r/DebateEvolution

An error can occur only when there is an established rule or conscious intention that an acting subject failed to follow. A clerk makes an error because there is a standard ledger to obey. In physical reality, a molecule undergoes a chemical rearrangement governed entirely by the physical conditions present at that instant. Nature possesses no intention, no standard of correctness, and no rule that it was trying to achieve. Without a prior goal, there is no failure. Designating a physical alteration as an "error" is a grammatical projection of human standards of success onto an indifferent physical change

Simply put, it doesn't make sense to go about it the way they do, especially from the perspective of being against evolution. Some form of rapid evolution is the closest thing to making sense of how the world could have continued after "the flood," with the only other possibility being that the ark itself was magic and had infinite space within it. Both explanations ultimately require that God had to use magic, which means there's no need for "proof" of anything. So, why even bother? Now, obviously the Bible not mentioning this magic anywhere is a point against them, but I still feel like they're shooting themselves in the foot by trying to argue against evolution while supporting the ark story. Trying to reconcile them would still leave a ton of holes, but at least it wouldn't leave open so many easy points of attack against them. It feels like they simply view evolution itself as a threat. Slippery slope fallacy, perhaps? As in, maybe they think accepting evolution will leave the door open for people to question other things?

One of the biggest problems for YEC is mammalian biogeography, especially the fact that nearly all marsupials are concentrated in Australia, with only a few species occurring in South America. And these marsupials are all radically different from one another: a Tasmanian wolf is as different from a kangaroo as a rabbit is from a lion.

Creationists claim that, after leaving the Ark in Turkey, the animals could have traveled on natural rafts of vegetation and wood, which can form after major catastrophes. But the problem is that there is no natural mechanism that would cause all these very different kinds of marsupials to somehow end up almost exclusively in Australia—and only in Australia!

So they ultimately have to appeal to magic: a highly intelligent and organized God must have miraculously transported all the marsupials to one particular place, apparently for the sake of neat geographical organization. One obvious problem with this argument is the existence of marsupials in South America, extremely far from Australia, which ruins this supposed “neatness” of God’s arrangement.

Another problem is more theological: why would a benevolent, truthful, and omniscient God intervene miraculously in such a way as to create precisely the geographical pattern that scientists would naturally interpret as evidence of evolution and common ancestry? That sounds less like the work of a truthful God and more like the work of a trickster god.

I was testing out different ideas about evolution and if we tried this exact scenario on trillions of different theoretical chimpanzee groups is it a non zero chance?

Humans disappear
A human-made, perfectly round, white, hard, iridescent pearl remains in an African forest.
The unusual chimp is born
Among many chimpanzees, one is unusually intelligent, curious, observant, and capable of making unusual associations.
The first encounter
During a full Moon, the chimp encounters the pearl shortly after looking at the Moon.
The association
The chimp notices that the pearl resembles the Moon: white, round, smooth, and bright.
The fascination begins
The chimp carries, examines, cleans, and protects the pearl. It begins repeatedly polishing it with leaves.
Other chimps imitate it
The behavior spreads socially. The pearl becomes an unusual object of interest within the group.
The tradition reaches the chimp’s children
The original chimp teaches its offspring to care for the pearl. The behavior continues after the original chimp dies.
The pearl becomes sacred
After many generations, nobody remembers the original discovery. The pearl becomes associated with the Moon, ancestors, and the tribe’s identity.
The pearl becomes a symbol of leadership
Whoever possesses or protects the pearl gradually gains authority. Eventually, possessing the “Fallen Moon” becomes a requirement for legitimate leadership.
The tradition becomes hereditary
Leaders pass responsibility for the pearl to their successors. Rival individuals may fight or steal it, creating early political struggles over who has the right to rule.
The pearl becomes the tribe’s central institution
Protecting the pearl becomes more important than any individual chimp. The tribe develops specialized roles around its protection.
The environment changes
Climate change dries the forest, turning much of the habitat into dangerous open savanna.
The pearl tribe has an unexpected advantage
Their existing culture already requires them to stay together, protect one another, and safely transport the pearl.
Cooperation becomes essential for survival
The tribe develops organized travel, guards, scouts, coordinated defense, and increasingly complex communication.
Bipedalism is reinforced
Long-distance terrestrial travel and carrying the pearl favor increasingly efficient upright walking. The pearl culture reinforces environmental selection for bipedalism rather than causing it directly.
Communication becomes increasingly complex
Coordinating pearl protection, leadership, travel, rituals, and group rules creates strong pressure for increasingly sophisticated communication.
Symbolic culture develops
The pearl becomes one of the first persistent symbols in the lineage, representing concepts such as authority, ancestry, duty, and the Moon.
Gene-culture coevolution begins
Individuals who are better at learning, communicating, remembering traditions, cooperating, and teaching become increasingly valuable to the tribe.
Technology accelerates
Better cooperation and increasingly sophisticated cognition allow more advanced tools, construction, hunting, food gathering, and eventually agriculture.
A new hominin-like species emerges
After millions of years, the descendants are no longer ordinary chimpanzees. They are a distinct, upright, highly intelligent primate civilization.
The original meaning is forgotten
Their civilization eventually develops religion, politics, mathematics, science, and writing, but the oldest surviving tradition remains the sacred Fallen Moon.
The final irony
Their entire civilization traces its cultural ancestry back to one extraordinarily unlikely coincidence: an unusually intelligent chimp encountering a perfectly round white human-made pearl beneath a full Moon.

