[After quoting a long list of evidence for evolution] Then, after such impressive proof, Froggie throws down the gauntlet and says, “Go ahead, falsify one even one of thousands of established facts supporting evolution. Go ahead.”

So let’s go ahead just a little and examine the list of “facts.” How about “human tails”? Where on earth (or in the fossil record) are humans with tails? We don’t even have a “tail bone” as some maintain.

Ok, so at this point I’m straight back to when I first read about Ray Comfort. I cannot believe he is anything but a fraud. You can’t possibly be this ignorant, and still maintain authority, can you?

Well, the straight fact is that humans with tails are born from time to time even today, and we do have parts of a tail bone left. In most people, it doesn’t take the shape of an actual tail, but if you ever fall down and hit the part of your lower back where that tail would be, don’t tell me it doesn’t hurt more than it should had we not even had hints of a tail bone left. Here’s the Wikipedia article on human tails. Here’s a site with plenty of images of human tails.

Now, Ray, want to revise your statement on the existence of the tail bone and tails in humans? Of course that, that would require you admitting you’re wrong.

Ray continues:

Ditto with legged whales, seacows and snakes with legs. Snakes had legs . . . did they talk? Then there’s the “ape-humans” (the missing link), and the “reptile birds” (that would be the belief that chickens were once dinosaurs). Sure.

Yes, Ray, if you close your eyes and cover your ears, all those fossils of legged whales magically disappear. There are both snakes with legs, and lizards without legs (the latter is actually quite common here in Sweden). The “missing link” is your own strawman imagination. You can’t keep getting closer to the middle between black and white, and still refuse to call it gray. As for reptile birds… Again, if you want to ignore hard evidence, that’s your problem. Ignoring it, however, does not make it go away for the rest of the world.

Of course when listing evidence of evolution, always be sure to drop in a few unpronounceables, such as pharyngeal, pseudogenes, endogenous retroviruses, anatomical parahomology and suboptimal, and you will impress the simple, because you have just evidenced your intelligence.

Maybe Ray can’t pronounce “suboptimal”, but that hardly disproves evolution as a fact (but does hint at why Ray has such a hard time grasping elementary school biology). And if it weren’t for the fact that any attempt to simplify the evidence is only met with even greater lack of understanding (a feat in itself), we wouldn’t have to write such long lists of incomprehensible and unpronounceable (say those two words quickly three times in a row) terms and names.

The rest are winding rabbit trails that I don’t have time to follow. They lead nowhere. It’s about as powerful as me listing all 66 books of the Bible and thinking that I have just proven the existence of God.

But… That is what you do, Ray. You keep telling us God exists because God says God exists in the book God wrote. That’s essentially the same as just listing the 66 books of the Bible. Did we just have a breakthrough here? Did Ray just unintentionally understand (the only way to make Ray understand anything, by the way) how flawed his entire position is?

Even if he did, he’ll repress it. After all, that’s what he does best.

I close with another quote. Todd C. Wood is a young-earth creationist—indeed, the director of the Center for Origins Research at Bryan College, founded in honor of the creationist hero William Jennings Bryan—who rejects evolution for biblical reasons, just like Comfort. Wood insists, “The Bible reveals true information about the history of the earth that is fundamentally incompatible with evolution.”

But unlike Comfort, Wood is a trained scientist. And as such, he recognizes that the scientific basis of evolution is strong:

Evolution is not a theory in crisis. It is not teetering on the verge of collapse. It has not failed as a scientific explanation. There is evidence for evolution, gobs and gobs of it. It is not just speculation or a faith choice or an assumption or a religion. It is a productive framework for lots of biological research, and it has amazing explanatory power. There is no conspiracy to hide the truth about the failure of evolution. There has really been no failure of evolution as a scientific theory. It works, and it works well.

Anyone who honestly examines the data supporting evolution—even a young-earth creationist—concludes that the science is strong. If you reject evolution, you are doing it for religious reasons. You’re entitled to your religious opinions—but not to your own scientific facts.

Evolutionists have been very clear about this distinction of fact and theory from the very beginning, if only because we have always acknowledged how far we are from completely understanding the mechanisms (theory) by which evolution (fact) occurred. Darwin continually emphasized the difference between his two great and separate accomplishments: establishing the fact of evolution, and proposing a theory—natural selection—to explain the mechanism of evolution.”

Stephen J. Gould, ” Evolution as Fact and Theory”; Discover, May 1981

To begin with, let’s take today’s post: “Evolution is exactly like the story of Pinocchio!”

Yes, because we all know the Theory of Evolution proposes that you must believe in wooden replicas of species magically coming to life, giving birth to mutated wooden replicas that in turn magically come to life as well. See? Not evolution, but Rayvolution.

I don’t blame him, really. I totally get it. It’s much easier to just boast and claim that you’ve knocked down that really big, tough bouncer at the bar, instead of actually showing everyone how you did it. Likewise, it’s much easier to disprove Rayvolution than it is to disprove evolution.

