King of Monkeyshine
“I am very clever king… tok tok tok tok… I am super genius… I am robot king of the monkey thing… compute… compute.”
–Julian, King of the Lemurs, Madagascar (2005)
Concerning the ridiculous hype over a long dead lemur trotted out in desperation after a quarter of a century to prop up a failed theory, Don Batten writes:
The orchestrated multimedia blitz over this fossil is almost unbelievable. The paleontologists even got Michael Bloomberg, Mayor of New York, to officiate at the public “launch” of Ida (the cute nickname for the fossil), when it was unveiled—like a new sculpture by a famous artist—to the assembled journalists.
According to brilliant fool David Attenborough, this little creature “is going to show us our connection with the rest of all mammals.” That’s a lot to expect from a dead lemur. Guess they’ll have to call in DreamWorks for some CGI for Ida to accomplish this.
Batten goes on to comment on another monkey king, Philip Gingerich:
I don’t think I have ever seen such blatantly over-stated claims on a fossil find, and I have seen a few, including one by a major co-author of this paper: Philip Gingerich’s claims for Pakicetus back in 1983. Gingerich had a couple of scraps of a skull of a mammal from Pakistan and claimed it as the evolutionary precursor of whales. He embellished the story with an artist’s drawing of what Pakicetus (“whale from Pakistan”) looked like, with legs becoming flippers, a tail fluke developing and the imaginary creature diving for fish. Cute. Gingerich claimed it was “perfectly intermediate, a missing link between earlier land mammals and later, full-fledged whales”. With such a strong, confident claim from the fossil expert, who could doubt that evolution was true? Seven years later, other paleontologists published a paper describing the rest of Pakicetus and the now almost complete fossil showed that Gingerich’s imagination had really run away with him and the animal was not the missing link he thought it was. See: Not at all like a whale.
Apparently many paleontologists appreciate this sort of over-the-top, publicity-seeking behaviour in support of evolutionary story-telling, because they recently elected Gingerich the president of the American Paleontological Association.1
Or, King of Monkeyshine.
It’s one thing for the world to believe this stupidity – when you reject the Bible you have no way to interpret the world. But many Christians follow these idiots blindly, then ridicule those of us who won’t believe the ridiculous hype. This theory is long overdue for filing bankruptcy, but they just keep bailing it out. We haven’t seen this much PR money and multimedia thrown at a bunch of hot air since, well, since November last year.
As the lead penguin in Madagascar instructed his friends to cover their deception, “Just smile and wave, boys. Smile and wave.”
If all this sounds uncharitable, read the apostles on false teachers who should know better.
1 Don Batten, Darwin fossil hyper-hype
May 27th, 2009 at 11:44 pm
Who would like a cookie?
May 28th, 2009 at 1:43 am
I listen to “the still small voice”. So far there has been absolute silence – which to me always means “move on please”
May 28th, 2009 at 7:49 pm
hahahahahaha Nice observations bro! Not unlike false propaganda surrounding the “Atheist” Debate…
May 28th, 2009 at 9:49 pm
Calling Darwinius masillae a “lemur” is a gross misnomer. But that’s not nearly as bad as your misrepresentation of evolutionary theory as “long overdue and filing for bankruptcy.”
On what basis do you believe evolution to be a “failed theory”? You live in the 21st century. Take a peek in your high-school biology textbook. Darwinian thought underpins much of science–from cosmology to psychology–and is supported by mountains of evidence. It must be the greatest conspiracy in history for the plurality of the world’s academics to believe in something you claim to be self-evidently false.
What’s worse is that I presume your justification comes from religion. Creationism, no less. Honestly.
May 28th, 2009 at 10:07 pm
Hi Dustycups
I do appreciate your comment, and I understand where you are coming from. The only place to deal with this is at a basic presuppositional level, and I start somewhere different from you. The conclusions of modern ‘science’ are just as ridiculous to me as mine are to you. Dawkins laughs at my God as if he’s a flying spaghetti monster, and I laugh at punctuated equilibrium, natural selection and mutation as supposed engines for this invisible process.
Ida looks like a dead monkey to me. But this is exactly the kind of stuff that fills the textbooks. It is an operating assumption that most of the world’s academics subscribe to, but thankfully not all of them do.
What I find amazing is how all the ‘internet’ proponents are so sure of the facts, when the guys at the top aren’t. In fact, the hands-on palaeontologists are the best ones to quote. They let the cat out of the bag all the time. See http://www.evolutionisdead.com
The scientists have yet to show me anything convincing, and we can argue the data till the cows come home. The real issue is not the science but the basic presuppositions.
