Evolution: A Critical Evaluation

No religion, no science just a critical evaluation of biological evolution

Quote: “I am not very skeptical… a good deal of skepticism in a scientific man is advisable to avoid much loss of time, but I have met not a few men, who… have often thus been deterred from experiments or observations which would have proven servicable.”
Charles Darwin

Quote: “What inclines me now to think you may be right in regarding it [evolution] as the central and radical lie in the whole web of falsehood that now governs our lives is not so much your arguments against it as the fanatical and twisted attitudes of its defenders.”
C.S Lewis.

The closed mind of the sceptic sees all criticism of evolution as being part of a religious conspiracy, a return to less enlightened days, a return to the dogma of medieval scholasticism. It never seems to occur to the universal doubter that the neo-darwinist paradigm has become a dogma in itself. They need no religion because they already have one and their god is biology. The faithful naturally believe through faith, that science has ALL the answers and is beyond the reach of simple logical common sense scrutiny.

The Angry Evolutionist, newsweek.com: A Newsweek headline declared: “More Americans believe in angels than in evolution and Richard Dawkins isn’t going to take it any-more.” 1

At the time Richard Dawkins was complaining bitterly about those whom he calls creationists (Creationists in this context being anyone with their own doubts, or anyone who encourages others to doubt the Theory of Biological Evolution, (ToE.)). Their largely correct observation is that the fossil record has its most important evidence missing. This being the transition of creatures from one species to the next with a few intermediate fossils to prove the point. The bones just don’t exist. It is unfortunate that this is the basis of all of evolutionary theory, the rest of the so called proof is only proof if the missing evidence is assumed to exist, something Richard Dawkins obviously and erroneously believes .

It is necessary to believe without wavering that a gradual and completely random process of life’s increasing complexity took place in order to support the extreme materialist, humanist, sceptical paradigm on which modern science is founded. Evolution is a need not to need a god and to a materialist this is all that’s required; science or proven evidence are of secondary importance. But the evidence does not exist, and it is this that gives support to the concept that it’s no more than an act of faith. No different from religious or ‘creationist’ ideals, the very ones to which the Dawkinsian camp is so opposed. In fact Dawkins states that “the evidence is unnecessary”, it ought to be that way – totally at odds with accepted scientific method, but in agreement with all religious dogma. 2 Yet again in these pages we find a convenient but paradoxical science.

David Hume’s is ought problem
It was the long departed Scottish philosopher and historian David Hume, who during eighteenth century, pointed-out the difference between is and ought to be, 3 something that seems to be missing from Richard Dawkins’ scientific education. There are numerous things that ought to be, but none is suitable as the basis for a science, if indeed biological evolution can be considered a science.

Dawkins continues: “What would be evidence against evolution, and very strong evidence at that, would be the discovery of even a single fossil in the wrong geological stratum. As J.B.S. Haldane famously retorted when asked to name an observation that would disprove the theory of evolution, “Fossil rabbits in the Precambrian!””… “But not a single solitary fossil has ever been found before it could have evolved.” 4
However, Michael Cremo and Richard Thomson’s book, ‘Forbidden Archeology’ runs to more than eight hundred pages, many of them detailing the very things that that Richard Dawkins claims do not exist. Hundreds, if not thousands of such odd time and place fossils, anomalous fossils, fossil footprints, and other out-of-place artifacts have been found. They have been quietly forgotten, lying in dusty museum basements, ignored or pseudo-debunked by the evolutionists who see them as a threat to scientific linearity and continuity, not to mention the threat to evolutionary theory itself. There is even a name for such artefacts, “OOPArts” or Out-Of-Place artifacts, a term coined by biologist Ivan T Sanderson many years ago.

Science, as a body, sanctions no input into OOPart’s, just a blanket denial of anything that does not support its own version of history. This is a million miles from scientific approval or disapproval and in most cases it is just plain prejudice. OOPArts are regularly hand-waved away by using a meaningless, dictatorial, despotism that says that only the qualified and peer reviewed scientist can possibly be right. This assumes that everything about the historic and prehistoric is already known by academia and that the non academic amateur is incapable of assessing the validity of a find. Again we see science knowing it all and rejecting the need for any outside input when history clearly shows that there would be no modern science were it not for the input of amateurs.

It is never mentioned that acceptance of just some of the anomalous fossils would mean a radical reassessment of prehistory and evolution, something the academics will strive to avoid at all costs, something never considered in the field of an evolutionary science that is sacrosanct, inviolate. A veritable library of books have been written about anomalous archaeological finds like those of Cremo and Thompson already mentioned and the work of the late physicist William R Corliss in his numerous catalogues and on his web site. 5- 6
Dawkins obviously knows nothing of such books or alternatively he and other scientists are perpetrating a mammoth hoax based upon a desperate need to dominate our thinking and of course to protect their own jobs.

Anomalous Palaeontology

Bones in Coal
Let us examine the realities of academic scholarship certainties:
Human bones in coal?
Corliss and sciencefrontiers.com: “Skulls and other human bones allegedly found in anthracite coal are on display in a museum in Pennsylvania. [Anthracite is a hard form of coal that burns with little flame and smoke.] Evolutionists believe this find is impossible because humans had not yet evolved when coal seams were formed. The display was reported in a newspaper in eastern Pennsylvania. The report said the Greater Hazelton Historical Society Museum had an elaborate display of petrified bones which were found between coal seams.” 7

The Abominable Coalman
britannica.com: “One of the most famous of the Late Miocene fossils was ‘the abominable coalman’, so called because the best-preserved remains, a complete skeleton, were found during the 1950’s in a lignite mine in northern Italy. Oreopithecus possessed a number of dental and bony characters that are typically hominid. The canines were relatively short and stout; the face was…” 8

The fossils above have been rationalised by claiming that the coal in which they were found is too old for hominid fossils which are geologically young, the oldest previously found being between 6 and 7 million years. A quote lower down these pages gives a completely different scientific age for coal. 9

‘Bad Archaeology’ Website
badarchaeology.com: “A jawbone, found at a depth of 183 m (600 feet) in a Tuscan coal mine, was identified by Dr Johannes Hürzeler of the Museum of Natural History in Basel (Switzerland) in 1958. It was badly distorted through its burial in the coal, but was sufficiently identifiable to enable it to be given an age at death of between five and seven. A number of biologists suggested that it belonged to a human ancestor, Hürzeler going so far as to claim it as “the world’s oldest man”, but this claim was not accepted by the overwhelming majority of palaeoanthropologist. It is now largely ignored as a potential ancestor. Creationists have taken this to mean that it was fully human, claiming it to be of modern morphology. This is nonsense: it belongs to a fossil primate, Oreopithecus bamboli, which flourished during the Miocene period, around twenty million years ago.”

Bad Archaeology has a Miocene axe to grind:
“Bad Archaeology is the brainchild of a couple of archaeologists who are fed up with the distorted view of the past that passes for knowledge in popular culture. We are unhappy that books written by people with no knowledge of real archaeology dominate the shelves at respectable bookshops. We do not appreciate news programms that talk about ley lines (for example) as if they are real. In short, we are Angry Archaeologists.” 10

They, like Richard Dawkins, are angry because there are so many people these days who have the temerity to question an unsatisfactory science. The Angry Archaeologists think that academic science should have the last word on everything and only their “real archaeology” be allowed in bookshops. They live in a Victorian world with schoolteachers who use the cane on dissenters. They throw-in ley lines to make it all a little woo woo and to discourage creationist credulity. Science becomes a secondary consideration in the face of a challenge to evolutionary linearity.

