When confronted by someone who loudly criticizes evolution and yet obviously has no actual knowledge of the subject, I try to demonstrate for the person how foolish he or she is looking. I typically use an example of a patient loudly criticizing his dentist. He rattles on and on about how flossing is a silly waste of time. He tries to convince the dentist that the way the professional is going about treating a cavity or doing a root canal is clearly all wrong. He cites information he read in some book published twenty years ago; a book that wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even mainstream in the dentistry profession back then. There is obviously a conspiracy afoot among the majority of today\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s dentists, according to the patient, because they all are actively trying to suppress the patient\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s revelations.<\/p>\n
It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a silly example, and I realize that I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know enough about dentistry to even really flesh out my example. But the point I am trying to make is that experts and respected professionals are, well, experts and professionals.<\/p>\n
If you have a burning desire to talk teeth with your dentist, but you know you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not going to become a dentist yourself, you might still manage to earn some basic respect and engage in a worthwhile conversation if you do some current reading on the subject. Dentistry undoubtedly has its own professional journals, respected leaders in the field, active research programs, commonly accepted basic knowledge, and standard practices. So, the guy with the tooth passion should be somewhat familiar with all of that. He probably wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be an expert, but would still be able to sound like more than just a kooky patient. The other patients might not know the difference, but the dentist certainly would.<\/p>\n
Why am I going on and on about dentists? Coincidently, a dentist got some space in the Tampa Tribune on Saturday<\/a>. To anyone with at least a little bit of honest biology background knowledge, this man sounds like the kooky dentist patient in my above example. He sneers at Darwinists and uses old, long-ago discredited creationist anti-evolution talking points. With all due respect to the man, I sincerely hope he knows more about dentistry than evolution. Putting aside his condescending tone, he trots out three main arguments:<\/p>\n 1) Random mutation does not lead to new species. He goes on to claim: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153There is no known example of the formation of a new species.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Sure, and flossing actually leads to cavities; didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t you know?<\/p>\n The dentist needs some educational reading here<\/a>, here<\/a>, and here<\/a>.<\/p>\n 2) The bacterial flagellum is irreducibly complex. Sure, and let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s stick a leech in your mouth to ease that toothache, shall we?<\/p>\n Educational reading here<\/a>.<\/p>\n 3) It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s unknown how life first started.<\/p>\n Dr. Dean Kenyon is the dentist\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s source for this point. What\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not mentioned in the column is that Dr. Kenyon is a prominent creationist<\/a>. Educational reading here<\/a>.<\/p>\n There are some informative comments from readers online.<\/p>\n I can answer your 3 questions: 1. Evolution is not something that happens overnight. It would take generations for even minor changes to become apparent. It would take tens of thousands of years for any significant changes and much longer for new species to form. But there is evidence of evolution happening all around us today. There are 8 different species of bears and many more sub species. There are over 20,000 species of spiders. These are just 2 examples but nearly every animal has many different varieties that have evolved differently. Recent (remember recent in evolution terms is tens of thousands of years) evolution is also easily seen in humans. Different skin color, facial features and body structure that came about when pockets of the human population where isolated for many generations. We also have an appendix that has no purpose and a tail bone (which is much more developed in some people). Creationists tend to focus on Darwin for a few reasons: It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s also sad that Mr. Weihe repeats the standard Creationist misquoting of Darwin. The entire passage is \u00e2\u20ac\u0153If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find out no such case.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n And a nice sandblasting of the opinion piece can be found here<\/a>.<\/p>\n A separate question I have concerns the newspaper’s policies on what they publish under the “Special to the Tribune” heading. I assume this is meant to be taken as an opinion piece. I certainly understand a person’s right to submit something that is opinion, regardless if others think the opinion is valid or not. But doesn’t the newspaper have some responsibility to check up on basic facts that are not just statements of opinion? What the dentist wrote is not just a string of garbled opinions, but statements of outright falsehoods that can be objectively verified as such. Anyone know what the standard practice is for newspapers concerning this?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When confronted by someone who loudly criticizes evolution and yet obviously has no actual knowledge of the subject, I try to demonstrate for the person how foolish he or she is looking. I typically use an example of a patient … Continue reading
\n1. New species are everywhere. In fact every species that exists today did not exist millions of years ago. If they did then the fossil record would be full animals that are alive today.
\n2. Complicated organ parts did not evolve independent of each other then all of a sudden work as one. Your rotary motor example, evolved over time. Each piece evolved together. 10,000 years ago it was a little different and 10,000 years from now it will have changed some more.
\n3. Try reading \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Spark of Life\u00e2\u20ac\u009d which discussed the Primeval Soup theory. This is just one of many theories though.
\nOf course these are simple questions to answer for anyone that took high school biology.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\n2. Darwin died in the late 1800\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s. There has been a lot of research done since then. I suggest that you don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t use a single book written over 150 years ago as your only source. But to address your comments, for the purpose of this conversation it really doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t matter where the original cell of life came from. Intelligent design totally discredits the claim that species have evolved into new species (although they do agree that minor changes have occurred). The facts are that the oldest fossils are of very simple organisms. As time passed the fossils became much more complex. NO fossils have been found for animals that exist today. That in itself would lead us to believe that either species evolved into new species or that new species have magically appeared over time. There is a lot more evidence that would lead us to believe that species evolved but I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll leave it to you to do a little research.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\n1) He is credited with conceiving the theory that fatally undermined any support for a literal reading of Genesis, so for them this is payback.
\n2) It’s easier to rally your supporters against a single man instead of the complex, subtle, and correct explanations that evolution gives us.
\n3) Lots of creationists think that but for Darwin there would be no theory of evolution; they don’t want to talk about the maturing of the scientific fields whose facts support evolutionary explanations, or they know but don’t want to admit that some other scientist (such as Alfred Wallace) would have picked up the same available pieces and come to roughly the same conclusions.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n