Feedback for August 1997

In addition to the talk.origins faqs files, there is a great deal of information with cross links to other sites in my web page Creationist propaganda would have you believe that evolutionary scientists are at a total loss to counter creationist attacks. The reverse is true. All of the standard creationist arguments, including the ones you have listed, have been totally refuted.

It is a little unrealistic to demand a similar level of detail for all other satellites in the solar system. They haven't been examined in as much detail or as directly, and neither has the body that they orbit. A lot is known about the Moon from direct examination of its geology, and about its orbital history from traces of its past influence found here on Earth. However, if you can phrase a specific question in this area, and post it to talk.origins, someone will probably try to give you more information.

Personally, I don't find the "population growth" argument to be terribly convincing. It rests on a uniform extrapolation on a rate that is known to vary widely, and often that extrapolation is incompatible with the evidence. Three discussions of various problems can be found in: my Age of the Earth debate with Bob Bales; the Matson vs Hovind FAQ (under Young-earth "proof" #25); and the January 1997 Feedback (the very last entry, at the bottom of the file).

The reader does not indicate what is the "correct" revelation of creation, and seems (though I may be mistaken) to accept that the literal interpretion of the bible is defeated; refering instead to "authentic" theological explanations which are not further explained. In any case, note that a theory encompasses much more than an order of events. A theory provides a basis for forming testable predictions. For more information, see the Stumper Questions for Creationists file.

I do feel that the reader has it backwards. The study of origins by the methods of science does not start from an attack on any religious ideas; it proceeds from evidence, observation, hypothesizing and testing. The conclusions reached happen to be inconsistent with some religious beliefs and not with others; but this is a consequence, and not the starting point. Deciding whether or not a conflict exists is a question for the believer.

In humans, regional and ethnic differences have always been assigned to types by those who are dominant in a society. The dominant class will also make these non-dominant "types" of lower standing biologically, calling them childlike, subhuman or primitive. In fact, all humans have closely the same cognitive abilities, and differences in intelligence and social behaviour are always the result of economic, cultural or political differences. Biologically, there are either no races in homo sapiens, or races are just slightly distinct superficial varieties. There is no biological category answering to the label "negro", for example. There is more genetic and external variation in the sub-Saharan African ethnic groups that in the rest of the world combined. "Negro" just means "not European, and darker than the other non-Europeans".

In recent history, Europeans were, and still mostly are in the Western world, at any rate, the dominating social and ethnic class. This has not always been true, of course, and will not be true again, quite shortly. However, those who are the children of the ethnic groups most recently subjected to racism are not interested in the racist abuse of, eg, other Levantine groups by the Jews 2500 years ago, or of the Jews by the English 1000 years ago. They are most interested in, and most critical of, the racist abuses of Europeans of 100 years ago or less. I cannot blame them.

By the same token, there is as little biological warrant for the view that all "whites" are a race, or that all male humans are the cause of all aggression and ills, as there is for the older racisms and discriminatory moral codes. And the issue of punishment is entirely distinct from questions of what actually happened in history. As it happens, creationism is as involved in recent racism as were those varieties of Eurocentric evolutionary thought that predated Darwin by many years, and the eugenics movements that followed him. The racism of the fascists derives from several thousand years of culture and values. The common thread is the need to discover "types" of people rather than treat them as we find them.

The error of the creationists is to go further, and take the stories as literal and "true" accounts of real events. I quite agree that this as an unsound basis for scientific beliefs.

"When my critics find a message about the assassination of a prime minister encrypted in Moby Dick, I'll believe them."

Brendan D McKay, a combinatorics expert from Australia, has done exactly what Mr Drosnin challenged him to do. You can see for yourself on his WWW page (Assassinations Foretold In Moby Dick)

Please note that Mr McKay does not believe Herman Melville really did predict the assassinations he has discovered: they are just a coincidence, and they don't prove anything.

Whether Mr Drosnin will really change his mind now that his challenge has been met exactly, nobody can say. But it was clear when he made his challenge that he thought it would be impossible to do what he said -- and it was easily done.

Theories can be good, bad, or indifferent. The bad theories are quickly exposed and rejected by the scientific community. An example of this is announcement of "cold fusion" as a source of safe atomic energy. It was thrown out in less than two weeks. On the other hand, the evidence supporting the idea that present species have evolved from primitive ancestors has been accumulating for a hundred years, and at this point in time is overwhelming. Creationists have carried out an unceasing campaign to try to discredit this evidence, but in every case their arguments have been shown to be based on half-truths, distortions, and outright falsehoods. But don't take my word for it: check the talk.origins faqs files and the information in my web page.

When people state that evolution is a fact, what they mean is that it is based on overwhellming factual evidence.

