By Kelly O'Connell ——Bio and Archives--January 2, 2013
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It is absolutely safe to say that if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked, but I'd rather not consider that).
Evolution is a fact. Beyond reasonable doubt, beyond serious doubt, beyond sane, informed, intelligent doubt, beyond doubt evolution is a fact. The evidence for evolution is at least as strong as the evidence for the Holocaust, even allowing for eyewitnesses to the Holocaust. We know this because of a rising flood of evidence supports it. Evolution is a fact, and this book will demonstrate it. No reputable scientist disputes it, and no unbiased reader will close the book doubting it...Proof beyond reasonable doubt? Reasonable doubt? That is the understatement of all time. I shall be using the name 'history-deniers' for those people who deny evolution...To say Dawkins is closed-minded is as controversial as claiming the Ayatollah opposes pulled pork sandwiches. He goes out of his way to regularly insult the religious, but now has been called out for being a secular "Fundamentalist" by a noted scientist. The UK Mail, in an article titled: Richard Dawkins branded a fundamentalist by expert behind the 'God particle', reports:
Atheist campaigner Richard Dawkins was branded a 'fundamentalist' by one of his most eminent scientific colleagues. The militancy of Professor Dawkins's attacks on religious belief mean he is 'almost a fundamentalist himself', scientist Peter Higgs said. Professor Higgs, whose theory on the sub-atomic 'God particle' was recently supported by experiments at the Cern research centre near Geneva, is considered one of the world's leading scientists and is widely tipped for a Nobel prize.
Fred Hoyle was an atheist, but also a freethinker who embraced intelligent design. Hoyle was a very famous Cambridge (UK) physicist, astronomer, and cosmologist. The truth is that Hoyle absolutely disbelieved in Darwinism. He thought that there is intelligence "out there" in the cosmos, and perhaps in past time, that is directing the progress of life on Earth. In The Intelligent Universe, Hoyle meticulously demolishes Darwinism in great detail and with scientific precision.In The Intelligent Universe, Hoyle wrote this famous passage:
A junkyard contains all the bits and pieces of a Boeing 747, dismembered and in disarray. A whirlwind happens to blow through the yard. What is the chance that after its passage a fully assembled 747, ready to fly, will be found standing there? So small as to be negligible, even if a tornado were to blow through enough junkyards to fill the whole Universe.Hoyle makes an equally strong claim in the same book:
Would you not say to yourself, "Some super-calculating intellect must have designed the properties of the carbon atom, otherwise the chance of my finding such an atom through the blind forces of nature would be utterly minuscule?" Of course you would...A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question.And to help illustrate the point, Hoyle gives some numbers as to the odds needed for evolution (see also Mathematics and Evolution). From the book Evolution From Space,
Hoyle calculated the chance of obtaining the required set of enzymes for even the simplest living cell was one in 1040,000. Since their are only 1080 atoms in the known universe, he argued that even a whole universe full of primordial soup wouldn't have a chance. He claimed that 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.Interestingly, Dr. Hubert P. Yockey, physicist on the Manhattan Project under Robert Oppenheimer, dedicated himself to studying application of information theory to problems in biology. He stated Hoyle was "wildly optimistic" in his numbers on evolution, which he considered much more unlikely, saying: "The origin of life is unsolvable as a scientific problem." Thus he rejected the primordial soup theory of the origin of life. Hoyle was criticized for his views, but not dismissed wholesale by other scientists because of his eminence inside the scientific community. In addition, Harvard's famous paleontologist Stephen J. Gould, believed the fossil record did not support gradual evolution. He taught, instead, that "saltation" had occurred--that is, episodic flurries of quick evolutionary leaps. He states the problem in an article:
The history of most fossil species includes two features particularly inconsistent with gradualism:The problem with Gould's saltationism is that it pulls the rug out from under slow evolutionists, whose God is Chance and Time. Further, there is no clear method from which saltationist evolution could occur-- although he states "punctuated equilibrium" is responsible. While Gould's ideas were controversial, and perhaps indistinguishable at some level from a creationist account of the rise of animals, his eminence as the world's greatest paleontoloist, and a best-selling author shielded him from criticism.
