I need to admit from the beginning that I have not personally investigated the data said to be for or against Global Warming. That said, I have been watching carefully how Global Warming is being promoted and defended and as a long time observer of how Evolutionary Theory is defended, the similarities are striking.
Examples of censorship against skeptics of Evolutionary Theory are now so numerous that Ben Stein just produced a whole movie on how those who advance ‘Intelligent Design’ are castigated and even have their careers threatened for taking a view that is not strictly Darwinian. Have we not seen similar tactics employed in the Global Warming debate? There are many examples, including comparing skeptics of Global Warming to holocaust deniers, threatening to fire climatologists, and more.
There is one unique difference between Evolutionary Theory and Global Warming, and that is that each of us, as ones living on the globe, can get a sense for themselves whether or not it is warming or cooling in any dramatic fashion, but we do not all have access to all the fossils.
I can tell you that in Wisconsin it was a cold winter and it lasted long! Anecdotal, to be sure, but it makes one wonder when the Global Warming talk begins and hearing that long cold spells are exactly what you can expect from a warming globe certainly raises eyebrows. What would you expect from a cooling globe? Hot spells?
It is very telling that promoters of Global Warming have resorted to tactics long employed by Evolutionists. Rabid Darwinist Richard Dawkins famously said, “It is absolutely safe to say that, if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked, but I’d rather not consider that).” It is not long - indeed, the day may already be upon us - before those who are skeptical of Global Warming make the same kind of statements.
We must ask ourselves why the proponents of Evolution and Global Warming feel like they need to advance their positions by using such hostile methods. In the case of Evolution I think the answer is obvious: the science itself isn’t nearly as conclusive as we are led to believe. As such, the position needs to be advanced with blunt force since the evidence is not as self-evidently persuasive as other, less controversial, scientific facts. Might it be that Evolutionary Theory is actually propelled by philosophical naturalism and not the evidence as illustrated by another quote by Richard Dawkins, that evolution made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist?
Science has certainly done great good, although it has handed us numerous ethical dilemmas as well. Yet few probably understand that what passes as science these days isn’t always like the science they learned in high school. There we learned that science proceeded along a method: first you make some observations, then you hypothesize about those observations, then you craft experiments which will tell you more about your hypothesis, and you do this a number of times, testing different explanations and challenges to the data you are generating, and eventually you come to the point where you can generate a theory out of it all.
It is here that the similarities between Global Warming and Evolutionary Theory become uncanny. All of the really controversial aspects of Evolution happened in the past, outside of observation and beyond experimentation. We have fossils, which must be interpreted, and we have small scale examples of variation within similar organisms, but the rest of extrapolation. Nor can we make any precise predictions on what kind of organisms will emerge in the future, since the biggest driver of evolutionary change is change to the DNA code itself - which is random. The theory is impotent in offering anything more substantially concrete beyond predicting that species will change, which anyone who has seen a baby and noticed that it is different than its parents will observe. Continue >>
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Prediction 23: endogenous retroviruses. Since endogenous retroviruses are heritable, their presence should mirror common descent, nested hierarchies, and the phylogenentic tree.
Potential falsification: endogenous retroriviruses which do not fit into the same nested hierarchies and patterns of common descent as the phylogenetic tree.
Prediction 24: genetic change. There should be sufficient genetic change to support the existence of macroevolution. When we compare the genomes of various organisms, we should see that genetic change traced out in the same pattern as the phylogenetic tree. Genetic change should be heritable and largely irreversible.
Potential falsification: if genomes were highly resistant to change, or commonly and typically reverted to wild type, macroevolution would be difficult to explain.
Prediction 25: the fossil record. Macroevolution predicts that as one looks at older and older sediments, one should see organisms that have increasingly primitive (in the cladistics sense of the term) features.
Potential falsification: essentially modern organisms all the way back in the fossil record, or alternatively, no pattern of primitive and derived characteristics chronologically.
Prediction 26: speciation. If speciation is an ongoing process, we should see various degrees of speciation, from fully-interbreeding populations to partially interbreeding populations to populations with reduced fertility or complete infertility to completely genetically isolated populations.
Potential falsification: if all species were genetically reproductively isolated and there were no instances of hybrids, it would be difficult for macroevolution to be true.
Prediction 27: speciation rates. Current estimates, based on the fossil record and mutation rates, are ~3 million years for complete reproductive isolation, on average. Rates of speciation and of morphological change should be as high as or higher than that observed in the fossil record.
