Responses here. I haven't been able to come up with good responses to all of them, so any suggestions welcome. Any other general input also welcome.
Posted Jan 24, 2012, 1:20 PM UTC
Most of this is simply "You don't know? Then God did it!" It's not really a useful debate.
I've called out argument from ignorance when relevant. What I'm mostly responding to though is their responses to scientists' answers of what we do know.
This entire debate can be summed up like this:
"You don't have evidence for evolution."
"Yes we do, here it is."
"I don't accept that as evidence."
I don't even see the use of the debate. The creationists are too narrow minded anyway to accept the evidence presented to them, no use to debate them really.
That's why the responses are intended to explain why they should accept that as evidence, and show why their reasons for rejection of the evidence are unfounded.
I'm glad you're taking the effort to try to get them to change their minds, someone has to do it. It's a brave and most importantly, very patient attempt of getting rid of some ignorance in the world :) All I can say is good luck I guess. I'm just not going to do it.. I'd lose my patience and rage two responses in. :P
Understood, and thanks. Other than an exercise in patience, I've learned a lot researching the responses, and am better prepared if one of these claims comes my way. Basically, the reason for me doing this is not entirely altruistic. It was a result of me essentially raging two responses in to all these claims from all over the place: I wanted there to be one spot where I can go to for the response. ;)
The ground rules for what constitutes evidence should have been agreed upon before the debate started, IMO.
And they ignore the extremely strong evidence - genetics - and then point out 'flaws' in only moderate evidence - the fossil record or carbon dating.
"Where are the transition fossils!?!??!" - They are all transition fossils. And the fossil record is SOOO 1950's. We've sequenced the human genome and compared it to other primates.
What stood out to me the most was the utter lack of any source material being presented by the creationist side. Not even a single supporting link. The evolutionist cites source after detailed source, backing up their claims with testable, often peer reviewed, evidence.
That speaks volumes to me.
I used to be a Jehovah's Witness, an evolution denialist - and of course completely misinformed. After I got to hear from the other side... you know, the scientific one... I was surprised to see all these sources. When I checked the sources for the creationist book I had learned all this shit from, I noticed so many lies and so much deceit.
That did my faith in creationism in for me.
They rely on the fact the most people don't see through the veneer of deception at all, most people just believe it because they want to believe it - proof/evidence/reason be damned. Science doesn't have that luxury (but then again it isn't trying to sell anything to people, just establish what is or is not true).
Very true, and this is why I wasn't afraid of being an Internet apologist. If my faith was a reflection of what was real, what did I have to lose? I had the evidence on my side!
Turns out I didn't, of course, but it was exactly the mindset I had going in that helped me getting out.
with testable, often peer reviewed, evidence.
You're going to have some problems here by default.
There is a lot of simple ignorance of how the process of natural selection could give rise to macro evolution.
The process itself is analogous to taking 1000 people and having them all start at some central point with the intention of walking randomly away from the starting point. Those that go in a certain direction are given water and food, those that go in certain other directions are given weights to carry, and the rest uninfluenced. Naturally we would find that after some arbitrary length of time that those who walked the furthest were those that went in the directions that offered them advantages (analogous to beneficial mutations) and that those that didn't walk far at all were those that went in directions that disadvantaged them (analogous to detrimental mutations).
Obviously that is an extremely simply analogy, but most reasonably intelligent people should understand it...
(Were I not going to sleep I would probably help you out on that page)
Also, I believe macro/micro evolution is not a term used by scientists. Macro evolution is just a long string of evolutionary changes that humans have decided represents a "big" change.
This is one of the greatest misunderstandings of evolution, even for the average person (who is not religiously motivated), that an "established" species has a short transitional period (in which they are essentially a freak of nature) into a new established species with drastically different features.
The hunt for "transitional fossils" is completely unfounded...ALL fossils are transitional fossils!
I think the greatest shame of modern biology education (at least in the United States) is that the Theory of Evolution is often pushed back to the end of the semester, covered rather pathetically for a couple of days, and sometimes isn't even gotten to.
