Petition against Science

Source: Google+

Fight against ignorance, anachronistic ideas and anti-science is needed today more than ever. Last week in Serbia controversy arose due to a petition to revise the teachings of theory evolution in Serbian universities and schools. The petition was signed by 52 academics and a number of advisers, artists, singers, engineers, philologists, philosophers and five priests.

The first page of this petition states: “Globalists and atheists in influential positions in the world, due to personal and globalist reasons, affirm the theory of evolution and finance the promoters of this idea. We are witnessing more and more famous scientists throughout the world stepping out and warning that the theory of evolution is a hypothesis whose attitudes on the creation of the world, life and man are scientifically unprovable or contrary to scientific facts”.

It is clear that a petition like this is only a pamphlet created by people who, in fact, don't understand what is the theory of evolution all about, people who don't understand that something is a scientific fact because there is a possibility of falsifiability. In fact, the possibility of falsifiability is the criteria for differentiating science from non-science. So, some arguments raised in this petition regarding evolution itself, and not the hypothesis of abiogenesis, are the exact arguments for the falsifiability of the theory of evolution – proof that it's a scientific theory, not dogma. However, it is true that there is no proof that the world was created out of the inanimate: we couldn't observe such an occurrence. In that regard, it is clear that the question of the emergence of the living world is unprovable on both sides: like the evolutionists can't prove that the first cell emerged from a primordial soup, the anti-evolutionists can't prove that it didn't. Ha! Got ya! However, astrobiologists have proof that the first, simple organic matter occurred in special conditions, on comets.

Something else – falsifiability is a term coined by Karl Popper in the 1930's, and to this day there are modern interpretations of this term. In fact, according to Popper's original, narrow interpretation, a lot of modern science branches, especially theoretical physics and the theory of abiogenesis, wouldn't be considered science. Modern interpretations and revision of the term of falsifiability are addressing this issue today.

Karl Popper

Also, it is important to, yet again, emphasize that the word “theory” in everyday life and in the context of scientific method are not the same: in everyday life, a theory is something that might be true, but doesn't have to be, while in the context of scientific method it is a tested hypothesis. A model that provides the closest representation of an occurrence is called a scientific law. If a law doesn't represent 100% of a phenomenon, it doesn't mean that the law is erroneous, it means that it has special cases or that it is a special case of a phenomenon.

The issue of differentiation of dogma from scientific method can be felt through subtle linguistic differences: dogma always portrays creation as one moment, while science talks about formation, gradual development – all that we today describe with the term evolution. Darwin's theory of evolution is often misunderstood: as an explanation of life creation on our planet, and not as an explanation of the formation of biological diversity. This is a prejudice like the one where something Darwin said is twisted to be something Darwin never said – that “humans evolved from monkeys” instead of the truth: that humans and monkeys have a common ancestor. The question “if  humans evolved from monkeys, why do monkeys still exist” is a testimony of complete ignorance of those who say it and it would be the same if we asked “if all children came from adults, why do adults still exist” (or if all adults evolved from children, why do children still exist”). However, the signatories of the petition distance themselves from criticizing Darwin (they will indirectly attack him later on), but direct their concerns towards “neo-Darwinists”, more accurate – modern science and the hypothesis of abiogenesis – according to which the world arose from inanimate forms – namely, the petition states that Haeckel's embryos are falsified, a statement that can be refuted with a simple ultrasound done on a pregnant woman, but Haeckel does not provide sources for his sketches of series of embryos, and that is the point where anti-evolutionists accuse him of falsification.

The Petition says:

"Mutations, adaptation to the environment and selection lead to some changes in the same species (variations throughout the species) and don't produce a new, more complex species, a higher level of life, which is a necessity in order to evolve into more complex species. It has been proven that Haeckel's embryos are a forgery and can't stand as proof to ontogenesis being a short recapitulation of phylogenesis."

Oh! We can't in a human century, not even a thousand or ten thousand years track the process of a certain speciation, evolution of a species from another species. But we can witness the changes in population, if two distant populations of the same species have different markers due to being isolated and how some species are practically subspecies. The basic proof of speciation is biosystematics, that nowadays despised “antique” science: take an apple, plum, cherry, strawberry, rose, almond, meadowsweet flower... all plants systematics categorizes as the rose family and you will see the similarities. Biosystematics addresses the issue of subspecies and it is not rare to see biosystematists in heated discussions on questions if something is a separate species or a subspecies, because some recent forms are exactly what anti-evolutionists are denying to exist – transitional forms, in front of our own eyes. One of those species is Lilium bosniacum, which only in 2005. gained the status of a separate species, after heated discussions and attestations.

