A Refutation of God-Directed Evolution, the Bible and the BASF - Part 5

 A Refutation of God-Directed Evolution, the Bible and the BASF - 5

Creationist Persecution of Theistic Evolutionists – the Real ‘Cancel Culture’

 

     While the creationists’ allegation of persecution and censorship has been shown to be grossly overblown, the reality is that creationists have been swift both to suppress the teaching of evolution through political power, and to drive out of their faith communities anyone who accepts evolution. Examples of anti-evolution legislation in America are numerous and range from the 1925 Butler Act which prohibited the teaching of human evolution in Tennessee public schools through to the 2001 “Santorum Amendment” which promoted intelligent design in public schools[1], and the 2008 Louisiana “Academic Freedom Act”[2] which disingenuously noted that “the teaching of some scientific subjects, such as biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming, and human cloning, can cause controversy” and aimed to allow teachers to “help students understand, analyze, critique, and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of existing scientific theories pertinent to the course being taught”. That the “strengths and weaknesses” of other scientific theories such as the atomic theory of matter were not mentioned positively shouted that this was yet another stealth creationist bill trading on weasel words such as “academic freedom” and “teaching the controversy.” The Santorum amendment was struck from the final bill, and many other anti-evolution bills in U.S. state legislatures were submitted but never became law, but it is quite likely further creationist attempts to mandate the teaching of creationism in public schools.

A Refutation of God-Directed Evolution, the Bible and the BASF - Part 4

 A Refutation of God-Directed Evolution, the Bible and the BASF - 4

   Not so Intelligent Design – Mistakes in Nature

       Given this, how do CVA’s assertions stand up to scrutiny? Their claim that “Consensus evolutionary science will never appeal to intelligence, design or purpose to explain how life developed upon this earth, even though such a hypothesis is entirely rational given the astounding witness of creation” is clearly nonsense. While there is no need as many scientists have done to a priori exclude supernatural claims from scientific investigation, the fact that consistently supernatural claims about natural phenomena have been replaced by natural explanations and creationists are either reluctant to publish in mainstream journals or bypass critical peer review and resort either to the popular press or creationist pseudojournals gives mainstream science little reason to “appeal to intelligence, design or purpose” to explain how the diversity of life on earth has appeared.

A Refutation of God-Directed Evolution, the Bible and the BASF - Part 3

A Refutation of God-Directed Evolution, the Bible and the BASF - 3 

The Evolution of Information – Even More Creationist Errors

 

     While CVA’s article is replete with gross misunderstandings of evolution, their assertion that “no one has ever observed an information-increasing genetic change of one type of organism to another, let alone the whole process of microbes-to-man evolution over millions of years” does warrant a complete takedown as it ably demonstrates just how poorly-researched CVA’s attack on evolution is, something that is sadly characteristic of every Christadelphian anti-evolution article I have encountered.

      That evolutionary processed can generate new information is entirely uncontroversial. A frequently quoted article by Thomas Schneider, a molecular biologist with expertise in information theory looks at information gain in a computer model of evolution that began with zero information and showed the generation of evolution by evolutionary processes. Speaking specifically to creationist objections, Schneider notes that

contrary to probabilistic arguments by [creationist] Spetner, the ev program also clearly demonstrates that biological information, measured in the strict Shannon sense, can rapidly appear in genetic control systems subjected to replication, mutation and selection.[1]

A Refutation of God-Directed Evolution, the Bible and the BASF - Part 2

 A Refutation of God-Directed Evolution, the Bible and the BASF - 2

Historical Science Makes Accurate Predictions

 

 

In the section “Normal Operational Science Vs. Historic Science”, CVA expands on their argument asserting that

The study of microbes-to-man evolution is a “historic” form of science that is very different to normal “operational” science which is done in the present and involves observation, experimentation and can be repeated.  Man’s achievements in the operational scientific fields gives us confidence to board an aeroplane, or undertake a MRI scan to see what maybe wrong with us.  Thousands if not millions of people have done it before, and everyone has confidence that the science works because we can all witness it happening over and over again with our own eyes.

