This is one of the dumbest arguments I have ever read against evolution. It’s so stupid I wonder if it is meant to be a joke, but I don’t think it is. Sample:
Before we even start, we ought to notice that, if evolution is true, there would be no way to know it. Because evolution teaches that everything that exists is the product of the random collision of atoms, this logically includes the thoughts I am thinking about evolution. But if my thoughts are the product of the random collision of atoms, there is no reason to think that any of them are true — they just are.
There’s kind of a perverse, almost psychotic, genius in that. However, it violates what I might call Maha’s First Laws of an Argument, which is that you can’t very well refute something if you don’t know what the bleep it is.
“Evolution teaches that everything that exists is the product of the random collision of atoms”? Where do they get this stuff?
For more refutation of the refutation, see PZ Myers and Charles Johnson.
Ah, yes, they really do not have an understanding of science, in general, or evolution science, in particular.
Gotta love the rehash of the “Refrigerators don’t work, so evolution can’t happen.” argument (“refutation” by Second Law of Thermodynamics).
The only real question is: “Is the author that dumb, or is he just expecting his audience to be that dumb?”
And, no, the First Law of Thermodynamics does NOT require a sentient creator, fossils are NOT the only evidence of evolution (and grid knows where they get the idea there are few or no transitional fossils), and finally the fictitious “naturally occurring genetic mutations are invariably harmful if not fatal to the organism” is such a canard one wonders how these people remember to breathe.
It is a wonder that creatures with such a lack of intelligence and a lack of imagination can be so clever…
I say we cut loose the South, pack up all the rightwingnuts and send them down there, allow anyone intelligent enough to request it asylum and citizenship, then refuse their incessant pleas for foreign aid…
Great title Barbara
It is a seriously great straw man, if you’re into that sort of thing.
Off topic, but how are you set for Irene? How does NY look? Hope y’all (if you’re gonna have hurricanes learn to speak Southern) come through it with no serious damage.
But if my thoughts are the product of the random collision of atoms, there is no reason to think that any of them are true — they just are.
Don’t discourage the boy. He’s onto something here. Perhaps it will shut him up.
All it says is if you survive to reproduce better than other individuals, you pass on you are more likely to pass on your genes. Regretably, civilization has improved the lot of man so much, dumber-than-brick do-dos seem to copulate successfully as well.
That’s actually the argument about determinism versus free will. If I don’t have free will, I’m deterministically forced to believe I do anyway.
I’ve seen a similar argument: a smug declaration that if we humans declare God unknowable, we are making a statement about God, which, by our own claims, we can’t make because, HAH! GOD IS UNKNOWABLE!
Uh, no. “God is unknowable” is a statement about the speaker and audience – humans.
However, just in case anyone doesn’t know this, “evolution” is not a random process. A better way to think of it is as a brute force process. We don’t know exactly why a giraffe evolved as it did, but there’s something about giraffeness that survived better in that niche than something less giraffely did.
In fact – it’s a great deal like economics. The price of a candy bar will result from a bunch of different people trying to make guesses about the right price for the right size for the cost of ingredients, and will stabilize at some price point. If it didn’t find a stable price point, someone would either raise or lower prices, and make more money, and other people would follow.
With the random process thing, I think he’s confusing something he heard and misunderstood about chaos physics with evolution.
I do ‘believe’ in evolution, but I haven’t seen the correlate to the theory of evolution that claims there is no god. Anyone who can objectively see the scientific basis of evolution is still free to hold any spiritual belief. The problem is not that science seeks to replace or invalidate religion. Its that religion, evangelical Christianity in this case, which seeks supremacy in any area they wish to claim. Islam does it in many countries, but they are not my problem.
I have no quarrel with someone who thinks life begins at conception. That’s perfectly valid for him/her in their relationship. Don’t impose it on me or anyone else as a legal standard unless science supports the superstition.
Regarding the big bang theory, it’s based on the factual observation that galaxies are expanding from an original point. Carbon dating factually disproves the bible as a scientific text. The world is much older than the few thousand years the thumpers claim. Man came along long after the dinosaur died off.
The problem is not that anyone wants to prohibit their brand of superstition. But don’t present it as science. Don’t impose your views on me, not even indirectly, until there’s a scientific basis.
For a long time, science and psychology were very materialistic – thought and consciousness was said (if it was talked about at all) to be merely an artifact of chemical processes in the brain. That’s the only way (in my mind) his statement relating random collisions of atoms (molecules actually) to thoughts makes sense.
But I’m really being too charitable. This kind of sloppy thinking, and blurring together of categories – to get the conclusion you want – is very common on the Christian right.
In next weeks ‘Rite Wing Filosofee Class,’ the question will be asked “If God is ALL POWERFUL, can he make a rock so big that even HE can’t lift it? *
And if cant’, and he’s ALL POWERFUL – why not?”
h/t to the late great, Great, GREAT George Carlin.
Their problem is that, as with all religionists, they have made their gods in their own images; consequently, their gods are pretty lame.
I suspect he gets it from C. S. Lewis in “Miracles” (1947), quoting J. B. S. Haldane in “Possible Worlds” (1927):
‘If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain, I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true…and hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms.’
I confess that when I first read “Miracles” I was quite impressed by this argument. In my defense, I was a teenager, I hadn’t thought much about evolution and I certainly wasn’t claiming to refute it.
I doubt if Haldane was, either – he was a strict materialist.
That makes no sense at all. I doubt it made any sense in 1947, either.
“Their problem is that, as with all religionists, they have made their gods in their own images; consequently, their gods are pretty lame.”
Their God is John McCain with a beard. “YOU-worshippers– off the LAWN”.
Bryan Fischer’s argument is a testament to the dumbing-down of American citizens. Fischer may be able to trade in Bible quotes or excel at invective (he does at that) but he has no clue how to make a logical or rational argument.