The Angry Archaeologists don’t mention that the fossil Oreopithecus bamboli and many others like it are found in the fossil-rich lignite mine in the Baccinello Basin, Tuscany and in Sardinia. Lignite (coal) is said to have been laid-down during the Tertiary period some 65 million to 2.6 million years ago. The ape has been dated to about 8 million years ago. It would be interesting to know how it was dated since dating with coal is considered to be something of a lottery as we will see below – See Dr. Gove. http://www.ancient-wisdom.co.uk/ooparts.htm

The Paluxy River tracks
Some of the most compelling fossil footprints of a human and a dinosaur were found at Paluxy River, Glen Rose TX, USA. We are spoiled for choice there are so many footprints in the area.

beg.utexas.edu: “R. T. Bird, fossil collector for the American Museum of Natural History in New York, visited the track site and worked with E. H. Sellards (former director of the Bureau of Economic Geology and the Texas Memorial Museum) at The University of Texas at Austin to organize collection of the tracks. In 1940, three large areas of tracks were cut loose by workers employed by the Works Progress Administration (WPA), which provided employment to people who needed work during the Great Depression. One set of these tracks is conserved by the Texas Memorial Museum on The University of Texas at Austin campus. Other individual tracks went to Baylor University in Waco, Texas; Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas; the American Museum of Natural History in New York; the U.S. National Museum in Washington, D.C.; and Brooklyn College, New York. R. T. Bird carefully sketched the site and labeled the limestone blocks for reassembly.” 11 …such was their importance!

Compare:
forbiddenhistory.info: “The following texts and pics are courtesy of the University of Vienna, on the Paluxy River (in Glen Rose, Texas) footprints: “ “The Paluxy River runs through Glen Rose, Texas. At the bottom of this river, there are thousands of layers of limestone. There was a bad flood in 1908 that ripped off 2 feet of solid rock. This rock was carried 20 miles downstream. This exposed thousands of dinosaur footprints. There were so many footprints that they decided to make the area into a State Park (Dinosaur Valley State Park). Many of the footprints were put into museums in order to be preserved, but there are still many there today.

Many human footprints were also found. Sometimes the human tracks were next to the dinosaur tracks. Several human footprints were found inside of the dinosaur footprints and some dinosaur footprints were found on top of the human footprints. The human strides were perfect. Excavation of tracks show a compressed layer pattern underneath as one would expect if they are genuine. A scientist who did not examine the evidence ruled out the possibility that the tracks were human. A professor of medicine from the University of Illinois examined the tracks and was convinced that they were genuine (CRSQ, 1970, 7:3, p.142; 1970, 7:4, p.246; Ryals, undated). Some years later at least some of the supposed human tracks were definitely shown to be dinosaur tracks. In the past 20 years many additional discoveries have been made to add to the controversy. Many books and articles treat these finds, both for and against their authenticity.” 12

The Paluxy River tracks are a source of so much emotion and deliberate pseudo debunking that any unbiased evidence is virtually impossible to find. It is even claimed that the human footprints were sculpted out of the rock as a hoax to raise money. Many of the (claimed to be) scientific articles start with the words, ‘Creationists claim that some of the Paluxy River footprints are human.’. This is part of the battle that goes on between science and religion, but is neither religious nor scientific.

It seems to be palaeontologist Roland T. Bird who was the first scientist involved in examining the tracks: asa3.org: “While working for the American Museum of Natural History in the late 1930’s, Bird reported the presence of unusually elongated tracks among those of dinosaurs in the Paluxy River southwest of Ft. Worth (Bird, 1985). Primarily stated to keep high the interest of his benefactor Harry Sinclair (Bird, 1985; Godfrey & Cole, 1986; Farlow, 1987), Bird had no idea his words would be taken by creationist Clifford Burdick as a guarded admission that there were mantracks in addition to those of dinosaurs (Burdick, 1950). Bird saw all genuine fossilized tracks along the Paluxy as saurian, no matter how unusual, as he could account for the unusual ones through natural track distortion or through dinosaurs wading through deep water.” 13

Bird would have been jobless had he even hinted at the possibility of the tracks being human… they can’t be human if science is to stand, and this is the real problem. Academic science breaks-down when confronted with its own biases. The author has no idea if the human prints are genuine having not seen them or found any unbiased evidence one way or the other.

Smithsonian Acknowledges Problem? Well, kind of!
ancient-wisdom.co: “In 1987, palaeontologist Jerry MacDonald discovered a wide variety of fossilized tracks from several different species of animals and birds, located in a Permian strata. Among the various fossilized tracks were the clear prints of a human foot. However, the Permian strata has been dated from 290 to 248 million years ago- millions of years before animals, birds, dinosaurs, and yes, man, was supposed to exist. How then can these prints be explained?
In July 1992, the Smithsonian Magazine had an article on these tracks called “Petrified Footprints: A Puzzling Parade of Permian Beasts”. The magazine acknowledged the mystery, acknowledging “what palaeontologists like to call, ‘problematic.'” It described what appeared to be large mammal and bird tracks that, “evolved long after the Permian period, yet these tracks are clearly Permian.” Does Richard Dawkins know about this?

While it is commendable that MacDonald and the Smithsonian clearly acknowledge the existence of these tracks in a strata that contradicts the current evolutionary theory, it is noteworthy that they highlight only the mammal and bird prints, and don’t mention the human footprint found with them. Interestingly enough, since these tracks have been discovered, evolutionists have not tried to argue their authenticity or debunk them. Nor have they tried to argue that the footprint isn’t human. (Often they claim that it’s a print that just “looks like” a human footprint.) Their silence is deafening.” 14

Out of place human footprints appear from all around the world and always debunked by academics. They are not alone, other types of artifact are plentiful, filling the pages of web sites and books.

The ‘London’ Hammer, Texas, USA:
ancient-wisdom.co.uk: A find that is obviously a hammer has been found in Ordovician rock 488 to 443 million years old: “It was soon pointed out by the geologist NCSE researcher John Cole that minerals dissolved from ancient strata can harden around a recent object, making it look impressive to someone unfamiliar with geological processes.
He said of it: “The stone is real, and it looks impressive to someone unfamiliar with geological processes. How could a modern artefact be stuck in Ordovician rock? The answer is that the concretion itself is not Ordovician. Minerals in solution can harden around an intrusive object dropped in a crack or simply left on the ground if the source rock (in this case, reportedly Ordovician) is chemically soluble (Cole, 1985).” 15

“Intrusive object” is used regularly when out-of-place objects are found.
Some simple questions arise:
1. How can a “chemically soluble” (water soluble?) Ordovician rock persist for almost half a billion years without dissolving completely?
2. What is the undisclosed secret that John Cole holds that tells him when a rock is genuine Ordovician or a concretion and why does he not tell us all, to prevent further mistakes?
3. How many fossils, declared genuine by palaeontologists are petrified by this solution process?
4.Supposing a concretion itself is millions of years old, how is it possible to tell?
5. How were the Ordovician rocks or the fossils within them originally dated?
6. If all fossils are contained within sedimentary rock that cannot be dated radiometrically, how can dates be assigned to fossils?
It seems that the usual circular process is used, where guesses from the past are used as certainties of the present.