Thanks again for commenting.
May 28th, 2009 at 10:27 pm
Dawkins’ purpose in comparing your God–all Gods, for that matter–to a flying spaghetti monster, or a celestial teapot, or an invisible pink unicorn, is less to mock you than to provide a tangible explanation of unfalsifiability: there are innumerable things that we cannot disprove–God being one of them–but that doesn’t make it equally likely that they exist.
Evolution is just one of many reasons why I call myself an atheist (by the way, I hate that term, if only because of the connotations it carries). My main beef with Christianity comes from its circular style of arguments: the Bible is evidence of itself. Creationism is a response to this criticism–attempting to find, a priori, evidence in the observable world for the Bible’s claims–and it fails.
Take the Great Flood, for instance. Creationists often use this as some sort of panacea for all of the Bible’s historical claims. Mountains? The Great Flood. The Grand Canyon? The Great Flood. The entire science of geology? The Great Flood. Barack Obama? The Great Flood. Ad infinitum.
May 28th, 2009 at 10:35 pm
I like the way you write. We’d probably get on just fine. If you’re ever in Katoomba and feel like meeting for a beer…
Points taken. But I feel just the same about the unfalsifiability of evolution. No matter what obstacles arise, someone just comes up with, for instance, punctuated equilibrium. “We know it happened, we just don’t know how.”
And evolutionist arguments are often just as circular. Like I said, it comes back to the basic presuppositions.
I knew there was something about Obama…
May 28th, 2009 at 10:59 pm
Sure, no scientist would really say that we know everything there is to know about evolution; hypotheses are proposed, debated, studied, peer-reviewed, and either wind up integrated into a theory or rejected. Punctuated equilibrium is between the debated and studied phases. Of course it’s not accepted as fact. Yet. (If that’s even philosophically possible.)
Evolution does not equal punctuated equilibrium. Even if the latter was found to be wrong, it wouldn’t bring down the paradigm of evolution, because it’s just one mechanism by which it happens.
I understand your point about having different presuppositions, but I see a huge difference between mine and yours: my presuppositions are supported by empirical evidence; your presuppositions are supported by presuppositions.
Darn! You’re onto Obama! I’ll bring this up in our next meeting. You know, the meeting of the Secret Society for Scientists and Evolutionists Who Are Trying to Keep the Lid Shut on All That Incredible Evidence Against Evolution.
May 28th, 2009 at 11:14 pm
How exactly does one study punctuated equilibrium?
Like I said, I have yet to see any convincing empirical evidence. The problem is the consistent confusion of speciation with any process that could actually produce new genetic code. Natural selection can’t do it. Mutation can’t do it. A combination of these two can’t do it. And punctuated equilibrium is basically a Creation miracle in a veneer of scientific jargon. In other words, I want to see evidence of a car factory, rather than just a spray booth.
As I posted here, evolution is just Enuma Elish in language that post-enlightenment man wouldn’t laugh at:
http://www.bullartistry.com.au/wp/2009/04/10/how-not-to-read-genesis
May 29th, 2009 at 2:04 am
The problem Mike is always mechanism. For instance, what is the mechanism for the purported “coevolution” of animal and plant species together???? I have been in science ALL of my life and haven’t heard the first mechanism for any of the stuff. I make my living as a research associate (just cause no PhD doesn’t mean we master’s guys don’t do the majority of the research, quite the contrary).
Not only that but what is the mechanism for non-life resulting in life??? Any examples of this ever happening? Is it reproducible? No, the myth of evolution has to dream up dreamworks types of schemes to ever get to any mechanism. The scientific fact is that spontaneous generation does not occur ever…never did, never will!!
How about the ‘big bang’. Is there any shred of evidence that an explosion ever created anything? Would an explosion ever create a lemur or dead monkey typing a book like “The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life” (sounds pretty racist to me!)??? How many thousands, whoops millions, whoops trillions (sounds like an Obama bailout…whoops stimulus) of years would it take for the exploded dead monkey to type on the exploded/created typewriter///???
Science doesn’t even attempt to have a mechanism for the information on DNA.
