An article from Evolution News that takes a statement from an evolutionist who supports common descent, and then then refutes it point by point.
Here’s the case for common descent:
UCA is now supported by a wealth of evidence from many independent sources, including: (1) the agreement between phylogeny and biogeography; (2) the correspondence between phylogeny and the palaeontological record; (3) the existence of numerous predicted transitional fossils; (4) the hierarchical classification of morphological characteristics; (5) the marked similarities of biological structures with different functions (that is, homologies); and (6) the congruence of morphological and molecular phylogenies.
(Douglas L. Theobald, “A formal test of the theory of universal common ancestry,” Nature, Vol. 465:219-222 (May 13, 2010).)
And here’s a response to each of those points from the Evolution News post:
(1) Phylogeny and biogeography don’t always agree.
(2) Phylogeny and paleontology don’t always agree.
(3) Transitional fossils are often missing (or the “predicted” transitional fossils fall apart on closer inspection).
(4) Hierarchical classifications often fail.
(5) “Homologous” structures often have different developmental pathways or different structures often have “homologous” developmental pathways.
(6) Morphological and molecular phylogenies are often incongruent.
Before I read this post, I only knew about 3, 4, 5 and 6.
A related podcast
Casey Luskin did a good podcast explaining a problem with two kinds of evidence commonly used to argue for common ancestry.
Details:
On this episode of ID the Future, Casey Luskin takes a keen-eyed look at Darwin’s tree of life and finds that common descent, far from being confirmed by the data, is actually contradicted by it, as New Scientist pointed out in their cover story, “Why Darwin was wrong about the tree of life.”
Listen in to learn how the data is challenging Darwinist assumptions, and check out “A Primer on the Tree of Life” for more information.
The paper linked above seems to be exactly what he read out loud in the podcast.
Here is one section from the paper that summarizes everything:
One authoritative review paper by Darwinian leaders in this field stated, “As morphologists with high hopes of molecular systematics, we end this survey with our hopes dampened. Congruence between molecular phylogenies is as elusive as it is in morphology and as it is between molecules and morphology.”
Another set of pro-evolution experts wrote, “That molecular evidence typically squares with morphological patterns is a view held by many biologists, but interestingly, by relatively few systematists. Most of the latter know that the two lines of evidence may often be incongruent.“
The two methods of determining ancestry are “often incongruent”. What I am looking for in order to be convinced of common ancestry is substantial agreement between morphological phylogenies and molecular phylogenies. I don’t see that, so I am still skeptical of common ancestry. Especially with all the examples of convergence that I keep finding out about.
Sherlock Holmes and John Watson: let’s take a look at the facts
What should we make of theistic evolutionists telling us that you can believe in God, while still knowing that matter, law and chance fully explain the development of all of biological life?
Consider this quotation from Phillip E. Johnson.
Quote:
The National Academy’s way of dealing with the religious implications of evolution is akin to the two-platoon system in American football. When the leading figures of evolutionary science feel free to say what they really believe, writers such as Edward O. Wilson, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Carl Sagan, Steven Pinker, Stephen Jay Gould, Richard Lewontin and others state the “God is dead” thesis aggressively, invoking the authority of science to silence any theistic protest. That is the offensive platoon, and the National Academy never raises any objection to its promoting this worldview.
At other times, however, the scientific elite has to protect the teaching of the “fact of evolution” from objections by religious conservatives who know what the offensive platoon is saying and who argue that the science educators are insinuating a worldview that goes far beyond the data. When the objectors are too numerous or influential to be ignored, the defensive platoon takes the field. That is when we read those spin-doctored reassurances saying that many scientists are religious (in some sense), that science does not claim to have proved that God does not exist (but merely that he does not affect the natural world), and that science and religion are separate realms which should never be mixed (unless it is the materialists who are doing the mixing). Once the defensive platoon has done its job it leaves the field, and the offensive platoon goes right back to telling the public that science has shown that “God” is permanently out of business.
(Phillip E. Johnson: “The Wedge of Truth”, IVP 2000, pp. 88-89).
So what naturalistic scientists believe is that God didn’t do anything to create the diversity of life – that nature does all of its own creating without God. In fact, it doesn’t matter if the best naturalistic explanation is improbable or implausible – naturalists must bitterly cling to materialistic explanations of natural phenomena. Any doubts about the efficacy of naturalistic mechanisms get met by “theistic evolutionists” – scientists who think that science shows that God didn’t do anything in the history of life.
When it comes to discussing origins, you have to be very careful with theistic evolutionists. The one question they want to avoid is whether science, done in the ordinary naturalistic way, can discover evidence of intelligent agency in the history of the development of life. And that’s why you have to ask them that question first. “Is there any scientific evidence that intelligent causes were active during the history of the development of life on this planet?” Their answer to that is the same as atheists, namely: “there is no scientific evidence that intelligent causes are responsible for the effects we see in the history of life on Earth”. Theistic evolutionists and atheists agree on that: as far as pure scientific evidence is concerned, nature can do its own creating without any intelligence writing genetic code or engineering animal body plans.
