Lecture-8-22-2005: Did Darwin Get it Wrong?

History 104A, August 22: Comparisons of pre-civilization with civilization +

DID DARWIN GET IT WRONG!

Welcome back after the first weekend after school starts. Pretty

soon summer will be over and we can really go to college.

On Friday, we did some inference based on a site map. The site

map as we indicated were the bushmen of the Kalahari. And the concept

was to take a look at perhaps one of the few, I hate to use the word,

primitive or pre-civilized peoples still around today. I didn't watch

it; I just saw the introduction. I don't even know why I didn't watch

the TV. There was a group of people out in the Thailand area around

the Tsunami who live very primitively, and they're a fishing

community. What we were dealing with this particular group was they

were the only group in the area to survive totally because they knew

the tsunami was coming based on watching nature. They got into the

highlands knowing that this wave was going to hit. Did anybody see

that?

A Parts of it.

THE PROFESSOR: I had heard about it at least previously. Yeah,

interesting kind of thing as far as primitive people are concerned.

They live with nature. They live in nature. And of course what else,

what other differences are there between quote/unquote pre-civilized

versus civilized people? In other words, how do the primitive people

differ from us today? Anybody want to speculate from watching the

film on the bushmen, the little stuff we saw. What did we see that

was different?

A They were naked.

THE PROFESSOR: They were naked. I don't know. It depends on

where you go in California. I think my worst experience was in going

to a nude beach, not just because people were looking at me.

Q Where was it at?

THE PROFESSOR: It was in Samoa -- I'm sorry, Samoa. My head is

somewhere. It was actually Tahiti. It was going back awhile. It was

on the island of -- memory is going here. I got a couple of pictures.

It was a downer. It really was. I've decided that fantasy is much

better than reality. My recommendation generally is keep your clothes

on. Okay. Any other differences besides nudity?

A Lack of modern conveniences and technology.

THE PROFESSOR: Lack of almost any convenience and technology,

forget modern. Very few tools in their arsenal granted. What other

things did you see culturally, socially, religious, whatever?

A They talked with like clicks.

THE PROFESSOR: Well, that was their language. They had a click

sound certainly. I'm not sure that's the same with all primitive

peoples, but certainly with the bushmen.

A They mentioned that they didn't really have rules because

everybody got along pretty well, and it wasn't like they had to have a

specific government set up so that they can have a punishment for a

crime or whatever because it just didn't happen.

THE PROFESSOR: Yeah. There were small communities. And of

course, living within a community, ostracism -- basically if someone

really did something evil quote/unquote, they would be removed and

that could be the worse punishment. The word ostracism comes from the

Greek, the city states would remove somebody and that was considered a

very severe punishment. I think to do if we were to remove somebody

from Fremont, they wouldn't complain at all. I sometimes wonder

whether or not it wasn't the film maker, the archaeologist or whomever

who wanted to see people in their primitive nature being more pure,

trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous kind, obedient,

cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent. We want to see them in

that nature. Perhaps one of the movies that I think hit me the most

and I still like, is a film called Deliverance with Burt Reynolds.

Living in the city may be bad, but living sometimes in the countryside

is just as bad if not worse. I'm not sure if that's just not an

interpretation. Again, we don't know. We see things through our own

mindset.

What are some of the similarities between the people we saw, the

bushmen and us today?

A Family units.

THE PROFESSOR: Their family units. And they didn't seem to be

family units made up of men and men and women and women. Although,

among many primitive people there was the acceptance of squawmen,

people who were quote/unquote effeminate. One of the things that

we'll talk about Wednesday is how women and effeminate men brought

about civilization, family units.

What else?

A Children played together like they do now, maybe not necessarily

the exact game, but kids come up with ways to entertain themselves and

each other.

THE PROFESSOR: Yeah. And kids were allowed to play. They

weren't forced to become adults very rapidly even though the lifespan

obviously was shorter. It's interesting though how many of the games

kids played to were played back in ancient Greece and ancient Rome and

how our games have developed and the kids stay with them. Apparently

nobody teaches them. They just learn from generation to generation.

You go down to the elementary school and the kids are playing the same

games and telling the same stupid jokes that you did in the second

grade.

Anything else? Similarities?

A How I guess it would be if it was the father, but a female figure

teaching the figure how to acquire the water from the roots.

THE PROFESSOR: There was passing on from generation to

generation a teaching process, in this case perhaps male, but females

as well more identified with the teaching level which we'll talk about

but not always. Similarities and differences perhaps part of being

human -- certainly your book goes into the development over the

millions of years of quote/unquote semi to human existence, how humans

survived using their brains rather than necessarily their physical

prowess from the habilus, homo habilus to homo sapien sapien. I think

that's funny. That's the name that's come about recently. We have

homo sapien, and then we have homo sapien sapien, meaning that we have

to be brighter, knowledgable than some of the earlier primitive people

who are knowledgable.