But historic science – what happened so long ago when no one was around to observe, test and repeat – is a completely different type of science. The problem for microbes-to-man evolution (along with cosmic, chemical, stellar and organic evolution) is that there is no way that anyone today can do an experiment, let alone a repeatable one, to prove microbes-to-man evolution, because we cannot directly observe the past, nor can we repeat it (as an experiment would require).    Assumptions and interpretations always have to be made based on the limited evidence available (e.g. the fossil record), and consequently there is room for a significant amount of doubt.  If the input assumptions are wrong then the derived conclusions will be wrong.

As CVA’s assertion that historical science is inferior to experimental science has already been shown to be incorrect[1] there is no need to engage in a lengthy refutation. One cannot repeat events in the past under laboratory conditions, but we are able to observe distant starlight, geological strata, fossils, and geological formations, create hypotheses and determine which is the most likely – either via the consilience of evidence or the presence of a ‘smoking gun’. CVAs argument is based on the fallacious YEC belief that the only reputable form of science is a caricature of experimental science.

A Refutation of God-Directed Evolution, the Bible and the BASF - Part 1

 

A Refutation of God-Directed Evolution, the Bible and the BASF - I

 

Introduction

 

Young earth creationists attempt to dismiss evolutionary biology, cosmology, and geology by asserting they are somehow inferior to experimental sciences, or by pitting them against “operational science” which they claim is ontologically superior to the historical sciences. As such, it is a slightly less risible version of Ken Ham’s “were you there?” chant which he teaches to children as a way of refuting evolution. Needless to say, credible philosophers of science do not accept the YEC distortion of historical science or its invention of “operational science”, and given this such YEC arguments can be dismissed. Therefore, an anonymous fundamentalist Christadelphian article[1] on “God-Directed Evolution”[2] and why it is allegedly incompatible with Christadelphian theology that makes use of this YEC distortion of the epistemological basis of science is built on unstable ground and can be summarily dismissed.

Occasionally, I will search the internet to see if there are any new Christadelphian anti-evolution arguments, and while I may discover new video presentations or papers, I see no argument that I have not already considered and dismissed many times before. Recently, someone alerted me to a 2016 paper that has been republished at a Christadelphian website that hosts videos on fundamentalist interpretations of prophecy among other subjects. Its entire strategy was to begin with a particular fundamentalist interpretation of Christadelphian theology, extrapolate from that the anthropological positions that this fundamentalist theological position demands – in this case monogenism – and effectively declare heretical any attempt to honestly engage with the considerable body of scientific evidence that confirms the reality of human evolution. Unsurprisingly given the lack of relevant scientific acumen among Christadelphian evolution denialists, no substantive attempt was made to engage with the scientific data other than to fret about the naturalistic basis of science and how it does not look for supernatural causes for natural events (a bizarre claim which shows the author to be profoundly misinformed on the philosophy of science), and to invoke the bogus YEC distortion of historical science and invention of “operational science”. Another red flag was the uncritical citation of YEC sources as authoritative. Given these, the appropriate response is to brand the entire paper as nonsense, and move on. However, there are times where ritual flogging of dead horses may have some pedagogical value.

Beyond Reasonable Doubt - Answering Christadelphian Answers on Common Descent

A few years ago, I referred to a fundamentalist Christadelphian website Christadelphian Answers which had made the regrettable mistake of linking the admirable goal of providing a Christadelphian apologetics site with evolution denialism. I hadn't thought of it for some time until looking at an old post on a Christadelphian forum ostensibly dedicated to evolution denialism that referenced a Christadelphian Answers article that claimed to provide a case against common descent. When I tried to look up that post, I found the link dead; evidently, Christadelphian Answers is no more. One of course must temper the sadness at a loss of a Christadelphian-specific apologetic site with the relief that another anti-evolution forum is no more.

