The power of such a paradigm, says Kuhn, is so great that some scientists will continue to believe it even in the face of contradictory evidence ( a phenomenon dubbed cognitive dissonance by psychologist Leon Festinger). This dogmatism continues until new evidence is overwhelming and a new theory deposes the old-- a "global paradigm shift" occurs.
SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM, Richard Milton, 1997.
Professor Eugenie Scott, director of the National Center for Science Education has stated that to allow the possibility of design into scientific methodology would bring science to a halt, i.e., there would be the tendency to shrug and say “God just did it that way” whenever we faced a difficult scientific challenge. Thus scientific enquiry would be stifled.
The following is a partial list of scientists who acknowledged their Creator and humbly sought to understand His amazing creation:
Louis Agassiz (1807-1873): glacial geology, ichthyology.
Charles Babbage (1792-1871): calculating machine, foundations of computer science.
Robert Boyle (1627-1691): chemistry, gas dynamics.
Georges Cuvier (1769-1832): comparative anatomy, vertebrate paleontology.
Sir Humphry Davy (1778-1829): thermokinetics.
Michael Faraday (1791-1867): electric generator, electro-magnetics, field theory.
Sir John A. Fleming (1849-1945): electronics, thermic valve.
Joseph Henry (1797-1878): electric motor, galvanometer.
Sir William Herschel (1738-1822): galactic astronomy, double stars.
James Joule (1818-1889): reversible thermodynamics.
Lord William Kelvin (1824-1907): absolute temperature scale, energetics, thermodynamics.
Johannes Kepler (1571-1630): celestial mechanics, ephemeris tables, physical astronomy.
Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778): classification system, systematic biology.
Joseph Lister (1827-1912): antiseptic surgery.
Matthew Maury (1806-1873): hydrography, oceanography.
James C. Maxwell (1831-1879): electrical dynamics, statistical thermodynamics.
Gregor Mendel (1822-1884): genetics.
Samuel F.B. Morse (1791-1872): telegraph.
Isaac Newton (1642-1727): calculus, dynamics, law of gravity, reflecting telescopes.
Blaise Pascal (1623-1662): hydrostatics, barometer.
Louise Pasteur (1822-1895): biogenesis law, pasteurization, vaccination, and immunization.
Sir William Ramsey (1852-1916): inert gases, isotropic chemistry.
Bernhard Riemann (1826-1866): non-Euclidean geometry.
Sir James Simpson (1811-1870): chloroform, gynecology.
Sir George Stockes (1819-1903): fluid mechanics.
Rudolph Virchow (1821-1902): pathology.
Through most of human history inquiry has been done by scientists who sought only truth and were willing to follow that where it may. The vast majority of these men and women were "young earth creationists" and their scientific achievements are the foundation of what we call science today. They were not content to say “God did it.” They were motivated to explore the wonders of creation and thereby give praise and glory to the Creator. This notion of materialism being prerequisite to science is a novel invention of the 19th century.
Richard Dawkins, Oxford Zoologist, in writing a review of a legitimate book that raises some questions about Darwinism, wrote that the book “is loony, stupid, drivel” and its author a “harmless fruitcake” who “needs psychiatric help.” (from The New Statesman Magazine)
I am amused by some proponents of Darwinism who are so sure of everything that they know based upon some popular writer who makes his living pronouncing the ignorance of others, yet has not contributed a speck to the science he defends. His idea of science is fanciful speculation and obfuscation of facts. They will tell us all about the forelimbs of whales and the DNA sequence of chimpanzees, but have told us nothing about the myriad cellular and molecular changes necessary to change from a land mammal to a salt water leviathan, or from forest scavenger to an ivory tower intellectual.