Gould and Dawkins were to coauthor a letter on the topic of debating creationists. With the passing of Gould in 2002, Dawkins published their correspondence and the early draft in his 2003 essay collection, A Devil's Chaplain.

A while back I was surprised to learn about the letter, and given the measly 4 google hits, I thought to share it here. What reminded me of it are some ongoing parallels (what is presently going on with Duffy, who, in my opinion, has subverted the lessons format with Erika - u/Gutsick_Gibbon; now it has become a I wonder what apologetics and false balancing - for his audience - he's going to vomit next; i.e., it's now, semantics aside, the kind of "debate" the fundies hanker after).

If you are not a regular and therefore unfamiliar with Duffy, and what has transpired since the last lesson, the letter will still stand on its own. For readability, given its size, I won't format it as a block quotation, and I look forward to your thoughts. To keep this short, I'll also share my thoughts in the comments.

The letter:

Unfinished Correspondence with a Darwinian Heavyweight

14 December 2001

Dear Editor

Like any flourishing science, the study of evolution has its internal controversies, as we both know. But no qualified scientist doubts that evolution is a fact, in the ordinarily accepted sense in which it is a fact that the Earth orbits the Sun. It is a fact that human beings are cousins to monkeys, kangaroos, jellyfish and bacteria. No reputable biologist doubts this. Nor do reputable theologians, from the Pope on. Unfortunately, many lay Americans do, including some frighteningly influential, powerful and, above all, well-financed ones.

We are continually invited to engage in public debates against creationists, including latter-day creationists disguised under the euphemism ‘Intelligent Design Theorists’. We always refuse, for one overriding reason. If we may be allowed to spell this reason out publicly, we hope our letter may be helpful to other evolutionary scientists plagued by similar invitations.

The question of who would ‘win’ such a debate is not at issue. Winning is not what these people realistically aspire to. The coup they seek is simply the recognition of being allowed to share a platform with a real scientist in the first place. This will suggest to innocent bystanders that there must be material here that is genuinely worth debating, on something like equal terms.

At the moment of writing, the leading ‘Intelligent Design’ website reports a debate at Harvard under the banner headline ‘Wells Hits a Home Run at Harvard’.^(134) Jonathan Wells is a creationist, incidentally a long-time devotee of the Unification Church (the ‘Moonies’).^(1) He had a debate last month against Stephen Palumbi, Professor of Biology at Harvard University. ‘Home Run’ might seem to suggest that Reverends (sic) Wells scored some kind of victory over Professor Palumbi. Or at least that he made powerful points and his speech was well received. No such claim is made. It doesn’t even seem to be of interest.

