[Evolution: Science or Religion]
This is Rich Zubaty, The Rude Guy, wormhole in the bible, snot on the workbook of science. Muddy hands of reality rubbing all over the white shirts of fundamentalist religionists and fundamentalist scientists alike.
On the second The Rude Guy show, I said I’d come back some day to take on the topic of Evolution… and so the hour has come… Evolution. Bible or bullshit? Or both. That’s today’s show.
As I told you back then, God didn’t do it and Darwin didn’t do it. There’s a third option here… if not fourth and fifth and sixth options… which are NOT being investigated. Evolution is not science. Where are the experiments? Where are the proofs? They don’t exist… And evolution is not even good religion. What are we supposed to believe in? What’s the meaning of it all?
Here’s the funny thing. Creationism and evolution are BOTH wrong… and BOTH right. And that’s why we’re so confused. So let’s pull this puzzle apart piece by piece.
Creationism is wrong about time frames. To verify that you need to know only one word. The word is “fossils”. God did not make the world six thousand years ago. If you still believe that he did, stop listening to this and go read your Bible. There’s nothing for you to learn here.
The theory, and I want to emphasize the word THEORY, of evolution, is wrong about random mutations. Life on earth did not evolve through random mutations. Period.
As far back as 1966 computer scientists and mathematicians led by Murray Eden of MIT and Marcel Schutzenberger of the University of Paris demonstrated that no matter how many biochemical processes they entered into their super computers, and no matter what time frame they assigned these processes to operate (billions of years), the probability of the evolution of life on earth by “chance” processes came out as – get this – zero. Just plain zero. No “ones” in the decimal places. Not in billions and billions of years. And yet the religion of evolution is still taught in our schools as if it were fact. Laughable… Preposterous …Downright disturbing.
However, if you still believe beyond a doubt, that life evolved through random mutations, stop listening to this and go read your Darwin. There’s nothing for you to learn here.
Now… If we can just get the room cleared of the true believer bigots from both sides, we can move forward.
What creationism is right about, is that forces which are invisible to us, and invisible to our current crop of measuring instruments, have played SOME part, literally, in SHAPing life. You wanna call that God, go head. It’s the traditional word used to describe things we don’t understand. Biologist Rupert Sheldrake calls it morphic resonance. Morphic resonance. Both of these concepts are like fingers pushing into the water of the unknown. Pointing a way toward what we do NOT know.
What we DO know is DNA codes proteins, and that’s ALL it does. That’s it. But what tells eyeball DNA to make eyeball proteins, and toenail DNA to make toenail proteins? We don’t know. The shape of a wing or a neck or a claw, is determined by something we have not yet discovered. It’s a complete mystery. No one knows where to look, so no one’s looking.
Like Plato’s perfect spheres, similar forms have a harmonic – for lack of a more accurate word – a harmonic blueprint hidden just over the horizon from where our measuring instruments are measuring at the moment. It is this zone that Sheldrake calls a morphogenetic field. And creationists call God.
What evolutionists are right about is that Darwinism — random, or nearly random mutations — describes VERY accurately what happens WITHIN SPECIES of plants and animals. How a certain beak or claw or flower evolved, in a certain forest or desert environment. But Darwinism is at a total loss to explain how DIFFERENT species evolved. They try. They make up all kinds of bullshit. But the fossil record itself shows that nothing happened for a couple hundred million years, then there was a big spike in the emergence of new life forms. Then nothing happened for another couple hundred million years, then there was another spike in the emergence of new life forms. And so on. They even gave it a name: Punctuated Equilibrium, as if this makes up for the fact that Darwinist natural selection doesn’t explain the process at all.