Evolutionary education should intertwine with ALL of biology, throughout the entire semester. It is what brings the entire story together; it is the only way to make sense of any of it.
Too true - there is really no such thing even as 'species' really when you look at a single lineage. It is only that we see the large differences separated by millions of years of evolution in the few fossils we have that we notice the significant differences and so classify them into species, but in reality they are just different stages of the same organisms along a common evolutionary path. Humans didn't 'jump' from species to species (eg. Australopithecus to Homo habilis to Modern Human) to get where we are today, it was a constant blend over millions of generations from one stage to another and human is just the stage we are at now.
Also - there is no such thing as a 'standard' human like most people seem to think, the next 'transition' of human evolution is alive and living among us right now, as is the previous one and the one before that. We are all transitions of particular DNA mutations, evolution is just those genes that find success in replicating enough that they become prevalent in the general population. There are millions of slightly different human 'types' alive today and there is no telling which particular blends of DNA will be the ones successfully prevalent going forward.
The commonly used terms are speciation and genetic drift I suppose. I am not to stringent in my terminology as an engineer :p
I think most Creationists would understand that, but that's doesn't address the issues raised in the 15 questions given.
How did sex originate?
Sexual reproduction allows for evolution at a much faster pace than asexual reproduction. Organisms that exchanged DNA were thus able to evolve out of situations that might have killed their asexual counterparts.
This explains why, but not how.
This seems like a common response, which really showcases the lack of understanding. The "how" is always the same: random mutation. That it was useful and survived is the basis of natural selection. Why it was useful is the only important thing to research.
Leeches are the answer here. They reproduce with partners, but they aren't male/female pairs... they're both hermaphrodites, and they inseminate each others eggs. Sexual reproduction as we know it is just a specialization of this behavior.
Why are the (expected) countless millions of transitional fossils missing?
They aren’t missing. Every fossil ever found is a link between older and newer forms.
This is assumed, not demonstrated.
Demonstration is incredible strong evidence in science, but not necessary in order to develop a strong case for something being true. We know the orbit of Pluto and yet have not known about it's existence long enough to observe it directly because we understand it's motion, inertia and gravitational influences.
Through the elimination of other reasonable and testable explanations, we are left with a strong theory.
This is hilarious, I love it. The whole page can be summed up in this example:
How could mutations—accidental copying mistakes—create the huge volumes of information in the DNA of living things
If only eight mutations per year were passed on for three billion years, that gives 3 gigabytes of information.
As population grows larger, it is harder to fix new mutations in the population, because the cost of substitution is greater (Haldane's Dilemma).
Haldane's dilemma has been solved.
No so hilarious. Rebutting all these claims will take a lot of time, unfortunately.
From Wikipedia:
Haldane's Dilemma refers to a limit on the speed of beneficial evolution, first calculated by J. B. S. Haldane in 1957, and clarified further by later commentators. Creationists, and proponents of intelligent design in particular, claim it remains unresolved. Contrary to creationist claims, Haldane's dilemma is of no importance in the evolutionary genetics literature. Today, Haldane's Dilemma is raised mostly by creationists opposed to evolution, who claim it is evidence against large-scale evolution, and a supposed example of negligence on the part of the scientific community.
Seriously? Your source is CreationWiki?
As a source of the opinions of Creationists, yes, my source is Creationwiki. The article is largely a response to the scientific claim that Haldane's dilemma has been solved.
We don't care about their opinions. We care about facts. Here's Leonard Nunney on Haldane's dilemma; his computer simulations show that Haldane's Dilemma applies in limited cases only.
I should note that he came under fire by creationists when he wouldn't share his computer software. I find it odd that they require it, since he did publish the math he used.
I don't even understand why some of the religious get up in arms about this. Religion and evolution aren't even mutually exclusive.
Their Bible tells them it is mutually exclusive. Same with religion and heliocentrism 500 years ago.
