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Adam and evolution
Adam and Michael Adam and FIRST First Edition, First Printing. Not price-clipped (£9.95 price intact). Published by Rider, 1984. Octavo. Hardcover. Book is like new with very light toning to the page ends. Dust jacket is like new with light toning to the flaps. 100% positive feedback. 30 day money back guarantee. NEXT DAY SHIPPING! Excellent customer service. Please email with any questions. All books packed carefully and ship with free delivery confirmation/tracking. All books come with free bookmarks. Ships from Sag Harbor, New York. Seller 303036 Philosophy & Psychology We Buy Books! Collections - Libraries - Estates - Individual Titles. Message us if you have books to sell!
- GenresScience
268 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 1984
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October 24, 2024
AN INQUIRY INTO “SOME OF THE FACTS THAT BEAR ON THE QUESTION OF ORIGINS”
Author Michael Pitman wrote in the first chapter of this 1984 book, “This book is an attempt to marshal some of the facts that bear on the question of origins; it does not set out to answer the question, but the reader who stays with me to the end should find himself well equipped to provide his own answer… The name ‘Darwin’ appears frequently, though this is by no means a manual of Darwinism. Creationist views are given a fair hearing. Is this ‘anti-scientific’? Science is a method, powerful but limited in scope to what its instruments can perceive. It cannot properly address certain questions---for example, those which concern unique historical or prehistorical events. Yet we may want answers. This is not ‘anti-scientific.’” (Pg. 13)
He suggests, “An atheist believes that evolution is the result of chance. Theistic evolutionists believe God, having created the universe, let purposeless chance evolve life. A creationist, dismissing this hybrid view as absurd, contends that an intelligent creator creates complex machinery, such as a living body, deliberately. In fact, by rigorous standards all three theories are metaphysical. This is because a theory of non-deliberate design (evolution) requires proof that no designer ever existed; a theory of deliberate design (creation) requires proof that a designer did exist. Theistic evolution, less logically, requires both proofs!.... Neither of the above proofs is scientifically possible because the field of science is limited to the material realm. And therefore each theory of origin is metaphysical.” (Pg. 22)
He observes, “To the evolutionist, homologous structures are clear evidence of common ancestry and a family tree of life… Creationists prefer to think of homologies as fixed patterns of discrete blocks… They can be varied according to an organism’s need to perform particular functions in air, water or land. Organisms are mosaics made up from such units at each biological level, and nothing of ancestry can be deduced from their possession. Grouping together animals with the pentadactyl limb, for example, tells us only that they happen to have that kind of limb in common---not that they inherited it from a common ancestor.” (Pg. 40-41)
He points out, “Do we… ever see mutations … producing new structures for selection to work on? No nascent organ has ever been observed emerging, though their origin in pre-functional form is basic to evolutionary theory. Some should be visible today, occurring in organisms at various stages up to integration of a functional new system, but we don’t see them: there is no sign at all of this kind of radical novelty. Neither observation nor controlled experiment has shown natural selection manipulating mutations so as to produce a new gene, hormone, enzyme system or organ.” (Pg. 67-68)
He asserts, “For the evolutionist bodies are merely gene-capsules, varied vehicles for the determined, selfish survival and replication of a remarkable chemical, DNA. The advantage of sex, whose origins are unknown, is the production of evolutionary novelties. Contrast this with the creationist view. Here genes are secondary… They represent the spoken language of life. And sex is the conservative agent whose object is to maintain but vary the archetype: to populate a changing world with as many diverse and healthy individuals as possible.” (Pg. 107)
He notes, “‘Gill-slits’ are but one example of a group of organs which evolutionists identified as ‘vestigial’---vestigial organs were thought to have been functional in the history of their possessors but were no longer useful. Victorian scholarship catalogued about 180 such structures (mostly muscles) in the human body. All except about six, however, are now known to be useful, even essential. Tonsils, the pineal gland, vermiform appendix and dozens of other structures have simply been reinterpreted, though the concept of ‘vestigial’ organs remains in scientific… evolutionary literature.” (Pg. 121)
Of chemical evolution, he argues, “There is no way that bases, sugars and phosphate groups naturally float together, link up, then go forth and multiply… After all, why should such unlikely building blocks arrange themselves in order to produce something completely new, bearing no chemical relationship to themselves? If it was not ‘in order,’ then protein would be a remarkable but coincidental spin-off---a spin-off whose stray strand or two would have been destroyed long before a body could form. However ‘primitive,’ the code must always have needed translation machinery. How, in the prebiotic ocean… could the necessary battery of complex, ingenious intermediates have bobbed up simultaneously with the code to translate it on the spot? Would Darwin himself… have backed his theory as far as this? Indeed, Darwin wrote that, in the beginning, the Creator breathed life into one or a few forms, which thence evolved.” (Pg. 147)
He contends, “There is no evidence that fins developed into legs or, for that matter in whales, legs into fins. Although newt-like Ichthyostega has ‘fin-bones’ in its tail, it is very different from a coelacanth, lungfish or Eusthenoperon. It has a true neck, limbs, fingers, toes and a greatly modified skull. Since the earliest tetrapods are found in upper Devonian rocks, contemporary with the fish from which they are supposed to have descended, some unseen line is supposed to have evolved from lobe-find. This is, as usual, theory-driven speculation.” (Pg. 199)
He says of the eye, “An eye, like a television or camera, exists to attain an end---sight. It is teleological. All types of eye, based on the light-sensitive cell, are simply variations on the couple theme of optical-image perception and interpretation. Both faculties are required; each is useless without the other. Eye, sight and meaning are inextricably entwined. It is reasonable to argue… an eye is the product of concept, not chance. That such an instrument should undergo a succession of blind but lucky accidents which by necessity led to perfect sight is as credible as if all the letters of ‘The Origin of Species’, being placed in a box, shaken and poured-out, should at last come together in the order in which they occur in that diverting work.” (Pg. 216)
Pitman’s book is hardly as “objective” as he suggests: he is very pro-creation, and has a particular animus against theistic evolution. But the arguments he presents are thoughtful and well-stated, and this book (though 40 years old) will be of some continuing interest to those studying evolution/creation issues.
