Feedback for December 2000

See also Glenn Morton's essay on the subject.

Thanks!

However, even assuming that the rosiest, most optimistic fantasies of biological futurists come true, it doesn't invalidate John's comment. The problem is one of definition: if we engineer a new kind of 'human' with bigger brains, 4 arms, a stripped down genome with introns excised and pointless frivolities like reverse transcriptases deleted, with resistance to cancer and heart disease and virtual immortality...is it human anymore? If humanity splinters into a host of wildly diverse genetic types, can we really say that Homo sapiens is immortal?

Let's not also forget that human technology has to live within a human social structure. Right now, we have people who hate other people because of relatively tiny differences, such as the amount of pigment in their skin. How will the world react to the kinds of radical transformations that you predict?

People with every bit as much religious faith as you have come to different conclusions about origins. Accepting Christ can't be the basis for a belief in creationism because I and others have had quite different results from it. Biblical interpretation, not to mention acceptance of the Bible in the first place, is similarly personal. Ultimately, you have only your own word to offer as a basis for creationism. To me, that seems much more like a faith in oneself than the theory of evolution, which results from people striving to describe the world according to objective criteria.

The statement that religion "claims exact accuracy" is meant to refer to the claims of Fundamentalists rather than the beliefs of more mainstream theists. Fundamentalists believe that God Himself wrote the Bible in exactly the way that it appears in the modern English versions, so they believe that every word of the modern English Bible is 100% scientifically and historically accurate. By their own admission they are required to believe that because the alternative, to admit that the Bible contains errors, would damage their faith.

Most mainstream theists like myself, however, are able to accept that the Bible has scientific and historical errors, because for us the Bible is not a scientific and historical textbook, but a book of faith, and in matters of the spirit we believe the Bible is perfectly accurate. So we have no reason to doubt the Bible's promise of salvation even though it contains scientific and historical errors.

As for science, yes science can produce very accurate calculations at times, but the whole of science is based on theory, and while theory is not a mere guess or supposition, it does nonetheless assume the idea that any concept, no matter how strongly supported by experiment and observation, can be refuted and proven wrong with the right kind of evidence. This is in contrast with the basic assumption of religion, which is that knowledge is a direct revelation from a deity, and assuming the deity is not a liar or a morone such knowledge can be believed as the Truth.

Since any world we were around to discuss would by definition be the "right" kind of universe for intelligent life, and all the other possible ones would not, the "odds" that a universe would support life in any discussion are extremely high - indeed they are one; that is, it is certain that the universe will support life. This is a bit like Descartes' slogan "I think, therefore I am" - of course you are - or else you'd not be saying to yourself "I think". Of course the universe is such that it can support life - or else we'd not be discussing the matter.

See the Intelligent Design: Humans, Cockroaches, and the Laws of Physics FAQ for more discussion of this subject.

Of course, the most common reason that evolutionists refuse to 'debate' is that what the creationists offer is not an open debate. It's usually held in a church packed with supporters, and the creationist is not going to encourage a back-and-forth discussion -- he's going to give a canned spiel that presses popular buttons with his audience.

What creationist web site did you see this at? I'm curious to see what these excuses might be.

However, you also have to ask what percentage of intelligent designs no longer exist? Human designs tend to die off, too. Nor does that mean the designs were a failure. Buggy whips and slide rules were excellent designs for their times, but the environment has changed. Similarly, trilobites and velociraptors were successful in their times; just because they are extinct now doesn't mean they were failures.

Rather than argue that extinctions show bad design, I suggest you argue that the history of human design shows that even intelligent design implies evolution.

Your point about the base is more interesting. Yes, if the parts are stapled to the floor, the floor functions as a base. But that base is not part of the mousetrap! Organisms are allowed to use parts of their environment, and they do so. There is no rule saying that organisms must create the parts of an irreducibly complex system themselves. What makes the mousetrap base example especially interesting is that it is similar to a hypothesis about the formation of the first cells. The cells need not have supplied their own cell wall; they could have used small niches in rocks instead. See:

Smith, Joseph V. et al, 1999. Biochemical evolution III: Polymerization on organophilic silica-rich surfaces, crystal-chemical modeling, formation of first cells, and geological clues. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA 96(7): 3479-3485.

Furthermore, whether or not something is irreducibly complex is moot, because irreducible complexity can evolve. Evolution is not limited, as Behe assumes, to the piecewise addition of discrete parts.

I am no expert but I do not agree that polystrate fossils are the worst argument yet for the flood model.

