Reflection by Paul Zachary "PZ" Myers

 

They’re trying to wear me down

I get email from creationists all the time, and it is so discouraging: there are a few people who manage to pump out so much noise and garbage, and there are a few people willing to engage their nonsense, and I guess I’m one of them. But I can’t possibly keep up! For instance, one obnoxious creationist has sent me a couple of links to his horrible website, Darhiwum, which just goes on and on with bogus misinterpretations at endless length. This particular article first quotes Conservapædia, and then explores the author’s misbegotten thesis, which is…let’s see if you can figure it out.

The cause of evolution does not exist in evolution. Evolution as a cause does not contain a response to the cause that makes it consequent. It does not give an account of itself, why is evolution possible in the first place? It is merely a programmed biological process on an assembly line.

“Evolutionary units must know the “trick” of reproducing, they must have heredity, hereditary variation… The basic problem is that the first evolutionary units could not have evolved in an evolutionary way, because they did not have the necessary properties at that time.” /Evolutionary biologist Eőrs Szathmáry/.

Where did they get this “knack” – they have no idea!

A pre-existing ability cannot be developed afterwards, and if the ability to evolve /reproduction, mutation, variation, natural selection, heredity/ is not there in the first place, the evolutionary process cannot even start. Evolution can only work if all its components are present and working simultaneously. Where do we get these capabilities by which the alleged evolution takes place?

First, I have to get something out of the way, this contemptible habit creationists have of quote-mining scientists. Eőrs Szathmáry is a theoretical biologist who published with John Maynard Smith, wrote articles presenting the mechanisms for evolution, and was never arguing for creationism. This creationist, though, throws out a mishmash of Conservapædia and established scientists to somehow lard his ideas with some trace of authority.

Their article goes on for thousands of words, but their central stupid idea is that evolution needed to evolve a specific mechanism for mutation, but evolution cannot proceed without mutation. Error is apparently intentional and designed; error is the “capability” that needs to be put in place by design.

I tried to read this bozo’s work with an open mind, but as it sank in what he was trying to argue, I realized that he was just stupid and not worth the effort.

https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2024/04/24/theyre-trying-to-wear-me-down/#comments

My answer:

Sir, you are deceiving your readers to make fools of whomever you want. But lying does not pay, because in the end, failure is inevitable. You may win a small battle, but you will lose the war!

Are there no scientific refutations? There are, but they should be noticed! For example:

1. The scientific refutation begins with the fact that organisms capable of evolution do not fall out of the sky, and organisms incapable of evolution do not produce evolution. Where did the first subjects of the initial, evolution-capable organisms come from that could not have been produced by evolution, because then evolution would have produced its own ability by evolution?!

2 If "biological evolution is essentially random wandering in a field of genetic possibilities." (Richard Dawkins), then how does LUCA (protobacteria) become any complex organism without guidance? In which case, breeding anything based on artificial selection for breeding characteristics is completely unnecessary! Conscious breeding and non-conscious random selection cannot produce the same complex organism because it is impractical in reality and calls into question the mechanism of artificial selection!

3. Darwinian evolution can explain variation within species - not the existence of the original parent species. The emergence of new, significantly different species cannot be extrapolated to the initial emergence of the original species, because their origin is not from existing organisms - as here - but from those that did not exist at all before. These are scientific facts!

- bozo