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Geerup has the right to have his opinion, of course, but I just can’t understand why he still thinks he actually knows more about evolution than AronRa. I can’t understand how he can watch AronRa correct his incorrect assumptions and outright lies over and over and over again, and still come back the next day with the same drivel yet again. Geerup isn’t just ignorant in general, he is willfully ignorant of his own ignorance!

Hell, it doesn’t even stop there. Some other creationist (sorry, don’t really know who he is) even feels the need to mock AronRa for – wait for it – being smarter than himself! Seriously, one the side of evolution we have trained professionals who actually know what they’re talking about, and are able to coherently and concretely explain it to everyone else, and on the side of creationism we have people who not only ignore corrections and explanations, but actually make fun of people for telling them why they’re wrong. Am I the only one seeing the problem here? Why don’t creationists realize what kind of players are on each team? This isn’t like those feel-good Disney movies, the team of raggedy street-kids with no training aren’t going to win this match. Or, they might, but not without breaking the rules and bribing the referee. The real winners in this game are those who actually know how to play.

Ok, so the fact that Dr. Hunter would make this argument is somewhat spoiled for us right in the very title of the site. It is also not a very new argument, ID/creationism proponents have been claiming this for years. But why do they think so? What is it about evolution that makes it seem like it is religious in nature?

The reason given by evolutionists such as Myers for why their theological proclamations don’t count is that “evolution provides an explanation for” the imperfections.

It’s true, evolution does provide an explanation for the imperfections in nature. Dr. Hunter quotes (his emphasis) PZ Myers as writing

the interesting part about imperfections like the recurrent laryngeal nerve or the spine of bipeds or mammalian testicles isn’t simply that they seem clumsy and broken in a way no sensible god would tolerate, but that evolution provides an explanation for why they are so.

Not only does the theory of evolution predict beforehand what kind of evidence we should expect to find – and do find – but it also fits the evidence we already have found of common descent with modification. However, this isn’t enough for Dr. Hunter, because it doesn’t fit his worldview. They theory of evolution is incorrect not because it isn’t supported by evidence, but because it is incompatible with his pre-existent opinion of what the evidence is supposed to be.

Third, the notion that “evolution provides an explanation” is absurd. That’s like saying bed-time stories provide an explanation.

The only one’s who are religious in their methodology and conclusions are the creationists and the IDists, because they are the only ones to have reached their conclusions before seeing the evidence. This is shown by their continued insistence to try and prove their case to all of science as well as dismissing all the evidence that doesn’t fit their own ideas, while the real scientists study the evidence, form their theories and then spend a lot of their time trying to disprove their own conclusions. This is the base of the peer review system where you submit your theories not so that others can praise you for how right you are, but so that they can tell you precisely why you’re wrong. Naturally, not being interested in being proven wrong, creationists and IDists mostly reject this system, preferring to pat each other’s backs when one of them finds some perceived flaw in some small part of the theory of evolution.

Dr. Hunter’s problem, I believe, is that he himself is probably religious, and he therefor can’t conceive of a person coming to conclusions that aren’t grounded firmly in religious dogma and beliefs. Because he already believes one thing to be true, he must automatically reject everything else, regardless of the evidence in favor of it. The easiest excuse for someone like that is, of course, to deny one’s own problem and instead pin it on the other person. This is why he makes the illogical and unreasonable accusation that we are the one’s who are religious, and that he is one who’s simply following the evidence.

I just wonder how it is that a theory that is completely false and untrue can continue to produce cures for diseases, better crops and live stock and be supported by so many and so large bodies of evidence, while a theory like Intelligent Design, that is so obviously true, can consistently fail to produce anything at all, least of all evidence in favor of itself. No wonder then that they have to resort to vast conspiracy theories to explain away their own failures.

Two people return to their long neglected garden and find, among the weeds, that a few of the old plants are surprisingly vigorous. One says to the other, ‘It must be that a gardener has been coming and doing something about these weeds.’ The other disagrees and an argument ensues. They pitch their tents and set a watch. No gardener is ever seen. The believer wonders if there is an invisible gardener, so they patrol with bloodhounds but the bloodhounds never give a cry. Yet the believer remains unconvinced, and insists that the gardener is invisible, has no scent and gives no sound. The sceptic doesn’t agree, and asks how a so-called invisible, intangible, elusive gardener differ from an imaginary gardener, or even no gardener at all.

The Parable of the Invisible Gardener was originally told by British philosopher John Wisdom. It highlights the lack of necessity of falsifiability in believer’s minds, and how faith can be adapted to explain away any and all problems that threaten one’s own theories. Where skeptics must, often against their will, accept fact, someone who takes something on faith must not. They can simply decide to believe whatever they want, regardless of proof or evidence.

Enter “A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism“, a petition signed by over 700 scientists who disagree with the popular position that the theory of evolution by natural selection is the best, or even the only possible, theory. Wow, that sounds serious. Over a period of several years, scientists from all over the world have expressed their opinion on evolution, “a theory in crisis” ((“Evolution: A Theory In Crisis” by Michael Denton)). Now, what are the rest of us going to think, those of us who trust that scientists do support evolution?