Potential falsification: rates of morphological change that are much slower than that observed in the fossil record.
Prediction 19: protein functional redundancy. There should be many genes that are common to all organisms regardless of whether they are needed. I.e., there should be genes in bacteria that also appear in humans even though they serve no function in human beings. Further, organisms which are related should have similar ubiquitous genes, and less closely-related organisms should have less closely-related ubiquitous genes.
Potential falsification: no pattern of relatedness to ubiquitous proteins. A chimp cytochrome c protein should be no more closely related to the human version than the rat protein, or the douglas fir protein, or the yeast protein, or the e. coli protein.
Prediction 20: DNA coding redundancy. The same pattern of relatedness should show up in the DNA coding for ubiquitous proteins. The more closely related two organisms are, the more similar their DNA sequences should be for ubiquitous genes.
Potential falsification: there should be no pattern of relatedness to DNA sequencing for ubiquitous genes, or a different pattern that is unrelated to the pattern for the amino acid sequence for the protein.
Prediction 21: transposons. Since transposons are random, but heritable, there should be a pattern in transposition that follows the phylogenetic tree.
Potential falsification: transposons that do not fit into nested hierarchies, or fit into different nested hierarchies from the phylogenetic tree.
Prediction 22: redundant pseudogenes. There should also be a pattern among pseudogenes that follows the phylogenetic tree.
Potential falsification: since pseudogenes are rare, it should be extraordinarily unlikely that the exact same pseudogene would appear in two distantly-related organisms. Therefore, pseudogenes should fit into the same nested hierarchies established by the phylogenetic tree. If there were no pattern, or a different pattern from that required by common descent, common descent would be falsified.
Prediction 14: molecular parahomology. All proteins currently in existence should show statistically significant similarities to proteins with more primitive, core functions.
Potential falsification: proteins that are not related to any previously existing proteins (i.e., "new" proteins which are not derived from any previously-existing proteins). Also, derived proteins that are more deeply rooted in the phylogeny, i.e., older, than the core proteins they derive from.
Prediction 15: anatomical analogy. If two unrelated organisms evolve an analogous structure, that analogous structure must be explicable in terms of modification of ancestral structures in both organisms.
Potential falsification: gills in aquatic mammals or birds. There are no structures available in immediate ancestors from which gills can evolve. Evolution can't "skip steps."
Prediction 16: molecular analogy. If two different organisms evolve analogous molecular structures, those structures must be modifications of previously-existing structures in both organisms.
Potential falsification: no cases of molecular analogy, where all organisms that perform a function with a particular structure all use exactly the same structure; i.e., no convergent evolution.
Prediction 17: anatomical suboptimality. Since evolution can only work by modifying pre-existing structures, there should be many examples of suboptimal evolution.
Potential falsification: a mammal or reptile with no optical blind spots. Evolution cannot got back and "fix" a suboptimal design after the fact, since the ultimate use for any structure cannot be "known" by evolution.
Prediction 18: molecular suboptimality. There should be evidence of suboptimal design at the molecular level, such as the large amount of the human genome that seems to serve no known function. E.g., the human GDPH gene. There is one functional GDPH gene, and at least 20 non-functional copies of the gene.
Potential falsification: if the genomes of all organisms were efficiently designed, with only the DNA required and no more (no pseudogenes, no nonfunctional tandem repeats, "junk DNA." - even if latest findings indicate that perhaps up to 20% of what we though was "junk" isn't that still leaves a lot of "junk")
Prediction 8: Molecular vestiges (e.g., the broken human gene for ascorbic acid).
Potential falsification: essentially the same as for anatomical vestiges and atavisms. A finding of pseudogenes for chloroplasts in any metazoan.
Prediction 9: embryonic features of ancestors, such as traces of gill formations in amniotes.
Potential falsification: embryonic features that do not exist in ancestral lines, e.g. nipples in reptile embryos or bird-like beaks in eutherian mammal embryos, leg buds in teleost fish.
Prediction 10: Present biogeography should reflect common descent.
Potential falsification: elephants on remote Pacific islands, amphibians on remote islands, Antarctic or Australian indigenous cacti.
Prediction 11: Past biogeography. We should not find the same taxon on two landmasses that separated before the taxon evolved (excepting, of course, later imports)
Potential falsification: ape fossils in South America, elephant fossils in Australia.