When did human beings come into existence? When did the world

come into existence? We're in the middle of a real controversy all

due to dear President Bush who promoted, starting perhaps with his

leave no child behind, the concept that we should in our science class

explain and deal with the controversy over the creation of human

beings as well as the Earth. And so a new quote/unquote sciences that

old controversy has emerged to the extent that not only did Time

magazine two weeks ago run a massive story on it, but the New York

Times, starting yesterday, has begun a serious -- their series was

four typewritten pages along, the first part of it, that appeared

yesterday in the New York Times dealing with the controversy between

evolution versus creationism, but a new name has been given to

creationism. Anybody know the terminology?

A Intelligent design.

THE PROFESSOR: Intelligent design to try and fit it into the

science curriculums in the various schools. Of course as some of you

know, there's also a push to teach alchemy with chemistry, phrenology

with neurology, and some other areas that -- and magic has been added

to some curriculums to provide interest in science. However, this

isn't a science class; and therefore, we can touch on social science

which includes intelligent design, creationism, to look at the world

and our origin, where we came from.

For most creationists, the belief is that the world was created

about 10,000 years ago following the Biblical pronunciation,

pronouncements. Translation, well, Bishop Usher in the 17th century

went to the Bible and did some mathematical calculations counting up

all the be gots and be got me nots and came to the conclusion that

human beings and the Earth was created in the year 4,004 BCE. Another

Anglican of the church went through Usher Bishop's calculations and

found them correct, but he went a step further. He found that human

beings were created on October 23rd prime meridian time. Some of you

are giggling. How why did you giggle?

A Because we didn't have written history in 4,000 BCE. And being

able to accurately portray that time implies some sort of written

history or is there some sort of tablet.

THE PROFESSOR: No. It's the Bible. It's there.

Q Where's there?

THE PROFESSOR: In the Bible. They calculate that in the Bible

as the book. Almost every Bible up until the 20th century had that

time line in it, the Saint James version, it's all listed it. A

student of mine many years ago had a copy of his family Bible that

came from about 1800. It was still in pretty good shape. I actually

took pictures of it. I don't think the laughing comes from the

history element of it. Why would --

A I think it's because October isn't a month, that it didn't exist,

but it wasn't called January, February. They had different names and

they were different times of the year. So like saying October

whatever just sounds funny because it was from an ancient time.

THE PROFESSOR: Well, it's true. Certainly the modern calendar

was not modern, but that would be a translation of the time based upon

the period of the time. Yeah, that would be difficult to translate.

Of course he might have used the Biblical term.

A Probably calculated like saying each person lives so long and

then generations and then he backed it up from BC zero and --

THE PROFESSOR: The Bible does give you certain time lines.

A -- and then the end of the year came and if he was using our

measure.

THE PROFESSOR: Well, what arguments would you use against it?

A The earth is over 3 billion years old and we have a lot of

fossil.

THE PROFESSOR: How do you know that?

A Carbon dating.

THE PROFESSOR: Can you do carbon dating? I'm saying, can you?

A No. We have to trust in the sense.

THE PROFESSOR: So why not trust the Bible? I'm making a point

here. Some of the things about science classes, every time we did an

experiment, I don't remember it ever working. If it never works. Of

course the science teaches always told us, well, now we have to figure

out why. So what we're dealing with basically is the faith and

fossils, the faith in carbon dating that we have accepted as our faith

rather than those that have the Biblical faith. And so you can see

where the controversy stems from basically faith. And in reality, on

both sides, on the authority side. Obviously science though is a

discipline. And the discipline of science does mean observable

evidence and rational interpretation. And of course the Biblical

element is revealed knowledge and certainly based more in faith.

Science is supposed to be something that quote/unquote scientists can

reproduce.

Tragically, there's a dogma in both which translates to people

who are ex-communicated for disagreeing with the standard doctrines

and certainly Velikovsky, as you'll read along, you'll see was one of

those which was part of the reason for it. But yet, one of the

problems that has arisen in the whole evolution versus quote/unquote

intelligent design debated to is just that issue. And that is the

stubbornness of scientists to not admit that possibly Darwin got it

wrong, not that evolution is wrong, but that Darwin got it wrong. And

that's the video tape that I transferred to a DVD. And the DVD is not

working here for some reason. I brought the video tape that I'm going

to start at least today. Before I do, most of you have learned of

Darwinian evolution -- yes, the whole point is, it is a theory. It

talks about the evolving of life on Earth. But what are the

fundamental bases? What is Darwinian evolution?

A Natural selection.

THE PROFESSOR: Natural selection. And what is natural

selection?

