OrionWorks wrote:
A recent comment from the esteemed Mr. Malloy got me to thinking...
Thomas sez:
I'm reading John Sanford's Genetic Entropy and The
Mystery of the Genome. Dr. Sanford makes the case that
most mutations are deleterious, if not fatal, to the
individual.
I actually thought anyone who'd spent more than about 10 minutes
studying biology knew that already. I'm surprised Dr. Sanford felt it
was a "case" in need of "making".
He contends that the web of life won't last
much longer. The primary thesis of the book is an attack
on the Primary Axiom of Evolutionary Biology, that
random mutations can spontaneously produce more
complicated and more fit life forms.
I'm also reading Vance Ferrell's The Evolution Cruncher,
a 900 page expose on the absurdity of Evolution.
So, I thinks to myself...something I find ironic about many thinly
veiled religious scribblings on why Darwin's Theory of Evolution alone
cannot by itself explain the progressive complexity of life is that it
seems to be based on a profound sense of distrust of the observed
rules of randomness.
Nah, it's simpler than that. Assuming the person making the argument
isn't just rationalizing a religious assertion that the set of species
is static, the real argument, I think, is this:
** I don't understand how it works so it's false.
This has a corollary which is often applied:
** I don't understand how it works so anyone who says they do is lying.
This is a very powerful pair of arguments, which are often used to
debunk such diverse piles of nonsense as the theory of relativity, the
claim that cold fusion exists, and the totally absurd claim that the WTC
north and south towers might have fallen due to airplane crashes.
I've seen these same powerful arguments applied to disprove Newton's
theory of mechanics, come to think of it -- but that use is a bit rarer;
most people who don't understand Newtonian mechanics keep the fact to
themselves rather than crowing about it.
