Written by: Christopher Sernaque
QUESTION:
Art Maven
00:00:00 "Students are blindsided by the term evolution..." Nope. Really? They can't just look it up if they don't already know what this common term means? That sounds silly to me.
00:00:05 "...which is often equated with the word "science"..." The theory of evolution is a part of science, just like the theory of gravity, the laws of physics and the scientific method.
00:00:30 "...the key to resolving the creation vs evolution controversy." Nope. There is no controversy. Darwin's theory is accepted by huge numbers of people worldwide and has been for decades. The only people who have an issue are so-called "biblical literalists", including creationists, whose strange faith forces them to worship a book rather than the reality the book describes. Who cares what they think? They're weird.
00:02:04 "[evolution and science] are separate and distinct..." Nope. The theory of evolution is a product of the scientific method, just lik the theories of gravity and heliocentrism. Your statement makes no sense...it's like saying that apples and orchards are separate and distinct. 00:02:16 "Evolution is the naturalistic explanation for the origin of life..." Nope. Darwin's theory says nothing about the origin of life, and neither does any other scientific theory. There are a few hypotheses (panspermia, abiogenesis, etc), but these are more like thought experiments, and do not rise to the level of theory. You would know this already if you'd bothered to actually read up on the subject, which you clearly have not.
00:02:27 "...single common ancestor which arose...through abiogenesis..." Nope. Abiogenesis is a hypothesis at most and is not a part of Darwin's theory.
00:03:29 "Evolution is not essential for understanding biology..." Nope. Evolution is widely considered to be the foundation of modern biology, and nothing in biology makes any sense without the frame work of evolution. Darwin's theory provides a very useful model for understanding how natural pressures influence the biology of living organisms. Any educated 12th grader could tell you this stuff, man.
00:04:02 "...creationary (sic) biologist..." Nope. There is no such thing. Real biologists work within the framework of the scientific method, which creationists *must*0 reject by definition. Barely four minutes in, and all you've shown so far is a near-total ignorance of science in general and Darwin's theory in particular. Not impressive.
00:04:23 "...supernatural or spiritual explanations are excluded or discounted..." Yep. You got one right; good for you. Science cannot accept or work with supernatural elements, because such things are outside the purview of science. Science can only work on empirical physical evidence in the physical world. You can't put God in a test tube, meaning that there's no way to quantify God or any other supernatural entity. And so science must remain mute on such subjects. If only creationists would do the same!
00:06:04: "...not a conflict between religion and science, but a conflict of two religious ideas..." Nope. Neither science in the round nor any of its aspects (theories, etc) qualify as "religious" in any way. Religions all require faith and belief; science specifically abjures those qualities. Religious dogmas such as so-called "biblical literacy" and its offspring, the bizarre dogma of creationism, cannot be questioned or examined, or even, since they have no methodology, investigated in any sense. They are also assumed to be transcendentally true, and cannot be doubted, that being heresy, nor dismissed, that being blasphemy. Scientific theories can be investigated and tested by anybody, and can even be dismissed if the evidence supports it. Science and creationism are two entirely different and opposed models of reality, and cannot be usefully compared.
00:06:10 [Michael Ruse quote] Nope. As always, the dishonest creationist fails to include the following line from the Ruse quote: "I am an ardent evolutionist and an ex-Christian...." Almost like you don't want your audience to know that little tidbit. Funny, that, eh? Well, you've shown that you don't know about science and don't care about the truth, and I have a busy day today, so I see no reason to listen to any more of this garbage. Art Maven OUT.
REPONSE:
Dear Art Maven,
Thank you for your comment. You did not take the time to address all of the arguments in the video and you chose not to read the additional material that was provided in the description. Thus, your various critiques fail on multiple levels.
The first two-minute markers that you listed do not correspond with the text that you provided. If you are going to provide minute markers, at least take the time to make sure that the text you record is an accurate representation at what was at each minute marker. Nonetheless, I will respond to your first two statements.