I believe part of your problem is in assuming that evolution can not be established unless one has proof of understanding the "mechanism." This is a misconception. Whether one assumes that evolution came about by God's will or by mere chance, the factual data supporting descent with modification remains unaffected.

This column is not intended to give feedback on other pages. If you would like feedback, you may post to talk.origins, which is the appropriate forum for discussion on alternative points of view. I recommend reading the Talk.Origins Welcome FAQ first.

You can also consider posting to sci.bio.evolution, which is a moderated group. It does not discuss creationism, but it does support debate on conflicting views within science. Good luck!

By the way, several of the Grand Canyon formations are non-igneous (e.g., shales and limestones) and therefore cannot possibly be the result of a "catastrophic eruption."

Space and my own personal competance does not permit a full reply here. Siegmar has kindly agreed to discuss this topic further in the talk.origins newsgroup, which allows a better airing of the issues raised. There is still discussion going on at the time this feedback is being written. A few points can be noted, however.

The archive has now updated the browser page on catastrophism, which has a one paragraph introduction to the icecore faq, to remove an incorrect reference to annual layers, so as to more correctly reflect the faq.

There is also a new updated faq on icecores being prepared; if all goes well this will eventually be posted to the newgroup for review by interested parties. We hope Siegmar will comment at that time as well, and I will be letting him know when this occurs.

As a minor point, O18/O16 analysis is used to date the Vostok core, by comparison with other records of long term climatic cycles, though not by using seasonal layers. Seasonal layers are used in other cores from Greenland and at other locations in Antarctica.

As a historical note, the icecore faq was written in the first instance to refute the theories of Veliskovsky, who proposes a number of "catastrophes" within the last 4000 years. It also happens to refute the young earth creationists who propose that the Earth is about 6000 years old; but this was not the original motivation. We have lost contact with Matt Brinkman, who wrote the faq, and would love to regain contact with him.

Again, thanks very much for a stimulating and productive feedback.

The criticisms of Dr. Gish in the archive are primarily to show that his views are riddled through and through with fatal errors.

If, on the other hand, you want to explore the alternative point of view, you can look at other files in the archive which do not particularly concern themselves with Dr. Gish's mistakes. A good starting point is the Introduction fo Evolutionary Biology FAQ. You will also be interested in the Evolution and Chance FAQ, which may help you see that evolution is not based on completely random processes. There is a good cosmology tutorial off-site, which explains the evidence, data and testing on which cosmological theory is based, and also explains that hydrogen is not the starting point.

2) I think there is no end in sight as yet. Every new insight and answer is still leading to new and better questions for further understanding.

3) There are many unanswered questions on gravity as well, in particular for quantum gravity. The word "law" is used not because it is finished, but because what we do know can be formulated in equational form. Evolution, on the other hand, is described in terms of many interacting processes, and hence the word theory is used. In science, this does not imply "unfinished" or "hypothetical". It simply means a well-established system or body of statements that explain a group of phenomena. So the answer to your question is no; evolution is already quite as well confirmed as gravity, but it is not a law.

(P.S. I love it too...)

For more information, see the article An Introduction to Evolutionary Biology, especially the section on "Evolution within a Lineage".

I have written a rather lengthy review of MOM. You will find it on my web page: NBC Program The Mysterious Origins of Man. MOM is full of distortions and outright falsehoods. I challenge you to peruse my web site, and *then* point out where you think I have erred.

The Paluxy "man tracks" are so preposterous that even creationist are embarrased by the claims. Check out talk.origins faq: The Texas Dinosaur/"Man Track" Controversy

The reason we never hear about Darwin's deathbed recantation from scientists is that it never happened. This myth continues to circulate, despite having been decisively refuted. See The Lady Hope Story: A Widespread Falsehood.

The print shown in MOM is the Burdick print (they say so themselves). The photo of the Burdick print in the talk.origins archive appears to be of the same print (one of the saw cuts is the same) but was presumably taken at an earlier date when the saw cuts across the toes had not yet been made.

Many believers in God have no problem with the evidence that evolution occurred, and even that it happened in a Darwinian fashion. See, for instance, the God and Evolution FAQ. The real issue about creationism is whether scientific research should be constrained by the religious beliefs of some citizens, and even more important, whether children in state-funded schools should be exposed to views, taught as science, which the scientists who work in the field have not accepted for over a century. The issue is about whether we will let falsity be taught to our children and be the basis for decisions of public importance.

As for the notion that we are all descended from one woman, I suspect you are referring to the "mitochrondrial Eve" hypothesis, which states that all existing humans share a maternal ancestor who lived in Africa between 60,000 and 800,000 years ago. (How long ago she lived depends on who you ask.) The hypothesis is based on measurements of variation in mitochondrial DNA, cell organelles that contain their own independent genetic code and are passed down only from our mothers. Note that the hypothesis does not mean "mitochrondrial Eve" was the first human woman. On the contrary, she would have been just one member of a very large human population. It simply implies that all living people can trace their maternal ancestry back to one woman. You should be aware that the mitochondrial Eve hypothesis is still controversial, and not all biologists agree on its validity.

