I find these attitudes scary

15 years ago

Yesterday the local Colorado Springs newspaper, the Gazette, printed this letter on the letters page. I find that the sentiments, the lack of research, the uncritical acceptance of "scientific" hogwash from non-scientific sources perfectly appalling.

Atheism’s a faith in evolution

Already we can see where this is going. Three nouns and you know it'll be a screed against biology and atheism.

In regard to the opinion expressed by Jo Ann Nieman, (“Use polling info wisely,”) it appears that Ms. Nieman doesn’t understand that atheism is indeed a faith in evolution. Evolution happened a long, long time ago. We don’t see it happening right now. And, it violates the laws of physics and common sense.

Whew. Where to start? First of all, references. Ms Neiman was talking about an article that appeared in the Gazette that seemed to play a little fast and loose with some stats, and pointed out that the acceptance of evolution is strongly correlated to people's educational achievement. She concludes that this shows "a case for more education, not for more Christianity." This letter seems to have incensed our writer and so off he goes: "Atheism is a faith in evolution." Not so, unless you want to redefine terms. Atheism is of course "a disbelief in the existence of a god or gods" according to the OED and nothing to do with evolution. Not a hard concept to grasp.

The next three sentences are complete rubbish as well. Evolution both happened in the past and is happening now and will in the future (and, yes, we can see it happening right now: just google "Superbug Hospitals" to scare yourself rigid about the effects of evolution happening today). I'm guessing the "violation of the laws of physics" is the old canard of "evolution doesn't work because of the Second Law of Thermodynamics" which has been shot down so much that it refuses to fly any more. And violation of common sense? Obviously the writer's common sense, because to me, evolution makes perfect sense.

We all see that anything that is left alone and not maintained will deteriorate.

What this has to do with anything I have no idea. Milk spoils, therefore evolution is false? Compost disproves evolution? Dunno.

Scientists have determined that in humans, each generation has at least 100 new DNA defects fixed in the population, drastically overwhelming the estimated slow rate of improvement given by the evolutionists. Besides that, there is no mechanism by which DNA can become more complex.

I have zero idea where he got this data that "each generation fixes 100 new DNA defects". Sorry, but it sounds utterly made up to me, or is based on some research that has been twisted from its original meaning. Let's see: your DNA is different than mine. Not by much, but it is different, otherwise we would be clones of each other. Are the differences of my DNA from yours defects? What about vice-versa? Even weirder, are the 6 billion different sets of human DNA currently being carried around by people in the world all defective from some perfect norm? Who has that perfect DNA? (No, don't go there.) Does the fact that my appendix (well, if I still had it) and yours being smaller than our ancestors' appendices mean that over thousands of years our DNAs have been eliminating this "defect"? After all, it must be a defect: I've been alive for 40 years without mine. And, puh-lease, "no mechanism by which DNA can become more complex" just means the writer knows nothing about evolutionary biology.

Instead, the cell has mechanisms in place to repair mutations and slow the loss of information. Natural selection does not provide new information.

Oh, great, now we get the "cannot create information" canard. First of all, although a cell has some ability to repair mutations, they happen all the time (estimates are upwards of 1 million per cell per day) . It is possible that the mutations overwhelm the cell's repair mechanisms and the cell could become cancerous. If the repair mechanisms fail in gamete producing cells, then the mutations could be transferred to the next generation (the first step in evolution, in fact).

I have no idea what he means by "the cell has mechanisms in place to [...] slow the loss of information". It's nonsense. The second sentence is equally nonsense: to what information does he refer? Is this yet again a redefinition, this time of the word "information"?

It is instead a creationist scheme which removes information from populations in particular environments.

No idea what this sentence (and it's a complete paragraph) means. Perhaps an over-zealous editor at the Gazette.

In the evolutionary scheme of things, the world and everything in it came about by random accident. In which case, the laws of physics or the world itself could suddenly change or even vanish. For atheists, there is no rational basis for science, logic, truth, or love. There is not even a logical basis to think that one’s memories of yesterday are even correct!