What’s more, none of this bullshit about missing links adds up. There ARE no missing links. Anywhere. We can’t find them. We keep finding these fossils of our human ancestors, and then discover they couldn’t have been our ancestors because they have different DNA or skeletons or brains. Something is missing. Ideas are missing. Information is missing. Processes are missing. We haven’t looked hard enough. We haven’t looked in the right places. We’re told that a marine reptile walked out onto the land, and his scales became feathers, and his mouth became a beak, and he became warm blooded, and then he flapped his wings and flew away. Okay fine. How the fuck did it happen? This is just a cartoon. No processes are identified. How does a scale turn into a feather, or a mouth into a beak, or cold blood into warm blood. The assholes don’t know. They just put it all down to random mutations and sail on. I’m not saying God did this. I’m saying evolution as it has been served up to us does not explain this. Not even a little bit. It’s religion, not science.
Scientists have been irradiating fruit flies for decades, inducing mutations. They’ve produced green fruit flies and white fruit flies and hairy fruit flies, but not once have they ever produced a moth or a housefly. In the same way that Newton’s physics theories seem to hold up well in the normal world of our senses, but break down in the subatomic world, so Darwin’s theories seem to explain what happens withIN species, but not how ONE species became another. Something is missing.
So… If EARTHbound evolution, by natural selection, of random mutations, is a hoax — is incomplete and insufficient to explain evolution — where can we look for new ideas? Hmmm. Simple. The answer to the question is in the question. If earthbound evolution doesn’t work we must look into the SKY.
There is a very good chance that some DNA arrived on earth from outer space. On comets and meteors and asteroids, from other solar systems in older galaxies. Evidence of viruses and bacteria, both of which contain DNA, has already been found on meteorites that have crashed onto the earth. Someday we may come to discover we owe our human existence to shitty little organisms like bacteria and viruses, inert forms of DNA, that traveled through eons of space in the tails of comets, to rain down on our atmosphere and melt in our ponds.
Also… There is a very good chance that something akin to Sheldrake’s morphogenic fields really exists. Plato talked about it thousands of years ago when he wrote about his concept of the Perfect Sphere. Somewhere in abstract space, there exists the perfect sphere, round and complete in every way. Nowhere in real life do we find one. Every sphere down here is a bit squashed or flattened, imperfect. But every child’s rubber ball or celestial planet harkens back to the shape of the perfect sphere.
OK, now what if somewhere out in abstract space, somewhere in the incredibly complex layers upon layers of overlapping energy fields we inhabit, there is a representation of: the Perfect Elephant. The perfect elephant has perfect ears and perfect tusks and always remembers everything, and so on. No elephant down here comes up to that mark. However, let’s imagine that when the little fertilized elephant egg inside the mother starts dividing and becomes a zygote, it is AFFECTED by the overlapping energy fields called the Perfect Elephant, and that morphogenic field tells the DNA, in the zygote to make a trunk here, and a tusk there. We haven’t studied this, so we don’t know if it’s true or not. It’s just a theory. A description of a possible process. But one thing we do know. After 50 years of studying DNA we know that it does not give formic instructions. It only codes DNA. So where do the formic instructions come from???? What tells eyeball DNA to make eyeball proteins, and toenail DNA to make toenail proteins? We don’t know.
Also… some random mutations notwithstanding, there is a definite possibility that living organisms develop feedback loops, with their environments. That means, the overlapping energy fields that comprise any environment – say, a jungle, or a desert – the natural energy fields of a jungle or desert, INDUCE some mutations in the living creatures that inhabit them. Maybe desert creatures are offered more genetic innovations for heat shields than for flying. That’s something that could be statically studied. That’s what science is: studying things. Not pulling theories out of your ass and never proving them.
Charles Darwin himself refused to rule out the notion of feedback loops, helping to induce evolution, though recent biologists, have axed it. Why? They can’t find the mechanism. They can’t find the mechanism, which means, according to them, it does not exist. But have they investigated subtle energy fields? No. Are they even capable of investigating subtle energy fields. No, they are not. Do we know that subtle energy fields exist? Yes we do. Do we know what they do or how they do it? No, we do not. Time for REAL science to come on stage.
This theory regarding feedback loops was first proposed around the time of Darwin by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck.
