Feedback for August 2006

In short, your zeal for evolution and demeaning of creationists give me the impression that you are in a panic to make sure people believe what you want them to believe. I find that both creationists and evolutionists blur, bend, and distort facts to suit their own purposes.

Why should you care what people believe about the origin of life? I hear over and over that it is because the U.S. is behind other countries in science education. Is that deficit because of a lack of belief in evolution concerning origins? I think not.

I'm a teacher in the public school system, and I can assure you the problem is not that kids don't believe evolution. The problem is that public school is just another entitlement in our country -- parents see it as free daycare. By middle school, the majority of parents do not participate in or support their children's education, and they place no importance on excellence. The state, districts, and teachers are left to raise and educate students who have no parental motivation to learn. Those students who are motivated to learn are unable to do so adequately because the children of parents who don't care get a disproportionate amount of teachers' attention and time.

Excellence in education isn't the reason for your zeal -- I know of no teacher or education professional who thinks excellence in education is in any way linked to belief in evolution. The argument that a lack of belief in evolution is the problem is invalid because too many other factors influence students' performance. So, what is it? Why does your site and others like it seek so zealously to snuff out belief in creation, knowing that such belief neither benefits nor harms education?

Teresa Beck

Using the Internet for browsing, I am ignorant of how newsgroups work. Do you think you could include an explanation of how to get started for those poor souls like me?

One key point is that where Issak says Stephen Meyer's paper "subverted the peer review process", Luskin's quote shows three substantial and high-level reviews which all found the paper "meritorious" and that "it warranted publication".

Secondly, Isaak says Denton explicitly refers to natural law as if to show that he does not support intelligent design, yet there is nothing about intelligent design which requires it to be outside the realm of natural law. Just because there is intelligence somewhere does not make that intelligence supernatural, wouldn't you agree?

- Glenn Shrom

I thought the article was very well compiled and organized, by the way. Great job on the site.

However, the claim "Just like you cannot have a painting without a painter, or a building without a builder, you cannot have a creation without a creator" sometimes kinda stumps me. I like to say "Who then created the creator? And who created the creator's creator, and so on..." but personally I don't find this rebuttal sufficient enough. Is there a better answer to this argument? Is it even a legitimate argument at all?

Also I would also like to express my disdain for "Dr." Kent Hovind. I have seen his videos on Google Video and they are just agonizing. There's one where he debates a Biology professor and just refuses all his claims saying "They're all wrong. There is no evidence for evolution" and then proceeds to quote random Bible passages and present easily dismissable "evidence" for Creationism.

Anyway, thanks for an awesome site.

Sites like this, and bright minds like you guys, are what keep my hope alive for the future.

Do you believe that human or people evolved from apes or chimpanzee based on your belief in evolution theory?

Thank you. Will appreciate your reply.

Shouldnt there be perhaps a small intro or text covering this problem, seeing that I'm sure many questions come in that originate exactly from such sources. School books are rarely the result of scientists really putting effort into creating them, usually they are a publishers attempt at making money (selling school books is a business after all) and can therefor contain outdated or even missinformation on the facts/theories of evolution (you need to fill the book somehow).

I just noticed many reactions from creationists on such books (over many forums)

For the rest, I really like the site and archive and eventhough I surely dont understand everything posted, I'm trying and enjoying it so far, good work en keep it up.

Near the bottom in the section labeled Michael Denton and Phillip Johnson influence Behe to doubt evolution

The entry that begins "another revealing review of...Evolution: a Theory in Crisis" has an odd url that takes you to http://internet.california.com/ , what looks like a general CA info page. The following link to Page of Honest Intellectual Inquiry takes you there too.

Just thought you'd like to know! I'll continue to check if I can't find another way to link to these sites. Thanks!

My question relates to Creationism itself: nowadays, Creation "scientists" accept that "variation within kind" caused by "genetic loss" is possible, but "macro-evolution" between "kinds" is not possible. As far as I understand, evolutionary science makes no distinction between micro- and macro-evolution, as they are driven by the same processes (mutations, natural selection etc.) But has this Creationist disparity always existed, or was there a time when the majority of Creationists did not accept that variation - whether "within" or "between" kind - could happen at all?

If the Creationists did at one point believe that variation did not happen at all, and then had to change their perception somewhere along the line, does this mean that their story wasn't completely right in the first place? And if so, does that mean that one day they will bow under the crippling weight of evidence for macro-evolution, and accept that as well?

1) What science is and how it works. Often creationists have only a comic-book understanding of it. This is dealt with very clearly in the first few chapters of Popper's "Objective Knowledge", but one can piece together some of that on this site, as well as by reading works by Gould, Dawkins, etc.

2) What evolution actually is. The most lucid and concise explanation I've found is Mayr's "What Evolution Is". It addresses the evidence and refutations of creationism briefly, but its value is that it lives up to the title.