Get a Half Life
There are dates of a kind to be found in the study of radioactive decay with calculation of the half life of isotopes. (See the chapter on physics) This appears to be fine with pristine samples in the lab’, but the samples taken from the sites of fossils are likely to be contaminated and the older they are the more likely the contamination. When we reach the four billion year mark the likelihood of total contamination is a certainty. Widely discordant dates are often obtained by these methods, but the final data presented by scientists often seems impressive. The reason for this is that only the dates deemed suitable to maintain the status quo are acceptable, all others are declared spurious, anomalous and discarded.

Contamination
The following little gem I found, in of all places, the Talk Origins Archive. The text was eventually changed to hide the original content. It speaks of C14 dating that makes coal appear to be older or younger, due to radioactive contamination:

talkorigins.org: “Dr. Gove and his colleagues told me they think the evidence so far demonstrates that 14C in coal and other fossil fuels is derived entirely from new production of 14C by local radioactive decay of the uranium-thorium series. Many studies verify that coals vary widely in uranium-thorium content, and that this can result in inflated content of certain isotopes relevant to radiometric dating (such as C14). I now understand why fossil fuels are not routinely used in radiometric dating!”
He continues: “Apparently it correlates best with the content of the natural radioactivity of the rocks surrounding the fossil fuels, particularly the neutron- and alpha-particle-emitting isotopes of the uranium-thorium series. I now understand why fossil fuels are not routinely used in radiometric dating!for the age of man?” 16

The above seems to be saying that coal may be quite young or it may even be old? It is certainly saying that C14 dating is unreliable in the case of coal, other fossil fuels and who knows what else. What does this mean for the age of the disputed bones above or any other bones? A young coal surrounded by an allegedly old strata is likely to cause problems that make palaeontologists angry. I can only assume that geological dates are not true or false in any normal usage of the words. They are true in as much as they are the convenient dates that scientists want and they are true in as much as they serve to bind together sciences such as geology, palaeontology and even solar system planetary dating. They do not however represent any kind of historical time, fact or reality. 17

The Stratigraphic Record
It must be remembered that coal is part of the geological record and the method of dating strata is by the fossils embedded in it. The fossils themselves are dated by the strata and so we have a completely circular system of dating, circularity being a common occurrence in science. Fossils cannot be dated by radiometric methods because they are found in sedimentary rock (which cannot be dated because it is made-up of various rocks of differing ages), and so there is no known method for dating fossils.

All the other more complex systems such as radiometric dating are calibrated by the circular method above with the exception of geologically recent datings that are checked by dendrochronology (tree-ring dating) and carbon14 dating where an actual artifact is used that already has an historical date for calibration. This is only good for two or three thousand years of recorded history. Calibration of, for example a 5 million year old sample is impossible because there is no sample known with anything like certainty to be 5 million years old.

Stratigraphy
Stratigraphy is the oldest method of dating: Wiki: “One of stratigraphy’s basic concepts is codified in the Law of Superposition, which simply states that, in an undeformed stratigraphic sequence, the oldest strata occur at the base of the sequence… (This is quite brilliant! )
…A gap or lacuna in the geological record may be caused by erosion, in which case it is called a vacuity, or by non-deposition, where (it) is known as a stratigraphic hiatus. It is called a hiatus because deposition was on hold for a period of time. A physical lacuna may represent both a period of non-deposition and a period of erosion. A fault may cause the appearance of a hiatus” 18

Thrust Fault
Wiki: “A thrust fault is a type of fault, or break in the Earth’s crust across which there has been relative movement, in which rocks of lower stratigraphic position are pushed up and over higher strata. They are often recognized because they place older rocks above younger.” 19 A thrust fault can turn the whole stratigraphic record upside-down.

Fossil Ages
Wiki: “Paleontology seeks to map out how living things have changed through time. A substantial hurdle to this aim is the difficulty of working out how old fossils are. Beds that preserve fossils typically lack the radioactive elements needed for radiometric dating. This technique is our only means of giving rocks greater than about 50 million years old an absolute age, and can be accurate to within 0.5% or better.” 20

The paragraph above skips the serious problem of fossil age by mentioning the lack of radiometric elements in fossils and then jumping into the next sentence that tells us how accurate radiometric dating can be; a wonderful example of the ‘circular method dating’.

The term “absolute age” is misleading as all radiometric dating is calibrated to fossil ages… that cannot be dated. There is no entire or complete stratigraphic or fossil sequence in the world with which to compare or calibrate, and therefore no dates can be assigned. Even if there were such a perfect example it would not be possible to assign actual ages to the strata, just a sequence of events with the oldest at the bottom. Dates are guesses.

Scientific self-justification
nature.com: “Science advances by testing hypotheses. The fossil record may be incomplete but it provides a valid independent test of phylogenetic hypotheses derived from character analysis. Surely even a poor test is better than no test at all?
Chris Paul, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Liverpool, UK” 21

Note: when science is in trouble, it invariably drops the ‘know-it-all’ and reverts to ‘We are doing our best’. But, just like a number 62 bus, another know-it-all will be along soon.
All of the universe is changing and the earth is no exception. It is impossible to use the ‘scientific method’ in such cases because reconstructions of the distant past are not possible on a changing Earth. There is no way to know what conditions were and so dates are guesses and not science.

Abiogenesis – first life on Earth.
Evolution has no start point. The date when the first cell arrived is totally unknown and 3.6 billion years for the emergence of the first life is a number thrown in just to make things neat and tidy, it being close to the conjectured 4.6 billion year theoretical age of the earth. Scientific dates for the age of the earth or the start of life have no more value than the 17th century Archbishop Ussher’s chronology that puts the first day of creation at 4004 BC.

We need a temporary diversion at this point to examine how science arrived at the presently accepted age.

How it’s done and why meteorites were used to date the Earth.
Wiki: “An age of 4.55 ± 1.5% billion years, very close to today’s accepted age, was determined by C.C. Patterson using uranium-lead isotope dating (specifically lead-lead dating) on several meteorites including the Canyon Diablo meteorite and published in 1956.

The Canyon Diablo meteorite was used because it is a very large representative of a particularly rare type of meteorite that contains sulfide minerals… The quoted age of Earth is derived, in part, from the Canyon Diablo meteorite for several important reasons and is built upon a modern understanding of cosmochemistry built up over decades of research.

Most geological samples from Earth are unable to give a direct date of the formation of Earth from the solar nebula because Earth has undergone differentiation into the core, mantle, and crust, and this has then undergone a long history of mixing and unmixing of these sample reservoirs by plate tectonics, weathering and hydrothermal circulation.

The moon, as another extraterrestrial body that has not undergone plate tectonics and that has no atmosphere, provides quite precise age dates from the samples returned from the Apollo missions. Rocks returned from the moon have been dated at a maximum of around 4.4 and 4.5 billion years old. Martian meteorites that have landed upon Earth have also been dated to around 4.5 billion years old by lead-lead dating.” 22

To arrive at this date several assumptions must be made:
1. That the Earth was formed from an accretion disk that circled the Sun: A theory that cannot be proved or disproved.
Examination of astronomical theories of the Solar System were shown to be wrong with the coming of the first NASA space probes. The accretion disk theory seems to have slipped through the net or is untestable, but probability says that it may also be wrong.
2. That the meteorite used for dating was in fact part of a Solar accretion disk.
3. That there was no lead in the meteorite when Earth formed: something impossible to prove.
4. See Lunar Anomalies, Moon rock ages are manipulated to fit-in with other preconceived ages.
5. That plate tectonics is a major cause of discordant dates for terrestrial samples: Plate tectonics theory depends upon seismic studies, shown to be unreliable. See the blog on Geology.
6. The Moon: Theories regarding the origin of the moon change almost as quickly as the weather. The soil on which the moon-rocks stood was originally dated at over five billion years, but this has been rationalised to fit the plan.
7. That the rate of radioactive decay has been constant: We have seen in the blog on physics that there is reason to believe that it has not, and that it varies according to the time of year and presumably with the age of the Sun.

