JAN 2015 Awake - Yet More Fallacies and Disingenuous Statements re Evolution/Creation (page 2)

AndDontCallMeShirley

Why can they not be open, transparent?

WT has never been guilty of transparency. Ever. Transparency is anathema to its core methodology.

Listener

Thanks MasterBob. From that same article came the statement

Their teaching that the earth and even the universe are less than 10,000 years old contradicts all the findings of modern science. They are so far out of step that they invite ridicule from scientists.

Yet at that very point in time they were teaching that each of the creative days were only 7.000 years long.

Niveau

They quote Michael Behe on page five - his work is so looked down upon that his own university has the following disclaimer on their website:

"While we respect Prof. Behe's right to express his views, they are his alone and are in no way endorsed by the department. It is our collective position that intelligent design has no basis in science, has not been tested experimentally, and should not be regarded as scientific."

undercover

"For example, the Bible does not support creationism. It does not state that the earth was created in six literal 24-hour days"

Ah, good ole WT juke and jive. They try so hard to distance themselves from loopy creationists who believe the earth is less than 10,000 years old, yet per their still official (never recanted in print) doctrine, each creative day is 7000 years each.

Exodus 20:11 says that the heavens and earth were created in six days. If each creative day is 7,000 years each per WT dogma, the heavens and earth would be less than 50,000 years old.

The difference between 6000 and 50000 is miniscule when comparing 6000 or 50000 vs 13.8 billion. They don't want to be lumped in with creationists, yet they are exactly that.

OneEyedJoe

My critique of the first article (there's so much wrong with this drivel, I'm probably just scratching the surface) in case anyone cares. I mostly wrote this for myself in case I'm asked why I refuse to take any awakes from the literature desk this january...I want to be prepared.

My comments are in red.

EDIT: I wanted to add a crossreference to Designer Stubble's find of a misquote that I couldn't find the source for. Find that here.

1 How Did Life Get Its Start?

Right off, they're moving the goalposts. The cover is talking about evolution, but this is apparently trying to disprove the theory of abiogenesis. Not a great start, if you ask me.

WHAT SOME SAY. Life arose spontaneously from nonliving matter. Noone (at least noone who has a clue about the current state of the study of abiogenesis) says this. Similar to the way a wild wolf eventually lead to that basset hound puppy sitting next to you, the process was not 'spontaneous.' It was almost certainly a very slow process that took place over at least around 500 Million years. By no means could this be described as having happened "spontaneously."

WHY SOME PEOPLE ARE NOT SATISFIED WITH THAT ANSWER.Scientists know more about the chemistry and molecular structure of life than ever before, yet they still cannot define with certainty just what life is. I'm not sure how a continuous debate regarding whether viruses qualify as life has to do with evolution. This is the logical fallacy of inflation of conflict. They say "even the scientists don't agree!" and then attempt to assert that this is evidence that nothing any scientist says on the matter is valid. The reality is that much of the difficulty in defining what qualifies as living matter is because the more we look closely at simple life forms and other natural systems which are typically considering non-living, the more the line between the two is blurred. If anything, this is evidence that life as we know it originated from natural processes involving non-living matter. A wide gulf separates nonliving matter from even the simplest living cell. After just stating that we can't define with certainty what life is, they then assert that there is a wide gulf seperating non-living matter from living? It seems they've chosen their certain definition for life as being a single celled bacterium. If that's the case, then there's really not that large a gulf between living matter and non-living (as viruses would be considered non-living in this scheme). If you take viruses to be alive, then this gulf further narrows. There has even been found in nature systems that closely resemble the metabolism that occurs within living cells, but occurring outside the bounds of any cellular membrane. The wide gulf that they assert is vanishing ever more with each continuing decade of scientific research.

Scientists can only speculate about what conditions on earth were like billions of years ago. I'm not sure what point they're getting at here. This only bolsters the idea that it's relatively difficult to work out exactly how life began, so it's no wonder we haven't gotten it completely worked out yet. They have differing views (inflation of conflict again) about where life began—for instance, whether within a volcano or under the ocean floor This is less of a difference than they're implying. The theory that life began on the ocean floor typically revolves around life starting near a geothermal vent, which is powered by volcanic activity. Another belief is that life’s building blocks first formed elsewhere in the universe and arrived here embedded in meteors. But that does not answer the question of how life began; it just pushes the issue farther into space. The idea behind panspermia (which is what they're refering to here) is not to address some apparent imposibility that life could come about from non-living matter, it is to address the apparent quickness (but by no means quick from a human standpoint) with which life formed on earth (roughly a half Billion years after earth's "late heavy bombardment" period in which the earth was frequently affected by asteroid impacts). Pushing the issue farther into space is less about trying to dodge the question and more about postulating that even if there wasn't time for life to form for itself on earth, it could well have formed somewhere else where it had more time, then was transfered to earth via meteor impact. Again, just because there are different ideas on how life first took hold on earth by no means invalidates the idea that it occurred without divine intervention. What's more, how is saying "god did it" as an explanation for the existence of life doing anything different than 'pushing the issue farther into space.' If a simple living cell is too complex to arise from non-living matter, certainly an intelligent designer is far too complex to arrise from absolutely nothing at all!

