Richard Dawkins makes absurd claims which don’t withstand even a casual glance, but at least provide some entertainment value — get the popcorn, this could surpass the best summer movie. You’ll watch as Dawkins equates scientific inquiry with Holocaust deniers. The suspense! The thrill! The betrayal! See Mr. Dawkins replace the scientific method by his own vision of truth by fiat! It’s the greatest show on earth! Get your tickets now for the best comedy of the year! Oh the humanity!
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 eye witnesses to the Holocaust. It is the plain truth that we are cousins of chimpanzees, somewhat more distant cousins of monkeys, more distant cousins still of aardvarks and manatees, yet more distant cousins of bananas and turnips …
Leaving for the moment his bizarre notion equating Holocaust deniers with scientific inquiry of evolution (when you have nothing logical to argue, call ‘em names, a loose corollary to Goodwins Law), the remainder of his article is no less absurd by allowing his atheist dogma to cloud what remains of his scientific judgment (hardly the “clear thinking oasis” his website claims).
Evolution is a fact in the same sense as it is a fact that Paris is in the northern hemisphere. Though logic-choppers rule the town, some theories are beyond sensible doubt, and we call them facts. The more energetically and thoroughly you try to disprove a theory, if it survives the assault, the more closely it approaches what common sense happily calls a fact.
We are like detectives who come on the scene after a crime has been committed. The murderer’s actions have vanished into the past.
The detective has no hope of witnessing the actual crime with his own eyes. What the detective does have is traces that remain, and there is a great deal to trust there. There are footprints, fingerprints (and nowadays DNA fingerprints too), bloodstains, letters, diaries. The world is the way the world should be if this and this history, but not that and that history, led up to the present.
Mr. Dawkins misunderstands science, yet again. It’s not the job to disprove evolution after he assumes a priori its truth, it’s his job to prove it scientifically — via the scientific method — otherwise it’s not science. Call it philosophy or some other discipline, but it certainly isn’t science.
To demonstrate the absurdity of Dawkins’ idea, suppose we proposed the following theory: Just before you read this page, aliens placed you and everyone else on this earth, with all memories intact, and created the world around you to match your memory; what you thought happened yesterday is just an implanted memory.
Prove that false. Since it will survive the assault, according to Dawkins we would “happily call that fact”. Absurd? Of course, but thus so is Dawkins error as he desires to substitute his dogma for science.
Actual scientific theory builds on experimental evidence. If you don’t have that, it’s not science. So where is the repeatable, verifiable experimental evidence for the following evolutionary ideas?
- Matter comes from nothing.
- Non-living material can spontaneously become alive.
- Species can change from one to another.
- Explosions produce order.
If you don’t have the first three, evolution doesn’t work. Surely such foundational and critical ideas in evolution have huge amounts of experimental data? Well, no, they don’t. Remember, they must all be true — if even one doesn’t have valid, experimental data, the theory isn’t science. These questions don’t exist on the periphery of evolutionary theory, they form the basis for it. Where’s the data? As Mr. Dawkins states evolution is a fact, certainly he can supply copious experimental results for those ideas.
Well, Mr. Dawkins? If you don’t have that, it’s not science, by definition. In other words, evolution is not science. No experimental data, no science. Evolution is a (bad) guess for people desperately clinging to the dogma of atheism (itself illogical, though that’s a topic for another time). That’s it. You can call evolution religion, philosophy, or any thing else — just not science.
“The murderer’s actions have vanished into the past” as Mr Dawkins says wonderfully by his own mouth admits evolution isn’t science. No experiment, no science. And of course, DNA evidence can now be created in the lab to fool those blindly trusting it (similar to Piltdown man) revealing how “science” can be easily fooled, as even the evolution zealots at talkorigins.org admit:
The hoax illuminates two pitfalls to be wary of in the scientific process. The first is the danger of inadequately examining and challenging results that confirm the currently accepted scientific interpretation. The second is that a result, once established, tends to be uncritically accepted and relied upon without further reconsideration.
Honest debate and discussion is good for science — lacking that science descends into personal attacks about what someone thinks is right, instead of discussing experimental data (or the lack thereof). Attempting to squelch scientific discussion by dogmatic fiat isn’t good for science, and Mr. Dawkins should be ashamed at himself for proposing the idea, while actual scientists should distance themselves from his attempts to be un-scientific.
We’re sure Mr. Dawkins’ filled his book with citations of experimental data covering the foundations of evolutionary theory. We’d like to review the book (it’s likely an entertaining read), so if Mr. Dawkins would send a copy, we’d like to review the evidence for ourselves. After all, if the evidence he presents is so overwhelming it should easily convince everyone with it’s voluminous scientific experiments proving foundational principles.
Mr. Dawkins desires to throw out the scientific method and proclaim evolution as fact by his own fiat. Sorry, Mr. Dawkins you don’t get to proclaim scientific truth to fit your dogma by your own fiat — that pesky scientific method rears its ugly head again, or perhaps we can call it “The Evolution Delusion”.
After all, blind acceptance of dogma allowed the Piltdown man evolutionary hoax in the first place, did it not?