I've had some fun toying with the fanatics who cling to the theory of Darwinian evolution like a Titanic life raft....I got them to attack, and show their ignorance [and dishonesty?] by their claiming empirical evidence for the theory exists.
Any who suggest weakness in the theory of evolution can expect to be referred to thusly: "... the uni-brow/paste-eater/low thinkers..."
Of course, that analysis comes from a uni-brow/paste-eater/low thinker.
Let me suggest two reasons for the attacks.
One, fear of having to defend a heterodox viewpoint.....that would require actual thought.
And two, not having the science acumen to understand what the theory is, and is based on.
1. Evolution is not the cyclical change within a gene pool, i.e., the moth population in England darkened, and then lightened due to pollution of the Industrial Revolution.
I know, you learned that it was in high school biology....but it is a misnomer. That is not what Darwin was calling evolution.
2. Darwinian evolution is successive change, from one species into another, due to the accumulation of alterations due to random mutations. These are tiny changes, and each makes the organism better suited to survive, i.e., natural selection.
a. Steven J. Gould, paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and historian of science, reported:
"In any local area, a species does not arise gradually by the steady transformation of its ancestors; it appears all at once and fully formed." (Natural History, 86:12-16)
3. So, this is where an honest defense of Darwin begins. While the liars and the fanatic religion haters.....you know who you are....outright lie and claim that the problem of missing fossil evidence is present...it is not....or that pointing out this flaw makes one anti-science, or irrational,....it does not..... we should begin by accepting the truth.
Darwin did.
a. As the above-labeled folks seem unable, it seems that I have to handle both sides of the debate. Not that I'm not up to it.....OK...begin by pointing out that the greatest scientist of the era, Louis Agassiz of Harvard, decried Darwin's theory.
4. Paleontologist Louis Agassiz knew the fossil record better than any man alive.
"He recognized that the problem with Darwinism was not the survival of the fittest, but rather the arrival of the fittest. Agassiz knew, as did most all animal and plant breeders both then and today, that clear limits exist to variation and no known way exists to go beyond these limits in spite of 4,000 years of trying. .... all mutations known to us cannot even begin to produce the variety required for molecules to mankind evolution, but rather they create 'monstrosities, and the occurrence of these, under disturbing influences, are only additional evidence of the fixity of species. '" So saith Agassiz.
Louis Agassiz: Anti-Darwinist Harvard Paleontology Professor
a. Generally, this is where the first attack begins: Agassiz was deeply religious. But, if this is a reason to throw out his science expertise, it is the same basis for tossing an atheist-scientist's viewpoint.
While he was religious, historian Neal Gillespie writes that Agassiz "was second to no man in his opposition to sectarian religious interference with science."
Neal C. Gillespie, "Charles Darwin and the Problem of Creation," p. 51.
5. OK....let's support Darwin already!
Rather than attacking Agassiz's credibility...actually, it is unassailable....accept it, and point out that science itself has moved away from his viewpoint. In several threads, it was obvious that proponents of Darwinian evolution were stymied every time they were prompted to show fossils that documented the theory, they did everything they could to obfuscate.
6. But, even without evidence, Darwin's theory is, today, largely accepted.
The reason is a change in the philosophy of science.
First, many eminent scientists agreed with Darwin, that just because we haven't found the evidence doesn't mean it doesn't...or didn't exist. This was the position of Joseph Hooker, Thomas Huxley, Ernst Haeckel, Asa Gray and others.
The theory itself seemed just too eloquent to pass up.
'Logic,' rather than fossil proof, won the day over evidence.
7. The philosophical turn was this: by the late 19th century, whether based on the growing child's demand to 'let me do it myself,' or the Enlightenment's desire to replace God with science, "it increasingly excluded appeals to divine action or divine ideas as a way of explaining phenomena in the natural world....According to [methodological naturalism], ...all features of the natural world can be explained by material causes without recourses to purposive intelligence, mind, or conscious agency."
Stephen C, Meyer, "Darwin's Doubt," p. 19.
a. So, proponents wag their finger and lecture, one must accept this new iteration of science if one is willing to accept all the benefits it provides because it has 'searched out strictly material causes for previously mysterious features...' Ibid.
b.So, here we have the scientists' mantra: one cannot look anywhere but to material provenance. If we agree to that.....Darwin becomes our god.
We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, the geneticist Richard Lewontin remarked equably in The New York Review of Books, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories. We are to put up with sciences unsubstantiated just-so stories because, Lewontin explains, we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door!
So....that's why Darwin is ahead on points. There is no disputing the benefits that science has provided...and 'we don't need no stinkin' fossils!'
