June 29, 2006

Follow-Up on Ann Coulter and Darwin: Scientists Admit There is No Proof of Darwin

This blog has been looking into Ann Coulter's rejection of Darwinism. Currently a Google search for "Ann Coulter Darwin" shows this site as the second link. Articles here on the subject have been eliciting great comments from a number of readers.

In previous posts, I was seeking a response to Coulter from the scientific community. There has now been some. And its been marked by some very unscientific behavior.

Several articles have used the very unscientific method of name-calling to respond to Coulter. From P.Z. Myers:

Ann Coulter's awful, ghastly, ignorant book ... shameless fraud ...

From the York Daily Record, via The Panda's Thumb, a leading Darwinist blog:

...the vitriol, idiocy, slander, vileness, ignorance, stupidity and simply breathtaking inanity that passes for the contribution to the public discourse of an alleged carbon-based life-form that goes by the name of Ann Coulter.

Of course, you've heard about this vile life-support system for a mane of blonde hair. She's been all over the media, spreading her poison, the vaguely human counterpart of a Gila monster, except with colder blood.

These insults are unjustified in light of the fact that 600 scientists around the world have expressed their own doubts about Darwinian evolution:

Dissent From Darwinism "Goes Global" as Over 600 Scientists Around the World Express Their Doubts About Darwinian Evolution

"I signed the Scientific Dissent From Darwinism statement, because I am absolutely convinced of the lack of true scientific evidence in favour of Darwinian dogma," said Raul Leguizamon, M. D., Pathologist, and a professor of medicine at the Autonomous University of Guadalajara, Mexico.

"Nobody in the biological sciences, medicine included, needs Darwinism at all," added Leguizamon. "Darwinism is certainly needed, however, in order to pose as a philosopher, since it is primarily a worldview. And an awful one, as Bernard Shaw used to say. The hold it has in academic circles is not at all due to the empirical evidence that allegedly supports it, but to its philosophical presuppositions and implications, the political correctness of the Darwinian paradigm and the intellectual inertia of academia in general. "

...Prominent signatories include U.S. National Academy of Sciences member Philip Skell; American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellow Lyle Jensen; evolutionary biologist and textbook author Stanley Salthe; Smithsonian Institution evolutionary biologist and a researcher at the National Institutes of Health"s National Center for Biotechnology Information Richard von Sternberg; Editor of Rivista di Biologia / Biology Forum --the oldest still published biology journal in the world-- Giuseppe Sermonti; and Russian Academy of Natural Sciences embryologist Lev Beloussov.

Does Mr. Myers wish to explain to these 600 scientists that they are also "awful, ghastly, ignorant" ?

There is no place for insults in a scientific debate. What does it mean, when insults are used as part of such arguments?

The answer is rather shocking to someone such as myself who believed, all my life, that Darwin as a mechanism for the origin of species was an established fact. In short, Darwin as a means of the origin of species has not been proven at this time, and all leading Darwinists know it and tacitly admit it. This may explain the use of insults when that fact is pointed out to some of them. They can't prove their position and they know it.

One of the most powerful arguments against Darwin as a means of speciation (that is, as a means of the origin of new species), is that one would expect to see a massive amount of fossils of transitional species, and while there are a number of possible candidates for transitional species, the expected massive amount of such fossils does not appear in the fossil record.

Here's how the American Museum of Natural History tacitly admits that while there is evidence in favor of Darwin as a means of speciation, there is not yet proof:

Evolution Today: How Do New Species Evolve?

Separate groups of organisms belonging to the same species may adapt in different ways to better exploit diverse environments or resources. They also may evolve varied characteristics for attracting mates. That is, different groups evolve in different directions. Over time, these groups or populations may become so different that they can no longer breed together-separate species are formed.

Note the repeated use of the word, "may." The Museum doesn't say this is how species do evolve. It says this is how species may evolve.

Here's how the Natural History Museum in London tacitly admits the absence of the expected fossils in the fossil record:

There are countless species that live in environments such as jungles and mountaintops, where the bodies of dead animals are more likely to be eaten or broken up than preserved. Therefore, palaeontologists are faced with a daunting challenge: to construct the history of life on our planet with knowledge of only a tiny fraction of the creatures that once lived here.

In fact, the Natural History Museum in London has a whole wing devoted to evidence of Darwin - yet, absent from the wing, is evidence of Darwin as a means of speciation. From Dr. Gerald Schroeder's 1997 book, The Science of God, page 31:

The magnificent Natural History Museum in London devotes an entire wing to demonstrating the fact of evolution. They show how pink daisies can evolve into blue daisies, how gray moths change into black moths, how over a mere few thousand years, a wide variety of cichlid fish species evolved in Lake Victoria. It is all impressive.

Impressive, until you walk out and reflect upon that which they were able to document. Daisies remained daisies, moths remained moths, and cichlid fish remained cichlid fish. These changes are referred to as micro-evolution. In this exhibit, the museum's staff did not demonstrate a single unequivocal case in which life underwent a major gradual morphological change.

Per Wikipedia, "Dr. Gerald Schroeder is a former professor of nuclear physics at MIT and former member of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. He holds doctorates both in Earth Science and Nuclear Physics."

It may be that this museum has added to the wing since the publication of Schroeder's book. The absence of even any evidence, from such a prestigious museum, shows the absence of proof for Darwin as a means of speciation.

Perhaps we humans can't bear not yet knowing how we got to be here on Earth. Nature abhors a vacuum, so into the vacuum of our lack of information about this, we put the best available theory. Darwin is the best available theory at this time, but it isn't proven, and there is a powerful argument that while it may be part of the answer, it is very far from being the whole answer.

(Thanks to Olah Chadasha, of the Greetings from the French Hill weblog, for bringing Dr. Schroeder's book to my attention.)