More Creatocrap from Mr. Caldwell

I brush aside the trivial lie by Caldwell that his letter, “… had nothing to do with creationism, which is a separate subject,” by observing he implicitly is employing the false dichotomy of evolution v. God. None of his supporters have missed his real intent, nor have I.

However, his following creationist nonsense does demand a thorough refutation.

Third, I sketched out some of the specific objections to evolutionary theory, but they were not the best ones, being limited by the letter length requirements.

Caldwell had the option of selecting any “objection” he liked, or as many as he liked. Next, Caldwell spewed,

Expanding a bit, every scientific theory or fact must have the property of being able to be falsified. Darwin's theory is no different. In fact Darwin identified two ways for falsifying his theory. One would be if gradualism in the genome did not show up [it hadn't at the time], and if a mechinism(sic) in life could be found that absolutely could not have come into being through microevolutionary(sic) incremental steps.

But, Caldwell has no interest in even being self consistent. He now claims that Darwin identified measures that could falsify his theory while originally Caldwell insisted that “evolution is untestable, given its billions-of-years basis.”

What a load of manure! First, the concept of a “genome” did not exist in Darwin’s time. Darwin’s own ideas of how heredity functioned were entirely wrong. This was shown in the early 1900s with the rediscovery of Mendel’s genetics (Castle 1903). Research by early geneticists, such as Hardy(1908), and Weinberg(1908) was actually promoted as a refutation to Darwin’s evolutionary theory. It was in the 1930s that work by many mathematicians and biologists, most notably R. A. Fisher, Theodosius Dobzhansky, J. B. S. Haldane, and Ernst Mayr, unified genetics and evolutionary biology.

Castle, W. E. (1903). "The laws of Galton and Mendel and some laws governing race improvement by selection". Proc. Amer. Acad. Arts Sci. 35: 233–242.

Hardy, Gh (Jul 1908). "MENDELIAN PROPORTIONS IN A MIXED POPULATION.". Science 28 (706): 49–50. doi:10.1126/science.28.706.49. ISSN 0036-8075. PMID 17779291

Weinberg, W. (1908). "Über den Nachweis der Vererbung beim Menschen". Jahreshefte des Vereins für vaterländische Naturkunde in Württemberg 64: 368–382.


I can not see the least reason not to continue exposing the self proclaimed ‘scientist,’ Mr. Caldwell, as a nincompoop. He now claims that far from being untestable, Darwin proposed tests of evolutionary theory, and that these tests have been falsified. Caldwell’s first false claim is,

”Gradualism does not show up in the fossil record, especially in the Cambrian, and this is affirmed by most evolutionists, then ignored. The Cambrian Explosion was known to Darwin even 150 years ago, and he stated at the time that if gradualism was not found to explain the sudden appearances of such a vast array of advanced life, his theory would die on the spot. Searching the Cambrian and PreCambrian, has revealed millions of fossils, but no gradualism.”

I dealt with the millions of years long Cambrian “explosion,” and the millions of years long precursor, the Ediacaran, twice already in just this one newspaper discussion, most recently on July 6, 2011 at 4:43 p.m. I see no need to repeat myself. Caldwell did ad a slight alteration, using the word, “gradualism.” We do of course have excellent examples of gradualism in the fossil record. But they are all from rather boring, stable organisms living I rather boring stable environments. They are marine snails, and little critters called foraminifera. The latter live in the billions in the Earth’s seas, and as they die, their calcified bodies drift down to the bottom of the sea. Happily for the oil industry, and evolutionary theory, the evolution of forams leaves a clear testament to gradual change in evolution. The other best example is also of a small class of many millions of marine snails that also live in a rather stable shallow, warm sea environment.

Since the oil industry needs to know which of these species tell them when they are near, or far from petroleum billion$, the classifications and evolution of these little critters is well funded. By well funded, I mean VERY WELL FUNDED; there is more money spent per year in petroleum exploration than in all other paleontology for all time. (We in the USA spend more on killing people per year than has been spent globally per year on saving them).