"The Evolution of Evolution"

Is it evolving, or is it intelligently designed?

I couldn't resist - I bought a copy of the January edition of "Scientific" American. Obviously this is the first of many "science" magazines that will come out in celebration of Darwin's upcoming 200th birthday, and the 150th anniversary of his book, "Origin of the species."  (the words "science" and "scientific" in the previous sentences are used loosely)

Even the title of this special edition is revealing - "The Evolution of Evolution."  The theory of Evolution was Intelligently designed (or arguably with perhaps not-so-much intelligence), and so were its many changes and alterations that it has undergone since its inception.
Aside from the oxymoronic title, the cover is chock full of promises for the public to see how evolution is science, and anyone who questions it is considered to be the moron.

But let's have some fun and peek through the mag, shall we?

Propaganda 101:
Most of the articles are typical evolutionary propaganda: Open with "Evolution is true."  Throw in a whole wack of science speak which has absolutely nothing to do with evolution, then close with "Oh, by the way, evolution is true."  This, of course, is a prerequisite for getting a paper published in a mainstream scientific journal, for without the opening and closing bows at the altar of evolution, well your paper just isn't scientific!

The propaganda approach is glaring - from trying to equate evolution with the real science depicted in the popular CSI shows (pg 82), describing it as a "theory for every man" that needs to be taught so we can understand true science (pg 32), describing Darwin as a "genius" (pg 40), the wonderful, fact-free but very impressive looking "evolution of humans" chart (pg 61-63), the new-agish and fictitious claim that we are continuing to evolve (contrary to all observable science which shows we are deteriorating) and -incredibly- vestigial organs (pg 64!!!) which were discredited decades ago.

So why on earth would they write on these things which are at best questionable, and at worst completely discredited - and often times discredited even by evolutionists?

It's because the propagandists are not interested in the facts, they are interested in getting the populace at large to believe their message - even if it requires lying and misinformation.  Don't believe me?  Here's what one evolutionist recently had to say on the matter:

http://scienceblogs.com/clock/2008/08/why_teaching_evolution_is_dang.php

"You cannot bludgeon kids with truth [sic] (or insult their religion, i.e., their parents and friends) and hope they will smile and believe you. Yes, NOMA [a philisophical hypothesis claiming that religion and science can't mix - it was proven wrong - I.J.] is wrong, but is a good first tool for gaining trust. You have to bring them over to your side, gain their trust, and then hold their hands and help them step by step. And on that slow journey, which will be painful for many of them, it is OK to use some inaccuracies temporarily if they help you reach the students."

"...it is OK if they keep some of those little inaccuracies for the rest of their lives. It is perfectly fine if they keep thinking that Mickey Mouse evolved as long as they think evolution is fine and dandy overall. Without Mickey, they may have become Creationist activists instead. Without belief in NOMA they would have never accepted anything, and well, so be it. Better NOMA-believers than Creationists, don't you think?"

"Education is a subversive activity that is implicitly in place in order to counter the prevailing culture. And the prevailing culture in the case of Campbell's school, and many other schools in the country, is a deeply conservative religious culture." [emphasis mine -I.J.]


Parents, I hope you're taking notes here! Did you catch that? This is what they intend to do with your children in school.  Yes, you read right - teach your children things that the teachers know are falsehoods, as long as it brings them to a belief in evolution.
This is their ulterior motive, summed up in a nutshell (emphasis on "nut").  Go ahead - read the blog for yourself.  Also please note that "Coturnix" (the author of the blog) is also the online community manager for the PLoS ONE on-line science journal.  Nope - no bigotry or bias against the truth or creationists here!

But I digress - let's get back to SciAm and ...

Dissecting the propaganda: "Darwin's living legacy"

It's interesting that the first article in this special edition has such heavy social implications.  Darwin was a man with severe mental problems.  He was hardly a genius, though SciAm would like to portray him as such.  It saddens me to read of Darwin's illnesses, and I feel for the man.  I am quite confident in what I say here, for I too, for a time, suffered from serious depression and mental instability.  Why?  For the same reasons I suspect Darwin had his problems: We had both rejected our Creator.

Contrary to what my enemies would have you believe, I am of quite sound mind now - why?  Because I turned back to my Creator, Jesus Christ, and He restored our relationship.  I can truly say "God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind." (2 Timothy 1:7, KJV, Holy Bible)

Darwin's psychoses:
http://www.icr.org/article/112/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Darwin's_illness

There are social consequences resulting from rejecting the Creator.  The list goes on and on, influencing and affecting others in the "here and now" as well as eternity, but I'll come back to this later.

