Saturday, March 22, 2008

My Six-Foot-Long Left Arm

I have serious doubts about macro-evolution, i.e., one species changing into another. It came about in an odd sort of way. It was because of an encounter with the gate where I used to work.

To enter the parking lot, I had to roll down my car's window and punch a code into a box. The gate would roll open to my right. When I left, I had to roll down my window and press a green button. Since I was at the same gate, but facing the other way, the gate opened to my left. But it never opened far enough to exit. I had to back my car up and angle it to the right to clear the gate. It occurred to me if I had a left arm that was six feet long, I would have been able to press the button without backing my car up.

So one day I tried to imagine how I could evolve a six-foot-long left arm. The first thing, I’d have to find a woman with a left arm slightly longer than her right. Then we'd have to have kids. The resulting kids with normal-sized arms would have to be prevented from reproducing -- neuter them, I guess, or maybe just drown them in a sack..

The kids with a longer-than-normal left arms couldn't reproduce with each other, since such incest would quickly de-evolve them into a state of dim-bulbness generally seen only in Hollywood liberals. So they would have to find mates with long left arms and have kids with them. But their offspring would have to consciously find mates with long left arms. After thousands of years, I figured the left arm could be evolved to be six feet long. I mean, if we were able to consciously and intentionally "evolve" all dog breeds this way, couldn't we do the same with humans? If my long-ago ancestors had done this, I would be lopsided enough to open the gate without backing my car up.

This, of course, is ridiculous. Yet a version of this wackiness is what I was essentially what I was taught in the Brain Laundries know as public school. I was taught it in jr. high, high school and college. The version I often ran across was the one of Richard Dawkins’ confabulations – that of the flying squirrel.

Dawkins argued that when squirrels jumped from tree to tree, evolution favored ones with pouches of skin on their sides, between the front and back limbs. After millions of genetic mutations, through millions of years, we ended up with Rocky J. Squirrel.

Now just imagine how this really works. A squirrel (a very stupid squirrel) attempts to jump from one tree to another. He doesn't make it and plummets to his death (this keeps him from reproducing). Generation after generation of moronic squirrels continue to jump and plunge to their demises. Finally, through random genetic mutation, "evolution" grows membranes on the sides. Don’t ask me how this happens. I suggest you don’t ask Dawkins, either. He’d probably go all scientific-bag-lady-screaming-in-the-street.

I guess membranes also grew on the top of the head and various other places, but they weren't any good for flight, so somehow these squirrels also died before reproducing. It would have been really cool if somehow these head membranes had evolved into a perfect facsimile of a leather flying helmet and goggles, just like a WWI fighter pilot.

Rocky then, somehow, find his true love (who also happens to have to membranes on her sides) and they have lots of little baby squirrels. The offspring grows up and somehow, somewhere, finds mates who just happen to have these membranes. After untold generations, voila' -- we have modern-day flying squirrels. This is the exact same mechanism by which I was supposed to evolve an arm as long as I am tall.

This isn't science. It’s alchemy. Laughably inept alchemy.

I have asked various Darwinian evolutionists if it would be possible for humans to evolve a six-foot-long left arm. I was told there are "genetic limitations" to what can be done with humans, just as with dog breeds. A dog can be made the size of a Chihuahua, but not a mouse. They can be made the size of a Great Dane, but not an elephant.

"If there are genetic limitations on species," I asked, "then how could one ever evolve into another?"

I've never gotten an answer to that. I've never gotten a believable answer as to why, out of over one hundred million fossils discovered, none are transitional. I was told "punctuated equilibrium" ("punk eek" to the irreverent) was the answer, but when I asked for proof, none was forthcoming. If I asked why no one had ever seen evolution, I was told "there hasn't been enough time." When I commented that the last known species came into existence twenty million to thirty million years ago (which certainly is enough time for something to evolve), I never got an answer. When I suggested that many bacteria reproduce several times an hour, and scientists have subjected billions of generations of bacteria to every conceivable stimuli, and still failed to make them evolve, I was still told "there hasn't been enough time." When I suggested evolutionary theory isn't science because it's not reproducible, I was told "it's the best explanation we have so far."

In other words, I didn’t get any answers, only rationalizations.

When Dawkins commented there is an enormous amount of information in our genes, I've asked evolutionists where this "information" is at. You can't see it, smell it, hear it, touch it...it's a non-material "idea" (and could that be just another word for spiritual?). Most of them didn't even know what I was talking about (it's a philosophical problem called Universals, which is about whether or not "ideas" exist only in our heads or "outside" in "objective reality").

When I suggested materialistic evolutionists were arguing in a circle and begging the question by assuming that evolution was true before they tried to prove it, I was told that science was based on materialism, therefore materialistic evolution had to be true. When I suggested that reality could only make sense if we assumed there was a rational, discoverable, non-material mathematical structure inherent in the universe, and that the universe would be a chaotic mush without it (again, the problem of Universals) most didn't know what I was talking about. When I suggested that the materialistic foundation of science is based on faith, and is therefore a kind of "religion," I was met with contempt.

Try as hard as I can, I can't find the slightest scrap of evidence that one species ever turned into another. And this is from someone who was taught it and originally believed it.

I blame most of this state of affairs on the State's interference in education. Most evolutionists seem to think that if the government didn't have its hand in education, and we had private schools, all of them would immediately sink to the level of fundamentalist Christians teaching evolutionary theory is the work of the Devil and that every word of the Bible is literally true. And that, sooner or later, the whole country would be run by a Christian version of the Taliban.

On the other hand, if the State didn't meddle with education, and we had nothing but private schools, maybe the competition would force legitimate, scientific criticisms of evolutionary theory to be taught. And then teachers couldn't tell "Just-So" stories about retarded flying squirrels crashing into the ground without being met with a barrage of criticism from the students. And that kind of competition and criticism just might advance evolutionary theory into something more rational that it is now...

I guess it's a good thing evolution doesn't exist. If it did, I'd have a heck of a time typing with one arm that much longer than the other.

1 comment:

Kent McManigal said...

Funny, but I do hope you are joking.