. But this YouTube video suggests that such wild types are being bred out of the academic gene pool. Deliberately.
File under Ill wind that blows nobody good: Here, we’d wondered who would be the next Lynn Margulis. Our scouts can now save time by crossing these gals off. But we are pretty sure the wild type is still out there. For one thing, Margulis may have inspired some of them herself …