You quoted me as saying, “Students are blindsided by the term, “evolution.” You made the claim that that statement was silly. Simply describing something as being quote on quote “silly” does not actually make it so. There are professors who do in fact commit the fallacy of equivocation. The term evolution is very easy to look up, and the word has multiple meanings. It can simply mean change over time in general. No creationist denies that the universe or world changes. The term evolution can also mean that organisms demonstrate adaptive capacity. No creationist denies this. In fact, the idea of natural selection was first described by a creationist by the name of Edward Blyth, who wrote before Darwin. Furthermore, the Bible affirms the reality that selection pressures can produce changes in organisms. (Genesis 30:32, 41-42)
Notwithstanding, as Dr. Donald Batten aptly stated, “The survival of the fittest does not explain the arrival of the fittest.” Neither of those definitions of the term evolution under dispute by creationists or intelligent design advocates. The definition of evolution that is under dispute, as I clearly stated in the video, is the notion that all living organisms, via undirected mechanisms, share a common ancestor that in turn came about from inorganic precursors. Professor David Hillel Gelernter, a writer, artist professor of computer science at Yale University, recently renounced this definition of evolution and did so for purely evidence-based reasons. Thus, it is not so “silly” that the weaknesses of the evolutionary theory be explored. (See: Kabbany, J., Famed Yale computer science professor quits believing Darwin’s theories. thecollegefix.com/famed-yale-computer-science-professor-quits-believing-darwins-theories, 30 July 2019.)
You quote me as saying, “which is often equated with the word “science.” As with the first quote, you did not put the correct minute markers. Let us look at your objection:
Objection: “The theory of evolution is a part of science, just like the theory of gravity, the laws of physics, and the scientific method.”
Response: Your claim is unsubstantiated; however, I will humor it. The theory of evolution, like any other theory, seeks to provide an explanation of a phenomenon. There is nothing wrong with presenting competing explanations for the same data. However, at this point, the theory of evolution has hindered scientific progress. Dr. Marc Kirschner, chair of the Department of Systems Biology, Harvard Medical School stated, “In fact, over the last 100 years, almost all of biology has proceeded independent of evolution, except evolutionary biology itself. Molecular biology, biochemistry, physiology, have not taken evolution into account at all.” (As quoted in the Boston Globe, 23 October 2005.)
Seconding the previous quotation, Dr. Phillip Skell wrote, “It is our knowledge of how these organisms actually operate, not speculations about how they may have arisen millions of years ago, that is essential to doctors, veterinarians, farmers….” (Skell, P.S., The Dangers Of Overselling Evolution; Focusing on Darwin and his theory doesn’t further scientific progress, Forbes magazine, 23 Feb 2009; http://www.forbes.com/2009/02/23/evolution-creation-debate-biology-opinions-contributors_darwin.html ) Finally, even Jerry Coyne, himself an evolutionist admitted, “If truth be told, evolution hasn’t yielded many practical or commercial benefits.” (Jerry Coyne, “Selling Darwin,” Nature 442, 983-984(31 August 2006)
I would recommend reading Dr. Sarfati’s article on the relationship between science and the theory of evolution. Follow the link here: https://creation.com/science-creation-and-evolutionism-refutation-of-nas
Objection: “There is no controversy. Darwin’s theory is accepted by huge numbers of people worldwide and has been for decades. The only people who have an issue are so-called “biblical literalists”, including creationists, whose strange faith forces them to worship a book rather than the reality the book describes. Who cares what they think? They’re weird.”
Response: There is controversy and denying it by claiming otherwise does not make it go away. Sweeping things under the rug is not a good policy to live by in your practical life, and neither is it an appropriate way to conduct scientific research. There are thousands of scientists who take objection to the theory of evolution. While it is true that Young-Earth Creationists take objection to the theory of evolution, there are old-earth creationists, intelligent design advocates, and even secular Darwin dissenters, like Professor Gelernter who critique the theory of evolution. Thus, your statement is a patently false lie. There are many resources that one could list that would show that your statement is baseless. “In Six Days” and “On the Seventh-Day” by John Ashton are a series of interviews of scientists who hold to a young-earth position. “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” by Ben Stein and “Revolutionary” by the Discovery Institute are documentaries that feature scientists who advocate the intelligent design position. There are numerous scientists who are skeptical of the theory of evolution. Please see the following resources:
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Furthermore, with regards to the scientific consensus, Dr. Michael Crichton of Harvard University said, “I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had. Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus. There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period.” (Crichton, Michael, Aliens cause Global Warming, 17 January 2003 speech at the California Institute of Technology (http://s8int.com/crichton.html or http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB122603134258207975 or http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Publications/PDF_Papers/Crichton2003.pdf)
According to Dr. Donald Batten, “History is replete with examples of ‘consensus science’ that later proved to be dead wrong. Furthermore, when we examine the way in which ‘consensus’ is achieved on evolution, we can see that it is no measure of truth.”
