June 8, 2012

On The Origin Of Darwin & A Demonic Selection


So I decided to reread Darwin's On Origin of Species. Not sure why, it's a brutally dry read and so full of 19th Century empiricism and rationalism, a person could choke on it even at a distance. The most coherent thing that I can pull from the last Chapter (14) of Origin of the Species is a convoluted explanation for sterility in female caste ants in their colony. It is overly wordy and comes off as pretentious and at times, rambling, like a man possessed. Perhaps he was? Perhaps this is why I put it down the first time when I tried to read the entire thing twenty years ago (boooooring). 

Darwin then goes on to describe in detail the potential shortcomings of his theory by stating them. The foremost being the complete lack of intermediate forms or what are now called transitional fossils/forms. He acknowledges at the time of publishing of Origin of The Species (1859) that there appeared to be a substantial lack of sources of transitional forms and unequivocally posits the rhetorical question that even if we as humans did find them, “What would keep us from finding them so distinct that they would be viewed as another distinct species and not a transitional or intermediate form?” He makes elaborate excuses for why intermediate forms would be so difficult to find. Case in point: He states that perfect scenarios/circumstances would need to unfold to fossilize these intermediate forms and then probably, even on the sheer scale of time that he allows for…the discovery of them would be minimal if not impossible. It’s as if he is making “scientific excuses” for why they won’t be found even though he is convinced they existed. That is like saying, “They existed, I’m sure of it but they don’t anymore and you won’t find proof.” How this any different than saying, “They never existed because they can’t…because evolution isn’t true.” Again we see an impressive intellect framing the argument so that no matter how its approached, it will be hard to refute or argue because you need to work within the framework laid out by the one who sets the criteria for what the truth is or what the possible end results or answers could be. To me this is no different than what David Hume did in his argument against miracles. It’s called “excuses for human inadequacy”. Hume narrowly defined criteria of how to view and assess miracles. So narrowly that he practically made the supernatural only explainable through means he found acceptable which in itself—was horribly biased. In Hume’s case he wants a posteriori experience or posits a need to have people or witnesses of the miracle and they had to have been “educated" and "honest" men by Hume’s definition. Like Darwin, Hume demands a proof that is unattainable by the criteria set up. Darwin by saying that the fossil record would be too infinitesimal is making excuses for why these intermediate forms will not (or cannot) be found. He then compounds the impossibly/improbability by saying that even if we found them, we probably wouldn’t recognize them as transitional fossils but rather completely distinct new species. How convenient for evolutionists.

Along the way he makes what appears to be leaping assumptions such as, “If we look to long enough intervals of time, geology plainly declares that all species have changed; and they have changed in the manner which my theory requires, for they have changed slowly and in a graduated manner. We clearly see this in the fossil remains from consecutive formations invariably being much more closely related to each other, than are the fossils from formations distant from each other in time. Darwin has drawn the false assumption here that things have to have been laid down in strata in a uniform manner and because it appears it has always been done in this manner, it would continue to so, both in time and within the ecological systems of which he refers. This is an adherence to Uniformitarianism. Too bad Stephen Jay Gould came along as an evolutionist himself and added a further theory to an existing flawed theory (evolution) called Punctuated Equilibrium. This theory generally states that evolutionary change occurs rapidly and then alternates with long periods of evolutionary stability or stasis (i.e.: non-uniform). Ironically, this sounds strangely akin to theistic evolution and if I dare say it…progressive creationism. Unfortunate for Darwin, it flies directly in the face of his foundational theory which states in the summary that, “As natural selection acts solely by accumulating slight, successive, favorable variations, it can produce no great or sudden modification; it can act only by very short and slow steps. Hence the canon of `Natura non facit saltum”. What’s this all mean? It means the very theory the Gould bases his modified theory on directly contradicts the tenants of his undergirding or supporting theory. He nicely “shoots himself in the taxonomic foot (or fin)” …so to speak. This violates the Law of Non-contradiction. Tut-tut Mr. Gould you committed a fallacy of logic that any first year philosophy student would know to avoid.

This being said I offer a short abbreviated Christian blurb as a point of commonsense and contrast from a site called:  biblicalcreation.org.uk. It alludes (rightfully) that science since the time of Darwin has purposefully and narrowly defined what is acceptable (and not acceptable) right down to terminologies (just as Hume did with miracles). Much of what we pull from Scriptures is dependent on terms. If science or humanistic society is successful in redefining them or deconstructing them, they can change people’s minds by obfuscating truth and bending meanings. This is exactly what biblicalcreation.org points out in a succinct prose. They mention that plants and animals reproduce after their “kind”.  As such there are not rigid rules in the norms of language in the Bible that says these “kinds” are species per se. This is a modern imposition on the text. This site then rightfully concludes that the Bible does not preclude speciation which is a false assumption by evolutionist and sadly, many creationists. This is all because of an improper or deliberate reframing of the argument and twisting of meanings.

What neither of these sites speak to very much is the issue of the soul unless you dig on the Christian sites. Darwin doesn’t seem to mention it. It is interesting that Darwin never took a thing like the soul into consideration in his theory. This also brings up the interesting question of what makes the difference between man’s self-consciousness and animal’s lack of it. Why are human’s different if we are nothing more than a more evolved primate? To me this is a glaring oversight or act of intellectual ignorance/arrogance in the case of Darwin and continues to be for all those that adhere to the tenants of his godless faith in evolution that cannot even account for something as obvious as his own human cognizance as anything more than a sum result of evolution and chemistry.

What I found truly interesting is the article on Darwin himself on christiananswers.net concerning his “free thinking” background with his parents. He himself seems to have been a victim or outworking of his own theory in a warped and twisted way. Darwin appears to have indeed been shaped by his environment in his youth by his father and grandfather and “adapted” accordingly by apostatizing and assimilating into agnostic surroundings he grew up in. He took on the “traits” within his own family or “species” of unbelief. Sad. Due to the mental devolution of one man a permanent detrimental mutation has now propagated to millions. He had a chance to select the right path, he chose the wrong one. Just as many who have followed him down a path of man-centered worship.

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