I myself am convinced that the theory of evolution, especially the extent to which it's been applied, will be one of the great jokes in the history books in the future.  Posterity will marvel that so very flimsy and dubious an hypothesis could be accepted with the incredible credulity that it has.

     Malcom Muggeridge, The End of Christendom, 1980, pg 59.
 

"I believe that one day the Darwinian Myth will be ranked the greatest deceit in the history of science.  When this happens, many people will pose the question:  How did this ever happen?

     Soren Lovtrup, Darwinism:  The Refutation of a Myth  (New York: 1987) p 422.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Key concept - origin of information, or specified complexity:
 
 

a)  complexity
 

asmeildf wifwen osief wpe oiwrejnfpaowx poih w43por hweoifj opwejfa

(a monkey typing on a computer can do this)

 
 

b)  simple repetitive order
 

abababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababa

(natural laws can do this - crystals, pebbles on a beach, etc)

 
 

c)  specification relative to a reference pattern
 

simple:      "it"

(chance can do this  - dump out a bag of Scrabble tiles)
 
 

specified complexity:

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  The same was in  the beginning with God.  All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.  In Him was life, and the life was the light of men."

         (characteristic of biological organisms  - only intelligence can produce this)

TOP 25 quotes from the class:
 
 

Introduction - definitions

25a.  "The cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be"

         C. Sagan, Cosmos

25b.  "I am a collection of water, calcium, and organic molecules called Carl Sagan.  You are a collection of almost identical molecules.  Is there nothing in here but molecules?     I find it elevating that our universe permits the evolution of molecular machines as intricate and subtle as we."

         C. Sagan, Cosmos, pg 127.
 

25c.   "We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism.  It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter- intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated.  Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door."

         Richard Lewontin, New York Review of Books, Jan 9,  1997
 
 
 

Introduction - rhetorical/symantical tactics used by naturalists
 

24a.  "Evolution is a fact, fact, FACT!"

         M. Ruse, Darwinism Defended, 1982.
 

24b.  "The consensus among evolutionists is that evolution is a universal fact of nature."

         N. Newell, Creation and Evolution   Myth or Reality,  pg 12.
 

23a.  "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)

         R. Dawkins, quoted in Darwin on Trial, pg 9.
 

23b.  "it is not surprising that people who prefer emotional stimulation to analytical thought frequently turn to
hallucinogens, mysticism, and religious cults - psychological crutches that replace self-discipline, responsibility, and
rational doubt.  The current exaggerated interest in astrology, the occult, monsters, creationism, and visitors from
outer space is a mass renunciation of mature reason, since these topics are deficienct in both theory and evidence."

         N. Newell, Creation and Evolution , pg 23
 
 
 

Introduction - microevol., circumstantial evidence, worldview
 

22.  "All that is needed to prove evolution is observed microevolution added to the philosophical doctrine of uniformitarianism which ... underlies all science"

         M. Ridley  Evolution and Classification
 

21.  "The discovery, early in the history of molecular genetics, that the genetic code is apparently univeral - the same in Escherichia coli, Homo sapiens, and all other organisms, is awesome evidence that all living things are descended from a common ancestor."

         Curtis and Barnes, Biology, pg 355.
 
 
 
 

Microevolution
 

20.  "All environments, inevitably, do change. The secret of life is that it can change with them and continue to thrive, and if I were searching for signs of an infinitely wise creator, I might find them here."

         Douglas Chadwick, "Evolution Right Before Their  Eyes", New York Times
         Book Review, 1994, pg7.
 
 
 

Microevolution does not equal Macroevolution
 

19a.  "Fruit flies refuse to become anything but fruit flies under any circumstances yet devised."

        Francis Hitching, "The neck of the giraffe:  Where Darwin went wrong", 1982, p56-57.
 

19b.  "Geneticists can study the gradual increase of favored genes within populations of fruit flies in laboratory bottles.....Orthodox neo-Darwinians extrapolate these even and continuous changes to the most profound structural transitions in the history of life.  ...  Macroevolution (major structural transition) is nothing more than microevolution (flies in bottles) extended.  ...  The shift of gene frequencies in local populations is an adequate model for all evolutionary processes - or so the current orthodoxy states."

         S. Gould, The Panda's Thumb, pg 187.
 

18. "...I wish to defend Goldshmidt's postulate that macroevolution is not simply microevolution extrapolated, and that major structural transitions can occur rapidly without a smooth series of intermediate stages.."

