Happy Cornelius Hunter vs The Angry Professor

Does evolution have enough time to produce highly advanced designs in nature?  Within the framework “time” produces miracles for evolution but advances in science they claim, doesn’t increase the difficulty in natural processes creating life. An angry professor was asked this question about probability and here is what he states…

“This represents my more substantive response because I know she is interested in an actual answer. A problem comes from the nature of the question itself. I do not know the context with which these statements of mathematicians came up. Was the discussion with an actual mathematician or is this some second hand remark made by a stealth-creationist.”

He then dives into the history of evolution since Darwin’s time. He says that evolution is dramatically different from that time which is true.  He then argues trying to use “inductive reasoning” in a way which means that a conclusion could come out false even though all other aspects are true. So he outlines old earth assumptions that were proven wrong but were still right on the earth being extremely old.

For instance, the angry professor and others have attacked Cornelius Hunter for degree credentials but he still uses Darwin who had no degree and who considered himself a  geologist. The angry professor points out that Darwin claimed that Weald in England was at least 300 million years but was wrong as he did not take into account according to the angry professor, factoring how much time it would take to deposit all the material to be eroded.

This has nothing to do with nature producing a living cell, rather he suspects that the reason why the question was brought up in the first place was because of a creationist. And of course, creationists (but not all) believe the earth is in the 6,000 year range.  So he then proceeds as though he is debating a creationist. He makes an analogy of flipping a coin which a strange way of trying to prove that probability is on their side.

“Let’s start with a simple probability idea and work our way up. If we get a penny and flip it, the chance of it coming up heads is ½ or 50% (the other possibility being tails of course). The odds of getting heads twice in a row is ¼ (½ x ½) or 25%. Similarly the odds of flipping a coin and having it come up heads and then tails is also ¼. We can take this a little further, the chance of flipping a coin 10 times and having it come up heads each time is 1/1024. 1/1024 is the same as 0.0009765 or 9.77×10^-4 or ~1×10^-3. It’s about 1 time in a 1000. The important thing here is that the odds of getting any specific combination of heads and tails in 10 flips is about 1 in a 1000. However, if you flip a coin 10 times, you will get a specific combination. I just flipped a nickel 10 times and got T(ails), T, H(eads), T, H, T, H, H, T, H. Was the chance of that happening 1 in a 1000? Well, it was before I flipped the nickel the first time, but now that it has happened the chance that it happened is 100% or 1/1. …”

“Remember when we flipped the coin 10 times above? The odds were ~1/1000 (a 1 followed by 3 zeros) that any specific sequence would come up. Well if we flip that coin 270 times, the odds of it coming up heads every time, or any other specific sequence, is 1/1.9×10^81. If I flip that coin every 15 seconds, it will take me just over an hour to get enough flips to get a sequence of heads and tails. If we calculate the odds of getting that sequence ahead of time, we get a number greater than the number of atoms in the universe! Using the creationist logic, then it was impossible to get the sequence of 270 Heads or Tails we just got.”

The angry professor claims all outcomes are one in the same like flipping a coin to designing human beings. Meaning that they all eventually come true given enough time. He then fails to mention that over 50 years of research in the lab, nobody has ever observed natural processes creating a cell outside an organism’s body. Therefore the angry professor resorts to flipping a coin.

Sadly, the angry professor fails to recognize the person whom he is debating with. Cornelius Hunter is not a young earth creationist nor is he up on the latest of what creationists advocate. He is however, in the modern intelligent design movement which claims such things as one species turning into another, the only difference between Darwinism and ID is, how that information was designed in the first place. Evolutionists claim it was through a mindless process while the ID movement relies on some sort of vague intelligent agent or agents at work but never attempt to identify what that is nor explain what that agent or agents are because they say it goes beyond the realm of science.

Cornelius then uses the poker analogy where he believes many evolutionary scientists bluff on having the royal flush. He writes…

“For instance, evolutionists claim that all the evidence supports evolution. Amazingly, they say there is no contradictory evidence, no scientific problems to deal with. When I first heard this argument I was astonished. But when you are certain you are right, then any and all arguments must support evolution.”

Doesn’t it seem odd that scientific theories can encounter some contradictory evidence but not evolution? That is because evolution is not a scientific theory, it’s a man-made story where aspects may change but its essence remains the same. Using flipping of a coin analogy is one of the weakest arguments one has ever seen that allegedly prove time is on evolution’s side.

Accomplishing Innovation Through Mistakes?