The Internet Archive of course ensures that nothing is really lost, so it didn't take me long to find the offending article which began boldly:

Anyone familiar with evolutionary biology will of course be sadly shaking their heads at the bold assertion that "common descent is an unworkable hypothesis". Just the convergence of morphological and molecular phylogenies alone made the case for common descent, and this was recognised nearly sixty years ago as Linus Pauling and Emil Zuckerkandl who observed:

"It will be determined to what extent the phylogenetic tree, as derived from molecular data in complete independence from the results of organismal biology, coincides with the phylogenetic tree constructed on the basis of organismal biology. If the two phylogenetic trees are mostly in agreement with respect to the topology of branching, the best available single proof of the reality of macro-evolution would be furnished. Indeed, only the theory of evolution, combined with the realization that events at any supramolecular level are consistent with molecular events, could reasonably account for such a congruence between lines of evidence obtained independently, namely amino acid sequences of homologous polypeptide chains on the one hand, and the finds of organismal taxonomy and paleontology on the other hand. Besides offering an intellectual satisfaction to some, the advertising of such evidence would of course amount to beating a dead horse. Some beating of dead horses may be ethical, when here and there they display unexpected twitches that look like life." [1]

One of my main criticisms of Christadelphian anti-evolutionary arguments is that they are poorly-researched, ignoring readily-available material available at the time those arguments were written that would show these anti-evolutionary arguments to be wrong. The Christadelphian Answers article was published in 2015, two years after a fascinating paper PLoS One article "Beyond Reasonable Doubt: Evolution from DNA sequences" by W. Timothy J. White, Bojian Zhong, and David Penny which made a comprehensive case for common descent:

We demonstrate quantitatively that, as predicted by evolutionary theory, sequences of homologous proteins from different species converge as we go further and further back in time. The converse, a non-evolutionary model can be expressed as probabilities, and the test works for chloroplast, nuclear and mitochondrial sequences, as well as for sequences that diverged at different time depths. Even on our conservative test, the probability that chance could produce the observed levels of ancestral convergence for just one of the eight datasets of 51 proteins is ≈1×10⁻¹⁹ and combined over 8 datasets is ≈1×10⁻¹³². By comparison, there are about 10⁸⁰ protons in the universe, hence the probability that the sequences could have been produced by a process involving unrelated ancestral sequences is about 10⁵⁰ lower than picking, among all protons, the same proton at random twice in a row. A non-evolutionary control model shows no convergence, and only a small number of parameters are required to account for the observations. It is time that that researchers insisted that doubters put up testable alternatives to evolution. [2] (Emphasis mine)

Those odds alone should have prompted the author of that Christadelphian Answers article to reconsider the folly of writing an article boldly declaring that common descent was an "unworkable hypothesis" but given the PLoS One article nowhere features in the Christadelphian Answers article, I suspect the author wasn't even aware of it.

The PLoS One article is of course freely available, but for those wanting a commentary on it, there's a nice, accessible post on it at EvoGrad.

References

1. Zuckerkandl, E. and Pauling, L. (1965) "Evolutionary Divergence and Convergence in Proteins." in Evolving Genes and Proteins: a symposium held at the Institute of Microbiology of Rutgers, with support from the National Science Foundation. Eds Vernon Bryson and Henry J. Vogel. New York: Academic Press, 101

2. White WTJ, Zhong B, Penny D (2013) Beyond reasonable doubt: evolution from DNA sequences. PLoS ONE 8:e69924

"By One Man" - A Selective and Misleading Review of Christadelphian Thinking on Adam

When By One Man, an anti-evolutionary screed by Colin Byrnes and Matt Jamieson was released a few years ago,  I made the conscious decision to avoid commenting on it, reasoning that letting it sink into oblivion rather than give it the oxygen of publicity was by far the best option to take. Health issues also played a factor in not reviewing it as the last thing my mental health needed was to wade through yet another factually-inaccurate tendentious anti-evolution rant. In addition, given that the lack of truly new anti-evolution arguments meant that I was posting only intermittently, I simply didn't see the point in giving a frankly decaying horse yet another beating.  Ultimately, it doesn't matter how many quotations from 19th and 20the century authors you can string together, if the science undermines your fundamental premise, universal human descent from two people, then your argument is dead in the water and as tenable as defending a flat earth.