The scientific age of the Earth is dependent on theory supporting theory and then assuming the outcome to be fact. In this case just about every conceivable theory is involved, but this is how science works and the reason there is so much doubt.

Selective dating
Science Against Evolution
scienceagainstevolution.org: “Last month we saw that rubidium-strontium isochron dating of the Apollo 11 moon rocks showed that the moon is 4.3 to 4.56 billion years old. That method depends upon an unwarranted assumption about the initial concentrations of rubidium and strontium isotopes. This month we want to compare that age with ages other qualified scientists found using other techniques.
Scientists computed the age of the Apollo 11 moon rocks 116 times using methods other than rubidium-strontium isochron dating. Of those 116 dates, only 10 of them fall in the range of 4.3 to 4.56 billion years, and 106 don’t. The non-isochron dates range from 40 million years to 8.2 billion years.” 23 Selectively fishing for dates that fit. Lists of the actual measurements made by scientists are shown on the web site.

Back to Abiogenesis
The supposed first cell having arrived, it is completely unknown how the first steps towards the cell developing into a multi-celled entity came about. Evolution requires additional new DNA although any changes to a first single cell, with just the basic genetic ability to feed and divide are certain to have proved fatal.
There is no known or acceptable or conjectured method by which the first cellular life could have obtained the needed extra genetic material. This was pointed out in the work of Fred Hoyle and Susumu Ohno many years ago. There is no explanation as to how evolution started.

It is interesting that Fred Hoyle did suggest a possible method whereby a source of genetic material may have been available for use by the earliest life, but as with all logical suggested improvements to the basic evolutionary theory it was rejected by the evolutionists. A plentiful supply of genetic material in the form of viruses, which is what Hoyle offered, would mean changes to evolutionary theory and that is the last thing the faithful want. The sacred holy writ of evolutionary biology is written in stone. 24

Panspermia
Wiki: “(Together) with Chandra Wickramasinghe, Hoyle promoted the theory that the first life on Earth began in space, spreading through the universe via panspermia, and that evolution on earth is influenced by a steady influx of viruses arriving via comets.

Published in his 1982/1984 books Evolution from Space (co-authored with Chandra Wickramasinghe), Hoyle calculated that the chance of obtaining the required set of enzymes for even the simplest living cell without panspermia was one in 10 to the 40,000. Since the number of atoms in the known universe is infinitesimally tiny by comparison (10 to the 80), he argued that Earth as life’s place of origin could be ruled out.
He claimed: “The notion that not only the biopolymer but the operating program of a living cell could be arrived at by chance in a primordial organic soup here on the Earth is evidently nonsense of a high order.”

Hoyle compared the random emergence of even the simplest cell without panspermia to the likelihood that “a tornado sweeping through a junk-yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein.” Hoyle also compared the chance of obtaining even a single functioning protein by chance combination of amino acids to a solar system full of blind men solving Rubik’s Cubes simultaneously.”

This is the same argument as the one at Wistar, (See other blog) with opposing mathematicians and biologists. Hoyle of course, was metaphorically burned at the stake by the evolutionists for having the audacity to encroach on their territory. But, they had no ideas of their own and Hoyle’s is at least a logical theory. Logic is expelled with the usual academic hubris.

Spontaneous Generation of life
The idea, first championed by Louis Pasteur, that life cannot spontaneously arise from non-living matter contains a deep seated paradox for science, in that life must have spontaneously arisen at least once or there would be no life on Earth. And so we have a religious idea supporting a materialist, atheist theory, that only on one occasion has life arisen on earth, all of the present biosphere originating from the first simple single cell in a muddy pool, or at a volcanic vent under the ocean, or maybe in a warm nutritious environment below the earth’s surface. Wherever the event was staged it amounts to the same conclusion: that the original religious creationist Genesis has been usurped by materialist science and presented as a literal fact to an all too-willing, but atheist audience. Let there be light.

Spontaneous generation of life was rejected by science. The panspermia theory (life from space) was also rejected by science with the claim that it puts the problem of life’s origin elsewhere and therefore does not answer the question of life’s genesis. 25 But at the same time the spontaneous generation is supported by abiogenesis that makes the same claim that life was generated spontaneously on earth in a remote era billions of years ago.
The origin of life on Earth is a problem that has no scientific answers. 26

How Evolution Stays Alive
by Richard Milton
Scientific Censorship and Evolution
“The article below was commissioned in February 1995 by the British weekly newspaper, Times Higher Education Supplement to appear in March 1995. It has been censored because it challenges, scientifically, the empirical foundations of the neo-Darwinist theory of evolution.

The article was “spiked” by the THES Following a campaign against it by Richard Dawkins, (then) of Oxford University.
In the interests of freedom of speech, and so that such attempts at censorship cannot succeed, I am placing the article in the public domain without copyright restriction and am posting it as widely as possible on the Internet. I also attach a copy of my letter to the editor of the Times Higher Education Supplement saying why I believe this article should be published.
I believe there is an issue of scientific censorship involved here that affects us all equally — even if you disagree with the conclusions in my article.”

Letter to Auriol Stevens
Editor Times Higher Education Supplement
Admiral House
66-68 East Smithfield
London E1 9XY

16 March 1995

Dear Ms Stevens,
I know that my article on the decline of the neo-Darwinist theory of evolution has caused some controversy and is bound, if published, to cause even more. May I draw your attention to two points that I believe are important?”

The first is that it has been said, by some scientists, that I am a secret creationist opposed to neo-Darwinism for religious reasons. I am not a creationist and my criticisms of the neo- Darwinist mechanism are purely scientific objections — as any reading of the article itself clearly shows.

The second point is far more important. I believe that the great strength of science and the scientific method is its openness to debate. Science is strong because errors are exposed through the process of open argument and counter-argument. Science does not need vigilante scientists to guard the gates against heretics. If the heresy is true it will become accepted. If false, it will be shown to be false, by rational discourse.

In his “The Open Society and its Enemies” Sir Karl Popper says that the great value of the scientific method is that it saves us from “The tyranny of opinion”. If neo-Darwinists can counter the evidence I present, let them do so. If they seek to prevent my writing being published because they don’t like it, then it is not just I that fall victim to the “tyranny of opinion”, it is all of us.

If this article were about any other subject — finance, politics, the economy — I know it would be welcomed as well- written and thought-provoking even if its claims were controversial. It is only because it is about neo-Darwinism, a subject on which some biologists feel insecure and ultra- sensitive, that doubts have been raised about it.

Best wishes

Yours sincerely
Richard Milton”
(Note: All of science is called consensus opinion)

Neo-Darwinism: time to reconsider
By Richard Milton

“It was the dazzling gains made by science and technology in the nineteenth century through the application of rational analysis that led people to think of applying reason to other fields.

