Reasonable Dissent

Ray Comfort’s Introduction (Released Version)

A while ago, I mentioned how Ray Comfort was redoing his introduction for the “special” release of (On) The Origin of Species. At the time, he hadn’t put it up, but it is out now (and interestingly, so is the rest of the book, though it says only the introduction). Check it out for yourself.

So I finally got to reading it. Did he do what he said? Is it more even-handed and honest about its intentions? Let’s take a stroll through the introduction together, and I’ll just throw out my thoughts as they come up, ok?

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Starting with a (brief) biography of Darwin. Ok, not much to say about that, if it’s factual. Not really relevant to the validity of the theory, but interesting to know I suppose.

Seems very interested in 1) Not getting good grades 2) marrying his cousin

P4:  Second time he refers to Cambridge as “Christ’s College”

P5:  And we start the discussion of Darwin’s religious views. Come on. What does that have to do with evolution? This is exactly the problem all over this debate. Religion has absolutely NOTHING to do with science. Evaluate a theory for its own merits. Portraying Darwin as a godless heathen to make him seem less credible, or to make it seem like a religious debate is wrong.

P9: The DNA code… So, did Comfort read this book before adding an introduction?

As you can see, random letters rarely produce words that make sense. But in time, mindless chance formed them into the order of meaningful words with spaces between them. Periods, commas, capitals, italics, quotes, paragraphs, margins, etc., also came into being in the correct placements. The sentences then grouped themselves to relate to each other, giving them coherence. Page numbers fell in sequence at the right places, and headers, footers, and footnotes appeared from nowhere on the pages, matching the portions of text to which they related.

This is nothing like evolution, and pretending so is either blatantly misleading, or it shows a complete lack of understanding. Here’s a better example, easy to visualize. Take 100 dice and throw them on the table. What are the odds you get all 6’s? Pretty slim. Do it again? Still pretty slim. How many times do we have to do this to get all 6’s? A huge number (think almost 100 digits). Now, play this game: take one die and roll it until you get a 6. Set that one aside. Take another and roll it until you get a six. Set it aside too. Continue to do this until you have 100 sixes. How long would that take? A while, but not really, compared to the first. It isn’t magic ink falling from the sky into perfectly formed words in one shot.

P11: DNA similarities -

To the question of whether sharing 96 percent of our genetic make-up with chimps makes us 96 percent chimp, Steven Jones, a renowned British geneticist, humorously commented, “We also share about 50% of our DNA with bananas and that doesn’t make us half bananas …”

Well of course not. Who said it did? I have two parents – am I half of each of them? I have 4 grandparents, am I 25% of each of them too? So I’m 200% of a human already, how far back do I go and still say I’m xx% of that? When you say that DNA is similar, it’s an observation. He’s trying to use that as evidence for a “common creator”, but at the same time acting like it’s ridiculous to consider. Pick one, man.

p15:

The creatures that Gingerich was looking at were simply different animals with similar hearing ability, and his conclusion was merely unscientific speculation.

Oh the irony of “unscientific speculation” in this context! Still, discussing “transitional forms” and lack of a “missing link” is interesting. Sure, on some level we will always wish for more fossils than we have. But what if we found some sort of transitional form between two species? Actually now there are 2 gaps to fill! Now we need to find two transitional forms to convince him! In all seriousness, evolution doesn’t happen linearly or on an even time scale. Changes in environment cause the need for a species to evolve, which happens in spurts and jumps. The fossil record is not going to be quite the pretty picture that Comfort seems to demand.

P 20:

Admittedly, this puts a tremendous responsibility on mutations to accidentally create complex new body parts, and on natural selection to recognize the benefit these new parts will eventually convey and make sure the creatures with those new parts survive.

Is Comfort admitting this? That doesn’t count as “admitting”, since you’re arguing against it. And really, he’s talking about irreducible complexity. I’ve said my piece on ID before.

P 23:

Therefore, mutations are not logical adaptations that make a creature better suited for its environment. They are completely random—the result of mindless, undirected chance.

Yes! Precisely! But I don’t think that means what you think it means. They are mindless and undirected, but that doesn’t mean that some of them don’t happen to be beneficial. The unhelpful ones don’t have any reason to propagate, and the helpful ones do. Mindless, undirected, but when viewed over a large population and large timescale – evolutionary.