One could go on ad nauseum just in the science realm. But, ultimately you are correct, it is presuppositional in nature…or possibly a matter of faith. A person inspects the “facts” and forms an opinon. I have done this all of my life. I just don’t have the faith to believe in what I call the myth of evolution. It’s not even a good fairy tale. At least in fairy tales things “fit” together in a logical fashion. After being in science literally all of my 55 years (I’ve always done research, my father was famous in his field as a Cornell research scientist and certainly IS to this day at least an ID creationist)…I’ve never heard the slightest explanation for “evolution” that makes even the slightest sense on the grand scale of things. When these guys have no explanation they trot out the latest hopeful monster. In this case, either a lemur or flattened dead monkey (without the typewriter).
This is why these clowns bring some sort of closeted creature out of the darkness ever so often. Then they scream, propagandize and say THIS IS IT!!! This, seals the deal because we are screaming loudly!
So, in summary they hope our response is, “oooo….ok….you win! (whimpering, slinking off with our lemur tails between our legs….)
May 29th, 2009 at 11:51 am
@ Mike: Actually, new genetic code can be created via natural selection and mutations–which, by the way, aren’t nearly as terrible as the creationists argue; mutations are essential to a population’s survival. And they happen all the time. You yourself are an example of this; your genetic code contains subtle mutations of your parents’. Just think of this same process on a much, much bigger scale. Also, it’s important to remember that individuals do not evolve; populations do. Individuals’ mutations introduce variation into the population’s gene pool.
It’s a very common misinterpretation to think of evolution as “totally random.” Evolution is not chance-driven; it is deterministic. Mutations provide the raw material on which natural selection acts.
You’re approaching it the wrong way when you say you want to see evidence of a “car factory.” That is not what evolution predicts. Rather, things develop from the very simple to the very complex, over extraordinarily long times (although not always, as with punctuated equilibrium). Nothing is irreducibly complex.
@ John: Evolutionary theory is a a work in progress, like all of science. We do not know all of the answers. But that doesn’t mean everything we do know is wrong, and nor does it make it appropriate to fill in the gaps with unfalsifiable Gods.
A person inspects the “facts” and forms an opinion.
Precisely. And this is exactly what religion doesn’t do. Creationists have the facts a priori; they know in advance that nothing can shake them from their beliefs. This is a crucial difference between science and religion.
May 29th, 2009 at 12:20 pm
Dustycups
I appreciate your post. I know the story, I just don’t believe that this is what we actually see in nature. Your paradigm is just as ‘a priori’ as mine. To me, it’s just another religion, and its proponents see what they want to see.
And I do believe in irreducible complexity. The fact that there are no fossils of a species actually ‘transitioning’, everything being fully formed and functioning, supports irreducible complexity. Can anyone seriously imagine a half-developed, fully-functioning wing? No? It would not be beneficial, and natural selection would wipe out any such monsters, which makes natural selection the enemy of evolutionary theory.
Evolution is religion. It is an opinion, and the data is either interpreted to fit the paradigm or thrown out.
Thanks for all your comments.
May 29th, 2009 at 12:33 pm
There are many transitioning fossils! Just gooogle the term and you’ll be amazed.
Re: Irreducible complexity. Watch this for an explanation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_HVrjKcvrU
May 29th, 2009 at 12:34 pm
Also, your recognition that natural selection would–and does, in some cases–”wipe out such monsters” is great progress.
May 29th, 2009 at 2:19 pm
After thinking about it some more, the only place in nature that we actually see anything ‘in transition’ is in the womb (or in the egg). Evolutionists ask us to believe that such partially-formed creatures could not only survive outside the womb, but themselves procreate and nurture young.
But we don’t see at all in the fossil record a myriad of hopeful monsters. They are all fully formed. Lining up a series of similar-looking species and claiming it shows development is not helpful. In one case, the so-called primitive form was found not only in the same strata as its far more complex descendant, but was found in the process of being eaten by it.
May 29th, 2009 at 2:41 pm
I watched that video. Thanks.
“Ken Miller debunks Michael Behe’s pseudoscience”
Ken Miller selects one system from within a fully functional “car” (a flagellum) and shows how this system still works on its own. Then he says that because all the systems within this car are similarly made of metal and plastic, that they are all interchangeable.
Not very good ‘debunking’ for such a smart fellow. So what if the fuel injection system still works when you pull it out! Intelligent design is written all over the car. Ad Mr Miller had to use his intelligence to select a section to isolate, which we actually never see isolated in nature.
And that’s the best they can do? Amazing what people will believe. And the poster of the video had the hide to tell the Creationist commenters to come back when they get some education. Don’t get your education from Ken Miller. His flawed paradigm hinders his understanding of basic logic.