Following the brilliant success of reason and method in physics and chemistry — especially in medicine — it was natural for science to seek to apply the same analytical tool to the most intractable and complex problems: human society and economic affairs; human psychology; and even the origin and development of life itself. The result was the great mechanistic philosophies of the last century: Marxism, Freudianism and Darwinism.

The simplicities and certainties of these systems mirrored the intellectually well-ordered life of Victorian society with its authoritarian values and institutionalised prejudices. Now, a century later, all three systems have run their course, have been measured by history, and have been ultimately found to be inadequate tools of explanation.

Unlike Marx and Freud, Darwin himself remains esteemed both as a highly original thinker and as a careful researcher (his study of fossil barnacles remains a text book example for palaeontologists). But the theory that bears his name was transformed in the early years of this century into the mechanistic, reductionist theory of neo-Darwinism: the theory that living creatures are machines whose only goal is genetic replication — a matter of chemistry and statistics; or, in the words of professor Jacques Monod, director of the Pasteur Institute, a matter only of “chance and necessity”. [1]

And while the evidence for evolution itself remains persuasive — especially the homologies that are found in comparative anatomy and molecular biology of many different species — much of the empirical evidence that was formerly believed to support the neo-Darwinian mechanism of chance mutation coupled with natural selection has melted away like snow on a spring morning, through better observation and more careful analysis.

Marxist, Freudian and neo-Darwinist systems of thought ultimately failed for the same reason; that they sought to use mechanistic reductionism to explain and predict systems that we now know are complexity-related, and cannot be explained as the sum of the parts.

In the case of neo-Darwinism, it was not the mysteries of the mind or of the economy that were explained. It was the origin of the first single-celled organism in the primeval oceans, and its development into the plant and animal kingdoms of today by a strictly blind process of chance genetic mutation working with natural selection.

In the first five decades of this century — the heyday of the theory — zoologists, palaeontologists and comparative anatomists assembled the impressive exhibits that generations of school children have seen in Natural History Museums the world over: the evolution of the horse family; the fossils that illustrate the transition from fish to amphibian to reptile to mammal; and the discovery of astonishing extinct species such as “Archaeopteryx”, apparently half-reptile, half-bird.

Over successive decades, these exhibits have been first disputed, then downgraded, and finally shunted off to obscure museum basements, as further research has shown them to be flawed or misconceived.

Anyone educated in a western country in the last forty years will recall being shown a chart of the evolution of the horse from “Eohippus”, a small dog-like creature in the Eocene period 50 million years ago, to “Mesohippus”, a sheep-sized animal of 30 million years ago, eventually to “Dinohippus”, the size of a Shetland pony. This chart was drawn in 1950 by Harvard’s professor of palaeontology George Simpson, to accompany his standard text book, “Horses”, which encapsulated all the research done by the American Museum of Natural History in the previous half century.

Simpson plainly believed that his evidence was incontrovertible because he wrote, ‘The history of the horse family is still one of the clearest and most convincing for showing that organisms really have evolved. . . There really is no point nowadays in continuing to collect and to study fossils simply to determine whether or not evolution is a fact. The question has been decisively answered in the affirmative.’ [2]

Yet shortly after this affirmation, Simpson admits in passing that the chart he has drawn contains major gaps that he has not included: a gap before “Eohippus” and its unknown ancestors, for example, and another gap after “Eohippus” and before its supposed descendant “Mesohippus”. [3] What is it, scientifically, that connects these isolated species on the famous chart if it is not fossil remains? And how could such unconnected examples demonstrate either genetic mutation or natural selection? Even though, today, the bones themselves have been relegated to the basement, the famous chart with its unproven continuity still appears in museum displays and handbooks, text books, encyclopaedias and lectures.

The remarkable “Archaeopteryx” also seems at first glance to bear out the neo-Darwinian concept of birds having evolved from small reptiles (the candidate most favoured by neo-Darwinists is a small agile dinosaur called a Coelosaur, and this is the explanation offered by most text books and museums.) Actually, such a descent is impossible because coelosaurs, in common with most other dinosaurs, did not posses collar bones while “Archaeopteryx”, like all birds, has a modified collar bone to support its pectoral muscles. [4] Again, how can an isolated fossil, however remarkable, provide evidence of beneficial mutation or natural selection?

Neo-Darwinists were quick to claim that modern discoveries of molecular biology supported their theory. They said, for example, that if you analyse the DNA, the genetic blueprint, of plants and animals you find how closely or distantly they are related. That studying DNA sequences enables you to draw up the precise family tree of all living things and show how they are related by common ancestry.

This is a very important claim and central to the theory. If true, it would mean that animals neo-Darwinists say are closely related, such as two reptiles, would have greater similarity in their DNA than animals that are not so closely related, such as a reptile and a bird.

In 1981, molecular biologists working under Dr Morris Goodman at Ann Arbor University decided to test this hypothesis. They took the alpha haemoglobin DNA of two reptiles — a snake and a crocodile — which are said by Darwinists to be closely related, and the haemoglobin DNA of a bird, in this case a farmyard chicken.

They found that the two animals who had _least_ DNA sequences in common were the two reptiles, the snake and the crocodile. They had only around 5% of DNA sequences in common — only one twentieth of their haemoglobin DNA. The two creatures whose DNA was closest were the crocodile and the chicken, where there were 17.5% of sequences in common — nearly one fifth. The actual DNA similarities were the _reverse_ of that predicted by neo- Darwinism. [5]

Even more baffling is the fact that radically different genetic coding can give rise to animals that look outwardly very similar and exhibit similar behaviour, while creatures that look and behave completely differently can have much in common genetically. There are, for instance, more than 3,000 species of frogs, all of which look superficially the same. But there is a greater variation of DNA between them than there is between the bat and the blue whale.

Further, if neo-Darwinist evolutionary ideas of gradual genetic change were true, then one would expect to find that simple organisms have simple DNA and complex organisms have complex DNA. In some cases, this is true. The simple nematode worm is a favourite subject of laboratory study because its DNA contains a mere 1,000 nucleotide bases. At the other end of the complexity scale, humans have 23 chromosomes which in total contain 3,000 million nucleotide bases.

Unfortunately, this promisingly Darwinian progression is contradicted by many counter examples. While human DNA is contained in 23 pairs of chromosomes, the humble goldfish has more than twice as many, at 47. The even humbler garden snail — not much more than a glob of slime in a shell — has 27 chromosomes. Some species of rose bush have 56 chromosomes. So the simple fact is that DNA analysis does _not_ confirm neo- Darwinist theory. In the laboratory, DNA analysis falsifies neo- Darwinist theory.

An even more damaging blow to the theory was the discovery that the very centrepiece of neo-Darwinism, Darwin’s original conception of natural selection, or the survival of the fittest, is fatally flawed. The problem is: how can biologists (or anyone else) tell what characteristics constitute the animal or plant’s ‘fitness’ to survive? How can you tell which are the fit animals and plants? The answer is that the only way to define the fit is by means of a post-hoc rationalization — the fit must be “those who survived”. While the only way to characterize uniquely those who survive is as “the fit”. The central proposition of the Darwinian argument turns out to be an empty tautology. C.H. Waddington, professor of biology at Edinburgh University wrote; “Natural selection, which was at first considered as though it were a hypothesis that was in need of experimental or observational confirmation, turns out on closer inspection to be a tautology, a statement of an inevitable although previously unrecognised relation. It states that the fittest individuals in a population (defined as those who leave the most offspring) will leave most offspring. Once the statement is made, its truth is apparent.” [6]

George Simpson, professor of palaeontology at Harvard, sought to restore content to the idea of natural selection by saying; “If genetically red-haired parents have, on average, a large(r) proportion of children than blondes or brunettes, then evolution will be in the direction of red hair. If genetically left-handed people have more children, evolution will be towards left- handedness. The characteristics themselves do not directly matter at all. All that matters is who leaves more descendants over the generations. Natural selection favours fitness only if you define fitness as leaving more descendants. In fact geneticists do define it that way, which maybe confusing to others. To a geneticist, fitness has nothing to do with health, strength, good looks, or anything but effectiveness in breeding.”

