How to Create an Ancient Evolutionary Tale
Many people I have spoken to repeat the myth that 'We only use 10% of our brains'. Others tell me the myth of how Columbus received opposition to his voyage because the people of the time thought the world was flat. Of course, these examples differ markedly. The first is a meaningless quote, often attributed to Einstein, which continues to get passed around like a chinese whisper and more often than not, used to support the New Age religion. The second however, was taught in schools.

I remember being taught that the people of Columbus's time thought the world was flat, as do other people who have been out of high school less than 10 years. Scary, but true. A well known falsehood continued to be taught, well after it was found to be false. I have no idea whether it is still being taught, or how widespread it is being taught, but the point is that many many people, are walking around today with a false belief about history simply because someone in authority (their teachers) told them it was true within the context of a nice little story about Columbus.

Attempting to correct false beliefs is not that easy however. A belief that was accepted a long time ago, for seemingly good reasons, doesn't get changed without effort. The weight given to a long held belief, especially when it fits with other beliefs (Like the other false belief of the 'enlightenment' rescuing man from irrationality), is quite strong.

This tendency to hold onto false beliefs is readily apparent in the areas of evolution and the age of the earth. At school, I and many others were taught that bones took thousands of years to form, diamonds took millions, oil and coal the same, and that rock layers were laid down very slowly. Every time I saw a fossil, diamond or rock layers, the immediate thought was about how 'old' they looked. Even today, theistic evolutionists continue to tell me about how 'old' the earth looks. The problem is, science has shown clearly that all of these things I was taught are wrong. But, as Sir Winston Churchill said ""A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on." The lie of these 'slow' processes was used to build the foundation for an ancient earth, so that when radiometric dating came along with all of its untestable assumptions, only those methods that found an old earth were considered. The original evidence is now questioned, but we now have 'new' evidence to support the original conclusion.

The same thing can be seen in evolutionary theory. Most of the original evidences that Darwin used have been shown to not support evolution. Haeckel's Embryonic Recapitulation is known to have been a fraud. The fossil record continues, despite hope, to not show the gradual progression of species.

The latest of Darwin's evidences to come tumbling down is his 'Tree of Life'. In W. Ford Doolittle and Eric Bapteste, “Inaugural Article: Evolution: Pattern Pluralism and the Tree of Life Hypothesis,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the authors make it quite clear that being able to construct a phylogenic tree of life (TOL) is merely an artifact of method, and provides no support for the truth or falsity of molecules to man evolution. The article also mentions off hand that

The only data sets from which we might construct a universal hierarchy including prokaryotes, the sequences of genes, often disagree and can seldom be proven to agree.

Read that again. When evolutionists try constructing a TOL based on genetic sequence, they fail.

If both the phylogenic and molecular TOL's fail to provide evidence for evolution, then how can the central assumption of evolution, that similarity applies a close evolutionary relationship, be accurate? It just isn't possible to support. Why then, does evolution continue to be held out by many scientists as a 'fact'. Some may have to do with the fact that a lot of scientists think the best evidence comes from outside their own fields. Others have no choice but to accept evolution as fact, because materialism needs a creation myth. Some may have accepted evolution as fact for so long they fail to realise the central supports have eroded away, thinking that other, newer evidence has come in to replace the crumbling pillars.

When the 'evidence' for evolution continues to evolve everytime a central tenant is found to be wrong/fraud, it is time to find a different belief. With evolution, tt isn't that the goal posts are moving, it is the entire playing field that shifts.
- posted by Alan Grey @ Friday, February 09, 2007