3) What the evidence for evolution is. There is some of that on this site, as well as in the books by Mayr, Darwin, etc.

4) Refutations of specific ID and creationist claims. This site is the mother load. Really, there just is no other place to find this stuff so conviently. It was minimally acceptable when I grepped the files I downloaded into a directory - but this site is much more convenient most of the time. Of necessity, talkorigins touches on the other three items in some detail.

I must visit once or twice a month at least and sometimes several times a week. I'm grateful for some of the other sites - such as nsceweb, Panda's Thumb, etc. But this talk origins remains my main reference.

The primary reason people reject evolution is that what they "know" about evolution amounts to barbershop gossip. Most of what the creationist "intelligentsia" (such as it is) promulgates and disseminates easily determined to be false by someone who does their homework. But they are masters of manipulation and have several techniques they apply which includes finding some area of arcane science where they think few people would have facts handy and making absolute assertions about how that branch of science precludes evolution. They have done this with 2nd law of thermo, with string theory, with NFL theorems, with woodpecker necks, and bombadier beetles. They thrive in the corners of science where there is poor illumination for the general public.

No matter how many times one refutes a specific crazy argument, it just keeps coming back. (Creationist leadership relies on the intellectual laziness of their followers.) On the good side, this site provides a ready reference of well-considered, well-worded refutations of the vast majority of specific claims. It is the snopes of the creation / evolution controversy although I suspect you precede snopes by some years.

I believe Ne should be the effective population size. That's all.

Since the Cassowary is native to Australia and New Guinea, it could hardly have been been observed on a trip to Egypt. Perhaps there's some semantic distinction I'm missing - was the discussion (as opposed to the observation) on his trip to Egypt?

I presume he was using data on cassowaries gathered by previous French explorers to Oceania (D'Entrecasteaux etc). Just thought I'd point it out.

I lean towards creationism myself, but appreciate hearing both sides of the story, and was interested in your proposed method of the evolution of the beetle's defense.

Towards the end of the article at http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/bombardier.html, you say the following:

"Some people are apparently uncomfortable with the idea of uncertainty, so uncomfortable that they try to turn the unknown into the unknowable. There has never been any evidence that bombardier beetles could not have evolved, but just because they couldn't explain exactly how the beetles evolved, lots of people jumped to the conclusion that an explanation was impossible. In fact, their conclusion says a lot more about themselves than about the beetles. To make such a conclusion based only on a lack of knowledge is a kind of arrogance. "

My thought is that it is equally arrogant to make the assumption that the bombadier beetle *evolved* its defenses, rather than being created with them. Obviously we don't know.

You also tend to assume that a given creationist or creationist school of thought represents all of creationism, thus if you disprove that school of thought, you've disproven the creation hypothesis. This is buying in to a false dichotomy.

What we seem to lack in discussions of origins is the admission that we just don't know for sure. Evolution advocates are committed to pushing their point of view, creationists to theirs, both, usually, because of their theological assumptions. Not too many people are neutral in their theological assumptions, and these assumptions often drive their scientific biases.

Is this accurate? I note that many of the quotes are quite old - from the 1930s and 40s - but some, like Grasse's, are more recent (1977). Has the fossil record challenged this view in more recent years, or was it ever valid? What explanation would you offer for evolution "winding down" if that is what we observe?

A point that I haven't seen addressed here is that if evolution did not occur, why does all the evidence point toward it as the mechanism of creation? I have heard other Christians say that God left the fossil record, isotope traces, current microevolution, and the rest of the overwhelming evidence as a test of our faith. That particular test would involve deception on God's part - making the world look much older than creationists believe. The God that I believe in doesn't deceive His own people, and the Bible itself says that God is incapable of lying.

It's also unfortunate that so many Christians have bought into the conspiracy theory that there is a huge cover-up in the scientific community, and that science actually supports their narrow interpretation of the Bible. I can't say I'm surprised, since two of the main creationist apologists are "Dr." Kent Hovind and "Dr." Carl Baugh, neither of whom has any degrees from a legitimate university. In fact, Carl Baugh is president of the "university" he received his "degree" from. It saddens me that my own brothers and sisters in Christ are willing to support these folks, who make their living deceiving Christians.

I occasionally catch Carl Baugh's program on TBN, and most of what he says about science is just wrong. He is constantly attempting to link evolutionary theory to Nazism, Communism, slavery, genocide, and any other negative thing he and his guests can think up. Hovind still repeats the lie that Darwin's reference to "favored races" refers to racism, when in fact Darwin was using the term to describe different types and species' of animals. As long as Christians are willing to support these charlatans, they will continue to remain in the dark about scientific matters.

Finally, I'd like to point out that a Christian is defined by his beliefs about Jesus Christ, not his beliefs about how mankind came to be the most intelligent species on the planet. Too many Christians think that to deny the doctrine of creationisn is somehow denying God's existence. That simply isn't true.

Thanks for the excellent site.