CNN Presents Darwin Fight
In this corner, Richard Dawkins:
In a series of books starting in 1976 and in his 2002 TED Talk, biologist Richard Dawkins has explored the implications of Darwin's work. In "The Selfish Gene," Dawkins wrote, "Living organisms had existed on earth, without ever knowing why, for over 300,000 million years before the truth finally dawned on one of them. His name was Charles Darwin."
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Dawkins argues that there is no doubt that Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection is true and, unlike some other scholars of the subject, says belief in evolution is not compatible with faith in religion. In fact, he argues, science and religion undermine each other.
And in this corner, some yahoo from the pseudoscientific Discovery Institute:
Darwin is the subject of adulation that teeters on the edge of hero worship, expressed in everything from scholarly seminars and lecture series to best-selling new atheist tracts like those by Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. The atheists claim that Darwin disproved once and for all the argument for intelligent design from nature.
And that of course is why he remains hugely controversial. A Zogby poll commissioned by the Discovery Institute this year found that 52 percent of Americans agree "the development of life was guided by intelligent design." Those who are not scientists may wonder if they have a right to entertain skepticism about Darwinian theory.
We are told that a consensus of scientists supporting the theory means that Darwinian evolution is no longer subject to debate.
And that's just the beginning of his bogus claims. If one watches the video of Dawkins on the top link you'll find his points about "proving a negative," which you'll find in most of his major writings on the subject. As with most intelligent design arguments the avoidance of offering any proof (as opposed to falling back on long debunked arguments against the other guys) is fairly telling. But let's look at those arguments:
- "The atheists claim that Darwin disproved once and for all the argument for intelligent design from nature."
This is an unoriginal straw man that attempts to dishonestly frame the situation. Evolution is a theoretical explanation for how modern species came to be not some attempt to disprove supernatural explanations of the same. The only real threat it poses to supernatural theories that rely on unobservable and untestable phenomenon is that it makes them unnecessary to rely upon. One fits the evidence. The other's only use is to make someone feel better about their supernatural beliefs. Astronomical findings didn't disprove Apollo, but it certainly made some theory about a deity dragging the Sun around the Earth entirely unnecessary to understand why we see what we see.
- "A Zogby poll commissioned by the Discovery Institute this year found that 52 percent of Americans agree "the development of life was guided by intelligent design." Those who are not scientists may wonder if they have a right to entertain skepticism about Darwinian theory."
This is a two-for... an appeal to popularity along with more dishonest framing. If we learned anything from our high school experience, understanding that popularity is irrelevant to proving something as accurate ranks high on the list. But in this case they are only pointing out the popularity in conjunction with the not-so-subtle implication that supporters of evolution theory somehow want to deny people the right to disagree. The victim mentality would be humorous if the examples generally cited aren't as easy to debunk as easily as they are accepted without critical thought by believers. The fact is that if you want to force an "alternative theory" to something that has been confirmed endlessly with strong predictive capability into the science classroom... you'll have a hard time doing so with something less observable/testable than ether theory.
- "We are told that a consensus of scientists supporting the theory means that Darwinian evolution is no longer subject to debate. But does it ever happen that a seemingly broad consensus of scientific expertise turns out to be wrong, generated by an ideologically motivated stampeding of opinion?"
More dishonest framing. Evolutionary theory is constantly debated and no sane scientist would demand otherwise. What is generally not debated among scientists is whether evolution theory should be tossed out altogether given no other explanation has the evidence to support the explanation. They also try to depict evolution theory as some mere opinion as if scientists could just change their mind on the subject and the "consensus" would be different. The problem is that evolution is backed by ever growing evidence that cannot simply be ignored. Compare this with say ether which was a theory without evidence or observations backing it. Once disproved in scientific testing it was quite easy to throw out and work on electromagnetic wave propagation theories that actually fit the evidence.
- "Contrary to Darwinian orthodoxy, the fossil record actually challenges the idea that all organisms have evolved from a single common ancestor. Why? Fossil studies reveal "a biological big bang" near the beginning of the Cambrian period (520 million years ago) when many major, separate groups of organisms or "phyla" (including most animal body plans) emerged suddenly without clear precursors."
Of course instead of backing their "alternate theory" they decide to go down the irrelevant path of attempting to debunk another. But even their attempts to debunk are nonsensical. The "Cambrian explosion" doesn't cast doubt on evolution. In fact it helps support it. There are many simple critters today that will never leave a fossil record because they lack the evolved structure to physically make fossilization possible. The explosion makes sense if those fossilized examples evolved from more simple structures to more complex ones, say with bony structures useful for survival.
- "Fossil finds repeatedly have confirmed a pattern of explosive appearance and prolonged stability in living forms, not the gradual "branching-tree" pattern implied by Darwin's common ancestry thesis."
Again not providing evidence for his own theory, but an attempt to cast doubt on evolution... again dishonestly. The fossil record provides snapshots in time, often separated by huge gaps due to the very specific conditions required for fossilization (and of course discovery) to occur. Beyond his strange views of what the fossil record can magically tell us, he's also incorrect that it somehow provides evidence against the branching of species as they evolved separately from common ancestors. To the contrary evolution theory predicts the kind of variation we find in related species that evolved on this island or that lake as opposed to others that developed on this continent or that other disconnected body of water.
- "There are also reasons to doubt the creative power of Darwin's mechanism of natural selection. While many scientists accept that natural selection can produce small-scale "micro-evolutionary" variations, many biologists now doubt that natural selection and random mutations can generate the large-scale changes necessary to produce fundamentally new structures and forms of life."
