Showing posts with label evolution. Show all posts
Showing posts with label evolution. Show all posts

Friday, February 3, 2012

It's all a conspiracy!

I've been met with a great deal many complaints about evolution.
That it is a giant conspiracy to suppress creationism, or to use evolution as a tool to further the cause of atheism.
Thus, the disproof of which is resisted and conspirators strive to cover up and propagate it's "lies" for the sake of going against god and the such.

Simply put, scientist are like anyone who else in the world. They seek fame and fortune. Even if not every scientist does, one must.
Now, imagine yourself one of these scientist. A creation scientist no less. You are then tasked to find evidence against evolution, or... for creation.
The moment you find this proof evolution is wrong, demonstrate it, and have your peers independently verify your experiment you would be herald as the person that heightened our understanding that much more.

I would be the first absolute person to admit evolution was wrong if I can review the details of the study that proves it wrong. The likely-hood of which is near insurmountable, but I assure you it can be done. To me it would be liken to telling me gravity isn't real, oddly "gravity" might not be real in the sense of what we understood it to be, but rather an illusion brought about by an interaction with the higgs fields, but that's mostly colloquial semantics.
But I digress.

The reality of it is, the person claiming that conspiracy to suppress creation must in it's core have the same beliefs they do, is absolutely false. I do not hold something so cherished of a belief that I would suppress another for their presented information. I follow where the facts lead, even if I don't like it. I would like to believe most scientist do that as well.
Records seem to show that most do, however, some do not.

Now, though that addresses the motivation, or rather the non-motivation, to suppress creationism, I now have to take one step further.
Has there been a time when a proposed theory was rejected and only later found out to be true?
Or more precisely a theory that was "suppressed" and later, with enough evidence inducted into the realm of fact?
The answer is definitively yes.
The proposed mitochondria as an invader and parasitic anomaly evolving into a structural symbiont, and now even integrated part of living cells, was in it's initial presentation absolutely rejected.
It took years and years to gather enough information and thousands of man hours of work to have it finally accepted as a fact. The implications of which is hugely exploited to the benefit of mankind at the moment.

Now, move on to a held belief that has been since rejected. The cosmological aether. It was widely accepted, coincidentally when the theory of evolution was first proposed, that the universe was made up of a medium called the aether. Like waves on a pond, everything was somehow immersed in it and everything flowed in relation to it.
Mainly this was thought up to explain the travel of light through a vacuum. Since light was observed to behave like a wave it had to flow within a medium like any wave. A beam of light then can not travel through a vacuum, yet.. it does.
The aether theory was believed and assumed by many scientist at the time. It wasn't till later they attempted to measure the travel of light through the medium of the aether that they discovered it's not there. Then there were offshoots of non-resistive aether, and non-stationary aether, and a few other theories that fell short. However, this does not give rise to the default victory of any other theories.
It wasn't until the proposed electromagnetic theory of light came about that the aether theory was finally put to utter rest. And yes, the electromagnetic theory met with stern and very very critical reviews.

So, the conspiracy you seek, doesn't exist. Simply put, the ideas put forward doesn't meet the standard bar of peer-review and testability to be inaugurated in the realm of science. Would scientists welcome something that expands their knowledge that much more, yes. Would scientists want to be the person to usher in a new paradigm shift, yes. Would scientists want fame/fortune and the nobel prize, yes. Would they like to do it by wedging information past the peer review process and undercut the standards of information, no.

Friday, June 25, 2010

Evolution does NOT explain the origins of life.

I hear the argument: "The theory of Evolution is wrong because it doesn't explain the origins of life".

I respond with: "Because you know how to drive a car, can you build one?"

I can't help but respond to a question such as this in such a crude manner. Any argument from pure ignorance who's answer is so blatantly obvious shouldn't be asked in such a serious tone.

The theory of evolution is a model that attempts to explain the divergence of species from a common ancestor. More details of evolution include survival of the fittest, simple life to complex life, inherited traits and behaviors, and so on...

Perhaps the argument shouldn't be addressed to evolution, since it is a phenomenon after the inception of life, but the point of inception itself, Abiogenisis.

Abiogenisis is the study of the inception of life from the inorganic to the organic.

Evolution is NOT Abiogenisis.

To my knowledge, unlike The theory of evolution, there is no generally accepted Theory of abiogenisis, though I personally do favor one over others.

Like the theory of evolution, abiogenisis is secular and does not directly affirm any particular belief of or rejection of any beliefs.

The conclusions being drawn is that the divine is not needed to produce organic materials from inorganic substance.