Notice the words; “The characteristics themselves do not directly matter at all.” This innocent phrase fatally undermines Darwin’s original key conception: that each animal’s special physical characteristics are what makes it fit to survive: the giraffe’s long neck, the eagle’s keen eye, or the cheetah’s 60 mile-an-hour sprint.

Simpson’s reformulation means all this must be dropped: it is not the characteristics that directly matter — it is the animals’ capacity to reproduce themselves. The race is not to the swift, after all, but merely to the prolific. So how can neo-Darwinism explain the enormous diversity of characteristics? Not only are neo-Darwinist ideas falsified by empirical research, but other puzzling and extraordinary findings have come to light in recent decades, suggesting that evolution is not blind but rather is in some unknown way _directed_. The experiments of Cairns at Harvard and Hall at Rochester University suggest that micro-organisms can mutate in a way that is beneficial. [8]

Experiments with tobacco plants and flax demonstrate genetic change through the effects of fertilizers alone. [9] Experiments with sea squirts and salamanders as long ago as the 1920s appeared to demonstrate the inheritance of acquired characteristics. [10] Moreover, as Sir Fred Hoyle has pointed out, Fossil micro-organisms have been found in meteorites, indicating that life is universal — not a lucky break in the primeval soup. This view is shared by Sir Francis Crick, co- discoverer of the function of DNA [11]

In the light of discoveries of this kind, the received wisdom of neo-Darwinism is no longer received so uncritically. A new generation of biologists is subjecting the theory to the cold light of empirical investigation and finding it inadequate; scientists like Dr Rupert Sheldrake, Dr Brian Goodwin, professor of biology at the Open University and Dr Peter Saunders, professor of mathematics at King’s College London.

Not surprisingly, the work of this new generation is heresy to the old. When Rupert Sheldrake’s book “A New Science of Life” with its revolutionary theory of morphic resonance was published in 1981, the editor of “Nature” magazine, John Maddox, ran an editorial calling for the book to be burned — a sure sign that Sheldrake is onto something important, many will think. [12, 13] The current mood in biology was summed up recently by Sheldrake as, ‘Rather like working in Russia under Brehznev. Many biologists have one set of beliefs at work, their official beliefs, and another set, their real beliefs, which they can speak openly about only among friends. They may treat living things as mechanical in the laboratory but when they go home they don’t treat their families as inanimate machines.’ It is a strange aspect of science in the twentieth century that while physics has had to submit to the indignity of a principle of uncertainty and physicists have become accustomed to such strange entities as matter-waves and virtual particles, many of their colleagues down the corridor in biology seem not to have noticed the revolution of quantum electrodynamics. As far as many biologists are concerned, matter is made of billiard balls which collide with Newtonian certainty, and they carry on building molecular models out of coloured table-tennis balls. One of the twentieth century’s most distinguished scientists and Nobel laureates, physicist Max Planck, observed that; ‘A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.’

It may be another decade or more before such a new generation grows up and restores intellectual rigour to the study of evolutionary biology.” 27

Richard Milton is a science writer and journalist. He is the author of “The Facts of Life” (Transworld/Corgi, London, 1993) a critical review of neo-Darwinism and “Forbidden Science” (Fourth Estate, London, 1994) a critical analysis of censorship and intolerance in science.

Human Evolution
The tens of millions and even billions of years appropriated by science for bio-evolution runs into a serious problem when confronted with that of human evolution:

en.wiki:
“The earliest known remains of Cro-Magnon-like humans are dated to 30,000 radiocarbon years.” 28

historyworld.net:
“The first traces of modern humans are now dated tentatively as far back as 90,000 years ago in the Middle East. (But no bones, and similar finds in the New World are denied simply because they contradict the preconceived plan.)
In Europe, where they first appear about 35,000 years ago, they are known as Cro-Magnon from the place in the Dordogne, in France, where remains of them are first discovered in a cave in 1868.” 29

Cro-Magnon is a word used by science to describe modern humans who had a bone structure just like ours. We just appeared, all of our ancestors being apes, a complete restructure of bones, soft tissue, hair and brain took place. No trail of bones for Darwinian detectives to follow as the scent disappears at about 30,000 years ago. After another 25,000 years, we find that cities were being built with all-mod-cons.

Modern humans just appear on earth fully formed and begin the process of civilisation almost immediately in geological terms. Without the need for the huge time-scales attributed to other mammalian evolution and no sign of even one similar predecessor with a human bone structure. This should be a problem for science, but it’s ignored because we had to evolve in the way that all other mammals evolved – it has to be…because science says so, even when faced with zero evidence. Most astonishingly, only one theory is dominant – that we evolved in a very short time from an ape that was completely different to a human being. There is no (scientific consensus) theory for abrupt radical change in biological evolution.

Hume’s Guillotine again
From Wikipedia, the ‘Is-ought problem’ of David Hume (1711-1776) Scottish philosopher and historian:
“Hume calls for caution against such inferences in the absence of any explanation of how the ought-statements follow from the is-statements. But how exactly can an “ought” be derived from an “is”? In other words, given knowledge of the way the world is, how can one know the way the world ought to be? The question, prompted by Hume’s small paragraph, has become one of the central questions of ethical theory and Hume is usually assigned the position that such a derivation is impossible. This complete severing of “is” from “ought” has been given the graphic designation of “Hume’s Guillotine”.
30
And yet the evolutionists regularly tell us that this unseen evidence that Richard Dawkins says is unimportant “ought to be”, because evolution ‘is’.

Wistar
pathlights.com:
A series of symposia were held at the Wistar Centre at the University of Pennsylvania starting in the 1960’s where a large group of scientists gathered to debate the mathematics of evolution, or not. Pathlights is unashamedly a creationist site and it seems that someone clandestinely tape-recorded the proceedings. Creationists do their homework at times even though their work is declared worthless by neo-Darwinists. What is presented here is what happened at the symposium. None of the attendees, as far as I know, has ever denied the authenticity of what was said to be discussed. It seems however that all have recanted and they now keep their doubts to themselves. The text is extensive and readers are encouraged to read it for themselves. 31 Ted Holden gives a good insight into the proceedings:

Ted Holden and Wistar
bearfabrique.org:
Ted is a hero, having used the Internet medium from its inception to voice his doubts about the dubious science to which we are all subjected.
Wistar
“Most people assume that a dialectic exists between the paradigm of evolution and deep time on one side, and religion on the other. That is basically wrong. The dialectic is between evolution(ism) and other branches of science, particularly mathematics and probability theory. In the mid 1960s when computers capable of analyzing the math and probabilities involved in evolution became available a series of symposia were held at the Wistar center at the University of Pennsylvania and a non-meeting of the minds ensued involving evolutionary biologists on one side and mathematicians on the other, and both sides left with the feeling that the other was in some sort of denial.
The biggest group of people who do not believe in evolution is probably mathematicians, and not Christians.” 32

Evolutionary Rationale
The theory of evolution is presented by evolutionists as if it were an undisputed scientific fact. Alternate theories are not even considered, all being downgraded to what evolutionists call ‘creationism’ – ‘if you don’t swallow evolution hook-line-and-sinker you must be a creationist.’ This is evolutionist logic at its finest; scientifically based objections are rejected, which in effect disqualifies the ToE as a theory.