I presume that you have read Andrew MacRae's Polystrate Trees FAQ and it is that text to which you are responding. You say that you do not agree, but you do not point out any statements in his text which you deem to be untrue, or point out any flaws in his reasoning. Indeed, you seem not to have read the FAQ very closely, since you make this statement:

I have read that some polystrate trees are found with their crowns down. If this is not an example of rapid burial what is it.

Not only does Andrew MacRae's FAQ not argue that fossil forests such as these are not examples of rapid burial, he notes specifically ways in which forests can be buried rapidly, like mud and sand breaching a levee. This leads us to your following statement:

You cite Mt St Helens as an example of how such irregularities could happen-isn't that conceeding to a form of catastrophism and not 'uniformitarianism' after all.

And here we come to the root (pun intended) of the matter - the simple strawman version of "uniformitarianism" frequently served up in creationist writings. Mt. St. Helens is cited by creationists as an example of how trees can be transported by floods, in this case caused by a volcanic eruption, and deposited elsewhere. This is then used to support "catastrophism" and placed in a false dichotomy with "uniformitarianism". The assumption is that conventional, i.e. uniformitarian, geology somehow neglects to look at any formations as having been formed as a result of catastrophe. This is, to put it mildly, sheer nonsense. The above sentence clearly makes this assumption, as it states that if one argues that fossil forests can be deposited by events such as the Mt. St. Helens eruption (in this case, it is creationists who are making this argument, but Mr. Springsteen for some reason attributes it to Andrew MacRae, presumably), then one is "conceding to a form of catastrophism". Further, he specifically turns this into a dichotomy between catastrophism and uniformitarianism.

Let us be blunt. Conventional, mainstream, or uniformitarian (pick your term, as they are often used synonomously in creationist writings) geology not only includes, but in large part focuses on, catastrophic events. The processes that produce the types of phenomena that geologists deal with range from very slow (topsoil formation, for example) to very fast. Some of the most interesting phenomena are produced by catastrophic processes such as floods, volcanic eruptions, tectonic shifting, meteoritic impacts, and so on. To view any explanation dealing with these types of events as supporting "catastrophism" and to then infer that this requires "uniformitarians" to "concede" is, quite simply, to betray either a gross ignorance of geology or a predilection for playing fast and loose with the facts. Floods, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions occur quite often at various places around the world. It is disingenuous, at best, to argue that finding a geological formation that is the result of a catastrophic event such as these lends credence to the notion that most of the world's geological phenomena were formed by a global flood. Geologists deal with catastrophic explanations for a wide range of natural formations. To imply that this is a problem for "uniformitarianism" is to distort, rather flamboyantly and dramatically, the meaning of that term. It is a convenient, but breathlessly absurd, straw man.

I have also read ("Bone of Contention" by Sylvia Baker) that some of these tree fossils intersect more than one coal seam. How did that happen?

Perhaps you could point to a specific formation in which this is found and we could take a closer look at the literature on the subject. Or perhaps you could look up such literature yourself and find out what the explanation is.

I wonder if you would answer my questions publicly or if you deliberately neglect emails you can't answer.

One would think that you would at least take the time to understand the most basic of geological ideas before putting such smugness on display.

By the way what are you- you quote a bible verse on the top of your web page and yet you have no respect for a single word in it.

We often get letters such as this asking what "you" believe or referring to what "you" said, without reference to a specific person. The FAQs found in the Talk.Origins Archive were written by a rather diverse collection of people. Some are atheists, others are Christian, and yet others are who knows what. Perhaps you could ask this question to someone specific.

Ed Brayton

However, the issues that you do raise are not inspiring. The current dynamics of the solar system, the placement of Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars does not allow for much in the way of the Velikovskian style of planetary billiards. We know from observations recorded in the Babylonian Ammizaduqa tablets, that Venus was observed by the Babylonians to be in an orbit indistinguishable from the one it is in now, as of roughly 2000 B.C., maybe earlier, depending on the exact dating of the tablets and their contents. I don't know when Moses was supposed to be walking about, but it seems unlikely to have been much before then. Had Venus closely encountered the Earth at such a recent epoch, there would be some clue(s) found in the relations between planets. But what we actually do find is a partial tidal lock between Earth & Venus, which can only happen if the two planets remain in the same orbits, relative to each other, for many millions of years at least. So not only do we not find clues pointing to a recent interaction, we actually find clues pointing to the contrary.

You speak of carbohydrate oils as glibly as Velikovsky did, but overlook the obvious problem of specifying their chemistry, how they were formed, how they survived the journey between planets, and why they managed to fall as manna only in Israel, to name but a few problems. Qualitative assertions are of limited value, sooner or later a quantitative argument is required, or ideas go nowhere. Nobody has producec a quantitative description of "manna", and I boldly predict that nobody ever will.

