Real Estate Agents Against Evolution

Posted by Richard B. Hoppe on October 22, 2004 04:02 PM

Peter and Helen Evans, identified as real estate agents who “teach a philosophical approach to conservatism,” published a response to Evan Ratliff’s Wired article about the ID Movement.  The column was published on Mullenax News, a far-right wing Web site that advertises itself as “Always Tough” and “Always Honest.”  Pity the same can’t be said about its columnists.

The Evans’ column starts with a brief revisionist history of evolutionary theory, claiming that after the publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species,

revolutionary scientists of the period seized upon its ideas to attack the monopoly of the religious establishment over the question of ‘the origin of everything.

No names or citations, of course, just those atheistic “revolutionary scientists.”  Poor Asa Gray.

The most egregious falsehood in the Evans’ screed is the identification of (an amazingly distorted description of) evolutionary theory with “radical materialism” and with (what else?) Communism.  They say

Essentially, this is the belief that, by chance mutation and “natural selection,” minerals evolved into plants; plants into animals; animals into humans and that human self-consciousness is merely the latest evolutionary spin off. Simple; no God required. If this concept rings a bell, it should. It is the same deterministic materialism which inspired Karl Marx and the whole, thoroughly-discredited Socialist movement and its horrific mutant offspring, Communism.

Have these people never heard of Trofim Lysenko?  Lysenko’s bizarre Lamarckian biology was the antithesis of Darwinian evolution!  But never mind, it’s all atheistic materialism to the Evans family.  One should also mention that The Communist Manifesto was published in 1848, 11 years before Darwin’s Origin (1859).  Do the Evanses think Marx had a time machine?  And never mind that tens of thousands of scientists, including thousands of biologists, are theists of various persuasions; never mind that millions of Christians find no irreconcilable conflict between Bible and science.  The false dichotomy posed by the Evans family is atheistic science or fundamentalist religion.

The most ironic statement in the Evans family’s column is this:

Scientific rigor demands proof of its testable hypotheses, but politics just demands numbers, expressed as votes, and by attracting the votes of school board members, Intelligent Design is making significant inroads into the schools, notably in Ohio.

This is (yet another) clear acknowledgement that ID is bereft of scientific content and must depend on misleading the scientifically illiterate in order to get itself insinuated into public education.

There’s a nice clear explanation of how ID is allegedly contributing to science:

Enter “Intelligent Design” or ID. Its proponents say that ID opens new ways of thinking about life, its origins and its development. It claims that the enormous complexity of the structures of life (think; eye, wing) couldn’t have evolved by the blind incremental ‘push’ of simpler forms from below, but rather, that evolution must be ‘pulled’ from above (or beyond) by an intelligence that precedes its physical manifestations.

New ways?  Poor William Paley.  He made essentially the same argument as modern IDists without the veneer of pseudo-sophisticated mathematics.  ID offers no “new ways” of thinking; it is a throwback to pre-Enlightenment magical thinking.  And what on earth does “the push of simpler forms from below” mean in the context of evolutionary theory?  It’s nonsense.

The Evanses say

The established priesthood of self-styled ‘real’ scientists attempt to dismiss it by calling it names like “Creationism in a lab coat” and claiming that it doesn’t further our understanding of anything and that “it isn’t real science.”

That’s an insult to real scientists who actually wear lab coats.  More commonly, ID is referred to as ‘Creationism in a cheap tuxedo.”  The “lab coat” remark is particularly ludicrous, since not one IDist has published lab research focused on ID.  That’s understandable, since the ID movement seems to be dominated by lawyers, philosophers, and rhetoricians.

ID differs from creationism mostly in having dropped virtually all of the testable (and empirically rejected) propositions “scientific” creationism offered — propositions concerning the age of the earth, for example.  Having abandoned Young Earth Creationism’s explicit tenets, ID has no testable propositions but only negative arguments of the form ‘We can’t believe evolution can do this or that.’  Fortunately, the degree of belief of Intelligent Design Creationists does not constitute data.

Finally, the dumbest sentence in the Evans’ column is this:

Let’s be intellectually honest here.

There is no detectable intellectual honesty in the Evans’ column.

RBH

Trackback URL: http://www.pandasthumb.org/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/573

Comment #9034

Posted by Great White Wonder on October 22, 2004 08:25 PM (e) (s)

Wow.

http://www.opinioneditorials.com/writer.php?id=hpevans

Talk about drinking the Kool-Aid.  There is obviously an endless supply of these bottom-feeding script-spewing hard right wingers but Mr. and Mrs. Evans (assuming they are not brother and sister, or both) truly stand out in their consistency (except … read to the end)

Now, it seems to us that ‘real’ scientists would be willing to debate the opposing theories on their merits. That’s what scientists are supposed to do, aren’t they? But that hasn’t been what the establishment materialists have done.