In the UK, not one TV program has ever been screened that presents objections, of which there are many. This is in the face of TV guidelines that insist the programming be balanced. Programmers are scared of the backlash from scientists and so, no one gets the opportunity to look at any facts that are not supportive of the theory. Non-supportive facts are unacceptable and are rejected as unscientific, this is the way that the ToE maintains it’s credibility. Not with scientifically verified research and experiment, but with dogma, just like the creationist religiosity that evolutionists so vehemently reject. The evolutionary credo is something that every scientist is required to chant as a kind of self-hypnosis to evoke Hoyle’s “sick minds”.

The hypnosis of evolutionary science is not even restricted to science and has become acceptable to many of the major western Christian religious groups. A ridiculous situation where the freely admitted materialistic and atheistic views of science have come to be embraced by Christians, as if the secrets of God’s natural world are only divulged by Him to those who clearly don’t believe in Him. Christianity has become as institutionalised as the science to which it submits. Once again logic is sacrificed on the funeral pyre of scientific rationality.

Everything that science does has to correspond with everything it has done and so an erroneous link in the chain affects every other link. The rationale is that new ideas come from the sum total of recorded scientific knowledge. It’s like asking someone to invent a new word by searching in a dictionary.

Medical science is no exception and evolutionary theory plays a large role in the treatment received from the doctor. If he or she fails to find a cure for your complaint, it’s probably because the doctor sees you as a ‘trousered ape’ and the result of several million years of evolutionary development, rather than a human being. The idea of a doctor being a healer has long since passed into the realms of alternative medicine and New Age treatment. Scientific medicine sees us all as some kind of biological machines, a left-over from Victorian times minus the cogs in the head and this as a direct result of ToE reductionism.

All of this is very confusing to those who have gone through any kind of scientific education, but there is supposedly a bottom line:
The bottom line says that we can be smart and believe what science tells us; after all, there are mythical, super-intelligent professors who have figured everything out. Or, we can be ignorant and believe what the Bible tells us. It is very old, and science says that old things are unreliable because they were not written according to scientific method or peer reviewed.
Not much of a choice there, some would say.
The trouble with this reasoning is that it’s not the bottom line at all. The real bottom line is to reject the mythical counterintuitive of both science and religion and start thinking for yourself. It’s at this point that you start to get some real answers. 33

“The Missing Link”
“A “missing link” between humans and their apelike ancestors has been discovered.”
By Richard Gray, Science Correspondent
9:00PM BST 03 Apr 2010
The Telegraph
telegraph.co.uk:
“The new species of hominid, the evolutionary branch of primates that includes humans, is to be revealed when the two-million-year-old skeleton of a child is unveiled this week.

Scientists believe the almost-complete fossilised skeleton belonged to a previously-unknown type of early human ancestor that may have been a intermediate stage as ape-men evolved into the first species of advanced humans, Homo habilis.

Experts who have seen the skeleton say it shares characteristics with Homo habilis, whose emergence 2.5 million years ago is seen as a key stage in the evolution of our species.
The new discovery could help to rewrite the history of human evolution by filling in crucial gaps in the scientific knowledge.

Most fossilised hominid remains are little more than scattered fragments of bone, so the discovery of an almost-complete skeleton will allow scientists to answer key questions about what our early ancestors looked like and when they began walking upright on two legs.” 34
Homo Habilis
Wiki:
“Homo habilis (or possibly H. rudolfensis) is the earliest known species of the genus Homo. In its appearance and morphology, H. habilis is thus the least similar to modern humans of all species in the genus (except possibly H. rudolfensis). H. habilis was short and had disproportionately long arms compared to modern humans;” 35

Support given to inappropriate evidence, by the press who seem to assume that it is their duty to mislead the public with announcements that support the evolution paradigm. This is not a link between man and ape, but an extinct species of ape that looks much like any other extinct species of ape. We need to ask ourselves if the press is totally ignorant of such things? If the answer is no, then we must ask why a theory that has been in place for so long needs to be supported by bogus emotional evidence?

talkorigins.org:
Richard Milton again:
“Show me a fossil that has feet, teeth and skull posture halfway between an ape’s and a human’s and I’ll be very interested to see it. Show me a sequence of fossils with progressive development of these three criteria from a sequence of securely dated rock strata and I’ll be willing to accept that there is evidence for an ape-human transition. So far no-one has found a single such fossil. Of course, I accept that doesn’t mean that such fossils will not one day be found, but that is not the point I am making. The point I am making is that some Darwinists are so mesmerised by their ideological beliefs that they were willing to make scientific claims that are not borne out by observation and measurement and this makes their ‘missing link’ claims nothing more than scientific urban myths.”
Regards
Richard Milton. 36

I hope that the reader is starting to get the picture at this stage. What must be noted in the exchange above is the use of fossil evidence, by evolutionists as if it were cut and dried fact, which it certainly is not and no scientist worth the title has ever claimed it to be so. These ‘assumptions’ are then incorporated into intellectualisations and take on a life of their own, a life unconnected to the reality of the argument but giving the impression of being a solid, literal, scholarly fact. It is therefore necessary to have a prior belief in evolution as a fact, in order to accept the non-evidence that supports it. This is of course totally illogical, but far from unusual in a science that claims evidence to be paramount.

Darwin was wrong
Evolution is not just offensive to fundamental Christians, mathematicians and those who think it unscientific:

narth.com:
seedmagazine.com:
Joan Roughgarden, a transsexual male biology professor says Darwin was wrong about sexual selection.
“I was just stunned by the sheer magnitude of the LGBT [Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender] population. Because I’m a biologist, I started asking myself some difficult questions.
My discipline teaches that homosexuality is some sort of anomaly. But if the purpose of sexual contact is just reproduction, as Darwin believed, then why do all these gay people exist? A lot of biologists assume that they are somehow defective, that some developmental error or environmental influence has misdirected their sexual orientation. If so, gay and lesbian people are a mistake that should have been corrected a long time ago. But this hasn’t happened. That’s when I had my epiphany. When scientific theory says some-thing’s wrong with so many people, perhaps the theory is wrong, not the people.” 37

Posted on: April 5, 2010 8:58 AM, by Jonah Lehrer.
scienceblogs.com:
“Jon Mooallem had a really interesting article in the Times Magazine yesterday. It reviewed some recent research on animal “homosexuality,” with an emphasis on scientists who argue that same-sex behavior is not a single adaptation or mutation, but rather reflects a panoply of different instincts, spandrels, and evolutionary accidents…
My favorite line in the piece: “One primatologist speculated that the real reason two male orangutans were fellating each other was nutritional.” We’re so good at explaining away what we don’t want to believe.” 38

Smithsonian “discriminated” against scientist
By:Ted Agres | December 22, 2006
the-scientist.com:
“A recently released Congressional report accuses senior officials at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) of having harassed, discriminated against, and retaliated against research associate and journal editor Richard Sternberg for allowing publication of a scientific paper supporting intelligent design (ID) in 2004. According to the report, NMNH officials sought to discredit Sternberg and force him out of his unpaid RA position after he allowed an article by Stephen C. Meyer, director of the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, to be published in the August 2004 Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, a peer-reviewed journal of which he was managing editor at the time. While legally separate from the NMNH, Proceedings is governed by a council that includes NMNH scientists and receives public funds from the museum. Meyer’s article, which used information theory to support the argument for intelligent design in biological complexity, sparked controversy. It was the first pro-ID article to be published in a refereed publication, raising concern among some scientists that it might be used to enhance the academic argument for intelligent design.” 39
There are many scientists who think this kind of behaviour is perfectly kosher.