As for the reference to satellite images of "Gentian", I can find no hint of where such images are or what you are talking about.

It also appears that someone should read our articles on Evolution and Chance and God and Evolution. And why should it be hard to believe that humans evolved (eventually) from single-celled organisms? After all, a zygote becomes a baby in nine months.

They view evolutionary science, which flatly contradicts the book of Genesis, as a direct threat to their theology, the foundation of society and a threat to the basis of morality itself.

We on the other side view the spreading of errors and lies called creationism as a direct attack on good science. They are mounting a campaign to reduce or remove evolutionary biology from public school science classrooms. This assault is not based on scientific arguments, but on religious objections. Their proponents in this battle are not scientists, but legislators and school board members, who couldn't tell you a thing about evolution if you asked them.

That is why there is so much energy devoted to this debate. Creationists need to realize that we are not interested in altering or depriving them of their religious beliefs. We only wish to see science receive its proper attention in public school classrooms. We need to inform the public that evolution is not involved in any kind of scientific controversy. The controversy is purely political. It is another chapter in the warfare between science and religion.

I see that you have rather unconventional ideas regarding the nature of God. The Fundamentalists would certainly not see you as an ally.

Albert Einstein said the following: "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."

Einstein's Religion.

The experiment would either carve blocks of DNA from another organism (likely Mycoplasma genitalium, which has the smallest known genome) or make the DNA from scratch, and insert the DNA into an empty cell. The initial impetus for such an attempt is to investigate what is the minimum genome needed for a living thing. Of course, if successful, it would raise all sorts of new possibilities for genetic engineering.

A Google search of "+Venter +create +scratch" finds dozens of relevant articles, including this one from The Economist via Britannica.com.

The link you give carries two arguments regarding the possibility of the decay rate not being constant, one based on Gentry's polonium halos, and the other on an obscure non-technical article on neutrinos by Frank Jueneman.

On polonium halos, see our own FAQ file "Evolution's Tiny Violences - The Po-Halo Mystery". Also follow the Articles in opposition to Creationism link for more on Po halos. In short, the Po halo evidence is pretty wimpy.

As for the neutrinos, forget it, Jueneman is way wrong. Neutrinos interact with other matter so meekly that it takes an enormous effort to catch just a few (like 2 or 3 or 4) when there are billions going through a detector every second. Furthermore, neutrinos interact most strongly with only a few well know nuclei, which is why the original neutrino detectors were filled with chlorine. There is simply nowhere near the interaction needed for neutrinos to affect any radiometric dating, short of a supernova so close that, while dating might in principle be affected, the Earth would be destroyed as a side effect.

In fact, there is a way to change decay rates, but only for electron-capture decay. Since ⁴⁰K decays by that mode, there may in principle be some affect on K/Ar dating. However, attempts to measure any change have worked only for ⁷Be, at the level of less than 1% change, even for pressures hundreds of thoudsands of times greater than the atmospheric pressure at Earth's surface. Attempts to detect variations in ⁴⁰K decay rates under similar circumstances have observed no effect.

Name some.

Lots of creationists claim that there are hordes of people being swayed by the evidence for their favorite myth; however, they never seem to be able to specify either the evidence or the people. I suspect that you will be another example.

As for the evidence for evolution, did you follow any of the links on the FAQ page? That page simply organizes the common questions and points you in the right direction for further reading.

What the second law of thermodynamics actually does say is that the entropy of a given thermodynamic system will, as a result of some process, increase (if the process is "irreversible") or remain unchanged (if the process is "reversible"), but not decrease, subject to some well defined limitations. The limitations are these: (1) The system must be thermodynamically isolated (which means that no thermal energy can enter or leave the system) during the process. (2) The process must be one that takes the system from one state of thermodynamic equilibrium to another state of thermodynamic equilibrium. (3) Entropy is measured only when the system is in a state of thermodynamic equilibrium.

Entropy is related to "order" and "disorder", but it is not in fact either "order" or "disorder", in and of itself. That's the first failure of your critique, your mistaken notion that somehow entropy is "disorder". The second failure of your criticism is that the environment of evolution is not "thermodynamically isolated". That's important, as energy and entropy are pouring in and out of the biosphere, and the "evolving" systems. Entropy is not even a well defined concept at all, under such circumstances.

Evolution does not violate the second law of thermodynamics. You might also look into the thermodynamics FAQs in this archive.

