Refuting Tad Cronn. Again.

Another essay posted by Tad Cronn was titled:

Darwin Day: Celebrating a mediocre theory.

It seems that Tad has blocked my account after I sent a pingback to him via my ‘Expelled’: An argument for ignorance post yesterday. Nice to see his staunch and unwaivering support of the principles of free speech, especially when he comes over as such a strong supporter of free speech in his review of Ben Stein’s creationist propaganda.

However, I had a response I very much would have liked to post on his ‘mediocre theory’ thread. Since that’s disallowed to me, I decided to stick it up here.

Tad says:

1) It’s untestable. A scientific theory has to be testable. No one has ever successfully tested evolution under controlled conditions.

Tad, you’re wrong. Speciation is an observed phenomenon.

Tad says:

2) It doesn’t match observations. No one has ever documented a case of a species evolving. It’s important to understand that evolving is not the same as adapting. Adapting simply means that a species either changes its behavior to accommodate changes in the environment, or that certain characteristics that already exist in the species are favored by environmental circumstances. Evolution specifically is the development of advantageous characteristics that did not exist in the species previously. Evolution has never been seen in nature or proven in the fossil record.

Evolution predicted that rocks of a certain age and a certain type would contain a fossil that contained one of the missing links in the fossil record – a transitional fossil between fish and ambhibian. Scientists found an area where rock fitting that description was exposed. They dug in the rock and found just such a fossil: Tiktaalik.

Tad, you’re wrong. Evolution is seen in nature (as linked above in response to point #1) and it is also proven in the fossil record by findings such as Tiktaalik.

Tad says:

3) Failed predictions. Darwin observed hundreds of species during his time in the Galapagos Islands. Evolution theory suggests that at least some of the species in the Galapagos would have evolved over the course of the century and a half since Darwin’s visit. Not a one has.

Firstly, it wouldn’t matter if the finches hadn’t evolved. If they were already ideally suited to their environment and their environment hadn’t changed, then they wouldn’t be expected to evolve by natural selection.

Tad, you’re wrong. Despite the fallacy of your argument, the finches have evolved anyway.

Tad says:

4) Flawed logic. At the heart of the problem with the evolutionary theory is that Darwin’s concept of natural selection does not answer the key question of how a species can acquire a trait it doesn’t already have. Natural selection, often called “survival of the fittest,” can only explain how certain already-existing characteristics might be favored by particular environments. Mutation, the current supposed mechanism for developing new traits, in real life almost always proves detrimental. French evolutionist Pierre-Paul Grasse noted that, “No matter how numerous they may be, mutations do not produce any kind of evolution.” There are no X-Men in real life.

You’re not wrong here so much as you are ignorant.

A species can mutate at the genetic level. If the species is more likely to reproduce because of the mutation, that species will probably reproduce more. Then there will be more of them, carrying that same genetic mutation. So natural selection and mutation can very logically lead to evolution.

Also, it’s not just natural selection and mutation. There’s other Mechanisms of Change understood to contribute to evolution. Here’s the list:

1. Mutation
2. Migration (gene flow)
3. Genetic Drift
4. Natural Selection

I strongly suggest you take a course in Evolution 101 before you try and criticise a theory you don’t actually understand. At the very least, you’ll be less likely to wind up looking like an ignorant fool.

Tad says:

5) Unanswered question. Evolution theory says nothing about how life arose from inanimate matter.

Once again, you’re not so much wrong as you are ignorant.

Evolution is our understanding of how organisims change over time due to reproduction. It doesn’t have to explain how life arose from inanimate matter in order to explain how life, once existing, can change over time.

Abiogenesis is the area of inquiry over how life could have risen from inanimate matter. The jury is still out on which current theory of abiogenesis is correct. But there are plenty of naturalistic theories that make falsifying predictions. The only difficulty is the time and geological scales involved – it’s hard to reproduce the environment of the pre-life Earth on a large enough scale in the lab to get conclusive results. But there’s no reason to think that this couldn’t have had a naturalistic explanation.

Essentially, it was demonstrated in 1953 in the Miller-Urey experiment demonstrated that organic compounds could very easily have been abundant in the early earth’s atmosphere. So all the pieces of the puzzle for early life were there. It’s just a matter of working out how those pieces got assembled, for which we have an abundance of naturalistic theories waiting to be validated or falsified.

So to summarize my responses to each of your five points:

1. You’re wrong.
2. You’re wrong.
3. You’re wrong.
4. You’re ignorant.
5. You’re ignorant.

Have a nice day!