Daily Mail Contradicts Itself

Peter Hitches is a journalist with strong views and he doubts evolution:

"For in my view the theory of evolution is done no favours by its fervent supporters. Interestingly, it's not comparable to other major scientific theories (like the theories of flight, gravity and relativity) to which its supporters always link it. These can be used to predict events, and are testable. Evolution is a theory about the distant past, unobserved and now unobservable."

In this single paragraph, Hitchens both makes an interesting point and then reveals amazing ignorance of both evolution and the scientific method.

First to his positive observation that people like Richard Dawkins (and hell, even folks like me) constantly bang on at people like him to leave it alone and let us study it.

He's right, we do: but with bloody good reason.

Evolution represents probably the greatest scientific discovery ever made but like many other major discoveries it threw a massive scientific clog into machinery of the great Abrahamic religions: Christianity, Judaism and Islam.

The modern-day theory of evolution, so called neo-Darwinian theory is what most scientists regard as the definitive (if incomplete) version; and it's this incomplete bit that pro-theists like to drive wedges into.

Anti-evolutionists, creationists - call them what you will don't want replace evolution with a better natural theory, they want to replace it with a story written four thousand years back by a bunch of nomadic Jews.

Which is why we get so utterly pissed off.

This alternative to evolution is no more an alternative than a slice of plastic is alternative to a sandwich. An alternative to a sandwich would be, say a nice, juicy Aberdeen Angus burger topped with melted cheese and a dill pickle... oh wait, it must be nearly lunchtime here.

It takes Hitchens just a dozen words to prove how strikingly ignorant he is about the whole affair:

"Evolution is a theory about the distant past, unobserved and now unobservable."

WRONG!

One theory about the distant past that a majority of scientists agree with is the Big Bang. We can observe the remnants of Big Bang in the cosmic background radiation - the very low temperature afterglow (about 4 degrees kelvin) of the cataclysmic event that brought our universe into being, yet we cannot - directly - see the event itself. Only a very few scientists actually disagree with Big Bang although small details are frequently debated. We don't have all the answers, yet Hitchens and his ilk don't, err, bang on about it.

Big Bang does not contradict a theist world view - whereas evolution does (sort of). There's a small matter, ignored by creationists that does allow room for God, if you must, called abiogenesis: the creation of life itself - we still don't know for sure how life came about. The famous Miller-Ulrey experiment looked promising, but failed to produce concrete results.

Evolutionary theory does not concern itself with abiogenesis - it only cares about how organisms developed from the simplest form of life into what we are today.

Hitchens can't grasp this.

Evolution is not a theory of some distant past: it's a theory of the development of all life. It is directly observable and it does make testable predictions. Darwin's contemporary, Karl Popper, solidified how theories work by making them falsifiable.

I have a theory that all sheep are white because all the sheep I have ever observed are white. This theory would be valid unless someone could find a black sheep. Even if I could produce a billion white sheep, a single black one would destroy my theory.

If, for example, a dog gave birth to a litter of cats (without human intervention) then evolution theory would be destroyed in an instant. It doesn't happen. Evolution is pretty safe as a theory among respectable scientists.

Journalists like Peter Hitchens are still wrong yet the Mail allows them to vent their spleens at regular intervals about stuff they know less than nothing about. In an amazing change of pace, the paper prints this Salute to Charles Darwin by the respected scientist, Desmond Morris, which is a remarkable about face .

They've also run the story I covered here several days late, but refreshing to see nevertheless with all the evidence including some I didn't include.

My guess is there's someone standing in over the Christmas holidays and the normally dumb service will be resumed shortly.