They're all members of the same little club.

Elephants modify their environment by pushing over trees, creating a savannah to which they must adapt. Humans likewise modify their environment, and to that we adapt or die. "Harmful" and "advantageous" mutations get their status according to the environment in which they exist. They aren't harmful or helpful in the absolute. In fact, as the sickle cell anemia gene shows, what can be harmful in one environment can be helpful in another. So humans have merely exchanged their environment, they have not escaped from the pressures of being in an environment.

A final point: we in the west are too ready to assume that what holds true for us holds true for all. The selection pressures brought to bear on humans in equitorial Africa, the Indian sub-continent, the holarctic regions, and so forth, are effectively the same as they were 8000 years ago, except when western medicine and agriculture is available (sporadically). If anything, the west is degrading the environments and increasing the selection pressures on people in those areas. The best we might say is that the operative force of evolution in the wealthy west (when it is healthy) is genetic drift, and on the rest of the world is still drift and selection combined. But I think that overstates it - we are still subjected to selection.

Think again.

On the other hand, I am an atheist, and have no problem saying so. Your one-liner does nothing to answer doubts, counter objections, or provide evidence.

No evidence, no belief. Know evidence, know belief.

Would you like the creation myth from someone else's religion taught in science classes as a viable scientific alternative? Most people do not, which is why most people oppose creationism in science classes. Instead, science classes teach evolution, which is based on objective evidence and is thus totally independent of religious belief. (People of different religions may then overlay that evidence with their personal views, or deny it entirely in the case of creationists.)

I personally believe that students should be taught at least half a dozen different creation myths outside of science classes to expose them to the variety of beliefs. Would that satisfy you?

Unfortunately, the extremists on both sides tend to vilify and marginalize the centrists, so as long as they dominate the public perception of the debate, no real progress can be achieved.

I find it sad that your sort are so eager to vigorously attack what you do not understand, nor could possibly explain. It seems to me like cavemen throwing rocks at the moon.

I would suggest that you, or any creationist, should become fully versed in evolutionary theory before you attack it. I have yet to encounter this in a creationist. You should be able to explain how the process works. Common sense says that you cannot criticize what you cannot explain.

An important point to remember, though, is that "vestigal" does not mean "useless." It means that something looks like trace evidence for something else. The significance of vestigal legs is not that they're useless, but that they look like traces of legs. One may satisfy oneself on this point simply by comparing the skeletons of snakes and lizards.

And, boy, should they! I wonder if the quality of feedback messages is indicative of the educational level of the people writing in. Scary!

Many of us have investigated the bible to find that it has many key factual errors. The most obvious concerning this website are the Genesis story of creation, and the Great Flood. Both events are directly contradicted by mountains of physical evidence-- neither event happened as a matter of historical fact.

Furthermore, the literalist creationist position seems to imply that Christ's sacrifice didn't work. Part of the Fall, in their interpretation, was the introduction of death and decay. But death and decay are still with us, so Christ's redemption was incomplete at best.

It seems to me that sin, if it is to mean anything relevant to the real world, must refer to tangible behaviors and attitudes. It doesn't take much looking to see that many behaviors around today would qualify. Once one recognizes sin in one's life, how it got there doesn't matter one whit; what is important is how to get rid of it. Finding a solution is much more productive than worrying about the source of the problem. Anyone who can show a way out of sin is valuable, and Christ is such a one.

I suspect that the creationist's real complaint is that if they abandon Biblical literalism when it comes to evolution, they will have to change a substantial part of their worldview. Well, yes.

"The prophets of Israel have never announced a God upon whom their hearers' striving for security reckoned. They have always aimed to shatter all security and to proclaim in the opened abyss of the final insecurity the unwished-for God who demands that His human creatures become real, they become human, and confounds all who imagine that they can take refuge in the certainty that the temple of God is in their midst." [Martin Buber, "Religion and Modern Thinking"]

Let me add my voice to yours in requesting more articles. There is a Request for FAQs page which shows a list of topics of particular interest.

The FAQs should be review articles. Recent developments by themselves are best discussed on the talk.origins newsgroup, though it is nice to keep the FAQs up-to-date.

You don't have to be the most qualified person in the world to write a FAQ on a subject. I wrote "What is Creationism?" not because I am an expert on creationism, but simply because I got tired of waiting for someone else to write it. Talk.origins can be an excellent source for information and review, and you yourself can learn a lot in the process.

And why are we not supposed to question? There are innumerable different interpretations of the Bible possible, and many different religions besides. To determine which is the best requires just the sort of questioning which you object to. You are wrong in saying that I am trying to disprove God; I am only trying to disprove some of the unreasonable things people have said about God.