Darwin was apparently the first to suggest the thinking that his was the first brain to realize evolution had produced his brain.  However, natural selection, and his ideas on evolution that really made him famous, were borrowed (read: "plagiarized") from his grandfather and many others.

It is particularly noteworthy that the idea of natural selection was a Creationist idea.  Yes, you read correctly: the supposed mechanism for evolution that made Darwin the famous "genius" that SciAm claims him to be, was a creationist proposition.
SciAm deems the subject of natural selection important enough to mention repeatedly in their special edition, and I will delve into natural selection next when I address their claims about it.

For the moment though, here's some good reading on the subject:
"Natural Selection - A Creationist's Idea", by Paul Humber, M.S.
http://www.icr.org/article/412/

"Darwin’s illegitimate brainchild - If you thought Darwin’s Origin was original, think again!", by Russell Grigg
http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v26/i2/brainchild.asp

Sadly, Darwin's reality cheque bounced, along with the reality cheques of most other atheists/anti-creationists who have not stopped to think of the consequences of suggesting that their brain was the result of evolution.  C.S. Lewis was a once-hard-core atheist who set out to show Christianity to be the farce that he thought it was, but wound up becoming a born-again Christian, describing himself as "the most miserable convert" ever.  He encountered this problem of the evolution of the brain:
“If the solar system was brought about by an accidental collision, then the appearance of organic life on this planet was also an accident, and the whole evolution of Man was an accident too. If so, then all our present thoughts are mere accidents - the accidental by-product of the movement of atoms. And this holds for the thoughts of the materialists and astronomers as well as for anyone else’s. But if their thoughts - i.e., of Materialism and Astronomy - are merely accidental by-products, why should we believe them to be true? I see no reason for believing that one accident should be able to give me a correct account of all the other accidents. It’s like expecting that the accidental shape taken by the splash when you upset a milk-jug should give you a correct account of how the jug was made and why it was upset.”
-C.S. Lewis

Darwin's book a best seller?
SciAm makes a point to mention a number of things in the timeline on page 40, some of which have absolutely nothing to do with evolution (i.e., Watson and Crick discovering DNA, and Mendel - whose research actually refuted Darwin's evolution).

They reiterate the propaganda that's been running around for years: Darwin's book sold out on the first day it was released.

Isn't it unusual that SciAm fails to tell the whole story?  It's not like Darwin's book flew off the shelves in droves - oh no.  It was "bought out" by bookstores to stock their shelves. 

By comparison, "In the Arctic Seas: A Narrative of the Discovery of the Fate of Sir John Franklin" by Captain McClintock was released on the same day and sold 7,600 copies (to bookstores) the same day.  Samuel Smile's "Self-help" was released and sold 3,200 copies to bookstores, on the same day.... and 20,000 copies by the end of the first year!  "Self-help" had sold over a quarter of a million copies by the time Smiles died. However, 13 years and six editions of "Origin of the species" later, Darwin had only sold 12,750 copies of his book.  "Origin" averaged sales of about 1,000 copies per year.

SciAm, in the sidebar, describes Darwin as an "approachable genius" with writings that were "remarkably accesible to any literate person."
Actually, even Leonard Huxley (the son of "Darwin's bulldog," Thomas Huxley) wrote "I have read ... the Origin for the sixth or seventh time, becoming confirmed in my opinion that it is one of the most difficult books to exhaust that ever was written." (Life and letters of Thomas Henry Huxley)

SciAm also refers to Darwin's famous finches, another discredited "evidence" for evolution which will be discussed in the next segment.

I say all of this, not to bad-mouth Darwin, as I frankly feel for the man when I read his writings.  Nevertheless, he has been elevated to the status of a demi-god by those who reject their Creator.  The SciAm article is only one glorious example of the status that has been erroneously granted to Darwin. Believe me - you do not want to follow in Darwin's shoes.  This is not a man you wish to emulate.  Reading his private writings will settle that issue, and right quick - at least, if you're of a sound mind.


Testing Natural Selection

The next article is devoted to natural selection, which I've already shown to be a Creationary idea anyway.  Though SciAm spent eight pages on the subject, I will spend a mere couple of paragraphs on the subject.

Surprisingly, evolutionists and creationists agree on almost everything with regards to natural selection!  Natural selection, or "survival of the fittest" is an observed phenomena that has nothing to do with evolution.  If an animal is sick, or has a genetic issue, its chances of survival (and consequently, chances of producing offspring) are less than those who are healthy.  And thus, sick or "less fit" creatures are removed from the population.

