A few questions for your evol. instructors…
Those were good questions.
*]If selection is a random and unpredictable process, how can it make definite predictions about future development of life forms? For instance, what macro changes are predicted for homo sapiens, if global warming continues?
I asked this elsewhere. First, the claim by some evolutionists is that “evolution is not random” – except the parts of it that are random. So, predictions about evolution are very successful, except for in those cases where we can’t predict because of random factors. As for the evolution of homo sapiens, “we really don’t know and can’t predict” – again, because of random factors like mutations and environmental conditions. No mathematical models or probability studies are provided to show the future evolution of mankind either. (An evolutionist recently admitted that humans “could grow wings” in the future as other mammals like bats have done, but that’s not “likely”). But it is also claimed that “evolution is very successful in predicting the past” – that is its primary interest and not really in predicting the future. Apparently, we don’t really need to know the future, but we do need to predict what happened in the past. Predicting the past requires looking at the present and then making sure everything that is found in nature fits into an agreed-upon plan about what happened. That is quite good, for them, because it provides “evidence” about what happened. We know that human beings exist, and we find various fossils. Thus, we predict that some fossils are ancestors of human beings. This tends to work every time – except when it doesn’t work (because our knowledge is still “growing”). A good example is the Tree of Life. This offered excellent (for them) predictions of the path of evolution and was claimed as evidence, fact and proof.
Now, that same Tree of Life has been destroyed by DNA evidence. So, those “predictions of the past” were falsified, even though they had already been taught as fact previously.
The wonderful thing about “predicting the past” is that if you’re totally wrong, nothing changes since the past has already occurred. And that is what happened here – new Trees of Life (now a tangled jungle of life) are being sketched out as predictions. The failed predictions had no meaning or influence on anyone except for the academics who proposed them. They’ll have to revise some textbooks but nothing else of significance changes with the result of the false Tree drawings that were given as fact.
Now, however, predicting the future could have serious consequences since people can make decisions on the predictions and change their lives. Then, if the predictions prove wrong, some serious consequences can result. That’s generally why evolutionists don’t like predicting future events. But we are told that “evolution is as certain as mechanical engineering” – except that evolution doesn’t like to predict the future because randomness makes some of the results not very certain.
The same is almost true of mechanical engineering. When engineers build a bridge, they don’t like to predict that it will work in the future. They prefer to predict how bridges worked in the past – that is a lot safer. When they’re wrong about predicting the past, nobody gets hurt.
Unfortunately, their employers force engineers to predict whether their bridges will hold up under the weight of automobile traffic. So, in this case, engineering is a little more certain than evolution.
I would like to hear some predictions on homo sapien evolution. Scientists already claim to know precisely how the weather will change with global warming. All evolutionists need to do is create the model showing mutations and adaptations that humans will make.