For his part, [Ken] Miller, a biologist, has no qualms about telling us what God would do: “And in Catholicism, he said, God wouldn’t micromanage that way. ‘Surely he can set things up without having to violate his own laws.'”
I am unaware of any tenet of Catholic theology that requires God not to micromanage. It is, however, a tenet of deism.
Got that? What really happened is that God didn’t do anything. How does he know that? From the science? No. Because he assumes naturalism. Oh, it’s true that he says that God is lurking somewhere behind the material processes that created life. But God’s agency is undetectable by the methods of science. And he is hoping that you will accept his subjective pious God-talk as proof that a fundamentally atheistic reality is somehow reconcilable with a robust conception of theism.
More from Richards:
Then we get Stephen Barr offering his private definition of “chance.”
It is possible to believe simultaneously in a world that is shaped by chance and one following a divine plan. “God is in charge and there’s a lot of accident,” said Barr, also a Catholic. “It’s all part of a plan. . . . God may have known where every molecule was going to move.”
What does Barr really believe? He believes that what science shows is that nature created life without any interference by an intelligent agent. Barr then offers believers his subjective pious God-talk to reassure them that evolution is compatible with religion. He has a personal belief – NOT BASED ON SCIENCE – that the material processes that created all of life are “all part of a plan”. He cannot demonstrate that from science – it’s his faith commitment. And more speculations: “God may have known…”. He can’t demonstrate that God did know anything from science. He is just offering a personal opinion about what God “could have” done. The purpose of these subjective opinions is to appease those who ask questions about what natural mechanisms can really create. Can natural causes really account for the development of functional proteins? Never mind that – look at my shiny spiritual-sounding testimony!
That’s theistic evolution. What really happened is that no intelligent causes are needed to explain life. What they say is “God could” and “God might” and “I pray” and “I attend this church” and “I received a Christian award” and “I sing praise hymns in church”. None of these religious opinions and speculations are relevant to the science – they are just opinions, speculations and biographical trivia. Atheists and theistic evolutionists agree on what science shows about the diversity of life – intelligent causes didn’t do anything.
Front-loading?
One of the ways that theistic evolutionists try to affirm design is by insisting that the design is “front-loaded”. The design for all the information and body plans is somehow embedded in matter.
Here is Stephen C. Meyer to assess that:
It’s very important to understand that there is no scientific evidence for design (information) being front-loaded. So although the theistic evolutionists are talking about design, it’s still in the realm of faith – not detectable to scientific investigation. And as Dr. Meyer explained, it doesn’t work to explain design anyway.
I attended a Wheaton College philosophy conference where Dr. Michael Murray read a paper advocating for this front-loaded view of design. I raised my hand to ask him a question, “hey, philosophy guy, did God front-load the information in that paper you’re reading, or did you write it yourself?” But the philosophy moderators must have known that I was an engineer, and would talk sense into him, because they never called on me. However, I did e-mail him later and asked him if he had any evidence for this front-loading theory, and couldn’t God write sequence information in time the same way he had sequenced information in his essay. He replied and said that front-loading was more emotionally satisfying for him. That’s philosophy, I guess. Thank goodness an engineer wrote his e-mail program so that he could at least come clean about his silly view.
The quickest way to disarm a theistic evolutionist is to ask them for a naturalistic explanation of the origin of life. And for a naturalistic explanation of the Cambrian explosion. And so on. Focus on the science – don’t let them turn the conversation to their personal beliefs, or to the Bible, or to religion. No one cares about the psychology of the theistic evolutionist. We only care what science can show.
I saved a copy of the post and the comments. Let’s look at some of the comments.
Comments by editors of the journal
Michael Sears:
The article should be retracted and the handling editor should be dismissed. As an Editor for this journal, I am appalled.
Ricard Sol:
I think that pretending to defend a creationist argument (non-science) in a science journal raises serious doubts about the whole enterprise. The paper should be retracted. As a PLOS ONE editor I believe accepting this situation would seriously damage our credibility.
Dante Chialvo:
[…]I am ashamed that the journal staff, the editor responsable for the paper, the reviewers, all ignored this more than obvious red flag resulting on a creationist argument embedded on a scientific paper. I will consider resigning unless exemplary actions are taken by Plos.
Angel Sánchez:
As I have said in a separate post, I will resign as an editor of PLOS ONE if this paper is not retracted immediately. PLOS ONE is a scientific journal and I don’t want to have anything to do, not even my name related to a journal tha publishes about superstition and supernatural entities. I will stop editing and I will stop submitting, and I’ll recommend everybody never to submit again to PLOS ONE. I hope we don’t have to go there.