Scientists speculate about the existence of molecules that preceded genetic material as we know it today. These molecules are supposedly more likely to arise spontaneously from inert material and are self-replicating. Yet, science has found no evidence that such molecules ever existed, nor have scientists been able to create any such molecule in a laboratory. There's a fair amount of evidence that some RNA (the precursor to DNA) molocules were able to act as enzymes (which are required to make copies of RNA) as well. Sure, we don't have direct evidence that these molocules exist, but that's like saying that we don't have direct evidence that all dinosaurs had DNA. Those molocules break down quickly, so we can't exactly expect there to be 3.5 billion year old strands of RNA floating around. Even if there was, the chances of finding it and making positive ID are miniscule, considering all the life that now inhabits the earth.

We also haven't been able to create a fusion reaction that produces more energy than it consumes in a laboratory. Is this meant to be taken as evidence that our sun doesn't exist? There are many tools we can use to learn about things, and not all of them involve reproduction in a laboratory.

Living things are unique in the way they store and process information. Cells convey, interpret, and carry out instructions contained within their genetic code. Some scientists liken the genetic code to computer software and the chemical structure of the cell to computer hardware. But evolution cannot explain the source of the information. Again, moving the goalposts. Evolution makes no attempt to explain the source of the genetic code, only it's variation and speciation after it came to exist.

Protein molecules are necessary for the function of a cell. A typical protein molecule consists of hundreds of amino acids strung together in a specific sequence. Additionally, the protein molecule must fold into a specific three-dimensional shape for it to be useful. Some scientists conclude that the odds of even one protein molecule forming spontaneously are extremely improbable. “Since a functioning cell requires thousands of different proteins,” writes physicist Paul Davies, “it is not credible to suppose they formed by chance alone.” Again, no one things that the complex protiens used by our cells today arrived spontaneously. Also, I'd like to point out that the WTS absolutely loves to quote scientists who are talking about a field outside their area of expertise. While you're asking the physicist about biology, you might as well ask him his thoughts on how best to diagnose schizophrenia, as he's probably just as well versed in psychology as he is biology.

CONCLUSION. After decades of research in virtually all branches of science, the fact remains that life comes only from preexisting life. Now that's quite a leam after first asserting that we can't even define the word life. I also can't say it enough - I thought this was about evolution (you know, the idea that one form of life came about from a preexisting form of life). Yes, the study of abiogenesis is challenging. Afterall, scientists are trying to work out the details of an "event" that occurred over geologic timescales only once (as far as we can tell) in earth's history. They're at a considerable disadvantage. Just because scientists have worked on something for "decades" doesn't mean they've made no progress or have reached some deadline beyond which there is no hope for answers. People went centuries without working out that the earth was orbiting the sun, but we eventually figured it out. Imagine if everyone told copernicus "After centuries of research, the fact remains that the stars appear to rotate around the earth" and we all just went on thinking that the earth was the center of the universe?

2 How Did Living Things Develop?

Finally, on to the topic that we were told this magazine would be about!

WHAT SOME SAY. The first living organism gradually developed into a variety of living things, including humans, through a process of random mutation and natural selection. That's a first, the WTS presenting a reasonably fair summation of the opposing argument. I have a feeling a strawman is coming, though.

WHY SOME PEOPLE ARE NOT SATISFIED WITH THAT ANSWER.Some cells are more complex than others. According to one reference, how simpler cells could develop into more complex cells is “often rated the second major evolutionary mystery, after the origin of life.” Citation needed. Ahh, well I found it for you Link (tangent - the WTS still misquoting works by Carl Sagan. He was never pleased with their misquoting him while he was alive, why should they leave the poor fellow alone now that he's dead?) The full quote is " Prokaryote cell organization is less complex than that of eukaryotes. The basic question of the evolution of prokaryotes into eukaryotes—often rated the second major evolutionary mystery, after the origin of life—is thought to involve a complex series of partnerships in which distinct strains of bacteria entered each others’ bodies, merged symbiotically, and traded genes." Far from being a deep unsolvable mystery, there is quite a bit of continuing research on the topic that is making quite a lot of progress in understanding how it happened. This is another one of those events that happened once a long time ago, so it's not likely that we'll have a firm answer soon. None of this has yet addressed the evidence that is readily available that, for example, humans and chimps have a common ancestor.