Does it though? I'm not going to debate for the religious, but Catholics accept evolution as an appropriate explanation for how their God created life.
That's because Catholics don't read their Bible. ZING! Seriously though, it's a matter of interpretation, and Creation Ministries doesn't represent Catholics, but Christian fundamentalists. Catholics learned their lesson back in the Galileo days, so chose an interpretation that jived with the science. Fundamentalists, unfortunately, didn't learn the same lesson, and are making fools of themselves as a result.
I agree.
Catholics have been writing off their hardcore beliefs for the last few hundred years to garner support and more members. They are a global religion, so they are more suspeptibal to global pressure. The american evangelicals are most of the problem. It tends to be these groups that have a literal view of the bible and can't handle anyone offering a scientific explanation that doesn't mesh with their superstitions.
I don't disagree.
What I don't get is how they're willing to bend on issues like evolution...but are absolutely, unshakably dogmatic about things like abortion and contraception, to the point where the pope will actually lie to Catholics in AIDS-ridden lands and tell them that condoms increase the risk of transmission.
That's because the Catholic Church, as a collective entity has evolved to survive social pressures.
But fundamentalists demand a literal interpretation, in which case the two must be mutually exclusive.
To their credit, they recognize that accepting a non-literal interpretation of the bible begins a slippery slope. If the 7 creation days are figurative, and there was really a big bang and evolution, then might Jesus not be the literal "Son of God" and rather just a really good person, and thus "close to God" in a figurative sense. Might it destroy the concept of salvation by rending "Christ died for your sins" to merely, "a really nice guy died because people can be really cruel sometimes, so think about that the next time you feel like being cruel."
This makes Christianity more of a personal philosophy than a religion, which I'm all for, because I find a lot the morality attributed to Jesus to be good, but it kind of takes away from the authoritative vigor of established denominations and preachers who love to hear themselves talk. When you take away the magic and the miracles and the heavenly authority, it just becomes another idea that we have to actualy debate on its own merit, in context with a bunch of other mere ideas. And gosh darn it, that's hard.
Before geology came along, everyone who believed the Bible accepted (more-or-less) Bishop Ussher's chronology of a young, 6,000 year-old earth. The field of geology began to mature and discovered a number of facts that contradicted that belief. Now, those who believe the Bible but also geology have to insert a number of caveats and asterisks to alter what was once the universal understanding of the Bible in order to make it fit with reality.
The Catholic Church insisted on geocentricity for over 1,000 years until the observations of Galileo challenged it. Eventually, Christians changed their mind and added asterisks and caveats to the scriptures that implied a geocentric view.
The same thing goes with evolution. The idea for it never came from the Bible. Before Darwin, everyone who believed the Bible believed that it taught that every species on earth was engineered specifically by God and has always been the same. Now, of those Christians who accept evolution, they once again have to go beyond the original, universal understanding of the text, inserting their asterisks and caveats in order for it to again conform to reality.
It makes no sense to say that Bible promotes a heliocentric view, or an old earth view, or evolution when the people reading the Bible all the time held completely different views until strong enough evidence came along. If it were true, and the Bible really did promote these ideas, they would have come long before Galileo or Darwin. It seems kind of ludicrous to claim that 100% of the people who believed the Bible for over 1,000 years who all interpreted it exactly the same way were wrong about what it was trying to say.
True; however, a scientist cannot be both religious and intellectually honest. If you know how things work, it is natural to reject the religious explanation.
While I agree with you for the most part, let me play the Devil's advocate by suggesting that no one knows how things work to the degree required to completely dismiss the idea of a supernatural deity. Also, being wrong is not the same thing as being intellectually dishonest. Saying that implies some sort of intent that is morally unacceptable.
We don't have to dismiss the idea of "a" supernatural deity. That moves the goalposts. What we can do, with knowledge we have now, is assert that the god of the Bible, Koran, and Torah did not and does not exist.
However, evolution and stupid are mutually exclusive. That's really where the divide is.