Raking the Primordial Muck
csmonitor.com:
When sociology students visit Creation Museum:
“A professor of sociology led a field trip through Kentucky’s Creation Museum, a fundamentalist Christian facility. The professor found that non-fundamentalists felt uncomfortable there. Museum officials say they’ve received death threats and the site sometimes draws anti-Creationist protesters.” 40

We find all manner of weird and wonderful polarities revolving around creationism, fundamentalism, scientism, homosexuality, discrimination, birth control, abortion, divorce, and death threats, all due to the heinous crime of refusing to believe that the earth was created in six days or the opposing view that neo-Darwinist dogma is an absolute truth.
The professor’s visit it seems, was part of an ongoing project to “understand fundamentalism”.
The perceived right of Christians to remove the free will of those who prefer to avoid religion, often for understandable reasons, is countered by an equal and opposite pole in the form of a scientism that also sees evolution as an absolute article of faith. It’s the old story of faith versus faith, the cause of countless wars and much of man’s inhumanity to man, just as we encounter above.

What is interesting is that all of this is no different to what Richard Dawkins is proposing at the start of this chapter – just a reversal and equally bizarre – a war against those who don’t agree with his views.

Time after time in these pages, we see science and its handmaiden scepticism (it may be the other way around) rejecting sense and reason, rejecting logic and sound judgement for the sake of supporting their own crypto-religious agendas. Mysteriously, this is often done with no comment from those who one would expect to know better, like a professor of sociology. It’s fine to defend science on the grounds that it can only study things that it can “test in the lab”, but that rules out commenting on the things it can’t – something to which science has become addicted. Pontificating on all and sundry is what science wants to do, and to do so with nothing more than an appeal to its own authority.

I read a very strange thing not so long ago, to do with doubts and confidence in the ToE. The forum-writer having lost most of his arguments in favour of biological evolution to a determined opposition, said: ‘Evolution is ‘anything’ that could have brought the biosphere from its primitive origins to what we see today’. He was of course referring to and supporting neo-Darwinian evolution; clinging to the word with a religious zeal that makes all things right and true. His faith tells him that the answers are there, somewhere, whatever the opposition, and he is just one of the faithful.
And here we have the crux of it all: that the idea of yielding to the story of Genesis was so intellectually alien that he will claim anything is possible in order to retain what he sees as the only alternative, ToE.
Amazingly, this was someone who claimed to be a practising Anglican.
Confusing eh?
He was so indoctrinated with the prevailing ideal and felt himself to be so inferior alongside the collected works of science that he thought had superseded his Bible, that he had collapsed mentally in the face of both religion and science. But, the idea that both had failed was inconceivable, unthinkable.

Human failure is not new, and to witness it in oneself is to acknowledge millennia of human failure as the norm. But science teaches us that this is not the case, even in the face of untold disasters, science will lead us to a ‘New Utopian Tomorrow’, or the day after: or maybe not in our lifetime… but sometime in the future. The things it does today ‘may’ someday help it to overcome the human problem of failure….or not… if science fails to do so.

Hiding behind science or even religion is not a good idea if ones sanity is at stake. There is a remedy and a path to sanity, in thinking things out for yourself, applying critical thinking to all things, rooting out appeals to authority and circular arguments, including those educational, scientific and religious.

The Primordial Soup
Scientific fundamentalism will befuddle your brain.
Fred Hoyle:
“”Because the old believers said that God came out of the sky, thereby connecting the Earth with events outside it, the new believers were obliged to say the opposite and to do so, as always, with intense conviction. Although the new believers had not a particle of evidence to support their statements on the matter, they asserted that the rabbit producing sludge (called soup to make it sound more palatable) was terrestrially located and that all chemical and biochemical transmogrifications of the sludge were terrestrially inspired. Because there was not a particle of evidence to support this view, new believers had to swallow it as an article of faith, otherwise they could not pass their examinations or secure a job or avoid the ridicule of their colleagues. So it came about from 1860 onward that new believers became in a sense mentally ill, or, more precisely, either you became mentally ill or you quitted the subject of biology, as I had done in my early teens. The trouble for young biologists was that, with everyone around them ill, it became impossible for them to think they were well unless they were ill, which again is a situation you can read all about in the columns of Nature.”” 41

References, Neo-Darwinism: time to reconsider.
By Richard Milton

[1] Monod, Jacques, 1972 edn. Chance and Necessity. William Collins. Glasgow.

[2] Simpson, George G. 1951. Horses. Oxford University Press.

[3] Simpson, George G. 1951. Horses. Oxford University Press.

[4] Norman, David. 1985. Encyclopaedia of Dinosaurs. Salamander Books. London.

[5] Patterson, Colin, presentation to the American Natural History Museum, 5 November 1981.

[6] Waddington, C.H., 1960, Evolutionary Adaptation in Tax Vol. 1, pp 381-402.

[7] Simpson, George G. 1964, This View of Life, Harcourt Brace and World. New York.

[8] Cairns, J., J. Overbaugh, S. Miller. 1988. The origin of mutants. In Nature 335: 142-145. Hall, Barry G. Sept. 1990. Spontaneous point mutations that occur more often when advantageous than when neutral. In Genetics Vol. 126, pp. 5-16.

[9] Durrant, Alan. 1958. Environmental conditioning of flax. in Nature, Vol. 81, p. 928-929. Hill, J. 1965. Environmental induction of heritable changes in Nicotiana rustica. in Nature, Vol. 207, pp. 732-734. Cullis, C.A. 1977. Molecular aspects of the environmental induction of heritable changes in Flax. in Heredity. Vol. 38, p. 129-154.

[10] See Koestler, Arthur. 1978. The Case of the Midwife Toad. Hutchinson. London, for an account of the experiments of Paul Kammerer at the Vienna Institute for Experimental Biology 1903-1926.

[11] Hoyle, F. 1983. The Intelligent Universe. Michael Joseph. London.

See also, Crick, Francis, 1981. Life Itself. Macdonald. London.

[12] Sheldrake, Rupert, 1988 edn. A New Science of Life, Paladin London.

[13] Nature 1981, Vol. 293, pp 245-246.

[14] Milton, Richard, 1993 edn., The Facts of Life: Shattering the myths of Darwinism, Transworld/Corgi, London.

[15] Milton, Richard, 1995 edn., Forbidden Science: Exposing the Secrets of Suppressed Research, Fourth Estate, London.
http://www.lauralee.com/milton2.htm

References

This is a mirror site for New Atlantis and http://www.nextexx.com

alixus

To jog the mind of sleepwalkers and grave diggers

Evolution: A Critical Evaluation

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