Why do these guys always have to resort to artists’ impressions and pretty diagrams of things we actually never, ever see in reality? (Like Miller’s diagrams in this video)
Here’s one of my favourite quotes from an evolutionist:
“I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them. You suggest that an artist should be used to visualise such transformations, but where would he get the information from? I could not, honestly, provide it, and if I were to leave it to artistic license, would that not mislead the reader?”
Dr. Colin Patterson, Senior paleontologist at the British Museum of Natural History, in letter to Luther Sunderland, April 10, 1979. Cited in: Sunderland, Luther D., Darwin’s Enigma: Fossils and Other Problems (El Cajon, CA: Master Books, 1988), p. 89.
And get this – Patterson still believes in these ‘transitional’ fossils. At least he is honest enough not to try to fool us with diagrams like Miller.
For my money, the argument for irreducible complexity still stands strong. And Miller’s ridicule of those he disagrees with is unfounded and arrogant. Mine, however…
May 29th, 2009 at 6:55 pm
the only place in nature that we actually see anything ‘in transition’ is in the womb (or in the egg). Evolutionists ask us to believe that such partially-formed creatures could not only survive outside the womb
Not a single one I’ve met would say that. Once again, individuals do not evolve; populations do. From the perspective of the transitional organism, it’s not transitioning at all! Such fossils merely demonstrate incremental changes from generation to generation. So, it’s not like a bird having half-wings; the “half-wings” themselves weren’t used for flying at all. They served a different adaptive purpose–perhaps to keep warm. I think you’re focussing too much on the end result (wings) than on the process of getting there.
Vestigial structures are evidence of this. Take a look at the hindleg bones of the whale–they serve no purpose in walking, obviously. In fact, they’re entirely useless altogether. They’re remnants of a land-dwelling ancestor. Pretty poor “design”, wouldn’t you agree? Similarly, the “wings” of penguins are not used for flight at all, but they’ve been adapted to a whole new purpose: swimming. These are just a couple of examples. Just because some organ or structure doesn’t serve the purpose we know it does today, that doesn’t mean it didn’t have some other purpose for the “transitional” organism.
And sure, I totally agree with your point about prettying up pictures for show. But being arrogant and showy has absolutely no bearing on the truth of a theory. This is reminiscent of another common Creationist argument: Darwinian thought has caused mass-genocide, racism, etc. While most would say that this is false–both Stalin and Hitler had moustaches; perhaps facial hair/i> causes genocide!–it in no way has any bearing on the truth of the theory. There is a difference between what is true and what is comforting.
May 29th, 2009 at 7:23 pm
I take your point, but to assume that every biological feature was useful at every point and never a hindrance stretches credibility beyond belief – well, mine anyway.
Re the ‘useless’ whale bones, there is an article here:
http://www.darwinisdead.com/an_email_exchange_regarding.htm
If I were a whale, I would miss them very much, even to the point of extinction.
On Darwinism and the bloodiest century ever, the links between atheism and mass murder are many. If there is no God, why is it wrong to eat your neighbour? Might is right. And tasty.
May 29th, 2009 at 7:38 pm
Are you telling me that the only reason you don’t eat your neighbour is because you believe in a God? That’s a pretty lame reason. “I WON’T STEAL THE COOKIE FROM THE COOKIE JAR BECAUSE DAD MIGHT CATCH ME.” I don’t know about you, but I’ve internalised my sense of morality.
Our morality is definitely complex. I would argue that the origins of morality are indeed Darwinian in nature–our selfish genes predict that it isn’t adaptive to kill off others (who might be potential mates/companions/otherwise advantageous to us in some way)–but our morality has undergone cultural evolution, too. Furthermore, the basics of morality–like not killing people–are present in every culture, from every religious/non-religious background across the globe. If you say Christians only behave morally (I use this term loosely *COUGH* THE INQUISITION *COUGH*) because of their belief in the Christian God, then what’s the motivation for the other five billion moral people in the world?
Also, animals also display altruism, so it’s not something uniquely human, either. This suggests an evolutionary origin.
May 29th, 2009 at 8:26 pm
Those are some smart selfish genes!
Yes, but why is it wrong?
(And you will find justification for the inquisition in the teachings of Jesus, not.)
I also have a great post, Universal Acid, here:
http://www.bullartistry.com.au/wp/2009/04/08/universal-acid/
Even some non-Christians understand the implications of evolutionary thinking.