P 26: Evolution’s difficult questions.

I’m a little tired of this. Does anyone actually claim that evolution is perfect and ties up everything in a perfect package? I doubt it. That’s not how science works. The real error is to say “Evolution isn’t perfect, ergo – GOD”. Science works on improving theories and finding better and better explanations (a little evolutionary, no?). So, yes we should ask the tough questions, but not having an answer for them (yet) isn’t checkmate – it’s how we make the theory better.

P 27: Which came first blood or heart?

Oh Good! This one again. Here’s the answer. Also, quit using irreducible complexity as a scientific rebuttal. There’s no prediction of the theory, it just says “is this one irreducibly complex? No. Ok what about this one? No. Ok what about…” How long do we have to play that game to satisfy you?

P 30:

However, if an organ were no longer needed, it could at best be considered devolution. This is consistent with the Law of Entropy—that all things deteriorate over time. What evolution requires, however, is not the loss but the addition of information, where an organism increases in complexity. “Vestigial organs” therefore do not serve as evidence for evolution.

Oops, nope. Let’s remember to keep our vocabulary correct. Evolution is the name of the theory and refers only to change. There is no ultimate goal of evolution, and no such thing as devolution. A species could perfectly well evolve to adapt to a certain change, and evolve back if a new change spurred it. There is no “perfect species” that we’re all progressing toward, and evolution doesn’t say that. It merely makes us fit together. If you can’t live in your “niche” then you either evolve or die.

Plus – Entropy? Really? That’s not exactly what entropy is about. By your logic, we shouldn’t be able to build a car, because that’s not deteriorating those specific atoms, which violates thermodynamics.

P 31: Darwin’s unsavory views, Atheism, Christianity

I knew it… <sigh>. Here’s a fun list of topics we get to enjoy: social darwinism, Darwin’s racism, atheists agree he was a racist, disdain for women, Hitler (!), lots of Hitler, Darwinism = Atheism = do-whatever-you-want-no-morals-ism, nothing created everything, theist scientists from history, lots and lots of “let me save you from Hell”, analyzing other religions as answers to Christianity’s questions?, go love Jesus, go love Jesus, come on just be a Christian!

An atheist wrote and said, “What do Darwin’s personal views on race have to do with our modern understanding of evolution? Nothing. Absolutely nothing, Ray. Even a fool knows this.” Indeed, Darwin’s racism has nothing to do with the credibility of the theory of evolution. It should stand or fall on its own merits. However, the theory itself teaches that all men are not created equal. Darwinian evolution doesn’t say that human beings are made in the image of God and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. It rather states that they are mere animals, some closer to apes than others, and it therefore opens wide the door to racism.

He was so close to an intelligent thought I got chills, but then another flatline. No, the theory says nothing about rights, a God or anything like that (including some people being closer to apes than others, which is a blatant lie). There are many ways we can derive morals and rights, which have nothing to do with being told how to live by a God. It doesn’t open the door to racism, but what if it did? I don’t advocate racism in any way, but the social implications of a theory don’t make it wrong. What if I had some crazy way to connect gravity with killing babies. Does that mean that you’re going to stop believing in gravity because you think killing babies is wrong? Evolution stands or falls by itself, and clouding the issue with this is incredibly misleading, dishonest, and sad.

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Well, I have to say that whether or not he actually changed the introduction to be more fair like he said he would, it’s exactly what I expected. There are blatant lies, misleading facts and irrelevant crap all over the place. It’s a shame that he did it, but What do we do about it? Exactly what I’m doing. Share your thoughts. Expose the crap that doesn’t belong in this discussion. As he notes just before the actual text:

Someone once graciously said, “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” However, it seems that some contemporary atheists don’t share such honorable convictions. When they learned about this publication they threatened lawsuits, book burnings, and even censorship in vowing to tear the Introduction out of the book.

And for once, he’s entirely right. This is exactly the wrong reaction. If ideas are good, they will be judged as good. It’s not up to us to keep ideas from anyone, only to combat the bad ones with even more good. Instead of burning them or tearing out the pages, why not get out a red pen and mark the crap out of it, go back to the street and hand it out to someone new?

Tags: atheism, Christianity, evolution, science