Finally, you the ad hominem fallacy. Calling the proponent of a viewpoint opposing yours “weird” is an indication that you cannot defend your own position adeptly. As Thomas Jefferson said, “Resort is had to ridicule only when reason is against us."
Objection: “Nope. The theory of evolution is a product of the scientific method, just (sic) the theories of gravity and heliocentrism. Your statement makes no sense…it’s like saying that apples and orchards are separate and distinct.”
Response: This response fails on multiple levels. Firstly, your argument from analogy does not even work. Apples are not orchards and orchards are not apples. Those two items are indeed separate and distinct. However, you might be trying to say that the theory of evolution, like an apple tree, is planted within the orchard of science. No, it is not. The idea that all living organisms share a common ancestor and arose undirected from inorganic precursors has not been verified by science. The common plea, “evolution is a theory just like gravity” is irrelevant. Yes, both the theory of evolution and gravity are, in fact, theories. The difference between the two is that the evolutionary theory, as described earlier in this response, remains an inviable conjecture as there are numerous problems with the theory as presented in the Genesis Under a Microscope series and by other scientific literature. I would recommend that you read this article by Casey Luskin, Is “Evolution” a “Theory” or “Fact” or Is This Just a Trivial Game of Semantics?” Follow the link here: https://www.discovery.org/a/6401/
Objection: “Darwin’s theory says nothing about the origin of life.”
Response: That is a lie or statement made out of ignorance. Fellow evolutionists Richard Dawkins, P.Z. Myers, and Nick Matzke and the University of California Berkeley all disagree with you. Those three scientists and the university just mentioned all teach that the origin of life is apart of the evolutionary theory.
(http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evosite/evo101/IIE2aOriginoflife.shtml (accessed 17 October 2013). (Myers, P.Z., 15 misconceptions about evolution, 20 February 2008, scienceblogs.com; Matzke, N., What critics of neo-creationists get wrong: a reply to Gordy Slack, pandasthumb.org. Dawkins tries to deal with the origin of life in his book The Greatest Show on Earth, where he claims to ‘prove evolution’.)
Objection: Abiogenesis is a hypothesis at most and is not a part of Darwin’s theory.
Response: Evolutionists believe that all living things came from a single cell, or some form of first life, which in turn came from a primordial soup. The origin of life question is a question that evolutionists must tackle. To continue to dodge the question is senseless. To quote Dr. Batten again, “The origin of life and the origin of new DNA programming are akin to getting water to flow uphill; natural processes head in the wrong direction for them to create a coded information processing system as well as all the actual coded instructions.”
Objection: “Nope. Evolution is widely considered to be the foundation of modern biology, and nothing in biology makes any sense without the framework of evolution. Darwin’s theory provides a very useful model for understanding how natural pressures influence the biology of living organisms. Any educated 12th grader could tell you this stuff, man.”
Response: This response is incorrect on numerous levels as well. Firstly, you again make a consensus argument for the theory of evolution. Once again, as Dr. Crichton said, “There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period.” Secondly, considered to be the foundation of modern biology by whom? Evolutionists? The fact that evolutionists believe in evolution does not constitute proof or evidence for evolution. There were biologists before Darwin, see the links that I provided above, and there will be biologists long after the Darwinian theory is abandoned. Thirdly, as provided in the links above, there are plenty of biologists, like marine biologist Dr. Robert Carter, who reject the theory of evolution and have no problem practicing science or publishing scientific papers in peer-reviewed journals. Thirdly, you again are committing the fallacy of equivocation by equating the idea of “common descent” with “natural selection.”
As Dr. John Sanford pointed out, “Natural Selection is simply differential reproduction.” In some living systems, some organisms reproduce more than others, and that might even be because of some survival advantage that they have accrued. The fact of natural selection was established before Darwin and was advocated by Christian scientists, such as Edward Blyth, as mentioned earlier. What Darwin did is that he suggested that natural selection had no limits, in spite of the fact that the limits to change are set by the amount of information that originally present in the genome from which to select. Claiming that Darwinian evolution has nothing to do with the origin of life is preposterous as Darwin, though reluctant to tackle the issue head-on, “favored the possibility that life could appear by natural processes from simple inorganic compounds.” (Peretó, Juli, et al. “Charles Darwin and the Origin of Life.” Origins of Life and Evolution of the the Journal of the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life, Springer Netherlands, Oct. 2009, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2745620/ .) Thus, your claim that Darwin did not attempt to address the origin of life issue is patently false. Finally, your overall sarcastic tone is unmerited as your points have numerous problems. You again committed the ad hominem fallacy by suggesting that I am uneducated. I am not uneducated.