If you're really looking for input to the rebuttals, this is one that struck me as particularly ridiculous.
"But many fossils are practically identical to living creatures, in which case the adjective ‘transitional’ becomes meaningless."
If this renders the adjective "transitional" meaningless, then why use the qualifier "practically." Either they are identical or not. If not then something transitioned.
Mmm, I get what you're saying, but I think the term transitional is defined by belonging to two distinct taxonomic groups.
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That's a great idea. I'm a wiki noob though, so it will take some time. Baby steps.
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Am I the only one who has noticed that the pro-reality side has provided direct links to scientific studies, information, and actual proof whilst the anti-reality side just asserts without backing a single thing up?
You are not the only person to notice that.
Scientists:
The words ‘code’ and ‘language’ are only metaphors when applied to the DNA code, and they have no reality outside our own mental constructs. In reality, the whole thing is dependent on chemical properties.
Creationists:
This doesn’t explain the origin of the code.
This is a joke, right? It's a metaphor. There's no origin to explain because it's not actually a goddamned code. The origin of the "code" is basic chemistry. Chemicals reacting with chemicals. Done.
It doesn’t matter how well one can or can’t explain how the first life could evolve, if you can’t explain how it got there in the first place, the theory is literally dead in the water. .
That's not true. We have a lot of evidence of evolution and understand it well. Just because we don't understand a necessary pre-requisite doesn't affect what we do know. Just because a theory can't explain everything, doesn't mean it can't explain anything.
I'd like to add to this one by saying: "Just because you don't know whether the orchestra came to the concert hall by bus or by train, it doesn't mean you can't hear the music play."
Half of that is seriously "I don't know, therefore, God"...
I once got into an email argument with one of these guys (from the website). It's incredible how well they can shift the argument to something completely unrelated, without ever acknowledging anything they say is wrong. They have an answer for everything and just keep going around in circles.
The whole thing seems "Ah ha! You don't know this thing!!". I guess it is helpful to some extent because it shows areas that are worth looking into, but argument wise it's rubbish.
The whole thing seems "Ah ha! You don't know this thing!!"
Which is especially amusing, because none of the "things" in question are things that science doesn't know.
As regards the creationist division between "intriguing sub-life entities, which can reproduce only in the presence of genuine life" like viruses and prions, and "genuine life," this is a division observed only by creationists; not by nature itself.
For example, wasps such as Ichneumonidae reproduce only by infesting caterpillars. Are these wasps not genuinely alive? What's more, the venom these wasps use is actually an ancient virus that now can only survive in the wasps' ovaries.
If the creationist bites the bullet and says wasps aren't really alive, what about humans? We only eat plants, animals, and fungus--removing this life from our environment would certainly prevent human reproduction.
Hey, thanks for the response. I’m trying to formulate it in a way though that’d be immune to this response: Whatever classification you give it, viruses, prions, wasps, and humans are examples of things that require life to survive.
It appears as though they’re asking for a process in which life originates, which doesn’t require life already existing.
The answer is abiogenesis. If they want more than that then they need to actually be willing to do some work on their own to research the subjects at hand. Why write out lengthy replies if they will not even read the links provided and/or nitpick things that have nothing to do with the actual evidence.
To explain all of abiogenesis and evolution is to ask a lot of someone without training in the field... To explain it when the person is unwilling to hear it is pointless.
Well, that's the thing, science doesn't have a complete understanding of abiogenesis, which is why they think that it is a valid point against evolution.
It wouldn't matter if we had all the information available and it was totally 100% known. A large portion of the creationist side of the argument will ignore it and keep shouting. For examples look at the number of times the 2nd law of thermodynamics gets mentioned on this subreddit alone.
Learned this on r/atheism and have been using it since:
Can't reason someone out of what they weren't reasoned into...
Take the fight to them
Why is a belief system that fails to explain the evidence taught in science class?
ಠ_ಠ
Most of the original questions are outside the scope of evolution. That should be emphasized even more and those questions safely ignored.
