Is Evolution Science?

I: Evolution ~ Philosophical Metaphysical Naturalism

"May not a future generation well ask how any scientist, in full possession of his intellectual faculties and with adequate knowledge of information theory could ever execute the feat of cognitive acrobatics necessary to sincerely believe that a (supremely complex) machine system of information, storage and retrieval, servicing millions of cells, diagnosing defects and them repairing them in a teleonomic Von Newman machine manner, arose in randomness-the antipole of information"~Dr. A.E. Wilder-Smith (Triple Doctorate) Huxley Memorial Lecture at the Oxford Union, Oxford University 2/14/1986

Dover, PA. 2005 Definition Of Science:

In the case where Intelligent Design (ID) was being taught in Public schools as science, the court held that the school board violated the establishment clause and that ID was no  more than  creationism repackaged. The court also held to the  validity of science according to the standards of the National Academy of Science's definition and said the following:

"As the National Academy of Sciences (hereinafter "NAS") was recognized by experts for both parties as the "most prestigious" scientific association in this country, we will accordingly cite to its opinion where appropriate. (1:94, 160-61 (Miller); 14:72 (Alters); 37:31 (Minnich)). NAS is in agreement that science is limited to empirical, observable and ultimately testable data: "Science is a particular way of knowing about the world. In science, explanations are restricted to those that can be inferred from the confirmable data – the results obtained through observations and experiments that can be substantiated by other scientists. Anything that can be observed or measured is amenable to scientific investigation. Explanations that cannot be based upon empirical evidence are not part of science." ( P-649 at 27)."


That was a most interesting definition. Did you notice what constitutes as science however? Here's the summary:

1- Science is LIMITED to empirical, observable, and ultimately testable data

2- Explanations are RESTRICTED to those which can be inferred from confirmable data.

3- Only has results that can be obtained through observation and experiments

4- Those results must be able to be  substantiated by other scientists.

5- Anything that can be observed or measured is "amenable" to scientific investigation

6- Explanations that are not empirical cannot be a part of science.

The amazing thing  about this is that evolution fails  under 5 of the 6 constructs. How?

1- Evolution  in the sense of Macroevolution has never been witnessed nor observed.

2- No data can be confirmed regarding evolution therefore any explanations for  it  cannot  be restricted to the available data. It has to be made to fit.

3- Evolution only occurs when species are made to show variation. there has been no new phyla created as evolution states. Only varying species and  most with severe limitations such as fruit  flies.

4- Evolution cannot be measured as postulations  take significant millions of  years for  cycles to reveal themselves. Secondly, the fossil  record is lacking and only consistent with  the biological explosion of the Precambrian era. there is no gradualism in the record.

5- There are no empirical explanations for  Macroevolutionary process. This is the overarching premise or process by which man is said to have descended along with primates from a common ancestor. There are no  empirical facts to back those assertions.

Can That Possibly Be Science?

Let's see, we have a system called "evolutionary science", that  has only been observed on a microevolutionary scale by which merely restricted variation has developed and some by laboratory design. We have plants and certain seeds that have been scientifically manipulated  for which scientists claim evolution, but  no evidence of similar biochemical process among any living thing.  There is no evidence of Macroevolutionary change creating new phyla and that has never been observed in any  known species, and  what claims that  exist  for such are refuted when studied more in depth. There is no fossil record to confirm historical macroevolutionary change, in  fact the  fossil record is consistent with sudden appearance of life forms and  creatures being made to be the way they are whereas evolution teaches gradualism, the evidence does not indicate such. Where is  the science of evolution? Is it in the peer groups or associations of the scientists themselves, the classrooms of the students, the books that they write. Where is it? Because it's certainly NOT in the scientific evidence.

I'm sorry my evolutionist friends, your dogma is what I call philosophical metaphysical naturalism. I believe this materialistic approach to science has caused the damage that we currently see played out in our children, families and social environments. Is evolution the ONLY cause? ABSOLUTELY NOT! but it is a cause. How is this so?

You have told people for generations that they are mere animals and except for the purpose they determine are without a higher purpose. You've told them that they were created by process of random chance and mutations. A mere accident of a spark called life. The effect is that they have been deceived into becoming animals and acting with the animalistic behaviour that you have encouraged through an empty worldview. They are  destroying themselves and our communities with murder, lust, greed, materialism, intellectualism, drugs and such the like and lending themselves to self directed relativistic morality or amoralism.

STOP The Madness!

I want my community back. My neighborhood back. My schools back, and my colleges back, and the future of my children back as well. The only way to do that is to insure that YOU either place your philosophical metaphysical naturalism, (which falls short of science under most definitions that  you postulate) in the guise of what you call science, onto the trash heap of history or exit the campuses and schools in which you pollute the minds of the young and vulnerable.

I ask every Christian to commit themselves to doing their part to make sure it is so.

II: Let's Take Another Look:

What has Dr. Michael Behe found that our local philosophical naturalist scientists say means nothing? Well, he can't be blamed for this one::

Nature publishes paper on the edge of evolution, Part 1

First Post Conclusions:

A number of points can be drawn from this fine work:

• The central point of The Edge of Evolution was tat if several amino acids of a protein must be changed before a certain selective effect is available, then that is effectively beyond the reach of Darwinian processes. Bridgham et al (2009) confirm that conclusion. (As an aside, it would make a good project for a sociologist of science to ask why the same conclusion is met with howls of protest when presented by a Darwinian skeptic such as myself, but garners praise when presented by someone else.)
  
  
• There is no reason to think the protein studied by Bridgham et al (2009) is unusual in its difficulty of developing a binding site for even a relatively closely-related substance. In fact, in the absence of strong opposing data, that should be the default, reasonable assumption.
  
