Friday, January 14, 2011

"You Cannot Trust Reasons to Believe"

At least that's what Todd Wood thinks.

In a series of detailed posts, Todd does an excellent job of taking apart a series of posts and responses by Dr Fuzale Rana of Reasons to Believe (a christian group that "bridges the gap between science and faith by exploring questions about God and the Bible". They have no problem with an ancient Earth, but evolution is apparently another matter) on the similarity between the human and chimp genome (or not, in the case of Reasons to Believe) and moves on to pseudogenes, thus:
"In his latest post, Rana asserts the following about the argument for common ancestry from pseudogenes:

When evolutionary biologists present this argument, they make a number of assumptions, all of which appear to have questionable validity based on recent research results. For the pseudogene evidence to have potency: (1) pseudogenes must lack function; (2) their origin must be due to rare, random events; and (3) their juxtaposition to other genes must be arbitrary.

Everything he wrote there is utterly false. None of those conditions are required to argue for common ancestry from pseudogene similarity. Not one."
Ouch!

Well, you may say, 'showing up the mangling of science by those seeking to support their religious views, is not unusual".

True. But Todd happens to be a young earth creationist.

Double ouch!

Here is post one, from there move on to "Newer Post" and read them in sequence. Post four is at the bottom of the front page of Todd's blog. You can work your way up.

It's well worth the read.

2 comments:

  1. Todd Wood is unique among modern creationists. However does he manage the cognitive dissonance between his detailed understanding of the science and his prior commitment to YEC? You have to admire him, but you also have to hope that he eventually loses his ruling delusion, however much he may find comfort in it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Chris,

    Thank you for the simple and understanding briefing of palaeon. It's very interesting and I learn something about new genus fossils that do not have examples in my Uni. I enjoy reading your blog and hope you can post more!

    Zai, Malaysia

    ReplyDelete

Sorry to use registration, but the site is plagued with link spanners. Please either sign in or send your comment by email and I'll add it to the site.