- Stasis. Most species exhibit no directional change during their tenure on earth. They appear in the fossil record looking much the same as when they disappear; morphological change is usually limited and directionless.
- Sudden appearance. In any local area, a species does not arise gradually by the steady transformation of its ancestors; it appears all at once and 'fully formed.'
We all remember them from biology class: the experiment that created the "building blocks of life" in a tube; the evolutionary "tree," the peppered moths, and Darwin's finches. And, of course, the Haeckel embryos. All of these examples, and many others purportedly standing as evidence of evolution, are incorrect. Not just slightly off. Not just slightly mistaken. On the subject of Darwinian evolution, the texts contained massive distortions and even some faked evidence. In fact, when the false "evidence" is taken away, the case for Darwinian evolution, in the textbooks at least, is so thin it's almost invisible.Responses to Well's Icons were extraordinarily condescending and disrespectful. One scientist, Jerry Coyne, composed the following response (including a pointed attack on his religious beliefs):
Wells' book rests entirely on a flawed syllogism: hence, textbooks illustrate evolution with examples; these examples are sometimes presented in incorrect or misleading ways; therefore evolution is a fiction. To compound the absurdity, Wells concludes that a cabal of evil scientists, "the Darwinian establishment", uses fraud and distortion to buttress the crumbling edifice of evolution. Wells' final chapter urges his readers to lobby the US government to eliminate research funding for evolutionary biology.The fact is, Wells' critics, instead of thanking him for pointing out obvious and misleading flaws in evolutionary teaching materials, attacked him personally, claiming all his points were either trivial or irrelevant to evolution. Yet, is this really the way science is supposed to work--where only the "right" people are allowed to criticize? Instead, Wells' critics come off like the jilted ex-girlfriend, personally offended by his disagreements. We do well here to recall scientist Garret Hardin's warning from Nature and Man's Fate--that he who does not honor Darwin "...inevitably attracts the speculative psychiatric eye to himself."
There is increasing concern that most current published research findings are false...Moreover, for many current scientific fields, claimed research findings may often be simply accurate measures of the prevailing bias.Further alarms on scientific falsification are happening across the globe in various studies, such as in Global Warming. For example, Michael Mann is infamous for his misleading "Hockey Stick Graph" falsely showing temperatures spiking for the first time in history. Moreover, falsified science is found everywhere--more typically with popular topics. Overall, there has been a--Tenfold increase in scientific research papers retracted for fraud. Finally, wherever we find fame, money, or power, we should keep an eye out for suspect scientific research. And certainly, in such a politically and culturally important field as evolutionary biology, with its vast use as a foundation for all modern, public undertakings, we must especially be on the lookout for fraud--such as the many faked "Missing Links" between ape and man, like Piltdown Man, Nebraska Man, Peking Man, etc... (list of evolutionary frauds).
I focus on the virtue of "intellectual humility" and ask what relevance it has for the pursuit of scientific knowledge. I argue that intellectually humble scientists have a stronger likelihood of winning knowledge and other intellectual goods than those lacking this virtue.After all, some of today's "heretics" will evolve into tomorrow's visionary geniuses.
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Kelly O’Connell is an author and attorney. He was born on the West Coast, raised in Las Vegas, and matriculated from the University of Oregon. After laboring for the Reformed Church in Galway, Ireland, he returned to America and attended law school in Virginia, where he earned a JD and a Master’s degree in Government. He spent a stint working as a researcher and writer of academic articles at a Miami law school, focusing on ancient law and society. He has also been employed as a university Speech & Debate professor. He then returned West and worked as an assistant district attorney. Kelly is now is a private practitioner with a small law practice in New Mexico.