I often have Darwinians tell me something like that “98% of all scientists believe in evolution” (the neo Darwinian or the modern synthesis). They think that this is somehow convincing and ought to settle the issue. It doesn’t. Not even remotely close. Indeed, these same people tell me whenever I quote from some scientist, including those in their own camp, that I’m using a fallacy known as “argument from authority” and then they dismiss the quoted statement as though it is meaningless.
What to do? Well, I am forever obliged to remind them that their own claim that “98% of all scientists accept the theory of evolution” is itself an appeal to authority. The blindness (or hypocrisy) is almost comical. I ask them what authority they themselves are specifically appealing to in claiming that evolution, i.e. neo-Darwinism, has been “as proved as gravity”, as they love to parrot robotically. Invariably they have no good answer.
Occasionally I get a link to say, the Berkley U. page on evolution for laymen or the equivalent. That’s it. Nothing more substantial, specific or genuinely useful. Just the usual empty assertions, just-so stories, terrible logic and baseless leaps of faith Darwinists are so famous for. The reason for this is because almost none of them even know what to point to! Oh, but they are still adamantly sure that proof exists somewhere in science land!
I have noticed over the years that most Darwinian scientists believe that somewhere, some other scientist has proof of the theory. They never have any of their own so they imagine that it must exist in some other scientists’ lab somewhere. Here’s another clue for you all, it doesn’t.
Even the PhDs send me to some peer-reviewed article inevitably demonstrating some trivial, microevolutionary experiment. I have to constantly remind these folks that pointing me to a molehill does not lead me to deduce Mount Everest. Ants building ant hills does not justify extrapolation to ants being the constructors of Everest and certainly not the architects of Mount Rushmore, no matter how many gazillions of years you like to add.
There is no leap of sane logic that can take one from say, antibiotic resistance, to “all ~8 million life forms on earth arose from some hypothetical, unobservable LUCA over billions of unobservable years”. If you didn’t recognize that, it is the Darwinian Evolution of the Gaps. Still the most common argument (fallacy) given us by Darwinists everywhere. We must take the leap of blind faith into the deep dark abyss of their fervid imaginations, jumping from the anthill to Everest, to accept the theory.
In decades of discussion and debate they have never given me anything better than trivial examples of microevolution – which all too often isn’t evolution at all but built-in, pre-programmed adaptation mechanisms coded in the species’ DNA – in their futile attempts to prove macroevolution. Macroevolution means major change crossing taxonomic Family boundaries. And don’t be fooled by their recent “moving the goal posts” redefinition of macro as meaning everything above the species level. If that were true then more than 90% of all evolution is macroevolution and the distinction between macro and micro is virtually useless. Creationists do not even dispute microevolution!
And of course, they did this redefinition because there is not a grain of evidence for any such macroevolution ever occurring. Hence – redefine macro so that it squeezes in – make the data fit the theory rather than accept that the theory does not fit the data.
Note: I received an objection from a Darwinist on this post. Of course, he did not read it correctly since his objection was basically, “lol macroevolution is the same thing as micro over time”. My reaction was, as usual, being disgusted at how these people don’t even read fully and then push the same old baloney with the ubiquitous LOL included, to pretend to themselves that they “gotcha”.
Well, this is just so wrong. The ignorance these people display is stunning. Worse, he added a lame article by poor thinking, disgruntled atheist fanatic Jerry Coyne which is supposed to prove that micro and macro are the same thing, macro being extended micro. These guys have no clue. Coyne’s article is full of really bad logic. It’s like they cannot keep up with the science and perpetually revert to defunct, early Darwinian beliefs that have long since been disproved. One such belief is the myth that macroevolution is just an extrapolation of micro. I addressed this issue here. So I’ll repeat some of it.
In short, even in 1940 Goldschmidt wrote, “Subspecies are actually, therefore, neither incipient species nor models for the origin of species. They are more or less diversified blind alleys within the species. The decisive step in evolution, the first step toward macroevolution, the step from one species to another, requires another evolutionary method than that of sheer accumulation of micromutations”.
Much more recently, the late evolutionary biology prof, William Provine, an avowed atheist and evolutionist stated, that “[e]very assertion of the evolutionary synthesis below is false”:
1. Natural selection was the primary mechanism at every level of the evolutionary process. Natural selection caused genetic adaptation . . .