So, based on considerations of archeaology and linguistics, I think it is safe to say that religion, as we think of it today, is at least 100,000 years old, and its roots certainly go much farther back than that, maybe even to the earliest tool makers as far back as 1,000,000 or 2,000,000 years.

To the best of my knowledge, there is no consistent standard for terminology; but "laws" tend to be simple expressions involving an equation or a basic relationship. The term "law" certainly does not imply a claim of omniscience or even complete accuracy. A number of physical "laws" are known to be approximations. (Bode's law is a good case in point.) There have been quite a number of "laws" proposed in this century. (Hubble's law, Bragg's law, laws of relativisitic quantum mechanics, etc.)

Evolution does not lend itself to formulation as a "law"; it is rather a body of theory which explains the phenomenon of life's diversity in the present and the past. For a far more detailed discussion on this point, see Evolution and Philosophy, and especially the page Predictions and Explanations.

The reader asks: "Who makes the change, God or man?" But no-one suggests man makes the change (of evolution). Biological evolution is a natural process, resulting in certain kinds of change. The nature of God's involvement in natural processes (such as weather, mountain formation, birth, growth and death, or evolution) is a question for believers; many of whom resolve it to their own satisfaction without denying the natural regularities discerned by science. But I think we are wandering from appropriate topics for talk.origins.

In the paper "Replica plating and indirect selection of bacterial mutants", (J. Bacteriol. [1952] 63:399-406) Joshua and Esther M. Lederberg started with cultures derived from Escherichia coli strain K-12. K-12 was isolated in a pure culture and is sensitive to both streptomycin and phage T-1 (FWIW - You can write to the E. coli Genetic Stock Center and get your hands on the K-12 strain). After several generations in liquid and agar media they could isolate mutants from the population that were streptomycin or phage resistant. They even discussed the frequencies at which spontaneous resistant mutants arose in cultures. So like Luria/Delbruck did in their fluctuation experiment (Luria started with E. coli strain B -- also sensitive), the Lederbergs also started with an isolated strain that was demonstrated to be sensitive to the antibiotic and T-1 phage.

You cannot say that the resistance was always there at the beginning, put there by God or whatever. Mutations produced resistance. The variation was not derived from a diverse population of E. coli that someone happened to have pulled from their butt with a swab.

In other words, scientists were able to start with a non-resistant strain of bacteria, expose it to antibiotics and bacteria-eating viruses, and observe it evolving new resistant strains via mutation. So it is simply not true biologists have not observed beneficial mutations. They clearly have.

I would like to add a couple more references to my earlier letter that the editor included. The acquisition of new traits by bacteria and other organisms is very old news by now. One brief and very accessible paper that I stumbled across recently was in the series "Methods in Enzymology" (vol 224 - Academic Press, 1993). Chapter 44, "Acquisition of new metabolic activities by microbial populations" describes some of the techniques used to isolate strains which have mutated and developed new traits. Barry Hall, one of the chapters' authors, has been deeply involved in this area of research for the past couple decades. This paper also references an older book ("Microorganisms as model systems for studying evolution", RP Mortlock, ed, Plenum Press, NY, 1984), that I think could go into much greater detail. - Tim Ikeda

The matter of a definition for evolution can be confusing. Evolution is (by definition) limited to changes which are associated with inherited genetic information. Hence, evolution can result in changes in height and much else besides; but not all change in height is evolutionary. As far as I know, everywhere in the archive where this definition is explained, the fact of historical evolution is also explained. That is, over long periods of time, evolutionary change is involved in the divergence of populations, and the origin of new species.

There is still ongoing debate concerning how best to explain the various aspects of origins in the introductory material of the archive without confusing people or omitting essential aspects.

Be that as it may, if for some reason you really do give weight to the theological musings of real scientists, I advise caution: the trends actually argue against your main point.

In particular, you have grossly misrepresented Einstein's views. He had a strong reaction to such misrepresentation. He once wrote the following to someone who had written to ask him about this point:

"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."
Albert Einstein in Albert Einstein: The Human Side, edited by Helen Dukas (Einstein's secretary) and Banesh Hoffman, and published by Princeton University Press.

Einstein's views on science and religion are readily available in print and on the web, but there is no compulsion for other scientists to agree with his personal views.

The final irony is that Einstein's remark God does not play dice is not a statement about God, but about quantum mechanics, and this is a famous example of a case where the great man was quite likely incorrect. The question is still open, and will not be resolved by appeals to Einstein's authority.