That is a valid response, which I've listed. But I've also listed all responses they've responded to for completeness.
but then..
and
This is a double standard. If "cumulative effect of the former leads to the latter" is the logic that makes natural selection inseparable from 'macroevolution' then it is equally logical that abiogenesis leads to evolution.
This is especially true when you are talking about evolution vs creation. Creation most certainly addresses origin of life. If evolution simply does not address origin of life, why would the two be in contention?
Further, it is logical to separate natural selection from 'macroevolution' in a evolution vs creation debate because both created and 'evolved' life would obey natural selection. Denying the logical separation of the two only adds confusion and misinformation to the debate.
To illustrate this separation another way, it would be a bit like two competing scientists developing an orbital model of a distant solar system. The two could develop different models but one would not say to the other, "but this is gravity, and my model is a culmination of the effects of gravity. It's disingenuous to say you believe in gravity but not in my model."
Edit: fixed a reference from the OP's link (forgot the question) , changed "galaxy" to "solar system" in my analogy
Edit: No one is really addressing my argument. I just keep getting repeat statements that 'macroevolution' is just natural selection occurring over a long time scale. To take this premise and extend it such that natural selection is true therefore 'macroevolution' is also true is a clear composition fallacy.
I also keep hearing the accusation that microevolution and macroevolution are made up 'creationists' terms. Tell me then, how does one differentiate the theory that all life evolved from a single celled organism from the basic principle of natural selection? Natural selection = principle, like gravity, 'evolution', in the broad definition, is an expansive subject to explaining diversity of life using the principle of natural selection.
If one cannot accept natural selection and reject some part of 'evolution', how will continued research into different areas of evolutionary science progress? If two evolutionary biologists have competing theories but both accept the principle of natural selection how can you choose one or the other?
"That's natural selection! It's just over a larger time scale."
"But that's not how it happened, that evolved a different way. Not to say I disbelieve natural selection."
"How disingenuous it is to accept natural selection but reject my hypothesis, which is just natural selection over a large time scale...."
It is not. Evolution is not the compounding effect of abiogenesis. They address two different questions. Micro- and macroevolution do not - they are the same except on the scale of time. This is why these word are so rarely used in a scientific context.
This is also, by the way, why creationists - especially the YECs - are so eager to pounce on these words and redefine them over and over again to fit whatever feeble point they are trying to make.
A small nitpick: I'd suggest sticking to "speciation" when talking about "macroevolution". "macroevolution" is a poor term that does not accurately represent what is happening within the process. I've gotten to the point now where I make sure to correct the misuse. Example: species can separate and look nearly identical and it allows YEC's to say "Well that's not macroevolution".
Further nitpick - there is no such thing as either "macroevolution" or "microevolution", both are creationist invented words they use to try and wriggle out of the fact that we see evolution happening in bacteria/viruses and to try and deny that it happens at all on scales larger than that - there is only evolution. Evolution does not happen in scales, it just happens.
Not a small nitpick at all, I think. It's exactly what I meant by my last paragraph. Depending on the flavour of denialism you are dealing with, it can mean speciation but also (as used to be for me) something above the biblical "kind" - which is, itself, a word without definition.
It's incredibly dishonest and I wonder how many of these people are good but ignorant and how many lie willingly,
One still does lead to the other. You are pointing out differences in mechanic, not logic.
One leads to the other, one is the other (Resp. abiogenesis/evolution and micro/macroevolution). Since the logic depends on sameness, and the sameness depends on the mechanics, showing the difference in mechanics launches the sameness out the window and thus the logic collapses.
There is nothing cumulative about the creation of life however; it is a singular event that is the beginning of a process.
When looking at the cumulative effect of something, it must have occurred more than once over a period of time.
They are not in contention and I believe this is the point the OP was making in their statements. Creation through a process other than abiogenesis does not mean that organisms could not evolve over time, which means that evolution is not dependent upon the manner in which life originated.