Bus Campaign (General)

by Grant Rogerson , I'm in yer monitor, stealin yer pixels, Wednesday, April 01, 2009, 21:14 @ david

You asserted two things in your flamissive:

1) GAPS argument, quoting Darwin especially on those unknown transitional fossils.

2)

I am a rationalist. I demand a rational explanation for life and the universe and I demand it today. The only rational answer to all the unknowns in science is God...not a supernatural God, a God that is just as natural as the nature it created and operates, day in and day out.

I am only going to address your GAPS argument here, and No2 in a second message.

There are several weaknesses with it. The usual one is that all unknowns get attributed to god.

• Diseases were 'evil spirits' or the god's punishment. Then we discovered the real causes were virii and bacteria.
  
• Thunder and lightning were god-created, until we discovered the real cause - static electrical discharges.
  
• ad nauseum.

The ones you YECs have the biggest affinity for are the gaps in the fossil records. Gap? discard all knowledge and claim god created the new species. I will illustrate where this leads...

Ancient bones are found which we will label species A. Various scientists study it and declare that it might be related to modern species Z. The YEC points out that there is a big gap, and this is obviously true. The YEC adds that also proves (but does not) God only made Zs, that the gap = fictional Darwinian theory. We have:

A________________________Z

Some years later, a paleontologist finds more skeletal remains which date to somewhere between the times of species A and Z. Various scientists note that it fits nicely between A and Z in terms of various bone structures. And we end up with species H in the fossil record:

A______H_________________Z

Now the YEC points out there are two gaps, and by the way the paleontologists dating methods probably suck anyway.

A few years later, more discoveries are made which seem to fit into a path from A to Z quite nicely:

A___F__GH______O___S_U___Z

Now the YEC becomes positively giddy. He announces that there are so many gaps that it is impossible to 'connect the dots'. Those scientists appear be getting it wronger and more badder - obviously, the more they discover, the more gaps appear, therefore God is the only answer.

This continues as further discoveries are made...

ABCDEFGHI_KLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

The YEC happily points out there is still a gap in the record. Those misguided scientists have wasted all their time. It was obvious when a gap was first noted between species A and Z in the fossil record that their efforts were doomed to failure. It is surely pure evidence of the hand of God.

Then some thrice damned gain-saying scientist has the nerve to suggest to the YEC that with the existing fossil evidence as well as DNA based evidence that the god hypothesis is not necessary, and that A is indeed an ancestor of Z.

The problem with the gaps (formally known as the God of/in the gaps) argument is that it leads inevitably to one or both of two outcomes:

• The gaps keep disappearing.
  
• Absurdity.

You can follow the process of filling in the blanks by studying the growth of the fossil record (and many supporting scientific endeavors such as plate tectonics, DNA, climatology and ecology). I would give you a few links, but we both know you would not visit them.

Now on to the next item...