In two recent posts, I have interacted with the arguments of Desmond “Dezi” Ferguson (see here and here), a former employee of Irish Church Missions, revealing that, his claims to be an expert on “Mormonism” notwithstanding, he is utterly clueless, and more than willing to lie through his teeth and deceive on various theological issues. Barring Ferguson actually agreeing to debate me for once, this will be the final installment of this mini-series.
While browsing the ICM Website, I encountered an article where Ferguson addressed the issue of science (see p. 10 of this document). One cannot help but chuckle at the title which reveals a persecution complex on his behalf, "Christian soldier faces battle with antagonism." For those who don't know, I have tried to interact with Ferguson in the past about his misrepresentations and lies about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and gross eisegesis of the Bible. Instead of dealing with the issues (which he cannot--his claims to expertise are as bogus as the day is long), he tracked down the phone numbers of my branch presidents and tried getting them to call me off him--needless to say, they both (correctly) thought this was a pitiful tactic on his behalf and was an utter joke. If he was a real researcher, he should be able to interact meaningfully with informed opponents, but he cannot. I do also find it funny that he called his interlocutor a “fool,” but accused me of immaturity when I said he was ignorant about Mormonism—a classical example of double-standards and projection on his behalf
In an attempt to “refute” (macro) evolution, Ferguson wrote:
He reminded me at this point that I said I would also discuss the issue from a non-biblical aspect. ‘We will look at the issue of creation or evolution from the aspect of evidence and what does the evidence tell us’. ‘Take for example’, I said, ‘two rooms, one room a total and utter mess, the other room, really clean and neatly organised’. ‘When we observe the two rooms’, I asked, ‘what is the obvious conclusion we come to?’ ‘One is being looked after the other is not’, he said. ‘Even though we have not seen who is taking care of the tidy room the evidence tells us it is being cared for’. ‘Let us now transfer that common sense logic to the order and care of the universe’.
Perhaps for those who don’t have a scientific background, this might sound plausible, but for those who do (undergraduate degree in a soft science [anthropology]) will see the fraudulent claims behind such a statement.
Ferguson is wrong in claiming that evolution teaches that life is “unobserved,” that is, by chance, something that macro-evolution argues against! Ferguson’s knowledge of science is found wanting.
A typical line by creationists is the following I have encountered on Message Board Forums that mirror the paragraph above:
If evolution is based on unscientific “random” mutations then how come the genome hasn’t degenerated into random unusable genetic code?
Genetic change does not occur in individuals, but between parent genome and child genome. Any such change which causes the child to die does not survive. Chances are, any change which reduces chances of survival will not survive either - whether be it a serious mutation like say Down's Syndrome, or a simple change like making the organisms skin brighter and thus easier for predators to see. Why? It makes the animal, it makes the individual with that particular mutation less likely to survive, and thus less likely to reproduce.
Harmless changes can stay - thus in humans, we get different colours of eyes. That particular difference makes no difference to our chances of survival: such changes are harmless and make no difference to the chance of reproduction.
Changes which increase chances of reproduction - varying from making the individual sexually attractive, to simply allowing the individual to survive longer in a harsh environment - are likely to stay.
Thus over time, advantageous and harmless changes stay. Those which would reduce the genome to "random unusable genetic code" would obviously make the individual less likely to reproduce, so those changes don't get replicated in the next generation.
Random harmless changes are by far the most common, and it's this that allows molecular clocks to work, which interesting wasn't proved until Kevin Peterson demonstrated it in a paper in Proceedings of the National academy of sciences in the late 2000s, although the concept has been used since Bruce Runnegar used it in the 1980s.
It should be obvious that Ferguson’s apologetic is empty of substantiation, as with all his other claims he makes, not just on scientific issues, but theological, too.