I am preparing my university lecture today on intercellular messengers, active and passive transport, G proteins, calmodulin, cyclic-GMP and AMP, trans-membrane transport mechanisms, JAK kinases and other utterly amazing systems that the casual reader of Dawkins, et al is scarcely aware of. Evolutionists have done nothing to explain how these systems came into being. There is no shortage of material for evolutionary scientist to test. Yet 95% of the research seems to be directed at DNA sequencing and pointing out homologies (either of which could argue for a common designer as easily as for a common ancestor). This may be interesting but not helpful in answering the important questions. Lets start small and work our way up; take the cell membrane, a phospholipid bilayer with embedded receptor proteins and transport mechanisms, impervious to polar molecules, even water, with a -20 mV potential difference without which the cell would rupture and die instantly. Even the earliest, most primitive organism that could reasonably be called living would require this or a similar system. Those who disagree have only to demonstrate for us in the laboratory an alternative system that accomplishes the same function that could easily have self-organized out of the primordial soup. That would be scientific evidence.
May I suggest a few more areas of inquiry for some intrepid post-doc? How about showing me the evolutionary steps involved in the development of the arachidonic acid cycle? Or the evolution of the oligodendrocyte and its ability to myelinate specific axons, while simultaneously guiding that axon to its designated destination. OK then, just explain the K/Na ATPase pump. That should be simple enough for any evolutionary cell biologist. What did cells do to maintain their membrane potential before the ion pump evolved? From the organisms found in Cambrian deposits all these systems, and much more, were in place and functioning perfectly from the earliest moments of life on earth.
It is easy to imagine evolutionary changes morphologically, but at the cellular and molecular level it is absurd to speculate about scales becoming feathers, fins becoming limbs and such silliness--the mechanisms involved are far too complex and precisely controlled and would involve hundreds, or even thousands, of "point mutations" all at the right time and in the right sequence. The "just so" stories of the Darwinists will not suffice in view of advances in molecular biology (or common sense for that matter).
The paradigm of the 19th century and the simple ignorance that allowed it to prosper is nearly gone. In my graduate physiology classes a small minority of students hold to neo-Darwinists theories. Not all accept Genesis as historically accurate, but most believe that the current theories are inadequate to explain what we observe in nature. Fred Hoyle said "The Darwinian theory is wrong and the continued adherence to it is an impediment to discovering the correct evolutionary theory" Max Planck, a distinguished Nobel Laureate observed "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."
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Monday, February 04, 2008
Give me that Old Time Science.
In 1962, Thomas Kuhn (physicist and philosopher of science) astonished his academic contemporaries by proposing that scientific theories should be looked on not only as dealing with pure objective facts, but rather as systems of belief relating to a wider context… This ideological context, which Kuhn terms a paradigm, is implicitly agreed upon by scientists who subscribe to a particular theory and who share the same world view.
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3 comments:
You bring out an interesting problem with evolution theory. The "just so" moments you mention stretch credulity after only one or two, but the number involved for only one organism to make even minor positive changes in genetic biology are myriad.
And in the case of sexual organisms, consider that not only does the organism have to develop a positive mutation that can be passed along genetically, you have to have a second genetically compatible organism that is capable of joining with and passing along that positive genetic trait....AT THE SAME TIME IN THE ALLEGED BILLIONS OF YEARS OF HISTORY!
I love a good sci-fi story, but this one makes Star Wars look pretty realistic.
Bob - For a much clearer picture of how species really do come about, look up ‘ring species’. For example, the Larus gulls are several subspecies where variants live in a ring around the Arctic. The Herring Gull in the U.K. can interbreed with the American Herring Gull, and the American can interbreed with the Vega Gull in Russia. And so on, until you come to the Lesser Black-Backed Gull in the Netherlands. It can’t breed with the Herring Gull.
So, is it a separate species? You could breed with its relative to the East, and so on. But what if, say, the Vega Gull went extinct? Would you have separate species then?
Now, imagine such variations happening across time instead of (or as well as) space, and you’ve got an idea how species actually do form, instead of the ’saltationist’ strawman that many try to imply.
"Ring species" and other such observations are nothing new to zoologists. The subspecies of warblers are another example. This is all very interesting, but doesn't advance any understanding of evolution without showing exactly how the genes and proteins changed sequentially from one subspecies to another and whether there was new genetic information or simply expression of genetic information already present in the species. It is not scientific to observe a set of data then extrapolate an explanation.
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