(Hat tip to Sean and Will for their conversation on Facebook that inspired this article.) The evangelists for evolution make a lot of strange and contradictory statements. I am routinely ridiculed and characterized as some sort of anti-Darwinian nutcase who doesn't understand the basic concepts of evolution theory because I tend to paraphrase what the "experts" have written and said with dripping sarcasm. One of my more vocal critics was asked his opinion about this six-minute video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyTcINLKq4c Prosanta Chakrabarty Sean replied, That's the kind of explanation I would have given. I only have a couple of provisos:(1) I would disagree that there are lots of <<theories>> of evolution. I would say there was one overarching theory with lots of associated hypotheses.(2) I'd disagree that birds are reptiles. I think reptiles are a paraphyletic group, which excludes aves. Other than that, I think it was a good overall summary. Hmmm. Was that video really a good summary? Professor Chakrabarty began his speech with a joke formed as a loaded question frequently attributed to creationists: "If we evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?" And the punchline? "Well, because we're not monkeys. We're fish." The really funny thing was Chakrabarty wasn't joking. According to the theory of evolution, humans are directly related to fish primarily by descent with modification via sexual reproduction, by isolation of a breeding population, over long periods of time. It seemed to me that Professor Chakrabarty was making a number of … [Read more...]
A blind rock maker?
In his 1802 book titled Natural Theology, or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity Collected from the Appearance of Nature, Anglican Priest and philosopher William Paley made the classic teleological "argument from design" in his famous Watchmaker analogy, which says: In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone, and asked how that stone came to be there; I might possibly answer that, for anything I knew to the contrary, it has lain there forever. Nor would it perhaps be very easy to show the absurdity of this answer. But suppose I have found a watch upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place; I should hardly think of the answer, which I had before given, that for anything I knew, the watch might have always been there.... The watch must have had a maker: that there must have existed, at some time, and that some place or other, and artificer or artificers, who formed it for the purpose which we find it actually to answer; who comprehended its construction and designed its use.... Every indication of contrivance, every manifestation of design, which existed in the watch, exists in the works of nature; with the difference, on the side of nature, of being greater or more, and that in a degree which exceeds all computation. Granted, rebuttals have been attempted in response to Paley’s argument for Intelligent Design, but the question is: can these counterarguments actually challenge a modernized version of Paley's Watchmaker with any real success? It seems to me that all of these counterarguments … [Read more...]
