"Evolution's Misleading Language" Rebuked
It’s not just creationists who are fed up with evolutionists’ propensity to personify evolution, contrary to their own beliefs.
In a letter to Science on Nov. 9, Alfred Nigel Burdett rebuked “Evolution’s Misleading Language.” He didn’t have farther to look than Science Magazine itself for an example:
In the News of the Week story “All that glitters” (14 September, p. 1277), Beverley Glover of the University of Cambridge describes the iridescent fruit of the African perennial herb Pollia condensata by saying, “The fruit’s dazzling display may have evolved to capitalize on birds’ attraction to sparkly objects, or to trick them into eating something that looks like a blueberry without going to the trouble of actually making juicy flesh.” At a time when remarkably few people seem to understand the basic mechanism of evolution, it seems inappropriate for Science to publish such comments without clarifying them to ensure that no one is misled.
This type of deceptive language, which “combines teleology with anthropomorphism,” is inappropriate because Darwinism does not allow for final causes or purposes in nature; an organism cannot “evolve to” do something. Yet instances in evolutionary articles and papers are rampant, Burdett indicated. Both the Science news story and the PNAS article it referenced were guilty, he said, “indicative of how widely and unfortunately such inaccurate and misleading language is now used in the scientific literature.”
Just thought you’d like to know that it’s not just CEH that hammers on this personification fallacy. Darwinian theory, with its aimless, purposeless, blind processes, was supposed to dispense with all teleology and anthropomorphism, but we report frequent violations in these pages. The staunch evolutionist George Williams used to chafe on that, too (5/31/2004). Burdett’s reference to the “remarkably few people [who] seem to understand the basic mechanism of evolution” includes a non-trivial number of readers and contributors to Science, including its Editors, otherwise this besetting sin would undoubtedly be chastised more often.
Comments
There should be no shock nor surprise here. This has never been about science and nature. It’s about resentment of a creator who simply has the right to establish rules on what is right and what is wrong and the resentment of a majority on Earth who seek to replace this God with another god who is tolerant of degenerate behavior. Interestingly enough the Biblical record allows for the fact that there are other gods which people invent, but only one true God.
Darwin was angry and blamed God for taking his daughter. He set out to disprove God’s existence through his own metaphysical religious reasoning, like when he stumbled upon those tribesmen in Argentina while on the Beagle Journey and religiously reasoned that if there were a creator, how could he make these ignorant Savages and clearly superior white people as himself.
The problem for the modern day evolutionist is that they can not deny the intelligently put together construct of things found in the natural world and they need to claim it as their own in the name of a blind force type of god which belongs to them. This god allows for degenerate behavior conduct and hence blesses the present mixed up world we have now. Their real dilemma is they can never remove themselves quite completely from the intelligent designing fingerprints which are everywhere and so spinning a tale of Evolution is guided simply cloaks the stupidity of their behind the scenes belief system which would truly expose them as FOOLS if they honestly attempted to explain how blind undirected forces with no purpose or intent accomplish anything.
We shouldn’t be surprised that this kind of personification and misunderstanding goes on. What did Evolutionists expect when the banned all criticism of Darwin? What did they expect when they decided to boot out all teachers and professors who even showed any doubt to Darwin, let alone dissent?
Keep hammering away at their sin. The only way evolution makes any semblance of sense (at the expense of self-contradiction) is if it uses teleological language, a nod to the creationists. As soon as they dispense with teleological language, evolution will fall apart. If they don’t, just keep pointing out their incoherence. Win-win.