Prediction 12: human and ape fossils should not be found in Australia, South America, or on remote islands which would have been inaccessible to ancestral apes at the time they evolved.
Potential falsification: human, H. erectus, Australopithicus, etc. fossils in Australia, the Americas, Antarctica, etc.
Prediction 13: Anatomical parahomology. There should be no anatomical features that are not derived from previously existing structures.
Potential falsification: an existing anatomical structure that cannot be derived from more primitive, ancestral features. A horse with wings would be a falsification, since there would be no anatomical features of any horse that could be modified into wings (no ancestors of horses have six limbs).
Prediction 1: a universal genetic code.
Potential falsification: a finding of multiple, unrelated genetic codes.
Prediction 2: a nested hierarchy of species.
Potential falsification: organisms that violate nested hierarchies, such as feathered platypuses, non-vascular plants with seeds, birds with mammary glands, insects with placentas.
Prediction 3: consilience of independent phylogenies.
Potential falsification: independently-derived phylogenies which do not converge, or which produce wildly divergent hierarchies.
Prediction 4: intermediate and transitional forms in the fossil record.
Potential falsification: fossils which do not fit into nested hierarchies, such as a mammal-like bird or an insect-like starfish.
Prediction 5: chronological order of intermediates.
Potential falsification: a negative correlation between the stratigraphy and the phylogenetic tree. E.g., mammal-reptile intermediates older than reptile-amphibian intermediates, or reptile-amphibian intermediates older than proterostome-deuterostome intermediates.
Prediction 6: anatomical vestiges.
Potential falsification: a vestigial feature that was not functional in an ancestor. Examples: snakes with vestigial wings, insects with vestigial backbones, primates with vestigial horns, mammals with vestigial gizzards.
Prediction 7: Atavisms (e.g., living whales with legs, living humans with tails)
Potential falsification: the same as the falsification for anatomical vestiges.
“Nor can we make any precise predictions on what kind of organisms will emerge in the future, since the biggest driver of evolutionary change is change to the DNA code itself - which is random.”
We’ve only been working with how genes respond in relation to their hosts environments for some decades, however that’s not to say that based on ‘X type of biome or niche’ means we can’t deduce which traits would be most favorable and thus passed on. It’s obvious that with such changes in seasonal weather or other factors impact the differential reproduction of a species and thereby impact which traits (white vs dark fur or thick vs think fur) is naturally selected for and passed on, these things we can know quite precisely and have shown in labs on how a given species should evolve/adapt based on environmental pressures. For an example of this, research the ‘stickle back fish’. The mutations are random, but their selection isn't and so aren't many of the other processes invovled.
“you can’t falsify the theory because uncomfortable data merely calls for a revision of it, with no realistic hope that anything would actually refute it.”
What an absolute lie, well actually Anthony Horvath it seems you know very little in terms of climatology or biology, so I would give you an F. Want to falsify Evolutionary theory, here are numerous falsifiable predictions its passed.
"Anthony Horvath apparently knows nothing about DNA analysis. The entire history of life can be observed by studying the DNA of humans and other animals."
Really, I think you just proved Anthony's point. And ratified his other points. Well done.
I wouldn't compare evolution to global warming. Evolution has been tested for 150 years and it's passed every test. The acceptance of evolution by biologists is virtually 100%.
Global warming is not so strong, but I noticed it's getting stronger. It's a fact that every year there is less ice at the North Pole in the summer. Whether the cause is human pollution or not, global warming is going on right now. Predictions have been made that South Florida will eventually be under water. But this is debatable. Scientists can't be as certain about global warming as they are about biological evolution. Evolution is one of the strongest facts of science. While the evidence for Global Warming is strong and needs to be taken seriously, the evidence for evolution is much stronger.
Dawkins: “It is absolutely safe to say that, if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked, but I’d rather not consider that).”
Dawkins sometimes is not very diplomatic, but he's right. The evolution deniers don't know what they're talking about. They are letting their religious indoctrination get in the way of understanding biology. They could study evolution but they have their minds made up about magical creation and they don't seem very interested in science. That might explain why most deniers of global warming are creationists.
"All of the really controversial aspects of Evolution happened in the past, outside of observation and beyond experimentation."
Anthony Horvath apparently knows nothing about DNA analysis. The entire history of life can be observed by studying the DNA of humans and other animals.