A It's basically when the environments, the creatures that are

unfit to survive in that environment die off and the ones that are,

are the ones that live on.

THE PROFESSOR: And there's certain creatures quote/unquote are

better fit to survive in the changed environment. The old example

being that birds come along and they see the white moths and they eat

them all up and the only thing left is black moths because they can't

be seen easily by the birds. And so the black moths survive and the

white mouths disappear. And then some birds come along who can see

the black moths better. The question is, how does this change takes

place in that environment? How do the white moths survive and the

black moths disappear? How did white moths come into being and how

about black moths come into being? And real the answer is mutations

that supposedly occur within time to provide for that natural

selection.

Problems have arisen, continue to arise, and have always arisen.

Number one, the length of time. Number two, why is it that in certain

areas species have disappeared though the environment was extremely

friendly to those species, such as the horse on the American plains?

Why did some species disappear almost overnight, such as the mammoth?

Those kinds of questions including a big one, micro versus macro

evolution. Does anybody know what that's about?

Micro versus macro? God, did you people take biology? This is

history. I'm not supposed to have to explain these things. Micro

evolution is the concept that we can he can see minor changes within

species from eyesight, eye color, but the species can continue to

reproduce. And micro evolution means that it remains within the

species so that a white mouth and a black moth are really no

different, it's just the color change.

Macro evolution is the concept of absolutely new species. New

species being groups animals that can only enter bead with themselves

and are not related directly to any of the species in reproduction.

Historically we cannot identify the movement creating new species. In

fact, while we have seen changes in dogs through interbreeding,

through breeding, et cetera, we can't produce new species. The

closest we've come -- mules, who are generally sterile. However,

there have been strange cases where a few mules have interbred, but

that's a combination of species, the horse and the donkey. How many

of you are following me at all? Okay.

In any case, the real question being, what is happening in our

society today over the dispute between evolution versus intelligent

design or creationism? The answer is that there has been a push

throughout the world in part to return to in a sense, a

non-materialistic, a non what we would call humanistic world, where

religion predominates and sets values. It's not just in the Muslim

world. It has exploded on the western world as well. And so there's

a tremendous push politically and otherwise to restore faith and

Biblical values in the West. And this is passing on into the push in

the school systems as well. What the intelligent design creationists

are doing is that they are finding fault with Darwin. And where

they're finding the fault is coming from scientists, who themselves

have openly admitted that Darwinian evolution does not work. Natural

selection does not work as a theory. And they are searching for new

theory. And so they're using -- those scientists searching for other

answers to evolution to attack evolution on the basis of Darwin. The

particular video I'm going to show you was made 20 years ago.

Q Why is it that the intelligent design people pick on -- well,

pick on biologists and not -- because I know some people that think

that way and they never particularly attack physics or chemistry. Is

it because they just don't have any solid argument that's laid out in

front of them?

THE PROFESSOR: They actually do attack physics. I'm not sure

about chemistry. My knowledge is limited here. In some of the

reading, there's a real dramatic attack on the intelligent design

people on the whole basis of physics and how the physics -- I need to

come back with it. I just can't articulate it at this point.

Chemistry, I really haven't read on the chemistry. The answer to the

question is, they attack biologists because it's in biology that

evolution is thought in the public schools and every student is

required to that biology. Not every student takes either chemistry or

physics.

How many of you took physics? How many of you took chemistry?

How many of you took biology? Well, I'm surprised more took

chemistry, but only about four took physics. I think that's the

easiest answer to it. They're attacking it where people are learning

it.

From another perspective, it is my personal view that the

movement in our society to return to a religious based society is very

similar to what's happening throughout the world traditionally via the

Muslim world or whatever, and that it explains in part also the

crusading spirit that has occurred in the political arena; in other

words, I think the West and the Middle East are engaged in a new

crusade. It's not being called that directly, but it appears to be a

conflict between Christianity and Islam once again. That's a personal

view and I want to make it clear.

Let's take a look at this video done 20 years ago to help you

understand one of the biggest problems that Darwinian evolution is

engaged with and that is the lack of missing links. The tree of life

does not have missing links. Their gaps seem to be catastrophic.

They seem to occur without anything in between. And that again does

not eliminate evolution. It simply raises questions in the Darwinian

base of evolution. And if I'm preaching anything, I'm preaching that

science class should be dealing with other interpretations of

evolution besides Darwinian, not that they should be teaching

intelligent design if that's a question, because it doesn't fit within

the curriculum any more than alchemy fits within a chemistry class.

That's again a personal statement. Okay. Let me set forth on the

tape.

(showing video tape)

Okay. We're going to pick up on at least some of the ways that

they're trying to find new answers to evolutionary theory. And then

we'll pick up on the whole issue of civilization on Wednesday. We'll

see you then.

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