And based on this view, or definition of science......
...Darwin cannot be disputed!
Any who suggest weakness in the theory of evolution can expect to be referred to thusly: "... the uni-brow/paste-eater/low thinkers..."
Of course, that analysis comes from a uni-brow/paste-eater/low thinker.
Let me suggest two reasons for the attacks.
One, fear of having to defend a heterodox viewpoint.....that would require actual thought.
And two, not having the science acumen to understand what the theory is, and is based on.
1. Evolution is not the cyclical change within a gene pool, i.e., the moth population in England darkened, and then lightened due to pollution of the Industrial Revolution.
I know, you learned that it was in high school biology....but it is a misnomer. That is not what Darwin was calling evolution.
2. Darwinian evolution is successive change, from one species into another, due to the accumulation of alterations due to random mutations. These are tiny changes, and each makes the organism better suited to survive, i.e., natural selection.
a. Steven J. Gould, paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and historian of science, reported:
"In any local area, a species does not arise gradually by the steady transformation of its ancestors; it appears all at once and fully formed." (Natural History, 86:12-16)
3. So, this is where an honest defense of Darwin begins. While the liars and the fanatic religion haters.....you know who you are....outright lie and claim that the problem of missing fossil evidence is present...it is not....or that pointing out this flaw makes one anti-science, or irrational,....it does not..... we should begin by accepting the truth.
Darwin did.
a. As the above-labeled folks seem unable, it seems that I have to handle both sides of the debate. Not that I'm not up to it.....OK...begin by pointing out that the greatest scientist of the era, Louis Agassiz of Harvard, decried Darwin's theory.
4. Paleontologist Louis Agassiz knew the fossil record better than any man alive.
"He recognized that the problem with Darwinism was not the survival of the fittest, but rather the arrival of the fittest. Agassiz knew, as did most all animal and plant breeders both then and today, that clear limits exist to variation and no known way exists to go beyond these limits in spite of 4,000 years of trying. .... all mutations known to us cannot even begin to produce the variety required for molecules to mankind evolution, but rather they create 'monstrosities, and the occurrence of these, under disturbing influences, are only additional evidence of the fixity of species. '" So saith Agassiz.
Louis Agassiz: Anti-Darwinist Harvard Paleontology Professor
a. Generally, this is where the first attack begins: Agassiz was deeply religious. But, if this is a reason to throw out his science expertise, it is the same basis for tossing an atheist-scientist's viewpoint.
While he was religious, historian Neal Gillespie writes that Agassiz "was second to no man in his opposition to sectarian religious interference with science."
Neal C. Gillespie, "Charles Darwin and the Problem of Creation," p. 51.
5. OK....let's support Darwin already!
Rather than attacking Agassiz's credibility...actually, it is unassailable....accept it, and point out that science itself has moved away from his viewpoint. In several threads, it was obvious that proponents of Darwinian evolution were stymied every time they were prompted to show fossils that documented the theory, they did everything they could to obfuscate.
6. But, even without evidence, Darwin's theory is, today, largely accepted.
The reason is a change in the philosophy of science.
First, many eminent scientists agreed with Darwin, that just because we haven't found the evidence doesn't mean it doesn't...or didn't exist. This was the position of Joseph Hooker, Thomas Huxley, Ernst Haeckel, Asa Gray and others.
The theory itself seemed just too eloquent to pass up.
'Logic,' rather than fossil proof, won the day over evidence.
7. The philosophical turn was this: by the late 19th century, whether based on the growing child's demand to 'let me do it myself,' or the Enlightenment's desire to replace God with science, "it increasingly excluded appeals to divine action or divine ideas as a way of explaining phenomena in the natural world....According to [methodological naturalism], ...all features of the natural world can be explained by material causes without recourses to purposive intelligence, mind, or conscious agency."
Stephen C, Meyer, "Darwin's Doubt," p. 19.
a. So, proponents wag their finger and lecture, one must accept this new iteration of science if one is willing to accept all the benefits it provides because it has 'searched out strictly material causes for previously mysterious features...' Ibid.
b.So, here we have the scientists' mantra: one cannot look anywhere but to material provenance. If we agree to that.....Darwin becomes our god.
We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, the geneticist Richard Lewontin remarked equably in The New York Review of Books, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories. We are to put up with sciences unsubstantiated just-so stories because, Lewontin explains, we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door!
So....that's why Darwin is ahead on points. There is no disputing the benefits that science has provided...and 'we don't need no stinkin' fossils!'
And based on this view, or definition of science......
...Darwin cannot be disputed!
