Part 2

Response To Ward Nicholson

Ward's comment:
>The first and most interesting observation to me is now that the
>anthropological and paleontological evidence for humanity's evolutionary
>origins as an omnivore are becoming more widely known, and it is becoming
>clear that vegetarian ideals about our species' past are completely
>unsupported by science, then those who are bent on maintaining these myths
>must resort to attempts to discredit the entire theory of evolution, if not
>science itself.

Reply:
Notice that Ward and omnivorous theorists depend on the theory of evolution
to support their hypothesis that humans are natural omnivores.  Because of
this dependence, Ward and omnivorous theorists may be deeply disturbed to
discover the theory of evolution is incorrect and is loaded with major,
irreconcilable flaws.  In this paper I dismantled the theory of evolution and
thus also dismantled the philosophical basis for the religion of "Science"
(as opposed to science: the application of the scientific method as a form of
knowing).  The religion of Science (with its deductions based on faith, such
as gradualism, common ancestors, etc.) embodies the philosophy of
(un)scientific (un)naturalistic materialism which is the basis of omnivorous
thinking.

Ward's comment:
>It is obvious that with the increasing awareness of what evolutionary
>science and paleoanthropology have discovered about the past, those who
>have relied on the "humans are natural vegetarians" line of thinking to
>support their beliefs are feeling pushed into a logical corner. They
>therefore have little choice but to become more extreme if they are to
>continue to assert the ideal ancient vegetarian Eden as humanity's pristine
>state.

Reply:
Common sense, physiology, anatomy, cause and cure of disease and unhappiness,
psychological predisposition, propensities of children, and many other
factors all clearly point to the fact, humans are biological vegetarians.
 The only leg omnivorists have to stand on is evolution, which is hardly a
stable premise as I have demonstrated.

Ward's comment:
>Due to the virtual total lack of hard evidence offered to
>support the thesis of the paper that evolution simply does not occur, the
>essay is almost not worth commenting on except to examine its emotional
>structure and debating logic. But it is very interesting from that point of
>view.

Reply:
Ward, let's see your hard evidence that evolution does occur.  I have clearly
demonstrated the massive discrepancies between the theory of evolution and
the fossil record.  After 140 years of searching for transition types, still
none have been found.  Embryology clearly contradicts evolution.
 Macromutations cannot be described by natural selection.  Clearly the burden
is on you to prove evolution actually occurs.  Consider the turnabout of
Colin Patterson, the one-time senior paleontologist at the British Natural
History Museum and author of the museum's text on evolution, who in 1981
stated in a lecture at the American Museum of Natural History, "Can you tell
me anything you know about evolution, any one thing...that is true?"

Ward's comment:
>Number one, the paper is not bashful about being based on the authority or
>knowings of David Wolfe himself, i.e., it is an egotistical presentation
>(and I use this word purely for its descriptive denotation, not emotional
>connotations), based on rejecting science almost wholesale as a mode of
>knowing.

Reply:
I don't reject science at all as a form of knowing (although it is certainly
not the only form of knowing), but I do reject Science (a religious belief in
(un)scientific (un)naturalist materialism) as a form of knowing.  And I
certainly reject Science being disguised as science.

Ward's comment:
>It is David Wolfe along with a few other individuals from the
>history of earlier science--not these modern supposedly idiotic researchers
>who have been led down the primrose path--who alone knows that evolution is
>a false view. His view, as he states outright in the paper, comes down to
>believing the universe will always remain mysterious and unfathomable.
>(While one can grant that from a spiritual, mystical point of view, such a
>stance may make some sense in terms of the ultimate existential meaning of
>the universe, to mix that kind of spiritual experience or view with
>scientific observation of the physical world is just foolish.)

Reply:
Again you are confusing scientific observation of the world with Science.
 You believe Science is science -- which certainly is not the case.  The
scientific observation of the world is simply empirical study, however
Science implicitly contains philosophical deductions (loaded with ideas about
the ultimate existential meaning of the universe, such as: notions of how
life began, what life is, etc.) not supported by empirical study.

Ward's comment:
>Yet at the same time he rejects scientists, he turns right around and
>relies on the outdated speculations of a few scientists and philosophers
>decades if not a hundred years ago or more for his "mysterious,
>unfathomable" origins for a vegan/ frugivorous human species. Basically the
>line of thinking used goes as follows: There is no evolution. There are
>sudden appearances or jumps from one species to another. And the form of a
>species never changes. It always stays the same over time in its essence,
>once established. So the world is populated with all these different
>species because they just appeared suddenly out of an unknowable somewhere.
>No adaptation occurs or is possible due to changes in behavior or genetic
>adaptation over the eons. The only change is not adaptation, but rather
>degeneration from one's original form, which leads to the sad state the
>world is now in. Etc. etc.

Reply:
This is exactly what the fossil record indicates, so what is the problem?
 Because this does not fit your evolutionary conceptions, then the fossil
record must be wrong?  Why don't you try looking at the facts and then
formulate a theory based upon them instead of formulating a theory then
looking at the facts to see how you can make them fit the theory.