7. Macroevolution was a simple extension of microevolution.
8. Definition of “species” was clear[–]the biological species concept of Dobzhansky and Mayr.
9. Speciation was understood in principle.
10. Evolution is a process of sharing common ancestors back to the origin of life, or in other words, evolution produces a tree of life..”
– William Provine, Random Drift and the Evolutionary Synthesis, History of Science Society HSS Abstracts.
Notice point # 7 . Provine was correct. We cannot pretend that macro is simply an extension of micro without a scientific warrant – and there is none. Indeed, the evidence tells us it cannot work that way. The genome contains so many restraining factors, error detection & correction mechanisms and poly-constrained data that it always was and still is utter folly to pretend you can just make such gratuitous extrapolations. You can’t.
“The suggestion that the development in bacteria of resistance to antibiotics as a result of genetic mutations or DNA transposition somehow “proves” organic evolution is flawed. Macroevolution requires change across phylogenetic boundaries. In the case of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, that has not occurred.” – Bert Thompson, Ph.D., microbiology.
“Large-scale evolutionary phenomena cannot be understood solely on the basis of extrapolation from processes observed at the level of modern populations and species.
Andrew M. Simons, “The continuity of microevolution and macroevolution,”Journal of Evolutionary Biology 15 (2002): 688-701.
“A persistent debate in evolutionary biology is one over the continuity of microevolution and macroevolution — whether macroevolutionary trends are governed by the principles of microevolution.”
“The neo-Darwinian theory of evolution claims to be able to explain this type of evolution in terms of random mutations, Mendelian genetics, and natural selection. But even within the mechanistic framework of thought, it is by no means agreed that this type of small-scale or micro-evolution within a species can account for the origin of species themselves, or genera, families and higher taxonomic divisions. One school of thought holds that all large-scale or macro-evolution can be explained in terms of long-continued processes of micro-evolution; the other school denies this and postulates that major jumps occur suddenly in the course of evolution. But while opinions within mechanistic biology differ as to the relative importance of many small mutations or a few large ones in macroevolution, there is general agreement that these mutations are random, and that evolution can be explained by a combination of random mutation and natural selection. However, this theory can never be more than speculative.
The evidence for evolution, primarily provided by the Fossil Record, will always be open to a variety of interpretations. For example, opponents of the mechanistic theory can argue that evolutionary innovations are not entirely explicable in terms of chance events, but are due to the activity of a creative principle unrecognized by mechanistic science. Moreover, the selection pressures which arise from the behaviour and properties of living organisms themselves can be considered to depend on an inner organizing factor which is essentially non-mechanistic. Thus the problem of evolution
cannot be solved conclusively.” (Sheldrake R., “A New Science of Life: The Hypothesis of Morphic Resonance,” [1981], Park Street Press: Rochester VT, 1995, reprint, p.24)
Do you know why evolutionists persist in claiming that micro extends into macro? Because they take it as an article of faith, since no evidence exists for it.
Pointing us to any given article, allegedly proving evolution, is itself an argument from authority. They appeal to their own chosen authority, they appeal to consensus – when it fits their prejudice – all while never even noticing that they are being wonderfully fallacious in their logic and doing what they accuse others of doing.
Worse, arguing from authority is NOT always a fallacy at all! Else the judicial courts would have abandoned doing it centuries ago. Lawyers are constantly making appeals to authority in virtually ever criminal case! The authority of the medical examiner, the forensics labs, the specialized scientist or professional. Appeal to authority is only fallacious when all you have is the word of some “expert” no matter the lack of empirical evidence.
It’s too bad PhDs in biology are not obligatorily required to follow some basic logical analysis and critical thinking courses. It could save us all a lot of wasted time, forever having to explain it to them.
“Historically, *the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled*. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had. Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world.”
“Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough. Nobody says the consensus of scientists agrees that E=mc2. Nobody says the consensus is that the sun is 93 million miles away. It would never occur to anyone to speak that way.”
– Michael Crichton, PhD Harvard, postdoctoral fellow at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies
I wish evolutionists would finally wake up to their own spurious and irrational arguments. Science has NOTHING to do with consensus. “Consensus science” is an oxymoron.
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