TOE and the Reasons for Doubt

One of the reasons Darwin postponed the publication of his theory for so long was that he realized his theory would be received with a lot of skepticism and even hostility, given the Victorian mores of his time, and he therefore knew he had to amass a lot of evidence first. To say that he proposed a theory without evidence is more than a little unfair towards Darwin.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

With some justification you could say that, for instance, penguins seem to be a transitional form between flying birds and a future species of animal that lives mainly underwater. Modern penguins are classified as birds, they lay eggs, have beaks, and appendages that look like wings. However, they fly like a brick. Their wings are useless as such. On the other hand, their wings are well on their way to becoming perfect for swimming and they consequently spend a lot of time underwater. In fact, penguins are skillful underwater "fliers".This is not to say that penguins are necessarily evolving towards some underwater species. It's not unthinkable that circumstances could change in such a way that penguin descendants will stop going underwater, (re)develop bigger wings and take flight once more.The point is that you don't have to concentrate solely on the fossil record to find species that are "obviously" transitional. In fact, all species, at any one time, are transitional, as I have argued in this forum a time long ago. It's just that some examples are obvious, and most are not. Penguins come close as an answer to the creationist question what good half a wing is. The answer, in this instance, would be: "It depends what they use it for."

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

And thus, whatever argument we put forward against this, it will never live up to your expectations. If we propose a transitional that is too much like a human, then you will simply state it's a human, and if we propose one too far removed it's just a monkey. You will never be satisfied.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

In that case it's quite obvious that there are none. They are cousins after all.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

I know that you know. Let's say I replied for the edification of our esteemed creationist fellow forum members.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

It's "Galapagos", darling. Have you read "The Voyage of the Beagle", or "The Origin of Species"? You should, it's great stuff. And you learn a thing or two.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

No, it isn't. He only "saw the light" in 1838: That's well after he returned from his five year voyage on the Beagle. You would have known this if you had read those books I mentioned.Edited by Parasomnium, : No reason given.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

The pedantic reply to this last remark would be: evolution doesn't apply to fossils. Fossils are the remains of dead individual creatures, and not capable of evolving. Only populations of species evolve.But I do not want to be pedantic. A more helpful approach would be to think of the fossil record as something like a film reel with most of the frames missing and only some of them still there but gone terribly bad. Only occasionally a frame is good enough to get some impression of what it must have looked like when it was new. We would like to know the storyline of the film with lots of details, but we only have this one reel and it's sadly impossible to see the complete film. If it were only for the fossil record, it would be the same with evolution. We'd only have a very incomplete picture of the development of life on earth.Fortunately, all is not lost because we also have evidence from sciences other than geology, most notably genetics. Genetic sequencing gives us a much clearer picture of the relatedness of all life. By looking at specific sequences and comparing them between species, we can put these species in their right place in the family tree. If we do so, we can also see that the tree so constructed coincides almost exactly with trees we construct from other evidence, like morphology, embryology, and, yes, the fossil record.The perceived suddenness of the appearance of species in the fossil record is an artefact of the way the fossil record came into existence. To use another metaphor: it's like a box of photographs you recover from the ruins of a house that burned down. Some photographs are still intact, but most are gone. Are we then to believe from this evidence that, sometime in the past, the girl in the remaining photographs suddenly appeared as a six year old and next turned into an adolescent overnight, to turn into an adult equally suddenly? Surely not.Does this make sense to you, Peg?Edited by Parasomnium, : No reason given.Edited by Parasomnium, : No reason given.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