Scientists have discovered within each cell intricate molecular machines composed of protein molecules that cooperate to perform complex tasks. These tasks include transporting and converting nutrients into energy, repairing parts of the cell, and conveying messages throughout the cell. Could random mutations and natural selection account for the assembling and functioning of such sophisticated components? Yes. Many find that concept difficult to accept. Many people find it difficult to believe that waking someone who is sleepwalking is perfectly safe. That doesn't make it any less true. If we based scientific fact upon consensus belief, we'd still be in the dark ages.

Animals and humans develop from a single fertilized egg. Inside the embryo, cells multiply and eventually specialize, taking on different shapes and functions to form distinct parts of the body. Evolution cannot explain how each cell “knows” what to become and where it should move within the organism. Evolution also can't explain why the sky is blue, or why gravity is the weakest of the fundamental forces, or why airplanes can fly or why the big bang happened. What's your f***ing point? That's not what the theory of evolution tries to explain, so there's no wonder it doesn't explain it.

Scientists now realize that for one kind of animal to develop into another kind of animal would require that changes take place within the cell, at the molecular level. Wait, are they trying to suggest that a chimp one day just spontaneously morphed into a human? What happened to their earlier description of evolution as a gradual process? Since scientists cannot demonstrate how evolution can produce even the “simplest” cell there's not a facepalm gif big enough to convey how this makes me feel. Plus the quotes around simplest is quite misleading since the simplest form of life that we can find today is still the product of 3.5 BILLION years of evolution, and as such it is still significantly more complex than the first form of life would have been., is it plausible that random mutations and natural selection could be responsible for the different kinds of animals on the planet? Yep, sure is. The standard model of particle physics doesn't explain how milk can turn into cheese, but it's still plausible that photons carry electromagnetic energy. Regarding the structure of animals, Michael Behe, professor of biological sciences, says that while research “has revealed unexpected, stunning complexity, no progress at all has been made in understanding how that complexity could evolve by unintelligent processes.” I'll just leave this here. This guy's own biology department published a statement opposing his views. what else ya got?

Human beings are conscious and self-aware, have the ability to think and reason, and possess moral qualities such as generosity, self-sacrifice, and a sense of right and wrong. Random mutations and natural selection cannot explain the existence of these unique qualities of the human mind. How dissapointing, they jumped right from trying to disprove evolution as an explanation of the complexity of single-celled organisms to an assertion that it doesn't explain some traits that are supposedly unique to humans. I was really hoping they'd take an untennable stance against the mountains of evidence for a common ancestor of chimps and humans (or cows and whales, or, indeed, every mammal, and on and on). Even so, the statement that evolution cannot explain certain psychological phenomena is similarly untenable. It has been demonstrated, for instance, that certain bits of genetics can lead towards a predisposition toward aggression. If a species has too much of that in it's gene pool, it's more likely to kill itself off and those genes are not continued on. If a species, on the other hand, develops genetics that create a predisposition towards generosity or self-sacrafice, it leads that species to become more successful by working as a community. If I sacrifice myself to save the lives of 3 others that also possess the same gene that makes me self-sacrificing, that gene is allowed to continue on. There is indeed an evolutionary explanation for all the qualities mentioned here, and what's more, there's an evolutionary explanation for why some people persist to believe in an intelligent designer in spite of the mountains of evidence. How's this for a taste of your own medicine: Creationism cannot explain the existence of athiests.

CONCLUSION. While many insist that an evolutionary origin of life is an indisputable fact among these people are educated scientists, evolutionary biologists, and pretty much anyone who's examined 1% of the evidence with an open mind, others are not satisfied with the answers that evolution provides regarding how life began and how life developed. Yep, I can see how someone who ties all their self worth into belief in a diety would be left unsatisfied with the answer that evolution provides - namely, you're wrong.

sir82

Good review, but of course they are not intrested in thinking people like you.

Their target is simpletons who want a religion that makes them feel good, and who will be satisfid with simplistic straw-man arguments.

The "how we get to 1914" video shown in US congregations this week is ample evidence of that. The householder in the video comes across as a mouth-breathing cretin who needs to be reminded "first socks, then shoes" every morning.

Oubliette

Why can they not be open, transparent?

Because then we'd be able to see the man behind the curtain!

AndDontCallMeShirley

sir82: The householder in the video comes across as a mouth-breathing cretin who needs to be reminded "first socks, then shoes" every morning.

Well, compared to a JW who has a "college-level" education simply by reading the Watchtower and Awake, everyone else is a mouth-breathing cretin.

AnnOMaly

Awake! question:

"Why is it that even some scientifically-minded people have trouble accepting evolution as the origin of life?"

Not a good start.

I shall read the rest of the thread now.

Heaven

"Why is it that even some scientifically-minded people have trouble accepting evolution as the origin of life?"

This question right here shows that the Watchtower has no idea what they are talking about. It's quite embarrassing.

JAN 2015 Awake - Yet More Fallacies and Disingenuous Statements re Evolution/Creation

1 How Did Life Get Its Start?

2 How Did Living Things Develop?

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