Nature is remarkably designed for instance, one-cell animals that were once considered simple creatures, have mind-blowing complexity with more of it yet to be uncovered, how could such innovations be created in the first place? The story begins in science daily with an idea that claims that evolution accomplishes it through mistakes.

“Some individuals are better adapted to a given environment than others, making them more likely to survive and pass on their genes to future generations. But exactly how nature creates variation in the first place still poses somewhat of a puzzle to evolutionary biologists.”

“Now, Joanna Masel, associate professor in the UA’s department of ecology and evolutionary biology, and postdoctoral fellow Etienne Rajon discovered the ways organisms deal with mistakes that occur while the genetic code in their cells is being interpreted greatly influences their ability to adapt to new environmental conditions — in other words, their ability to evolve.”

So here we have the implication of  animals having the ability to evolve which then leads to innovation like bacteria to man because later. How can they get  from errors to innovation? Here is an interesting analogy…

“Evolution needs a playground in order to try things out,” Masel said  who had his paper published in PNAS,  “It’s like in competitive business: New products and ideas have to be tested to see whether they can live up to the challenge.”

Random mutations are like an idea formulated by intelligence? Certainly natural selection has no ability to think in order to direct what mutations are produced in the first place while knowing which ones should be tested and others that should be discarded. What’s more puzzling about that analogy is the fact that when companies are originally created, there is a purpose in place for it. It’s basically intelligently designed to either provide a particular service or sell a particular product.

In no way does innovation of companies comes from no ideas and no purpose or direction. Some companies may fail do to lack of direction and purpose or no market for what product or service they are offering. Certainly evolution with its lack of purpose, and non-thinking process doesn’t remotely compare with a business. So overlooking that error, evolutionists go into detail about accomplishing innovation through various mistakes…

“In nature, it turns out, many new traits that, for example, enable their bearers to conquer new habitats, start out as blunders: mistakes made by cells that result in altered proteins with changed properties or functions that are new altogether, even when there is nothing wrong with the gene itself.  Sometime later, one of these mistakes can get into the gene and become more permanent.”

Keep in mind, we want to see how innovations like brains, eyes, or wings, got there. All we have are protein mistakes. The gene was fine, then something happened… “Sometime later, one of these mistakes can get back into the gene,” they claimed. Is there any evidence for this claim?  None found in the article.

The explanation then takes a more bizarre turn, by invoking global and local solutions. A global solution has “a proofreading mechanism to spot and fix errors as they arise.”  Something “watches over the entire process,” wait a minute, how can an entire process that oversees errors and being able to fix them be a product of errors itself?  It appears that global solutions nothing more than about preserving integrity of the genome, not innovating brains, eyes or wings.  So that means innovation must be local…

“The alternative is to allow errors to happen, but evolve robustness to the effects of each of them.  Masel and Rajon call this strategy a local solution, because in the absence of a global proofreading mechanism, it requires an organism to be resilient to each and every mistake that pops up.”

“We discovered that extremely small populations will evolve global solutions, while very large populations will evolve local solutions,” Masel said.  “Most realistically sized populations can go either direction but will gravitate toward one or the other.  But once they do, they rarely switch, even over the course of evolutionary time.”

Using a purposeful concept, the explanation in the evolutionary framework entails a lot of strategy like a chess game! Now if an organism has an ability to use strategy in order to allow some errors to creep in, but then “evolve robustness” to their effects, did that strategy itself evolve through step by step mistakes?  The article doesn’t say.

The story plot thickens with the introduction of a contrast between “regular variation”, and what they call “cryptic variation.” Regular variation for the majority of it’s production, produces something non-useful or bad with very slim odds of producing something useful. While on the other hand, cryptic variation is supposed to produce something non-deadly and mostly harmless. Even so, cryptic variation doesn’t have the power to innovate.  Here they come up with a story about it for it to supposedly work…

“So how does cryptic variation work and why is it so important for understanding evolution? By allowing for a certain amount of mistakes to occur instead of quenching them with global proofreading machinery, organisms gain the advantage of allowing for what Masel calls pre-selection: It provides an opportunity for natural selection to act on sequences even before mutations occur.”

While Masel’s recalls Darwin’s personified depiction of his theory, yet even Darwin might have had doubts of natural selection keeping harmless variations in the junkyard for later analysis and future usage. Masel argued that “the organism doesn’t pay a large cost for it, but it’s still there if it needs it.”