Groovy, now we have the "it's all random" argument. First of all the world, by which I assume he means the planet Earth, "came about" through various cosmological forces that have absolutely nothing to do with evolution. Zero. Zip. Nada. We had the Big Bang (about which we can make predictions and prove with experiments; you know, science), the Universe expanded, matter started condensing out, and billions of years later, the Sun formed, and the Earth and all the other planets and minor planets and Kuiper belt debris coalesced and formed through gravitational forces. Nary a sight of evolution. Instead, evolution is about random changes in biological systems (yes! got that bit right) with the added booster of natural selection to sort it all out (ah, he forgot about that, even after just mentioning it). What the next sentence is about, I have absolutely no idea. Nowhere do biologists or chemists or physicists or mathematicians say that because random events happen the world could disappear. (Unless this is some oblique criticism of quantum mechanics? No, it couldn't be. Could it?) The next sentence is pure unadulterated nonsense and just shows a deep fundamental misunderstanding about, well, everything really, but especially about what atheism is and what atheists think.

I really like the last sentence in that paragraph: very philosophical indeed. How can we individually know what we remember is correct, or how we perceive the world is real? Deep epistemology to the fore, dude. Or at least some kind of Kantian idealism.

Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould wrote: “We fancy ourselves as the only true students of life’s history, yet to preserve our favored account of evolution by natural selection we view our data as so bad that we never see the very process we profess to study.”

Yay! Now we have the quote-mine. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this oratorical technique, it means finding a quote from someone who would ordinarily be against your position that reads (once stripped of context) as if they support it. Theatres do this every now and then: if a critic says "It was sheer brilliance to chain a bunch of incapable actors to a deplorable script, but the two wrongs don't make a right", the theatre would have boards printed with "Sheer Brilliance" and placed outside.

So what did Stephen Jay Gould actually say? Ready?

The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils. Yet Darwin was so wedded to gradualism that he wagered his entire theory on a denial of this literal record:

The geological record is extremely imperfect and this fact will to a large extent explain why we do not find interminable varieties, connecting together all the extinct and existing forms of life by the finest graduated steps. He who rejects these views on the nature of the geological record, will rightly reject my whole theory.

Darwin's argument still persists as the favored escape of most paleontologists from the embarrassment of a record that seems to show so little of evolution. In exposing its cultural and methodological roots, I wish in no way to impugn the potential validity of gradualism (for all general views have similar roots). I only wish to point out that it is never "seen" in the rocks.

Paleontologists have paid an exorbitant price for Darwin's argument. We fancy ourselves as the only true students of life's history, yet to preserve our favored account of evolution by natural selection we view our data as so bad that we never see the very process we profess to study.

For several years, Niles Eldredge of the American Museum of Natural History and I have been advocating a resolution to this uncomfortable paradox. We believe that Huxley was right in his warning. The modern theory of evolution does not require gradual change. In fact, the operation of Darwinian processes should yield exactly what we see in the fossil record.

Gould, S. J. 1977. "Evolution's Erratic Pace" in Natural History 86(5):12-16.

In other words, this is one of Gould's arguments for punctuated equilibria as a methodology for evolution rather than gradualism. He's not denying evolution at all, he's making the point that the lack of transitional fossils indicate real gaps. It's not gradual evolution, but evolution by leaps and bounds. We all agree that evolution is a fact, now let's argue about how it happened. That's all. In other words, science: hypothesize, experiment, refine. (For more information about what Gould really said, see this article by him: Evolution as Fact and Theory.)

Only in the Christian world view is there a logical basis for these things, seeing how we have an ultimate authority who is logical, truthful, loving, and consistent.

I'm not going there. Sorry.

Thus, Christians have a basis for logic and science. Hence, a Christian scientist, such as Dr. Raymond Damadian, could discover a technique and invent an apparatus (patented in 1974) for magnetic resonance imaging of the human body.

This has absolutely nothing to do with anything. It's a completely illogical corollary, drivel. I'm sure the writer would be refuting his own argument if I put it to him that algebra could only be invented by the Islamic mathematician Muhammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī. But, in other news, Dr. Damadian is a creationist, which of course is why the writer brings up his name: "See, even a creationist does real science!"

In conclusion, it would be the evolutionists that would be living in the dark ages, not Christians who are following the Biblical mandate to subdue the world.

I find that word "subdue" absolutely chilling, especially after a letter that exhibits such a level of misunderstanding, miscomprehension, lack of learning (or desire to learn), and utter ignorance.

J. Dale Holt, Colorado Springs

You're the man, Dale.

As an epilogue, consider this statement by Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal:

Most educated people are aware that we are the outcome of nearly 4 billion years of Darwinian selection, but many tend to think that humans are somehow the culmination. Our sun, however, is less than halfway through its lifespan. It will not be humans who watch the sun’s demise, 6 billion years from now. Any creatures that then exist will be as different from us as we are from bacteria or amoebae.

Personally, I find this thought exhilarating. I dare say J. Dale Holt will refute it and all science that led to it.