Oh really?  Do you suppose Mr. and Mrs. Evans considered looking into what scientists have said about ID before they made their facially false claim?  Of course not.  But they certainly read the Wired article.  Did the Wired article suggest that scientists haven’t addressed ID on its merits?  Nope.  So where did they come up with this?  They made it up.

The Evans Twins are, of course, invited to discuss their limited understanding of “intelligent design” with “real scientists” here on the Pandas Thumb any time they choose to do so.  What do you suppose will happen the instant it is revealed that they haven’t a clue what they are talking about?  Will they apologize and retract their comments?  Highly unlikely!

If you want to see some paranoid old white folks making asses out of themselves, check out the Evans Twins “at play”:

http://peterandhelenevans.com/pho-rifle.html

Say, do you notice the one thing that’s curiously missing from the scribblings of these two red-baiters? There is no mention of the bearded guy up in the sky.  Do the Evans Twins belong to that rarest category of ID apologists: the conservative right wing agnostic new-ager ?????
 
http://www.circlesoflight.com/articles/responsibility.shtml

Responsibility: Free Will Astrology Consciousness
By Peter and Helen Evans

“Every apparently separate consciousness and what we think of as “our own” mind, every ‘me’ and ‘you’, is an individualized expression of Universal Consciousness, whose Intelligence structures Itself as the One Mind. Likewise, our apparently separate bodies and the infinity of other “things” which fill the material universe which we perceive through our senses, are individualized expressions in Universal Substance, which is everywhere present in potentiality and capable of assuming any form given to it by thought.” Free will astrology is a powerful concept.

http://www.holisticshop.co.uk/library/freedom.html

Modern doctors and physicists tell us that the human body completely renews itself every five years. Some “parts” of the body renew themselves faster, such as the lining of the stomach changes every week, the liver is regenerated in six weeks, the skin in a month. Our present bodies just didn’t exist five years ago.

Mainstream culture, however, is still firmly rooted in 17th century physics, and we continue to view our bodies as “machines made of matter”, a set of pumps and pipes, joints and muscles and we tell ourselves that “naturally” parts wear out. Our society believes that parts degenerate with age, get clogged and malfunction. Yet, none are more than five years old. So how can we now explain this process of aging or of a disease that lasts more than five years?

Some scientists believe our bodies are patterns of energy maintained by mental images held in consciousness. We have “learned” our mental images from our society and its Newtonian worldview, and so we persist in the “danse macabre” which only lasts “three score years and ten”.

What do you think would happen to aging and disease and hardened arteries and immobile joints, scars and degeneration if we changed our worldview? What would happen if you held your body’s image as vital, healthy and youthful based on the information that every single atom and molecule will be fresh and new within five years? How old do you think you really are?.

Let’s just cut to the chase and do a google search for “peter helen evans god” …

In President Lincoln’s proclamation, he further states, “No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.” In 1863 Lincoln was referring, of course, to the sins of slavery. May we suggest that our ‘sin’ has been “tolerating tyranny in the name of stability,” which had been the West’s foreign policy for the past 50 years. This is the sin that President Bush has courageously brought to an end. Yes, we are paying now for these past sins through the war on terrorism. Yet, at the same time, we are also enjoying growth, prosperity and even population growth. God compels us do what we must, but also rewards us for doing so.

So, what are we really celebrating this Thanksgiving? Gratitude for the many, many people who clean up life’s daily messes; gratitude for the challenges that compel us to correct our wrongs; gratitude for prosperity and opportunity. Above all, gratitude for the Author of our very lives and the freedom with which they are unalienably endowed. It is entirely appropriate to thank God for these manifold Blessings.

Ah. My sensibilities are still intact.

Comment #9055

Posted by Les Lane on October 23, 2004 02:58 PM (e) (s)

If you need advice on evolution, let me recommend drug addicts.

Comment #9143

Posted by Matt Inlay on October 26, 2004 11:04 PM (e) (s)

The Evanses wrote,

Essentially, this is the belief that, by chance mutation and “natural selection,” minerals evolved into plants; plants into animals; animals into humans and that human self-consciousness is merely the latest evolutionary spin off.

Yikes.  Apparently they subscribe to the 20 questions concept of taxonomy.

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