The ‘Home Run’ turns out to be simply the public demonstration at Harvard that, in the words of the web site’s author, Phillip Johnson, ‘This is the sort of debate that is now occurring in universities.’ There was a victory, but it occurred long before the debate itself. The creationist scored his home run at the moment the invitation from Harvard landed on his doormat. It came, by the way, not from any biological, or indeed scientific, department, but from the Institute of Politics.

Phillip Johnson himself, founding father of the ‘Intelligent Design’ movement (not a biologist, nor a scientist of any kind, but a lawyer who became a mid-life born-again Christian), wrote, in a letter of 6 April 2001, which he copied to one of us:

> It isn’t worth my while to debate every ambitious Darwinist who wants to try his hand at ridiculing the opposition, so my general policy is that Darwinists have to put a significant figure at risk before I will agree to a debate. That means specifically Dawkins or Gould, or someone of like stature and public visibility.

Well, we can condescend too, and we have the advantage that evolutionary scientists don’t need the publicity such debates can bring. In the unlikely event that a significant argument should ever emerge from the ranks of creationism/‘intelligent design’, we will be happy to debate it. Meanwhile, we shall cultivate our evolutionary gardens, occasionally engaging in the more exacting and worthwhile task of debating each other. What we shall not do is abet creationists in their disreputable quest for free publicity and unearned academic respectability.

> When Father chose me (along with about a dozen other seminary graduates) to enter a Ph.D. program in 1978, I welcomed the opportunity to prepare myself for battle.’ (‘Father’, of course, is the Moonies’ name for Rev Moon himself). [ https://web.archive.org/web/20000122220156/http://www.tparents.org/Library/Unification/Talks/Wells/DARWIN.htm ]

In all humility, we offer these thoughts to our colleagues who receive similar invitations to debate.

 

Stephen Jay Gould, Harvard University
Richard Dawkins, Oxford University

The first eucaryotic cell is a freak accident. How does it get inherited?

I'm sorry, yet another Vox Day post*, but I heard that he is malding over mere YouTube comments, so the more the merrier! To add to the mix, I wanted to share PZ Myers' blog post from today:
- https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2026/10/02/vox-days-amazing-ego-and-bill-dembski-dont-care/

From it, I'd like to share two things:

1) Vox's book is essentially self-referential:

> ... all of 11 citations (a number I’d find unacceptable in an undergrad student paper that was much more narrow in its scope). Even worse, 7 of those citations are to the LTEE, and contradict his conclusions, and 2 are to ape genome sequencing papers whose authors would be surprised to learn how their work is being distorted. At least he has 2 that reinforce his argument, sorta, but they’re both also written by Vox Day.

Meaning that's what he has "fed" to his "author":

> Vox:
AI did all the calculations and wrote the first draft of everything

And 2) in Day's interview with Dembski, Dembski the "mathematician" didn't discuss the math.

As usual, it was a fun read from PZ Myers, and I recommend checking the entire post and the full quotes from the interview.

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And a reminder on Dembski (the IDiot** behind ID's so-called "specified complexity"):

> Dembski (in a chapter he authored):
"The world is a mirror representing the divine life. The mechanical philosophy was ever blind to this fact. Intelligent design, on the other hand, readily embraces the sacramental nature of physical reality. Indeed, intelligent design is just the Logos theology of John’s Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory."

 

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Footnotes:

* If you are not chronically online--erm, a regular here, there have been four posts so far. Erika's (u/Gutsick_Gibbon) post was the latest. In reverse chronological order, they are:

• Vox Day is Wrong on Evolution According to Every Scientist But Ten* : DebateEvolution
• New anti-evolution "paper" today from Vox Day : DebateEvolution
• Responding to Will's new favorite book, and testing my own growth : DebateEvolution
• My opinions on Will Duffy and his journey so far through evolution : DebateEvolution

** To borrow Larry Moran's term.