| email - August 2014 |
| by Do-While Jones |
Non-sen-sus: a foolish, incorrect consensus reached by a group of scientists.
We aren’t the only ones who have noticed that science is no longer science. Victoria and Ryan noticed it, too. Both of them sent us emails this month to say so.
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Dear Do-While Jones, I was looking at some TED Talks and came across this one which discussed, as the name implies, why we should trust science. http://www.ted.com/talks/naomi_oreskes_why_we_should_believe_in_science It kind of lead [sic] me on a search to find the definition of science and I was surprised that there were several broad definitions that fit better with hers and paid no attention to the scientific method. The speaker basically says, in short, that the scientific method is flawed and consensus is a much more accurate way of conducting science and determining fact. Her third point at about 9:30 against the scientific method is that many sciences don't fit it. I kind of thought the scientific method determined what was considered science (am I wrong?). Wasn't it how we were supposed to go about experimenting things, and if it didn't work with that method, then it really wasn't science? Now all of a sudden it doesn't matter anymore? Science is defined by whatever we decide are sciences, whether it be physics, or evolutionary biology, or astrology? If the scientific method has been thrown out the window, what constitutes science? Who says what it is? And wasn't the point to eliminate bias? Doesn't consensus bring back everything that the scientific method was supposed to avoid? It is all very confusing. But I guess it would be funny in a bad way if evolution got to be more largely accepted as science because the definition of science changed. Victoria |
Ryan made up three “crazy theories” to illustrate the flawed arguments of some modern scientists. Unfortunately, his email is so poorly written it was too hard to correct. Here is what he actually wrote, followed by our explanation of what he was trying to say.
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I have come to the conclusion that scientist and atheist both no longer deserve their titles. Scientist no longer apply the skepticism to their favorite theories not just evolution. Atheists do believe in God to them evolution is God. Evolution has become their religion. They have purposely made it unfalsifiable, and then made strawman arguments of what would falsify it. Statements such as "if rabbits were found in the Precambrian" with out even giving a thought to the fact that if a rabbit is found the rock is never thought to Precambrian. Second when the tree of life is questioned exceptions to the rules. Examples would be Homology: animals with like traits are related, Convergent Evolution: animals with like traits are not related, and finally Re-evolution and Atavism: why traits disappear and reappear in a animals lineage at random. With these three mechanisms I could construct my own I independent life-trees. None of which could be proven wrong. I will provide three loony theories and evidences for them to prove my point. 1. Dolphins are the ancestors to all mammals. Dolphins evolved from ichthyosaurs. Dolphins then evolved into wolves which then diversified into modern mammals. There are proofs of this 1. Is that fossil evidence has found that ichthyosaurs gave live births. 2. Is that ichthyosaurs and dolphins are nearly identical. 3. Ichthyosaurs evolved from lizard-like dinosaurs meaning that it would be warm blooded because dinosaurs were warm blooded. 4. We now believe that wolf-like mammals evolved into dolphins, we could have got it backwards. [second two theories deleted] All three of my theories are crazy, but can't be proven wrong. Worse is that if a famous biologist like Richard Dawkins came up with these ideas they would be accepted within three years time. Ryan |
Ryan’s first point is that science has been replaced by faith rather than experimentation in many cases. In particular, some scientists accept the theory of evolution, not because of experimental data and observation, but in spite of the experimental data and observation, because of the theological implications.
Like Ryan, we have heard evolutionists argue, “If a fossilized rabbit is found in the Precambrian layer, it would disprove evolution.” But, we also know that many “out of place artifacts” have been found, and ignored.
Ryan has noted that the “tree of life” has many inconsistencies incompatible with the theory of evolution. We first mentioned some of the discrepancies between DNA analysis and traditional classification in 1999,1 and again in 2001. 2 The most recent examples we have published had to do with DNA studies which suggest unrelated birds are closely related, electric fish that are surprisingly classified in unrelated families, and the evolutionary problems posed by radically different nervous systems. 3
Ryan notes that homology is assumed to be the result of common ancestry, so things that look similar are assumed to have a close common ancestry. When this ancestry is inconsistent with other evolutionary assumptions, “convergent evolution” is invoked as the reason why unrelated creatures are so similar. They both supposedly converged on the same survival strategy independently. Physical traits are believed to evolve, be lost, and then re-evolve as needed. This is wishful thinking—not science!
Ryan presents three loony theories which actually make more sense than the loony theories evolutionists believe. We deleted the second two to save space, and because they were redundant.
Ryan’s first loony theory was based on the fact that evolutionists believe that a wolf-like creature evolved into the first whale. (They believe this because a skull was found with an ear bone like a whale’s ear bone, so the fossil was classified as a whale. Later, when the rest of the skeleton was found, it turned out to be a wolf-like land animal. But, since it was already classified as a whale, and since the fossil was dated to be older than any whale fossil known at the time, it was assumed to be a whale ancestor.) Because wolf-to-whale evolution is touted as one of the best examples of evolution, there is little chance that evolutionists will ever walk back from it. 4
Ryan’s argument is that it makes much more sense to believe that a whale-like creature evolved into the first wolf. That is, an aquatic dinosaur (an ichthyosaur, for example) made the transition from reptile to mammal by evolving mammary glands to nourish live young, and warm-blooded metabolism. Then this aquatic mammal evolved into the first land mammal. But, Ryan points out, there is no scientific way to prove or disprove either theory.
As Victoria pointed out, in this case experimentation and actual observation don’t matter. All that matters is if more evolutionists believe that a wolf-like creature evolved into a whale-like creature than believe that a whale-like creature evolved into a wolf-like creature. Evolutionists call it “consensus.” We call it “nonsensus.”
Ryan’s second two loony theories are similar, so we omitted them. All three make the point that if one isn’t bound by experimentation and observation, one can make up any story about how anything happened, and call it “science.” If Ryan can make up a more plausible story, it doesn’t matter if another story is too strongly entrenched in the “scientific” community (because Richard Dawkins said it).
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Footnotes:
1
Disclosure, July 1999, “The DNA Dilemma”
2
Disclosure, November 2001, “Fuzz, Birds, and DNA”
3
Disclosure, June 2014, “Jellyfish, Kiwis, and Moa” and Disclosure, July 2014, “Shockingly Fishy Conclusions”
4
For more detailed discussions of whale evolution see
Disclosure, August 1999, “In A Whale of Trouble” and Disclosure, November 2001, “Whale Tale Two”