And yes – there is something called molecular phylogenetics, a branch of phylogenetics that analyses hereditary molecular differences, primarily in nuclear DNA, but also in RNA and mitochondrial DNA in order to find information on evolutionary connections of living organisms.

Tree of life, source: FB page Do you even science, bro

Anti-evolutionists note only natural selection and mutations as evolution mechanisms, forgetting phenomena as the genetical drift, hybridization and even although very rare but possible, horizontal gene transfer, through viruses and bacterial vectors. Placental syncytium is the exact consequence of viral genome incorporation which led to the evolution of placental mammals. They're also forgetting symbiosis, especially endosymbiosis which is used to explain the origin of mitochondria and chloroplast in eukaryotic cells. 

More on, the petition notes that there is only one transitional form – signatories name only Archaeopteryx, forgetting a series of other transitional forms as Undina, then Seymouria and Therodontia and transitional sequences as Equidae, which is just one more proof of scientific illiteracy of the signatories. They are also forgetting rudimentary and homologous organs.

Archaeopteryx lithographica, Berlin museum

The petition also notes a lot of things modern science would never claim – that mutations are always a subtraction, and not an addition of genetical information and that mutations can cause nothing useful. They are forgetting that there's insertion and duplication of genes, and this addition does not have to cause useful mutations: one example of bad mutations caused by copying a triplet of bases is Huntington's disease, but an example of a good mutation is the existence of more copies of Tp53 gene which prevents the division in mutated genes and to a great extent prevents cancer. They're also forgetting that mutation and selective pressure after the first air pollution during the industrial revolution influenced the spread of the butterfly Biston betularia forma carbonaria, and the propulsion of Biston betularia forma typica. And they're pretending not to see how bacteria develop a resistance to antibiotics, which is a sign that they're really, but really, complete idiots.

One of the signatories of this petition is Ljiljana Čolić, former Minister of Education of Republic of Serbia, famous for already attempting (of course, unsuccessfully) to cut the theory of evolution from the education plan and program.

The point is that we, at this stage of comprehension and with proof available, can't understand how the living world arose, but we can understand how it developed once it was created. That is the thing modern anti-evolutionists don't understand. The theory of evolution, which explains the mechanisms of mutations, natural selection and the genetic drift factors is the most complete and convincing theory of life evolution on our planet.

Creationists' calls for biblical interpretations and the request to teach the biblical portrayals in schools, is not and can't be appropriate. Under the pretense of freedom of thought, they're trying to insert non-scientific interpretations into science subjects in schools. Let biology teach only the biological approach, and those who need the biblical approach should attend religious subjects and study the Book of Genesis.

Source: Don Addis

However, the testimony of what a group of fools the signatories of this petition are is not only the fact that Pope Francis agrees with the theory of evolution, because these orthodox zealots won't even hear the words of a catholic sovereign, but also that some, more enlightened orthodox theologists don't see the problem with the theory of evolution. Anti-evolutionists creationists consider modern evolution, moreover atheism and globalism as audacious enemies of tradition and religion. However, those “great believers” seem not to read texts published by the Serbian Orthodox Church: in the magazine Kalenić, published by the Eparchy of Šumadija from 2009, no. 5., author Srećko Petrović in his piece “Biblicalcreationism in the orthodox church” notes the text written by deacon Andrej Kurajev “Orthodoxy and creationism” about how the historical background of the hiatus between science and the Holy Scripture lies in the problematic of the translation of Book of Genesis to Latin, where the word koine – which has many meanings, considering that ancient Greek words were laden with meaning and can mean “together” and “connected” - was translated with the Latin word simul, meaning at the same time. So, this orthodox theologist thinks that the Greek text of the Holy Scripture says that everything in the world is connected, and not created at the same time.

Unfortunately, this petition is a humiliation for Serbia which hasn't, in a long time, went that low and profane. The same goes for Bosnia and Herzegovina which also has its' share of advocates of intelligent design and ideas like “it was created to evolve”, but as in Croatia, no one had the courage to expose themselves to public mockery.

Update: last week same group tried to promote these anti-scientific views at University of Banjaluka, but their request was dismissed. 

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