So, you can see that science – as the naturalists conduct it – is not really the search for truth, no holds barred. It’s the attempt to explain nature without reference to a Creator and Designer. Whatever the experiments show must conform to a philosophical assumption (a religion), called naturalism. And the religion of naturalism determines what can and cannot be accepted as science. You can see the same principle at work in the denial of the Big Bang cosmology despite evidence such as the cosmic microwave background radiation, the light element abundances, and the redshifting of light from distant galaxies. Science has shown we live in a created universe that began about 13.7 billion years ago, but here we have atheists in denial of science sitting in positions of power deriding the Creator who has been revealed by experimental science. That’s the power of the naturalistic dogma. And it turns out that the most powerful argument for Darwinian evolution is this: “believe it, or I’ll have you fired, and ruin your career”. This is how Darwinism propagates from old to young – through coercion, and not through real science.
Other comments
Zach Throckmorton:
As others have noted, utilization of an intelligent design creationism framework for explaining human anatomy is not acceptable for a scientific journal.
Jorge Soberon:
I find the use of religious language in a scietific paper totally unacceptable. I will be watching this paper closely, and distributing it to colleagues. If PLOS ONE does not do something about it, like asking the authors to retratct the paper, or at the very least publishing an explanation, I will stop reviewing papers for PLOS ONE. I do hope the editors of PLOS ONE realize what a huge mistake was to accept publication of a paper with this wording. It says a lot about the care with which a paper is edited.
Adam Hartstone-Rose:
This article proves that there is something SERIOUSLY wrong with the journal. If the paper isn’t retracted, my students, collaborators and I will have no choice but to refrain from submitting to this once respectable journal. I’m embarrassed for you and embarrassed that some of my proudest papers are in your journal.
[…]This requires a ballistic reaction, not a considered “looking into” the problem!
Enrico Petretto:
This is outrageous. If PLOS ONE does not do something about it, i.e., ask the authors to retract the paper, and in any case, if the paper isn’t retracted, my students, collaborators and I will have no choice but to refrain from considering (i..e, reading, reviewing and citing) papers published in PLOS ONE.
Luigi Maiorano:
Quote totally!! outrageous is the minimum! I published 3 of my papers in PlosOne, but I will never do it again. I’m actually telling all my students and colleagues to boycott the journal and never consider it again!
Jean-Michel Heraud:
I have no knowledge to judge this article…
[…]I would recommend to the editor of the journal to exclude definitely the two reviewers that have accepted this manuscript.
Oliver Rauhut:
As noted by many comments below, this is not a matter of inappropriate wording! This rather seems to be a (successfull) attempt to place an intelligent design argument in a (so far) respected scientific journal. Thus, the only solution is the immediate retraction of this paper! Unless this step has been done, my workgroup and me will refrain from publishing further papers in PLoS!
Harry Noyes:
Changing Creator to Nature will not solve the problem since it still implies a fundamental misunderstanding of evolution. That is there is no design process, no outcome is foreseen. Anything that works better tends to have a selective advantage but that is not a product of design it is a product of selection working on random events. The paper clearly needs a substantive rewrite quite apart from the concerns raised about the significance of the results raised by other comments.
Carl Schmidt:
A more important issue is the review process that allowed such nonsense as “Creator” to appear in a journal purportedly devoted to science.
This would seem to bear out a remark by Chinese paleontologist J.Y. Chen, recounted in Darwin’s Doubt, “In China we can criticize Darwin, but not the government; in America, you can criticize the government, but not Darwin.”
So what’s really behind all this fascism?
Consider this quote from famous population geneticist (and Darwinian fundamentalist) Richard Lewontin. And note that he equates science with his chosen religion of naturalism, he doesn’t accept science in the traditional sense of the word, where there is no metaphysical baggage.
He says:
Our willingness to accept scientific [i.e. – naturalistic] claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science [i.e. – naturalism] and the supernatural. We take the side of science [i.e. – naturalism] in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific [i.e. – naturalistic] community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science [i.e. – naturalism] somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated.Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.
“Billions and Billions of Demons” by Richard Lewtontin. (Link)
“A priori” means before seeing the facts, before seeing the evidence.
And what is behind the choice of naturalism as the preferred religion? Consider this quote from atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel.
He says this:
“In speaking of the fear of religion, I don’t mean to refer to the entirely reasonable hostility toward certain established religions and religious institutions, in virtue of their objectionable moral doctrines, social policies, and political influence. Nor am I referring to the association of many religious beliefs with superstition and the acceptance of evident empirical falsehoods. I am talking about something much deeper–namely, the fear of religion itself. I speak from experience, being strongly subject to this fear myself: I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers.
I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and, naturally, hope that I’m right in my belief. It’s that I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that.”
(”The Last Word” by Thomas Nagel, Oxford University Press: 1997)
The days of Isaac Newton are long gone, and another Newton will not emerge while the Naturalistic Church is in power. And it’s a taxpayer-funded church, too. Think about that next time you vote for bigger or smaller government.
WINTERY KNIGHT 