But scientists could not FIND these Lamarckian feedback mechanisms so, instead of admitting their incompetence, they simply announced that they don’t exist. Good grief. That’s not science. That’s throwing out the baby with the bath water. That’s like saying you’ve never seen an elephant, so elephants don’t exist.
And recently it has been discovered that RNA, the proteins that replicate DNA… it has been discovered that RNA does not always faithfully reproduce DNA. Sometimes it DECIDES to make different proteins than the DNA tells it to make. Now what the fuck does that mean? Some little strand of RNA doesn’t DECIDE anything. It doesn’t have a brain, it CAN’T decide. It is being influenced by some unseen force, some unseen energy field, to make different proteins than the neat little world evolutionary biologists say it will make.
There are lots of things about Darwinian evolutionary theory that worried Charles Darwin himself. But no two were of more concern to him than the size of the human brain, and the complexity of the human eyeball. So I’m gonna read, right now, some excerpts from my book, The Corporate Cult, that talk a bit about this. Here we go:
Darwin’s theory of natural selection posits that mutations occur randomly and beneficial mutations are preserved, while unbeneficial ones are edited out of the gene pool. Fair enough. But how did it come about that the human brain is nine times bigger than it need be? We only use 10% of our brains. The other 90% is superfluous. Wasted space. Worse, due to our enormous brain size the human infant is born much too early. Our brain gets as big as it can inside the womb, then mom goes into labor and we squirt out. We have spindly arms and legs, we can’t walk for a year. A fawn can walk within hours. Being born with a brain as big as ours is in NO WAY a beneficial mutation and is, in fact, a physical debility, a life-threatening defect that should have been eliminated by evolution. It is a distinct disadvantage both to us and our parents. Our brain is too big. And the theory of natural selection cannot explain why. Every high school kid should be taught that. And every knee-jerk Darwinian should be forced to account for this.
What’s more, Neanderthal men had bigger brains than ours. Our brains are actually smaller than a race of men whom we consider to be stupider than we are. So, a correlation between brain size and intelligence doesn’t seem to be a factor here. Charles Darwin had no answer for this. During his lifetime he was worried that both the size of the human brain and the intricacy of the eyeball would militate to discredit his theory. The problem he anticipated has been described as “irreducible complexity” – the recognition that some organic structures are so profoundly complex, that the notion they evolved slowly over time is scientifically preposterous. Turns out Darwin was right.
A classic example of irreducible complexity is the human eye. An eye is no use at all unless all its parts are fully formed and working together. Even a slight alteration from its current form destroys its function. How, then, could the eye evolve by slight alterations? Even in Darwin’s day the complexity of the eye was offered as evidence against his theory, and Darwin said the mere thought of trying to explain the eye gave him a, “cold shudder”.
Darwin would have shuddered even harder had he known the structure of cells inside the eye. Contemporary Darwinists such as Richard Dawkins (inventor of the “meme” meme) have tried to solve the problem by tracing a pathway to the evolution of the eye, starting with a light-sensitive spot, moving to a group of cells “cupped” to focus light better, and so on through a graded series of small improvements to produce a true lens. But as Michael Behe, LeHigh University professor of biochemistry, points out, even the first step – the light-sensitive spot – is irreducibly complex, requiring a chain of chemical reactions, starting when a photon interacts with a molecule called 11-cis-retinal, which changes to trans-retinal, which forces a change in the shape of a protein called rhodopsin, which sticks to another protein called transducin, which binds to another molecule…and so on. And where do these “cupped” cells that Dawkins talks about come from to begin with? There are dozens of complex proteins involved in maintaining cell shape, and dozens more that control groups of cells. Each of Dawkins’ steps is itself a complex system, and adding them together doesn’t answer where those complex systems came from in the first place. It’s as if we asked how a stereo system is made, and someone answered, “By plugging a set of speakers into an amplifier and adding a CD player and tape deck.”
This is just about the level of sophistication that evolutionary SCIENCE is at. Making stereo systems out of components you can buy at radio shack.