Well, there’s always “A Scientific Support for Darwinism“, a counter-petition signed by 7733 scientists in only four days, as opposed to the 700 dissenters over a period of several years. Or, if you like a challenge, “Project Steve“. Project Steve lists only those who support evolution and are named Steve, Stephanie or any foreign variation of the name. Even with those limits, they have 1080 signatories as of March 26th, 2009.

Not content with that, there’s also the fact that both the supporter petition and the Steve project contain a higher ratio of biologists than the creationist counter-part. Of course, everyone is allowed their opinion. However, if you want to present your opinion as fact, you better be sure you know what you’re talking about.

So the next time someone tells you that there’s great controversy regarding the theory of evolution, or that there are many scientists who don’t agree with Darwin’s original theory, be skeptical. Be skeptical of those who try to refute science with religion. Be skeptical of those who don’t draw conclusions from evidence, but seek evidence in support of the conclusions. Be skeptical of those who claim to be skeptical, but really aren’t.

To end things, I don’t suggest that we accept the theory of evolution simply because a majority say so, but the numbers are there to interpret anyway: 700 dissenters, of which many aren’t even active in fields relevant to evolution, versus 955,300 biologists in the United States alone ((A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism: Expertise relevance)), who presumably all support the theory of evolution.

Yes, the scientific method encourages questioning and skepticism, but for a whole other reason than proposed by Creationism/ID supporters. Those people have already reached their conclusion beforehand, and they’re actually also telling you not to question that conclusion. Instead, they question the scientific conclusion, as well as the methods used, in order to validate their own, unquestioned, hypothesis. This isn’t scientific, and this is why Intelligent Design isn’t science.

Evolution is not “just a theory”. Creationism and Intelligent Design, however, are.

Unarguably the most important criticism of this film is the fact that it contains no facts. The entire 90 minutes consist of Stein (or someone else) interviewing people who feel they’ve been wronged by science, and are left without jobs or, in some cases, without the possibility of ever even getting a new job in their field. Sure, there’s a valid point in investigating the circumstances of these people’s claims to have been ostracized from science in general, I’ll admit that much. But does Stein even do that? No, of course not. The few cases he even felt the need to investigate were done sloppily so, and without any depth or reasoning whatsoever. He’s content with the assumption that these people lost their jobs because of their opinions.

The validity of the hypothesis of Intelligent Design, then. Does Stein actually bother to find out if it really is what proponents claim it is? No, not that either. He assumes, throughout the entire film, that the mere fact that the idea of Intelligent Design exists means it is on equal ground to the theory of evolution in any debate over the two. He disregards the scientific scrutiny either due to gross ignorance in the subject, or malicious intent.

For 90 minutes, the people he interviews talk about holes in the theory of evolution, gaps in many fields of science, great controversy and all kinds of disturbing notions. Disturbing, had they been true, that is, and which is something that he doesn’t bother at all to verify. When asking about one certain idea of how life might have evolved from non-life, he dismisses the answer simply because he doesn’t understand it. Admittedly, the interviewee didn’t exactly make himself very clear, but doesn’t that just mean that Stein should have sought a more detailed explanation elsewhere? Of course, he didn’t.

Near the end, he interviewed Richard Dawkins and asked some pretty much non-essential questions that had nothing to do with anything else in his film, and had some very telling reactions to his answers. At 1hr and 31 minutes he seems baffled at the idea that Dawkins rejects all possible gods (by contrast, Dawkins is also equally baffled at the reaction to his answer). The problem here is one that is central to those who call themselves ignosticists rather than atheists or agnostics, and that is that it is meaningless to discuss the existence of a term you’ve not yet clearly defined the meaning of. In the same interview, Dawkins tries to explain the possibility of Intelligent Design by creator that itself is a product of natural evolution, and it is doubtless this that confuses Stein. He goes so far as to express his confusion in a voice-over during the interview clip. What he probably doesn’t understand is Dawkins’ definition of God in scientific terms, as applied to the context of Intelligent Design. The idea of an intelligent designer is plausible even within evolution if that designer itself was a product of evolution. However, science can not, and will not, ever allow the idea that the designer is “magic” and came out of nowhere. This is not a fault in science, but rather it is the very point of science.

Overall, the film left me rather irritated. The intent of the film was to show that the freedom to express ideas and have them taken seriously is under attack. What he didn’t mention, however, is that Intelligent Design is an idea that has only ever been expressed, but never scientifically verified by either side. Surely Stein isn’t proposing that we assign equal scientific value to any idea proposed, no matter how ridiculous? Of course not, he only proposes this when it comes to the thinly disguised version of Creationism, a religious and non-scientific movement, that is renamed and rebranded as Intelligent Design. Even early on in the film, Stein wants to assign credibility to ID’s secular validity by stating how many theistic religions there are that accept it and back it up. Surely, finding a single atheist to support ID would have been more constructive, but I also suspect that it would have been much, much harder.

By all means, watch this film if you want to. Just keep your mind alert while you do, and I guarantee that you won’t miss the glaring holes, gaps and fallacies in the arguments that he presents, nor the suspiciously missing facts to support the very claim of validity for Intelligent Design that he’s repeatedly making through the 90 minutes of it.