Objection: “Nope. There is no such thing. (as a creationary biologist) Real biologists must work within the framework of the scientific method, which creationists *must* 0 (sic) reject by definition.
Response: This is complete errant nonsense. You have commited the “no true Scotsman fallacy.” Creationists, long before Darwin, and until this very day make valuable contributions to scientific enterprise. Please take a look at the material in one of my previous responses to you. Each of those links proves that there are numerous intelligent scientists who reject the Darwinian theory and shows how many of the founders of modern science, like Sir Isaac Newton, Maxwell, Faraday, Kepler etc. all believed in God and intelligent design. Your claim that creationists reject the scientific method is nonsense as the Biblical worldwide provides the basis for our uniform and repeated experience in nature. Laws of logic and the scientific enterprise are inconsistent with an atheistic materialistic evolutionary worldview. Please see the following article and the first episode of Genesis Under a Microscope:
Article: https://www.christjesusministriesllc.com/post/the-bible-is-the-foundation-for-science Episode One: https://youtu.be/H8CbskKV4O4
Objection: “Barely four minutes in, and all you’ve shown so far is a near-total ignorance of science in general and Darwin’s theory in particular. Not impressive.”
Response: Sadly, you are the one who is completely ignorant of the history and philosophy of science. I recommend reading the book, “Signature in the Cell” by Dr. Steven Meyer. It outlines several testable predictions of intelligent design and demonstrates how intelligent design is a viable scientific theory. Another book that I would recommend is “Replacing Darwin” by Dr. Nathaniel Jeanson. This book goes into how testable predictions related to the mitochondrion can be made using the scriptural record. You missed the very first point of the video. The theory, or definition of evolution, that is under dispute is the theory of common descent of common ancestry. All throughout your tirade you continued to equivocate the idea of natural selection, a concept first advocated by a Bible-believing scientist, with the idea of common ancestry. The fact that you continue to resort to lies, misrepresentations of creationist positions, and logical fallacies is not impressive.
Objection: “Science cannot accept or work with supernatural elements, because such things are outside the purview of science.”
Response: Stop personifying science. The vast majority of the founders of modern science would completely disagree with you. Furthermore, as I have stated in this comment, in the video, and throughout the series, science is not naturalism. Stop equating the two as if they are the same. There is no way to reduce human rationality to non-rational causes, and physical causes are non-rational causes, therefore human rationality is not reducible to physical causation, and so there must be more to reality than the products of physical causation. In an evolutionary materialistic world view, our brains could only ever produce beneficial behaviors, not true beliefs, so that we couldn’t trust any of the beliefs formed by our brains, including the belief in materialistic evolution, which means materialistic evolution is self-referentially incoherent—to assert it is to provide reason to doubt it.
Objection: “Nope. Neither science in the round (sic) no any of its aspects (theories, etc.) qualify as “religious” in any way. Religions all require faith and belief; science specifically abjures those qualities…”
Response: Throughout your comment you have repeated gone out of your way to misrepresent either what I stated in the video or what Creationists/Intelligent Design advocates believe. Here is another prime example. I believe in the scientific method and so does every other creationist/ID advocate. At this minute marker, I was talking about the religious/philosophical worldview of naturalism, not the scientific method. Either you were not paying attention, or you are deliberately mispresenting what I said, in which case you are a liar.
Objection: “Nope. As always, the dishonest creationists fails to include the following line from the Ruse quote: “I am an ardent evolutionist and ex-Christian.”
Response: You seem to suggest that I would be afraid if my audience found out that Michael Ruse is an evolutionist. If that is the case, then why did I say, “In fact, according to evolutionary zoologist Michael Ruse, “Evolution is a religion. This was true of evolution in the beginning, and it is true of evolution still today.” I have no problem with my audience knowing that Ruse is an evolutionist. If you were paying attention, or not deliberately misrepresenting what I said, then you would have realized that. The fact that you portrayed me as not stating that Ruse was an evolutionist when I clearly did indicate that your statements are dishonest.
Objection: “Well, you’ve shown that you don’t know about science and don’t care about the truth, and I have a busy day today, so I see no reason to listen to any more of this garbage. Art Maven OUT.”
Response: Art Maven, you have shown that you have no appreciation for the Christian heritage of science and that you do not care about accurately stating your opposing parties’ positions. Please do not comment on the videos if you will not even honestly address their content.
Cheers,
Christopher Sernaque (Dip Psy, Dip ForSci)
