December 11, 2013 | David F. Coppedge

Extreme Speculation Presented as Science

Things no one could possibly ever know are being reported by science journals and news sites as things worthy of scientific faith.

Here are some far-out speculations coming from science sites recently:

  • Asteroid that killed dinosaurs might have sent life to Mars (BBC News).
  • A roundworm’s mind may be the first step toward understanding the human brain (Live Science).
  • One-way breathing may have evolved 270 million years ago (Live Science).
  • An ancient “fig wasp” lived 100 million years before figs evolved (Science Daily).
  • A meteor may have delivered the building blocks of life to Europa (Space.com).
  • Exoplanet hunters may find ET by glut of alien corpses (New Scientist)
  • Life was possible in the early universe in the cooling glow of the big bang (Nature News).  This weakens the Anthropic Principle and the need for a multiverse.

For the last claim in the list above, comments to PhysOrg‘s version of the story came from many who felt the subject was far too speculative and therefore unscientific.

And yet these same priests and prophets of scientism, who take on the role of delivering scientific truths to the masses, routinely become filled with rage at critics of Darwinism, claiming they are enemies of science, that they don’t understand science, that they are religious nuts.  Casey Luskin just reported on Evolution News & Views a new case where bullies threatened disruption of a non-credit, optional class on intelligent design vs. evolution, and succeeded in getting the administration to cancel the class (for fear of bad publicity).  Hypocrites; the bullies belong to a group that calls itself the “Freethought Oasis.”

Not a single one of the claims in the above list could be demonstrated by observation or experiment.  The perhapsimaybecouldness index for each one is exorbitantly high to the point of fantasy.  Any one of us could speculate wildly on similar subjects with equal credibility.  Try it; it’s fun:

  • Dinosaur farts may have caused global warming on Venus.
  • Alternate universe #3652908 may have had the conditions for the evolution of silicon life.
  • Mutation in a newt may have caused men to be more hairy than women.
  • Cosmic rays could have started the geysers on Enceladus.
  • Unseen planets between the galaxies might host advanced civilizations.

Anything goes in secular science news these days; it’s Alice in Wonderland meets Stephen Hawking, like Bob Berman said of modern cosmology (10/06/04).  Notice that mentioning current-day observational facts (like a meteor crater, a roundworm, or a fossil) does not validate a speculative claim.  The presence of a connectome in a roundworm says absolutely nothing about the human brain.  A crater on Europa says nothing about life.  Don’t be fooled; none of the observational props provide necessary or sufficient conditions to establish scientific validity to any claim that is (1) speculative and (2) incapable of verification.  You can observe a robin in your yard; that does not give you the right to claim in the name of science that it got its avian lung from the ancestor of a monitor lizard 270 million years ago.  “Well, it might have” is no excuse.  Scientists need to stop imagining things; they need bigger vigor in their scientific rigor.

 

 

 

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Comments

  • snelldl says:

    LOL!

    Living part time in snowy conditions might have caused Europeans to become racist.

    First words probably evolved from mimicking animal noises made during mating

    Stonehenge possibly a temple built to honor rockslides and volcanoes

    Politically conservative mental states could have evolved from diminished olfactory sense in Neanderthal-Dmanisi-Denisovan-pig hybrid

  • Michael says:

    Ahhh, the freethought oasis. “You are free to think what you like – as long as it is on our approved list”

    The irony of their name would be quite funny if the issue wasn’t so serious.

  • Creation Myth or Miracle says:

    or as the great philosophers of rock, Steppenwolf, put it

    You’re free to speak your mind my friend
    As long as you agree with me
    Don’t criticize the father land
    Or those who shape your destiny
    ‘Cause if you do
    You’ll lose your job your mind and all the friends you knew
    We’ll send out all our boys in blue
    They’ll find a way to silence you

    But there’s nothing you and I can do
    You and I are only two
    What’s right and wrong is hard to say
    Forget about it for today
    We’ll stick our heads into the sand
    Just pretend that all is grand
    Then hope that everything turns out ok

  • rockyway says:

    “Asteroid that killed dinosaurs might have sent life to Mars.” (BBC News)

    It’s also possible that some dinosaurs saw the disaster coming and escaped it by building a spaceship. (It’s also possible that they came back in a different form as birds… or, possibly, as cats. At this point it’s too early to tell, as more research needs to be done.)

    “A roundworm’s mind may be the first step toward understanding the human brain.” (Live Science).

    That this makes sense to anyone, explains a lot of the ‘profundity’ we see coming from the materialist camp. (I take it the worm has a mind but humans do not.)

    – The average Darwinist just-so story is about as useful as a styrofoam anchor.

  • dan says:

    It gets even crazier. Dr. gene McCarthy a geneticist who once taught at the University of Georgia posits that humans are a hybrid of apes and pigs. Because we share so vary many traits with pigs that we do not share with apes, he believes the way we got them was through the mating of a pig and an ape. He is very serious and his list of things similar between us and the pig which could not and are not found in any ape is voluminous. Horizontal gene transfer to the rescue.

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