  
• That same reasonable assumption counts strongly against any two unrelated proteins easily developing a binding site for each other.
  
  
• That reasonable assumption therefore negates all woolly Darwinian evolutionary scenarios where critical protein binding sites are assumed without justification to pop up when needed (such as, say, in the building of multiprotein structures like the cilium or flagellum).
  
  
• Thus the work strongly supports the conclusion of Edge that Darwinian processes are highly unlikely to have built the complex molecular machinery of the cell.
  
  

Second Post:

Nature publishes paper on the edge of evolution, Part 2

Nature has recently published an interesting paper which places severe limits on Darwinian evolution. The manuscript, from the laboratory of Joseph Thornton at the University of Oregon, is entitled “An epistatic ratchet constrains the direction of glucocorticoid receptor evolution”. ( http://tinyurl.com/yeq2cy8 ) The work is interpreted by its authors within a standard Darwinian framework, but the results line up very well with arguments I made in The Edge of Evolution. ( http://tinyurl.com/yba6vba )This is the second of several posts discussing it.

Using clever synthetic and analytical techniques, Bridgham et al (2009) show that the more recent hormone receptor protein that they synthesized, a GR-like protein, can’t easily revert to the ancestral structure and activity of an MR-like protein because its structure has been adjusted by selection to its present evolutionary task, and multiple amino acid changes would be needed to switch it back. That is a very general, extremely important point that deserves much more emphasis. In all cases — not just this one — natural selection is expected to hone a protein to suit its current activity, not to suit some future, alternate function. And that is a very strong reason why we should not expect a protein performing one function in a cell to easily be able to evolve another, different function by Darwinian means. In fact, the great work of Bridgham et al (2009) shows that it may not be do-able for Darwinian processes even to produce a protein performing a function very similar to that of a homologous protein.

Before reading their paper even I would have happily conceded for the sake of argument that random mutation plus selection could convert an MR-like protein to a GR-like protein and back again, as many times as necessary. Now, thanks to the work of Bridgham et al (2009), even such apparently minor switches in structure and function are shown to be quite problematic. It seems Darwinian processes can’t manage to do even as much as I had thought.

(As an aside into the circus world of popular-level debates on Darwinism, the work of Bridgham et al (2009) nicely shows the fallacy of the anti-ID retort that, say, a mousetrap is not irreducibly complex because, if the catch and holding bar are removed, parts of it can still be used as a tie clip. The same principle that holds for cellular machinery would hold for all machinery. Something that was shaped by selection to work as a tie clip would not look like an ancestor of a mousetrap, or easily be converted to one by random changes plus selection. If you look at images of tie clips on the internet, none of them resemble mousetraps — except for those purposely designed by folks who were arguing against irreducible complexity.)

Another point worth driving home in this post concerns the frequently encountered argument that, well, just because one kind of protein can’t develop a useful binding site or selectable property easily doesn’t mean that some other kind of cellular protein can’t. (In keeping with their Darwinian framework, Bridgham et al (2009) seem to allude to this.) After all, there are thousands to tens of thousands of kinds of proteins in a typical cell. If one of them is ruled out, the reasoning goes, many more possibilities remain.

This argument, however, is specious. For any given evolutionary task, the number of proteins in the cell which are candidates for helpful mutations is almost always very limited. For example, as I discussed in EOE, out of thousands of malaria proteins, mutations in only a handful are helpful to the parasite in its fight against chloroquine, and only one is really effective — the mutations in the PfCRT protein. Ditto for the human proteins that can mutate to help resist malaria — there’s just a handful. In the case of the hormone receptors discussed by Bridgham et al (2006), one can note that, out of ten thousand vertebrate proteins, the one that gave rise to a new steroid hormone receptor was an already-existing steroid hormone receptor. This should be quite surprising to folks who believe the many-proteins argument, because the steroid receptor was outnumbered 10,000 to 1 by other protein genes, yet it won the race to duplicate and form a new functional receptor. If all things were equal, we should be very surprised by that. But of course not all things are equal. The reason the receptor duplicated to give rise to a closely-related receptor is because no other protein in the cell is likely to be able to do so in a reasonable amount of evolutionary time.

The bottom line is that, for a given evolutionary task, at best only a handful of proteins will likely be helpful to evolve, at worst none may help. To calculate the probability of, say, a helpful protein-protein interaction developing in response to any particular selective pressure, it’s mistaken to gratuitously multiply odds by the total number of proteins in a cell. Combined with the point made by Bridgham et al (2009), that even tiny structural/functional changes may not be achievable by random mutation/ selection, these considerations pretty much squelch the likelihood of Darwinian processes doing much of significance during evolution.

References

Bridgham,J.T., Ortlund,E.A., and Thornton,J.W. 2009. An epistatic ratchet constrains the direction of glucocorticoid receptor evolution. Nature 461:515-519.

Bridgham,J.T., Carroll,S.M., and Thornton,J.W. 2006. Evolution of hormone-receptor complexity by molecular exploitation. Science 312:97-101.

By the way...is evolution science?

"Evolutionary philosophy has indeed become a state of mind, one might almost say a kind of mental prison  rather than a scientific attitude. To equate one particular interpretation of the data with the data itself  is evidence of mental confusion. The theory of evolution...is detrimental to ordinary intelligence and warps judgement." ~ Dr. Arthur C. Custance" Evolution: An Irrational Faith" in Evolution or Creation Vol. 4-The Doorway Papers(Grand Rapids, Zond.1976)pg. 173-174

I'd say NOT!

Blessed!