Author Michael Pitman wrote in the first chapter of this 1984 book, “This book is an attempt to marshal some of the facts that bear on the question of origins; it does not set out to answer the question, but the reader who stays with me to the end should find himself well equipped to provide his own answer… The name ‘Darwin’ appears frequently, though this is by no means a manual of Darwinism. Creationist views are given a fair hearing. Is this ‘anti-scientific’? Science is a method, powerful but limited in scope to what its instruments can perceive. It cannot properly address certain questions---for example, those which concern unique historical or prehistorical events. Yet we may want answers. This is not ‘anti-scientific.’” (Pg. 13)
He suggests, “An atheist believes that evolution is the result of chance. Theistic evolutionists believe God, having created the universe, let purposeless chance evolve life. A creationist, dismissing this hybrid view as absurd, contends that an intelligent creator creates complex machinery, such as a living body, deliberately. In fact, by rigorous standards all three theories are metaphysical. This is because a theory of non-deliberate design (evolution) requires proof that no designer ever existed; a theory of deliberate design (creation) requires proof that a designer did exist. Theistic evolution, less logically, requires both proofs!.... Neither of the above proofs is scientifically possible because the field of science is limited to the material realm. And therefore each theory of origin is metaphysical.” (Pg. 22)
He observes, “To the evolutionist, homologous structures are clear evidence of common ancestry and a family tree of life… Creationists prefer to think of homologies as fixed patterns of discrete blocks… They can be varied according to an organism’s need to perform particular functions in air, water or land. Organisms are mosaics made up from such units at each biological level, and nothing of ancestry can be deduced from their possession. Grouping together animals with the pentadactyl limb, for example, tells us only that they happen to have that kind of limb in common---not that they inherited it from a common ancestor.” (Pg. 40-41)
He points out, “Do we… ever see mutations … producing new structures for selection to work on? No nascent organ has ever been observed emerging, though their origin in pre-functional form is basic to evolutionary theory. Some should be visible today, occurring in organisms at various stages up to integration of a functional new system, but we don’t see them: there is no sign at all of this kind of radical novelty. Neither observation nor controlled experiment has shown natural selection manipulating mutations so as to produce a new gene, hormone, enzyme system or organ.” (Pg. 67-68)
He asserts, “For the evolutionist bodies are merely gene-capsules, varied vehicles for the determined, selfish survival and replication of a remarkable chemical, DNA. The advantage of sex, whose origins are unknown, is the production of evolutionary novelties. Contrast this with the creationist view. Here genes are secondary… They represent the spoken language of life. And sex is the conservative agent whose object is to maintain but vary the archetype: to populate a changing world with as many diverse and healthy individuals as possible.” (Pg. 107)
He notes, “‘Gill-slits’ are but one example of a group of organs which evolutionists identified as ‘vestigial’---vestigial organs were thought to have been functional in the history of their possessors but were no longer useful. Victorian scholarship catalogued about 180 such structures (mostly muscles) in the human body. All except about six, however, are now known to be useful, even essential. Tonsils, the pineal gland, vermiform appendix and dozens of other structures have simply been reinterpreted, though the concept of ‘vestigial’ organs remains in scientific… evolutionary literature.” (Pg. 121)
Of chemical evolution, he argues, “There is no way that bases, sugars and phosphate groups naturally float together, link up, then go forth and multiply… After all, why should such unlikely building blocks arrange themselves in order to produce something completely new, bearing no chemical relationship to themselves? If it was not ‘in order,’ then protein would be a remarkable but coincidental spin-off---a spin-off whose stray strand or two would have been destroyed long before a body could form. However ‘primitive,’ the code must always have needed translation machinery. How, in the prebiotic ocean… could the necessary battery of complex, ingenious intermediates have bobbed up simultaneously with the code to translate it on the spot? Would Darwin himself… have backed his theory as far as this? Indeed, Darwin wrote that, in the beginning, the Creator breathed life into one or a few forms, which thence evolved.” (Pg. 147)
He contends, “There is no evidence that fins developed into legs or, for that matter in whales, legs into fins. Although newt-like Ichthyostega has ‘fin-bones’ in its tail, it is very different from a coelacanth, lungfish or Eusthenoperon. It has a true neck, limbs, fingers, toes and a greatly modified skull. Since the earliest tetrapods are found in upper Devonian rocks, contemporary with the fish from which they are supposed to have descended, some unseen line is supposed to have evolved from lobe-find. This is, as usual, theory-driven speculation.” (Pg. 199)
He says of the eye, “An eye, like a television or camera, exists to attain an end---sight. It is teleological. All types of eye, based on the light-sensitive cell, are simply variations on the couple theme of optical-image perception and interpretation. Both faculties are required; each is useless without the other. Eye, sight and meaning are inextricably entwined. It is reasonable to argue… an eye is the product of concept, not chance. That such an instrument should undergo a succession of blind but lucky accidents which by necessity led to perfect sight is as credible as if all the letters of ‘The Origin of Species’, being placed in a box, shaken and poured-out, should at last come together in the order in which they occur in that diverting work.” (Pg. 216)
Pitman’s book is hardly as “objective” as he suggests: he is very pro-creation, and has a particular animus against theistic evolution. But the arguments he presents are thoughtful and well-stated, and this book (though 40 years old) will be of some continuing interest to those studying evolution/creation issues.
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