Ward's comment:
>Thus the objective is to return to some
>idealized past (for which no evidence is given), since only preservation of
>that idealized form of the species (or its loss--degeneration) can occur,
>not evolution.

Reply:
Yes, that is the objective: to actualize our natural, ideal form, which may
or may not have been actualized in the past.

Ward's comment:
>The Wolfe paper is in fact unavoidably a form of creationism in saying that
>the different fossil forms over the eons appear whole and complete
>"suddenly."

Reply:
This is not "creationism" but simply a fact.  The fossil record demonstrates
conclusively that different fossil forms over the eons appear whole and
complete "suddenly."

The greatest problem the fossil record poses for Darwinism is the "Cambrian
explosion" of around 600 million years ago.  Nearly all the animal phyla
appear in the rocks of this period without a trace of the evolutionary
ancestors that Darwinists would predict.  As the staunch Darwinist Richard
Dawkins puts it, "It is as though they were just planted there, without any
evolutionary history."

Ward's comment:
>Basically he recites the tired creationist line that "sudden"
>jumps disprove evolution--when in fact they do not, because evolution is
>not dependent on either suddenness or gradualism, at least not in the way
>that opponents seem to think. After all, mutations--one of the key
>linchpins in evolutionary theory--are themselves sudden random changes
>(which scientists freely and quite proactively acknowledge and
>promote)--that is what the theory is all about! Whether something is sudden
>or not is just a question of how microscopic the timescale is. Line up
>enough sudden and random--but microscopic--mutations at the molecular level
>of DNA, and voila, you have "gradual" evolution looked at from afar. It's
>all a question of the "resolution" of the lens or microscope/
>telescope--how wide a view of time--you are taking.

This is a great theory, now prove it.  In 140 years this has never been
shown. The fossil record on the whole testifies that whatever "evolution"
might have been, it was not the process of gradual change in continual little
changes adding up which you imply.  As an explanation for modifications
within populations, Darwinism is an empirical doctrine.  As an explanation
for how complex organisms came into existence in the first place, it is pure
philosophy.

This argument is also a tautology.  It is so clever, most people who use this
reasoning don't recognize it is tautological.  The prevailing assumption in
evolutionary science circles seems to be that speculative possibilities (such
as accumulated micromutations leading to new species), without experimental
confirmation are all that is really necessary because evolution "just must be
right."  The logic goes: Nature must have provided whatever evolution had to
have, because otherwise evolution would not have happened.  The theory itself
is tautological; it provides whatever supporting logic is necessary, while
side-stepping the facts.

Ward's comment:
>Evolutionists themselves debate suddenness (the "punctuated equilibrium"
>school) vs. gradualism, but it is not at all central to the debate of
>whether evolution occurs or not. Yet creationists and people like NFL
>(Philip Johnson in "Darwin on Trial," who NFL likes to promote, is another
>example) lift this debate from *within* evolution, which is merely a
>refinement of the details, and reframe it as if it were a fatal flaw, when
>in actuality it is an ever-more-detailed debate on the niceties of how the
>rubber meets the road at the most reductionistic level.

Reply:
Even mentioning Gould's "punctuated equilibrium" theory is bound to give
skeptics the impression that Darwinists are making weak excuses for their
inability to describe the fossil record.  Why would Gould even formulate such
a theory?  No matter how earnestly so-called experts insist they are only
arguing about the "tempo" of evolution, and not about whether it ever
happened, many astute minds will think that the evidence is missing because
step-by-step transitions never occurred.

Ward, I used to believe that you actually read the scientific journals, now I
know you don't.  Gradualism is scientifically bankrupt.  Gradualism does not
explain the process which supposedly transformed insects into humans.
 Gradualism is not anywhere visible in the laboratory or the fossil record.

Ward's comment:
>The basic and easy way to show anti-evolutionist arguments for the
>creationist ideas they are is simply to point out that if you believe there
>are different fossil forms, and you believe the dating methods are in any
>way accurate to even a rough level, then you have to account for how all
>these different fossil forms got there. Ask them what they propose leading
>to the different fossil forms if they don't believe earlier ones gave rise
>to later ones somehow.

The truth is, I do not know how the fossil forms got there.  It is not
explainable at this time.  I know one thing, however, they did not get there
through Darwinian evolution.

Scientists have often studied the effects of phenomenon (such as gravity)
which they could not explain by natural law.  Just because they could not
explain it, does not mean the laws which govern gravity do not exist!

Ward's comment:
>If you are going to reject science outright, as Wolfe in his paper would
>seemingly prefer, then you are basically saying you do not agree to abide
>by the process of repeated experiment and observation among competing
>groups of scientists as the acid test for what one takes as empirical
>"fact"--which is the only dependable process we have for establishing some
>degree of objectivity as to what is or isn't an empirical "fact" in the
>material world. (Otherwise, if we were to give up repudiate current science
>as Wolfe would like, we would be reduced to the specter of everyone
>affirming what they wanted, unchecked by confirmation by others using
>similarly rigorous observational and experimental techniques.)

I do not reject science outright, but I do reject Science outright.  I
believe, as any truth-seeker should, any given hypothesis should be rigidly
tested to determine if it is empirically true.  That is why the scientific
method must be used to rigidly test the theory of evolution.  This has been do
ne for 140 years, and the theory of evolution fails miserably.

