SCIENCE OR PSEUDOSCIENCE

The scientific world has been in decline for a long time.  Precisely when science stopped being empirical and became faith based is hard to pin point but I think it started with the popularization of science by Carl Sagan.  Science – real science – is very complicated, technical, and thus hard to follow.  Because of this Carl Sagan in the brief time allotted to him by TV began to state various theories as facts when in fact they not.  From that time on things that had been postulated slowly morphed into facts ignoring the very basis of science which is empirical proof.  This erosion of science started with cosmology but rapidly infected other portions as well, especially the Theory of Evolution.  The very idea that Evolution is theoretical has disappeared.  Darwin reigns supreme even though the proofs demanded by Darwin have been ignored.  What Darwin observed and described is environmental adaptation not speciation.  No where in his seminal book “The Origin of Species” does he describe the origin of species and from that day to this how species originate is unproven and undemonstrated.  Many theories exist but none have been demonstrated.  This problem has plagued science for years but the scientific community is convinced that evolution is real even though they can’t actually prove it.

The evolutionary problem begins with the Cambrian Explosion.  The Pre-Cambrian is that period from the origin of the Earth to the fossil rich Cambrian and the beginning of the Geologic record.  Due to some unexplained process or event – non-divine event – life began in the Pre-Cambrian.  This life – based on limited evidence – was primitive bacterial life that evolved into something like pond scum and possibly simple worms.  But the Cambrian teems with fossils of complex life forms -- creatures with eyes, ears, organs, and complex bodies and ecologies.  How did these come to be and to be so diverse without any indication of their origin?  No transitional fossils exist – a criteria demanded by Darwin. 

The lack of transitional fossils is described as Stasis meaning a particular species exists unchanged in the fossil record for millions of years and then another species suddenly appears without any transitional fossils.   However, on close inspection these new species are really just examples of environmental adaptation by the same species.  That is the new trilobite is similar to the old trilobite, the new brachiopod is similar to the old brachiopod.  This pattern is repeated throughout the geologic record with new species looking like the preceding one, but are these truly new species or merely new versions of the same species much like a race horse looks different from a Clydesdale or a donkey but they are all equines.  How the ancestor of the horse divided into separate and distinct species remains an article of faith rather than a demonstrated fact.  The fossil record is devoid of transitional forms so to address this problem scientists have decided on Punctuated Equilibria.

This theory claims that no transitional fossils can be found in the geologic record because the separation between species happened at an accelerated rate requiring merely thousands of years rather than millions.  Because of this rapid evolution no transitional fossils were created because there wasn’t time.  That is a rather silly argument because the existing fossils were created one at a time and within the life time of the living fossil.  So while Punctuated Equilibria may sound like a viable theory it really doesn’t explain the absence of transitional fossils anywhere in the hundreds of millions of years of the geologic record.

This brings us to the descent of man – from pond scum to interstellar explorer.  Current thinking is that modern man has descended from a primitive ape that lived in Africa approximately three million years ago.  This original human (?) ancestor consists of a handful of bone fragments from which a proto-human has been constructed.  With this as a starting point additional bone fragments have been found in various places which has led the construction of the tree of human evolution which shows various species that have branched off and remained in the animal kingdom while others are shown to have continued their evolution into homo-sapiens and modern apes like the Chimpanzee. 

Whether or not this evolutionary tree of human development is true or not may be arguable but the real point is that this evolutionary span is approximately 3 million years and these various bone fragments can be argued to be transitional fossils.  If this is true then it seems logical that the geological record would contain transitional fossils of other life forms and whether Punctuated Equilibria is true or not-- it wouldn’t preclude finding transitional fossils.  The reality is that throughout the geological record new life forms suddenly appear with the most recent being Cro-Magnon man.  The question of speciation remains open and Darwin’s criteria for proof of his theory remains unanswered.

Faith and Science

It seems that what passes for science today is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish from religion although the religious community is quite open about their reliance on faith while the scientific community is in a state of denial. We are treated every day to new statistics showing the ever growing number of “smoking related deaths”. What is missing of course is any proof that any of these deaths were related to smoking, this is merely a claim based on no facts whatsoever other than some statistical analysis which is never divulged. The actual fact is that no death certificate has ever been issues showing the cause of death to be from smoking. In fact there is no empirical evidence that smoking has any relationship to cancer or any disease other than some statistical correlation, which may or may not be real. This is particularly significant since the incidence of lung cancer has not shown any decline in correlation to the decline in smoking. This is merely one example of how science has ceased to rely on empirical evidence but has shifted to a belief system.

Evolution is another example where science has shifted from facts to belief. The loudest supporter of Evolution is Richard Dawkins who has simply stated that Darwin’s “Origin of Species” is correct, that Intelligent Design is bunk and a code word for “Creationism” which is laughable. Now Evolution may indeed be correct or at least partially correct but outside of the evidence of environmental adaptation there is not proof of speciation or transitional fossils. However, periodically and now almost daily some scientist lays claim to have discovered “the missing link” or the “transitional fossil” that proves Evolution. But saying something is so doesn’t make it so and these claims of transitional fossils are all based on opinion and a belief that what is claimed is so – or in other words – faith. But the question of speciation is the real problem because there is no example of how one species becomes another. How a rat becomes a horse cannot and has not been demonstrated. Instead the scientists assure us that speciation is simply the result of a mutation – a random mutation at that. So the “belief” is that some random cosmic particle impacted one animal – say an ape – and this ape reproduced passing this mutated gene on to its descendants. Then over millions of years this ape became a humanoid who became a human, this is the belief, but there is no evidence other than it must be because there is no alternative. You can hear the Hallelujah’s

But there are even greater questions that the scientific community ignores or attempts to explain with ever greater stretches of the imagination. My particular favorite is the scientific theory that the origin of life on Earth came via some primordial life form arriving on Earth aboard a meteorite. This is viewed as the answer to the origin of life on Earth which of course doesn’t explain the origin of life at all. Another good one is that life on Earth was introduced by Space Aliens which doesn’t really explain the origin of life either although it does seem to support Intelligent Design as the origin. But the major theory is that the primordial ocean was filled with chemicals of all kinds which were constantly being bombarded (as we all are even today) by cosmic particles which caused these chemicals to react and transform into more complex compounds which ultimately resulted in an organic carbon based molecule that became (how is unexplained) self-replicating and evolved into pond scum and then into humankind. Unfortunately this miraculous process seems to have ceased once the miracle of life was achieved, but the true believers have total faith in this miracle and never see the irony between their theory and belief and those who believe in intelligent design.

However, the scientific community generally avoids any discussion or theory regarding the situation prior to the big bang. Apparently there was NOTHING, and certainly there wasn’t any space because space and time didn’t exist prior to the big bang because it was the initiating event. So there was nothing and then – in a flash – there was space, time, and all of the energy ever to exist. What initiated this event is never discussed – but it is believed this is how it happened; of course a careful reading of Genesis might shed some light on the subject. But Dawkins, the Atheists, and science cannot even address this question of the creation of the universe because it opens the door to a Supreme intelligence and with THAT comes credibility for intelligent design and THAT shakes the very foundation of their belief system – a system called “science”.