         S. Gould, The Panda's Thumb, pg 188.
 
 
 
 

Macroevolution - Fossil Record
 

17a.  "If it could be shown that this fact [gaps between widely distinct groups] had always existed, the fact would be
fatal to the doctrine of evolution."

         T. H. Huxley, Three Lectures on Evolution, 1882, quoted by Bird, Origin of
          Species revisited, vol 1, pg 59, 1993.
 
 

17b.  "The known fossil record fails to document a single example of phyletic (gradual) evolution accomplishing a major morphologic transition and hence offers no evidence that the gradualistic model can be valid."

         S. Stanley, Macroevolution, 1979, pg 39.
 

16.  "...no real evolutionist, whether gradualist or punctuationalist, uses the fossil record as
evidence in favour of the theory of evolution as opposed to special creation."

         Mark Ridley, New Scientist 25, 1981, pg 830.
 
 

15.  "Stasis is data."

         S. Gould and N. Eldridge, Nature  366, 18, 1993.
 
 

14a.  "We've got to have some ancestors.  We'll pick those.  Why?  Because we know they have to be there, and these are the best candidates.  That's by and large the way it has worked.  I am not exaggerating."

         Gereth Nelson, Wall Street Journal, Dec. 9, 1986.
 
 

14b.  "Evolution cannot forever be going on somewhere else.  Yet that's how the fossil record has struck many a forlorn paleontologist looking to learn something about evolution."

         N. Eldredge,  Reinventing Darwin,1995.
 
 
 
 

Macroevolution - Mechanism
 

13a.  "One of the most amazing aspects of evolution is how easy it is to account for major transformations through rather simple changes in developmental processes."

         D. Futuyma, Science on Trial, pg. 62.
 
 

13b.  "If I ask you, "What would I have to do to transform a primitive mammal into a bat or a whale?" the answer is "Nothing very drastic."

         D. Futuyma, Science on Trial, pg 62.
 
 

12.  "Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose."

         R. Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker, pg 1.
 
 

11.  [The extrapolation of microevolution to macroevolution] "is simply an affront to reason.  A flagrant violation of common sense."

        M. Denton, video interview
 
 

10.  "What good is 5% of an eye?"

         S. J. Gould, The Panda's Thumb
 
 

9.  "Evolution is very possibly not, in actual fact, always gradual.  But it must be gradual when it is being used to explain the coming into existence of complicated, apparently designed objects, like eyes.  For if it is not gradual in these cases, it ceases to have any explanatory power at all.  Without gradualness in these cases, we are back to miracle, which is simply a synonym for the total absence of explanation."

         R. Dawkins, River Out Of Eden, pg 83.
 
 
 

Molecular Machines, Biochemistry, and Irreducible Complexity
 
 

8a.  "If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down."

         C. Darwin, The Origin of Species,  pg 219.
 
 

8b. Darwin's criteria [of falsifiability] has been met in discovery of molecular machines

        Michael Behe,  Assoc. Prof. Biochem., Lehigh Univ.,author of Darwin's Black Box
 
 

7a.  "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution"

        T. Dobzhansky, Lecture, quoted in Darwin on Trial, pg 188.
 
 

7b.  "There has never been a meeting, or a book, or a paper on the details of the evolution of complex biochemical systems."

        M. Behe, Darwin's Black Box  pg 179.
 
 
 
 

 Origin of Life
 

6.  "Our task is to find an algorithm, a natural law that leads to the origin of information."

         Manfred Eigen, Steps Towards life: A Perspective On  Evolution, 1992, pg 12.
 

5a.  "... the time available for the origin of life seems to have been short, a few hundred million years at the most.  Since life originated on the earth, we have additional evidence that the origin of life has a high probability."

         Carl Sagan, Scientific American, 1975, 232(5), pg 82.
 

5b.  "The chance that  higher life forms might have emerged in this way is comparable with the chance that a tornado sweeping through a junkyard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the material therein."

         F. Hoyle, 'Hoyle on Evolution' Nature  294 105, 1981.
 

4.  "One has only to contemplate the magnitude of this task to concede that the spontaneous generation of a living organism is impossible.  Yet here we are - as a result, I believe, of spontaneous generation."

        George Wald, Scientific American, 191, 1954, p45.
 