The sheer complexity of the eyeball means that it had to have come on the scene very quickly and nearly complete. Stephen Jay Gould has posited the theory of “Punctuated Equilibrium” to account for this speeded up evolution, but as far as I can tell the theory is little more than a high-sounding phrase. He has offered no mechanism to explain what remains one of the profound inconsistencies in Darwin’s theory. According to fossil records evolution does not happen slowly over vast periods of time, it happens in short fast bursts. The Theory of Natural Selection simply does not account for that.
And here’s one more goofy example that made it clear to me that Darwinism is a religion, a belief system, not a science… Bats are mice that grew long fingers with webs between them, and learned to navigate by sonar. So far so good. That seems to make sense. But let’s imagine this first little bat-mouse. This “missing link”. His fingers have grown a little bit longer and he’s got these embarrassing webs growing between them. He can’t dig or climb as well as his friends. His eyesight and smell are getting worse as his hearing gets better. Is Minnie Mouse interested in this geek? This loser? Who can’t even smell worms or dig grubs with his deformed hands? Not likely. He’s not a handsome member of his tribe, he’s a deformed freak. He’s not gonna get laid, and he’s not gonna reproduce. In fact, Darwinism explains much about how variations occur within species. But it is at a loss to explain how different species evolve. Something is missing. Memes are missing. We haven’t looked hard enough. We haven’t looked in the right places.
Why does any of this matter?
Here’s another quote from the Corporate Cult.
William Provine of Cornell University declares forthrightly that Darwinism is not just about mutations and fossils; it is a comprehensive philosophy stating that all life can be explained by natural causes acting randomly – which implies there is no need for the Creator. And if God did not create the world, he notes, then the ENTIRE BODY OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF COLLAPSES.
Provine teaches his message on college campuses across the country, often flashing the following list on an overhead projector to hammer home what consistent Darwinism means: “No life after death; no ultimate foundation for ethics; no ultimate meaning of life; no free will.” The only reason people still believe in such things, Provine says, is that people have not yet grasped the full implications of Darwinism.
THAT’s why this matters. Because Fundamentalist Evolutionists are running around the country saying things like this. If Darwinism is right, the entire basis for human life: morals, conscience, valuing cooperation over competition, are naive and pathetic. Only the fittest would survive. Social Darwinism. Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles would have been laid outside on rocks the day after they were born.
But who really benefits from this materialism and atheism? I wrote a whole book about it. The book is called The Corporate Cult. And the answer to who benefits is simple. One word… corporations.
Our government has defined corporations as persons, with all the Bill of Rights protections that you and I have. Persons. People. But people who do not eat, sleep, die, get drafted into war or pay their fair share of taxes. In a Darwinian universe corporations thrive, and people wither. Now look outside your window and tell me what the fuck you think is going on out there?
Darwinism tells us a lot about how certain beaks and claws evolved, and nothing about the meaning of life. When you look for meaning, don’t look to science. Don’t fall for some batty collection of rationalizations whose ultimate effect is to discredit fundamental human nature for profit. Make evolutionists prove their points with real proofs like real scientists, or shut up. Go get real jobs. Build houses, drill wells, feed people.
…………..
Thanks to all the people who made donations or bought books. Santa Claus is watching. Now I’m only homeless and $7000 in credit card debt. And for the rest of you there’s still time to save your souls AND replenish that jolly reservoir of Christmas cheer. Go to happyfool.orG or therudeguy.com and buy a book, or make a donation. I’ve produced over 40 hours of unique audio essays so far, and if you’ve listened to even part of them, it’s the right thing to do. The only reason this show’s still goin’ is because of the people who helped. Some sent money, some gave me places to stay, others contributed technical skills to launch this thing in the first place, and keep it going till now. What about you? What can you do to help?
This is The Rude Guy. We’ll be back. Stay strong. Don’t let anybody intimidate you. Don’t let anybody shame you. No more bullshit. That’s our motto…. No more BULLssshhhiiittt.
Ahhhh, feels a little better already.
