Posted by
Rob on Sunday, October 26, 2008 4:28:47 PM
Moving the comments from the past blog here, so as to write a more lengthy comment.
Based on what I have read, the thesis of Expelled was not that
intelligent design proponents are "denounced" by people exercising
their First Amendment rights, but that they are suppressed by
institutions such as universities and the Smithsonian.
Could you
explain exactly what the "problems with evolution" described in your
quote are other than a lack of observed speciation events (there are
actually several such events. See talkorigins.org)?
One person
does not form a consensus, even if he claims he represents one. By that
logic, support for evolution is collapsing (as creationists have
claimed for decades)!
I am genuinely confused about why you
would quote someone from 1895 and then infer that present "Darwin
worship" began 30 years ago? What is the supposed "logic" here?
To begin with, most of what you read about Expelled was probably specious.
If you take the trouble to click on the link, you will see a Youtube version of the DVD.
Or you can go to the official site (two clicks from the review) and watch the trailers. Or best of all, buy the DVD!
In this movie, which I reviewed in the first link, you will see teachers both denounced and suppressed.
As well as slandered, abused, and condescended to. All very familiar to my experience.
Concerning "problems with evolution" quoted by Laidlaw, are:
(a) not enough time.
The probabilities of life evolving from scratch are something like 1:10^150. If there are 10^80 protons in the universe, and we give them a chance to form the first cell, oh, a million times a second, then the number of combinations of every atom in the universe since the Big Bang trying each combination a million times a second is: (yes, mathematicians can do the numbers) 10^80 atoms * 10^6 comb/sec * 10^7 s/yr * 10^10 yrs ==> 10^103 which is about 10^47 smaller than our optimistic first cell. So we have only another trillion trillion trillion trillion to go! Yes, Laidlaw is right, we don't have enough time.
b) we still haven't seen a single specie form the way Darwin said.
A lot of people confuse adaption with speciation. Sure you can get galapagos finches change their beak size, but that is like saying chihuahuas are a different specie than great danes. They aren't despite their inability to breed (the definition used on talkorigins) and we haven't seen it happen in the 150 years since Darwin when we were looking for it. That is to say, our understanding of speciation is much better now than in either Mayr's (1942) or Darwin's (1859) work, and so it is pointless to debate a view of speciation that was pre-genetic when we are arguing for the validity of NDT, genetic Darwinism.
I'll say it one more time for maximum clarity. If Darwin is taken as Darwin's theory--pregenetic, pre-DNA, pre-Mendel--then his hypothesis is demonstrably wrong, which is what you read in Laidlaw. If Darwin is taken as post-genetic, NDT synthesis, then the view of speciation is still wrong, we still haven't seen it happen. And all that homology, cladistics stuff is circular reasoning, as many others have demonstrated.
c) The physiological and geological difficulties remain the same: the absence of missing links, the "punctuated equilibrium" even Stephen Jay Gould acknowledges, the Cambrian explosion of life forms, the fact that all dino-bird missing links occur AFTER the emergence of birds, and we could go on. Small, but important in demonstrating that Evolution isn't just wrong in the broad outline, but also in the details as well.
Finally, why do I say Darwin worship begin 30 years ago?
Easily determined, when did admission to the academy depend on allegiance to Darwin?
About 30 years ago.
I had biology teachers in college who did not believe in Darwin.
Imagine that happening today.
I rest my case.