Ward's comment:
>By any scientific standard, evolution has massive amounts of evidence going
>for it.

Evolution has massive amounts of evidence going for it?  Really?  Evolution
provides no supportable chain of evidence for how or why the fossil record
appears as it does.  Evolution describes no mechanism for macromutations and
how new organs are developed.  Evolution does not tell how new species
appear.  The only thing the theory can describe is part of the mechanism for
biological fluctuations within an established species over time.

Ward's comment:
>For creationism, you have appeal only to a supernatural God, or to
>unverified spores from space or extraterrestrials, with no scientifically
>supportable chain of evidence as such for that being the mechanism of how
>fossil forms actually appeared. It's religion or science--that's the choice
>you put to people--which is it going to be?

Reply:
Religion or Science?  Science *is* Religion.

Consider the words of Phillip Johnson: "Theists do not throw up their hands
and refer everything to God's great plan, but they do recognize that attempts
to explain all of reality in totally naturalistic terms may leave out
something of importance.  Thus they reject the routine non sequiturs of
scientism which pervade the Darwinist literature: because science cannot
study a cosmic purpose, the cosmos must have no purpose; because science
cannot make value judgments, values must be purely subjective; because
science cannot study God, only purposeless material forces can have been
involved in biological creation; and so on."

Ward's comment:
>Beyond these basic observations, as with much of the writing that comes
>from the NFL group there is not much more to say about the Wolfe paper
>unless one wanted to wade into the non-sequiturs, outdated pseudoscience,
>and just plain arrogant me-ism and total leaps of faith and illogic. But it
>really isn't necessary to do that with a basic understanding of why
>creationism is bankrupt as outlined above, and how it relies on faith
>rather than science or evidence.

Relying on faith rather than science or evidence is exactly what the theory
of evolution does so well.  Philosophical deductions, such as the common
ancestor idea or accumulated micromutations leading to new species are not
supported by the evidence, they are articles taken on faith, which just "must
be true."

The Challenge

I hereby challenge you Ward to a debate on the theory of evolution before our
peers.  The truth does not fear investigation.

A New Paradigm

"If there are so many problems with Darwinism, and no satisfactory
alternative within the framework of evolution, why not reevaluate the
framework?  What makes our scientists so absolutely certain that everything
really did evolve from simple beginnings?" -- Phillip Johnson, Darwin On
Trial

What we need is a new paradigm based on the facts.  What we need is a new
group of people, healthy enough to reason clearly.  What we need is a fresh
surge of creativity into the study of biological origins.  A new paradigm
does not just propose different answers to the questions scientists have been
asking, or explain the facts differently; it suggests entirely different
questions and different possibilities.

It is possible that life is -- what it seems to be -- the product of creative
intelligence.  If that were true, this would certainly not end science (but
certainly would end Science) because there would still be tremendous work to
be done in deciphering the genetic language, in determining how the whole
system of life operates, and in investigating the mysteries which abound.  Of
course, the Science religion would lose the illusion of total mastery over
Nature.  Scientists would have to face new levels of reality outside the vain
conundrums of Science.

Darwinists claim they are scientific, but if the scientific method were the
primary value at stake here, Darwinism would have long ago been limited to
the changes and fluctuations visible within species groups, where it would
have no important philosophical implications.  However, what happened
beginning in 1859 was that the budding Science religion (establishment) got
carried away with blind enthusiasm, and thought it had uncovered an entire
creation story when it had only discovered the mechanism of natural selection
within species.

If Darwinists truly accepted the scientific method, they could still hope to
find a materialistic explanation for everything, but now they would have to
admit they have made a monumental mistake by imposing Darwinism upon
empirical scientific facts (such as the fossil record) which clearly prove
otherwise.  Darwinists are not actually interested in science, what they are
interested in is maintaining the religious worldview of Science -- without
Darwinism, Science would have no creation story.  A retreat on an issue of
this importance is a deathblow for the Darwinian establishment.

In overview, Darwinian philosophy is a religious artifact of (un)scientific
(un)naturalist materialist belief, it has nothing to do with the real history
of life.  The theory of evolution is a philosophical excuse to let the base
passions run wild.  It is an exact outer reflection of humanity's weakened
internal physical and mental condition due to ever increasing cooked-food
addiction and unnatural living.   Darwinism is the creation story of the
Science religion.  It can only leave its followers spiritually, financially,
emotionally, and physically bankrupt, because it is unnatural.

Copyright 1997
Nature's First Law
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San Diego, CA  92190 USA
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References

Books:
Darwin, Charles "The Descent Of Man" & "Origin Of The Species"
Denton, Michael, "Evolution: A Theory In Crisis"
Gish, Dr. Duane, "Evolution: The Fossils Still Say No!"
Gould, Stephen J.-- various articles
Johnson, Phillip, "Darwin On Trial"

Periodicals:
Science, various issues from 1980 to the present.
Nature, various issues from 1980 to the present.

Videos:
The Evolution Conspiracy
Professor Richard Thompson On Evolution