 
 
 

Supposed Human Ancestors
 

3.  "The human fossil record is no exception to the general rule that the main lesson to be learned from paleontology is that evolution always takes place somewhere else."

         J. S. Jones and S. Rouhani  Nature  319, 449, (1986).
 

2.  "Ironically, after all the years of unresolved ... debate about the validity of Homo Habilis, the phylogenetic outlook suggests that if there weren't a Homo Habilis we would have to invent one."

         M. Wolpoff, Amer. Journal of Phys. Anthrop.  89:402,  1992.
 

1a.  "In sum, the 3.5-million-year-old footprint trails at Laetoli site G resemble those of habitually unshod modern humans.  None of their features suggest that the Laetoli hominids were less capable bipeds than we are.  If the G footprints were not known to be so old, we would readily conclude that they were made by a member of our genus, Homo.   ...   we should shelve the loose assumption that the Laetoli footprints were made by Lucy's kind, a. afarensis."

        R. Tuttle Nat. History  Mar. 1990, pp. 60.
 

1b.  "Many more remains of the species [a. afarensis] have turned up, including beautifully preserved footprints found in the mid-1970's in Tanzania by a team led by the famed archaeologist Mary Leakey. Set in solidified volcanic ash, the footprints confirmed that Lucy and her kin walked like humans."

         "How Man Began", Time March 14, 1994.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Below are the risky or distinctive predictions of Darwinian Macroevolution:
 

1.  A mechanism must exist for creation of new genetic information, truly new genes, etc

                    (can't get from bacteria to elephants by substraction)
 

2.  Fossil record - simple to complex, gradual increase in number of phyla, diversity precedes disparity, gradual and continuous transitions, universe of transitional forms.
 

Quotes by Darwin in The Origin of Species:

"why, if species have descended from other species by insensibly fine gradations, do we not everywhere see innumerable transitional forms?

"the number of intermediate and transitional links between all living and extinct species must have been inconceivably great"

"[Since] innumerable transitional forms must have existed, why do we not find them imbedded in countless numbers in the crust of the earth?  Why is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links?  Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this is perhaps is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory."

C. Darwin quoted in The Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection, 1974, pg 202, 292.
 

3.  All complex biological systems (organ systems, molecular machines, integrated functions, developmental trajectories) must be able to be built by individual small steps, each of which provide increased reproductive success.
 

"If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down."

C. Darwin, The Origin of Species,  pg 219.
 
 

These defining predictions have not been supported by the data!
 
 
 
 

Instead, the following are emphasized as support for macroevolution today, yet these are irrelevant as they make no distinction between Naturalism and Design:

 
1.  Mechanisms for adaptation, new gene combinations, new alleles  (microevolution)

2.  Layers of strata with different fauna

3.  Patterns of similarity and differences   (homology, molecular sequences, etc.)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

Comprehensibility of the universe  -  existence of simple laws that govern nature

Anthropic coincidences - fine tuning of the universe

Infinite number of universes?

A quantum fluctuation out of absolute nothingness?

Imaginary time?

Intractability of naturalistic origin of life

Directed pan-spermia?  -  life seeded from outer space

Intractability of naturalistic origin of biological information

Irreducible complexity

                         - of certain organs (What good is 5% of an eye - S. Gould)

                         - of certain biochemical systems (Darwin's Black Box - M. Behe)

                         - in development (the marching band problem - Paul Nelson)
 

Cambrian Explosion - coincident appearance of all basic body plans

Lack of evidence for gradual transformation in the fossil record
 

 Some Final Suggestions:
 
 

1. Don't be impressed with claims of beneficial mutations - the issue is whether mutations
create information.
 

2. Don't be impressed with examples of "evolution in action" - this is microevolution and has nothing to do with origins.
 

3. Don't be impressed with claims of fossil intermediates - the paradigm of naturalistic macroevolution is not being tested, but rather its validity is assumed.  New fossils are placed wherever they make the most sense within this paradigm.  The fossil record is thoroughly nonDarwinian.
 

4. Don't be impressed with patterns of morphological or genetic relatedness - these are expected from a common Designer.
 

5.   Don't be impressed with computer programs modeling evolution.  The rules dictate the results (information is always smuggled in).
 

6.  Don't be impressed with examples of law-driven simple repetitive order, like crystals - the issue is information not order!
 

7.  Focus on   a) direct evidence, b) plausible mechanism, and c) origin of information