Not if you have to rely on the fossil evidence alone, no. But you don't have to, as I've pointed out. It's funny you should say that, because many cold cases are now being solved after all, because of... genetic evidence. Isn't that a curious coincidence? I don't have the specifics available right now, so I can't confirm this. But I'll take your word for it. It doesn't worry me in the least though, because it only proves that science is an ongoing operation and that new insights only improve our knowledge base. In this case, I'd say that genetics, which is a fairly exact science, trumps the less exact science of paleontology, and provides better insights in the findings of the latter.Besides, you're talking about all people alive today. If the total human population has, at any one time, gone through a bottle neck, meaning that the total population had sunk to very low numbers, then it's no surprise that everyone living today descends from just a few, possibly even one human ancestor. There are good indications, again from genetic evidence, that it is indeed the case that humans have gone through one or more bottlenecks. But anyway, how about the total human population contemporary to that human ancestor? And how about the population of all humans who ever lived? Who did they descend from? Depending on when "once" was, this is not surprising either. Before the advance of molecular genetics scientist pretty much didn't have a clue about the exact degree of similarity in DNA between humans and their nearest cousins. And I'm not worried about different percentages being quoted today. The fact is that they are becoming more accurate as we speak, and are still in the low to intermediate one figure numbers, depending on what's being compared. Sure, I concur. Most, if not all, creationists don't agree that genetics has helped evolutions cause. So it's a bit of a moot point, actually. If it were the only evidence, you'd have a point. But how about all the other scientific evidence pointing in the same direction? Doesn't that count for anything?Edited by Parasomnium, : No reason given.Edited by Parasomnium, : No reason given.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

The question is then, have you read source material directly from these fields of science, or have you read digests prepared by creationists with a hidden agenda? You should really try to get closer to the sources. I've asked you before if you've read Darwin's "Voyage Of The Beagle", or his "Origin Of Species". They may seem daunting books to read, but I assure you, Darwin wrote very clear and understandable prose, quite modern for his day. I heartily recommend giving it a try, even if you'd do it only to better understand what it is you're opposing. But I said: if it were the only evidence, you'd have a point, "it" being the fossil record. You probably glanced over it too quickly, because now you mention it again. Well, never mind. It might help to look at it this way: mutations are the raw material that natural selection works on. So, indeed, mutations do not drive evolution, they're the fuel. Natural selection is what drives evolution, weeding out harmful mutations and letting neutral and beneficial mutations slip through. Even if only 1 per cent of all mutations is beneficial, in the long run they will pervade the population. Remember, evolution means change in populations over time, not individual hopeful monsters overnight.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

Peg, I don't get it. A while ago you said that you understood my metaphor for the fossil record of a film reel with a badly damaged film, or the other one of the burned box of photographs. And now you say this.Are you sure you understand those metaphors?Let me tell you something else about the fossil record. We are actually very lucky to have fossils at all, because fossilization is a rare process. You've heard that before, no doubt. But what you should also realise is that even if there were no fossil record at all, evolution would still be true. We have so much evidence beside the fossil record that we really don't need it. So don't get too hung up on the fossil record and its gaps, because it isn't the be all and end all of evolution.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

I think he would be absolutely over the moon if he saw what his initial framework had grown into, and how his theory was utterly and thoroughly vindicated by the evidence from so many different lines of investigation as we have today.Your quote actually catches Darwin in one of his brilliant moments: long before the concept of falsifiability had been formally defined as one of the cornerstones of scientific theorizing, he effectively told us in no uncertain terms how it ought to be done.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

Peg, one hundred and fifty years have gone by since he published On the Origin of Species, and scientists haven't exactly been sitting on their hands in the mean time. During the twentieth century alone we have seen such discoveries as hormones, the chemical bond, antibiotics, the structure of DNA, and the structure of proteins, to name a few. You can't seriously expect a theory that was formed before all of those breakthroughs to remain unchanged after them. It has nothing to do with Darwin being philosophical, and everything with science making progress.With regard to Darwin's theory supposedly being "spot on": I never suggested that. I merely noted that he was ahead of his time when he pointed out how his theory could be falsified.O, and one other thing: you don't "coin" a theory. You coin a word, or a phrase. Herbert Spencer coined the term "survival of the fittest", for example. But Darwin worked on his theory for a good quarter of a century before he published, and he then went on to refine it. To say that he "coined his theory" hardly does justice to the effort he put into it.Edited by Parasomnium, : No reason given.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

It's not just blind chance, you've been told that a million times. But aside from that, the core idea of Darwin's theory has been vindicated by later discoveries, most notably the last two I mentioned in my previous post. I can only say: read his books.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.