Again attacking evolution instead of supporting his own theory. Again doing so dishonestly. Those little changes are what evolution theory is all about. His attempts to imply that the big differences we find had some supernatural cause as opposed to the culmination of those little changes over extended time periods are just absurd, but more importantly entirely unfounded. Evolution is about subtle changes over time... not dramatic and useful mutations in a short time on par with a comic book plot.
- "For this reason more than 800 scientists, including professors from institutions such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Yale and Rice universities and members of various national (U.S., Russian, Czech, Polish) academies of science have signed a statement questioning the creative power of the selection/mutation mechanism."
Appeal to authority and popularity, but this time merely for doubt of evolution theory, not the one he's supposedly arguing in favor of.
- "Increasingly, there are reasons to doubt the Darwinian idea that living things merely "appear" to be designed. Instead, living systems display telltale signs of actual or "intelligent" design such as the presence of complex circuits, miniature motors and digital information in living cells."
Again focusing on doubting evolution, with bogus reasons no less, and attempting to rely on the appearance of design to back his own theory. The problem is that the appearance is painfully exaggerated. He ignores the fact that "intelligence" isn't required for useful mutations to increase the odds of those mutations of being passed on to offspring. The fact that they're useful, or in some cases merely not detrimental, will ensure that. He further ignores all of the oddities that would suggest that if there was a "designer" he may have had a severe drinking problem given all of the errors, dead ends, vestigial throwbacks to our fishy roots, etc.
His play on words of "digital information," "complex circuits," "miniature motors" is obviously intended to confuse more than inform. One could easily get the impression that DNA works like a blueprint for a robot as opposed to how it really works. He seems to be hoping that the reader has no idea how little mystery is left in the chemical reactions behind the far more complex end result of more of this protein or that one... why the early embryonic cells divide into daughter cells that will eventually be your muscles or skin tissue or a spleen. But to go from a single cell to a complex organism is something we've all done. The chemistry behind a self-replicating molecule is fascinating, but the idea is simple enough to grasp.
The evidence available doesn't require an invisible hand to explain why changes that help a critter survive, or just as importantly when it does not, why those changes have been discovered occurring over the long history of our planet. The energy and resources necessary to keep the process going aren't any mystery either. So what exactly does their alternate theory explain? Why it's okay not to have to learn about the chemistry? About genetics? Is it just an excuse to get out of going through the hassle of learning how all this stuff works or perhaps to protect a worldview they've been indoctrinated into that has become "too big to fail" for them to deal with and how that may apply to their worldview in general? You be the judge.
- "The structure of DNA allows it to store information in the form of a four-character digital code, similar to a computer code."
Spoken like someone both ignorant of genetics and computer programming. But in this case it's just an obvious attempt at deception hoping to capitalize on the general ignorance of both subjects by the public. While DNA is simply a molecule that can act as a catalyst for forming other molecules, computer code relies on a processor to use the information to perform logical operations on data... all requiring an actual designer. The chemical reactions necessary for life hardly require so much hands on interaction.
In other words, he's begging the question.
- "This discovery [of DNA] highlights a scientific mystery that Darwin never addressed: how did the first life on earth arise? To date no theory of undirected chemical evolution has explained the origin of the information needed to build the first living cell."
Now he really goes off on a tangent. We don't know what the first replicating molecules looked like so the theory of how living organisms evolved with all of the evidence substantiating it is somehow suspect? That doesn't even make sense. Worse for him it does absolutely nothing to prove an intelligent designer was involved (unless lack of proof is somehow default proof of the supernatural... worked great for Apollo theory of sun movement). Even worse for him is that the building blocks of life come down to simple chemical reactions hardly point to, let alone substantiate, some complicated intelligent designer or what his origins may be... it just creates new unanswered questions.
- "Instead, the digital code and information processing systems that run the show in living cells point decisively toward prior intelligent design. Indeed, we know from our repeated experience -- the basis of all scientific reasoning -- that systems possessing these features always arise from an intelligent source -- from minds, not material processes."
As pointed out above it shows no such thing. It shows the opposite. Again he begs the question by painting DNA as somehow mysteriously functioning as opposed to being yet another chemical process common throughout our scientific observations.
- "DNA functions like a software program. We know that software comes from programmers. Information -- whether inscribed in hieroglyphics, written in a book, or encoded in a radio signal -- always arises from a designing intelligence. So the discovery of digital code in DNA provides a strong scientific reason for concluding that the information in DNA also had an intelligent source."
Back to lying his ass off. DNA doesn't function like a software program at all. The "information" isn't a programming code to be processed by some computer. The "information" is also not like a book, written language, or radio signal. He's conflating the idea of "information" that someone would be sending out (i.e. begging the question again) with the scientific concept that generally revolves around anything that can inform... right down to the fact that hydrogen exists. Here he's literally playing dumb.
- "All the more reason to let the evidence, rather than a supposed consensus, determine the outcome of what is, in fact, a very legitimate and important debate about the Darwinian legacy."
For someone so concerned about the "evidence" you'd think he'd provide some. Instead he misrepresents, distorts, or outright lies about a competing theory while providing no evidence for his own. But using a lot of logical fallacies he could fool some into thinking his side has support beyond "faith."
In the end his little rant quite openly is about spreading doubt about something that challenges his religious philosophy... not substantiating any scientific theory of his own. He helps confirm the Dawkin's accusation that intelligent design is more about discouraging scientific understanding and hoping people will rely on supernatural explanations they've been indoctrinated with instead.
The desperation is encouraging to a "militant atheist" like me.