So now we know how important cryptic variation is to evolution but still one asks…Is natural selection a person?  Does it have a plan?  How would natural selection have any precognition of the need for an eye, a wing, or a brain? A mistake that leads to a misfolded protein are very deadly for the organism.

Purifying selection (eliminating mistakes) and compensating selection (tolerating mistakes) are not controversial for creationists. But having those protections still won’t give you a brain, eye or a wing! The analogy they made between a business and evolution demonstrates they have the idea it’s intelligent design but they are trying desperately to invoke miracles in evolution.

Lyell Geology Influence Found To Be Incorrect

In the year of a celebration concerning the found of evolution, geologists decided to revisit a site where Darwin himself had visited during his voyage of the Beagle.  Darwin was first a geologist, his study of the boulders were declared wrong  In fact, modern geologists say, the “Darwin’s Boulders” were deposited by a completely different process.

Geological Society of America’s December issue stated the reason for this error was based on a bad influence…

“Darwin’s thinking was profoundly influenced by Lyell’s obsession with large-scale, slow, vertical movements of the crust, especially as manifested in his theory of submergence and ice rafting to explain drift.”  Lyell, in turn, felt vindicated: “Lyell celebrated these observations because they supported his idea of uniformitarianism—that continued small changes, as witnessed in the field, could account for dramatic changes of Earth’s surface over geologic time.”

Here’s Darwin’s story:  the land supposedly rose slowly over millions of years where icebergs carrying boulders from far away became stranded in the shallow water.  Then these boulders and where left behind. However, the latest story is much different: supposed avalanches up in the Andes dropped the boulders onto glaciers, which ferried them many miles toward the coast.  When the glaciers melted, the boulders were left behind.

Notice the differences.  Darwin interpretation was based on his vision of slow and gradual. Lyell’s geology was accommodating to the new hypothesis. Today, geologists envision the potential of massive avalanches and long-distance glaciation. based on cosmogenic nuclide dating methods. These dating methods place the boulders age  around 22-74 thousand-year range – not millions of years old. However as you might have noticed already, they had their own problems with this data.

“Our Bahía San Sebastian dates reveal anomalously young ages (74.4 to 38.1 k.y.) for moraines previously interpreted to be ~1 m.y., thus requiring significant reworking.”

Let’s see, Darwin got it wrong because he was influenced by Lyell but modern secular geologists were influenced by Darwin and got it right. It’s interesting to note that the article did not have anything particularly nice to say about Lyell or uniformitarianism. But in light of that downplayed it so Darwin didn’t look bad only that he lacked the tools.

Creationism has been light years ahead in geology compared to Darwinists. Nicholas Steno, the father of stratigraphy, was a creationist.  Many early geologists like Sedgwick had a Biblical framework and criticized Darwin himself for rejecting modern geology at that time.  Lyell was the first to try and separate geology from the biblical account.

Creation papers that describe a universal flood do so within the constraints of the geological processes involved rather than with a filtered worldview of Lyellian uniformitarian.

Darwinian Evolution Getting Into Religion?

Let’s see, they keep telling us that science is science, and religion is religion, Stephen Jay Gould stated that science would stay out of religion if religion stayed out of science? Does this mean science by their definition is now unto religion?

Elizabeth Culotta wrote an article in science about the origin of religion using the evolutionary framework.

“How and when did religion arise? In the 11th essay in Science’s series in honor of the Year of Darwin, Elizabeth Culotta explores the human propensity to believe in unseen deities. No consensus yet exists among scientists, but potential answers are emerging from both the archaeological record and studies of the mind itself. Some researchers, exploring religion’s effects in society, suggest that it may boost fitness by promoting cooperative behavior.”

“And in the past 15 years, a growing number of researchers have followed Darwin’s lead and explored the hypothesis that religion springs naturally from the normal workings of the human mind. This new field, the cognitive science of religion, draws on psychology, anthropology, and neuroscience to understand the mental building blocks of religious thought.”

Now they have sociologists who are studying the propensity of humans to explain things when they happen. Also, psychologists investigating “theory of mind” explanations that compare mental states with others and evolutionary anthropologists consider the social aspects of sharing beliefs in gods to develop social cohesion. Elizabeth admits there are huge gaps when it comes to this part of evolution concerning the origin of religion.

Don’t fall for this story line, it’s explanation of nature is highly flawed let alone trying to explain where the belief in God comes from. This study has no evidence whatsoever that religion or Christianity comes from evolution, it’s only in their imagination which is confined to a certain framework evoked on the population known to be “evolution.”