We Creationists have no problem with natural selection.
  • Natural selection only selects from what already exists.  Evolution requires new information, new organs, and new appendages to appear.  Natural selection does not produce anything new.
  • Natural selection removes information - the exact opposite of evolution.  For example, breeding dogs into chihuahuas removes variation within the species.  So natural selection doesn't build up a super-dog, but rather over time it converts a super-dog into an animal that wouldn't survive a day in the wilderness (but would make a nice appetizer for a hungry bear)
  • Little changes do not add up to big changes (see below and "From Atoms to traits")
  • Natural selection is not evolution.
Think about it: Place a chihuahua, a great dane, a french poodle, a wolf, and a weiner dog beside each other (if you actually do this experiment, it's probably a good idea to tie them a safe distance apart from each other).  Now observe: This is the kind of variation you can get within a species.  They are all dogs.  While these are examples of unnatural selection (people bred these different variations deliberately), SciAm seems incredibly impressed with three examples of "Evolution in action" on page 48:

"Wild Rabbit (Australia); Animals brought from Europe changed in body size,
weight and ear size as they adapted to the hot, dry Australian climate."
Ummm... are they still wabbits?  Elmer Fudd would think so.  Hey - I changed in size this past year! (That's what living in your van and eating lots of fast food does)  Am I any less human?  Am I evolving?

"Scarlet honeycreeper (Hawaii); As its favorite source of nectar began disappearing, the
bird sought nectar elsewhere, and its bill became shorter."
Is it still a Scarlet honeycreeper?  Yes.

"Marine snail (New England); Likely in response to being hunted by crabs, the
snail's shell changed shape and became thicker."
For some evolutionists, that is enough to proclaim it a new "species" (which by the way, there is no real definition for "species."), but it sure looks like it's still a snail to me.

Let's go over this:  These incredibly minor variations don't compare to the variations we see in dogs around the house. 

If you want serious variation, driven by serious mutations, just visit Chernobyl.  Why - you can see all kinds of creatures growing extra limbs and all kinds of cool stuff!  It's an evolutionist's dream study!  Think of all of the mutations - and the natural selection (read: "background radiation") killing off the weak - hey! 

But evolutionists are not studying evolution there, why not?  Aside from the fact that they may start growing limbs and other "cool stuff", becoming part of their own evolutionary study, there is a deeper reason I think:  It's because then they (and you) would see that "evolution" kills.  In the absolute hotspot of "evolution" on the planet, it is amazing that anything survives - and the things that did survive didn't improve.  This is the real evolution, and not that cheap big-box store imitation that SciAm and others try to sell you.

Evolution is not a progression, it is a regression, a loss of information, a loss of variation, a loss of life.  That is scientific, observable, testable, and repeatable.

But what of Darwin's finches?
(image courtesy Big Valley Creation Science Museum, a museum which displays real science)
Okay, so Darwin documented some finches in the Galapagos islands - so what?
In fact, most people are surprised to find out that Darwin didn't observe natural selection in the Galapagos finches - in fact, he erroneously labeled some of them as the wrong bird.
However, since that time, there has been considerable study of finches on isolated islands, and it's been educational, but no help to evolution.

After 30 years of studying the finches, and watching rapid natural selection, we still have..... finches.
And apparently these different types of finches can interbreed, which of course means they aren't different species - merely variations of the same bird.
Further reading:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v4/n1/natural-selection#fnMark_1_19_1


Variations in people:
Variations even occur in humans, due to diet and environment.  Here in the Western hemisphere, we have a problem with "wisdom teeth."  In fact, depending on where you are, you may get the evolutionary take on this: Some have claimed that these teeth are "evolutionary leftovers" (vestigials) from our ascent from the apes.  Later on, in "This old body" we'll get a good laugh over some of the ridiculous suggestions of vestigials made in SciAm.

But for now - what about those teeth called "wisdom," presumably because they smart?  In cultures where they eat a hard-to-chew diet (i.e, lots of nuts), the human jaw actually grows the way it's supposed to and their wisdom teeth don't collide with their other teeth!

Yup, the jaw becomes "robust" (an evolutionary term) by a simple change in diet, whereas here, we have a dreadfully overcooked, soft diet.  As a result, our jaws are underdeveloped.  We get a lot of impacting wisdom teeth here, and it has absolutely nothing to do with evolution, or our "ancestral history" from the apes - which, by the way, typically have the same number of teeth we do.

Variation is not evolution.




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Other segments in this commentary:
"Propaganda 101"
"Darwin's living legacy"
"This old body"
"What will become of Homo Sapiens?"
"Evolution in the Everyday World"
"The Science of SPORE"
"The Latest Face of Creationism"