However, your claims that theories are just theories needs another look. Your comments are born out of misuse of the word theory. People who make statements like: "But it's only a theory; it's not a scientific law," or "It's a theory, not a fact," don't really know the meanings of the words their using.

Theory does not mean guess, or hunch, or hypothesis. A theory does not change into a scientific law with the accumulation of new or better evidence. A theory will always be a theory, a law will always be a law. A theory will never become a law, and a law never was a theory.

The following definitions, based on information from the National Academy of Sciences, should help anyone understand why evolution is not "just a theory."

A scientific law is a description of an observed phenomenon. Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion are a good example. Those laws describe the motions of planets. But they do not explain why they are that way. If all scientists ever did was to formulate scientific laws, then the universe would be very well-described, but still unexplained and very mysterious.

A theory is a scientific explanation of an observed phenomenon. Unlike laws, theories actually explain why things are the way they are. Theories are what science is for. If, then, a theory is a scientific explanation of a natural phenomena, ask yourself this: "What part of that definition excludes a theory from being a fact?" The answer is nothing! There is no reason a theory cannot be an actual fact as well.

For example, there is the phenomenon of gravity, which you can feel. It is a fact that you can feel it, and that bodies caught in a gravitational field will fall towards the center. Then there is the theory of gravity, which explains the phenomenon of gravity, based on observation, physical evidence and experiment. Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity replaced the less accurate gravity theory of Sir Isaac Newton, which was the first complete mathematical theory formulated which described a fundamental force.

There is the modern synthetic theory of evolution, neo-darwinism. It is a synthesis of many scientific fields (biology, population genetics, paleontology, embryology, geology, zoology, microbiology, botany, and more). It replaces darwinism, which replaced lamarckism, which replaced the hypotheses of Erasmus Darwin (Charles' grandfather), which expanded the ideas of Georges de Buffon, which in turn expanded upon the classification of Karl von Linne.

So there is the theory of evolution. Then there is the FACT of evolution. Species change-- there is variation within one kind of animal. There is a predictable range of genetic variation in a species, as well as an expected rate of random mutations. Creationists readily admit that a "kind" (an ambiguous, non-scientific term) can develop into different species (i.e. a dog "kind" can evolve into wolves, coyotes, foxes, and all types of domestic dogs) but they insist that it must stop there. They never give any reason for this fabricated limitation-- they just deny that it can happen. They just can't accept macroevolution, because it contradicts the "truth" of their dogma. But in reality, there is no limit to the degree that a species can change. Given enough time, a fish-like species can evolve into a amphibian-like species, an amphibian-like species can evolve into a reptilian-like species, a reptilian-like species can evolve into a mammalian-like species, and an ape-like species can evolve into the modern human species.

The process (simply stated) involves the genetic potential of many different types of individuals within a species, the birth of a great many individual organisms, and the deaths of those individuals whose characteristics are not as well suited to the total environment as other individuals of the same species. The deaths of these less well suited individuals allows for the increased reproduction of the better suited ones, which initiates a shift in the appearance and function of the species. Without limitation. There is more genetic stuff to it than that, but that is basically how it works.

Yes, evolution is a fact, as real as gravity. The fact that all species alive today have descended from a common ancestor can be denied, but not refuted. We know it happens because we can observe it directly in short-lived species, and for longer lived species there is genetic and fossil evidence that is unambiguous. There is no other scientific explanation for the diversity of living species. Evolution is a very well established scientific concept with a massive amount of physical evidence for support. It is not a guess. Evolution is the basis of modern biology, and thousands of universities and laboratories across the world are engaged in research that explores evolution.

You don't have to 'believe' in evolution. You can trust that the thousands of scientists who study this phenomenon aren't morons, or Satanists. You can accept the general idea that life propagates with modifications, and those modifications can lead to improved survival, and that as those modifications are passed over time, many modifications can lead to a species that looks very different from its predecessor. Is that so hard to accept?

See also the FAQ: Evolution is a Fact and a Theory

This is the statement from the National Academy of Sciences:

Is Evolution a fact or a theory?
The theory of evolution explains how life on earth has changed. In scientific terms, "theory" does not mean "guess" or "hunch" as it does in everyday usage. Scientific theories are explanations of natural phenomena built up logically from testable observations and hypotheses. Biological evolution is the best scientific explanation we have for the enormous range of observations about the living world. Scientists most often use the word "fact" to describe an observation. But scientists can also use fact to mean something that has been tested or observed so many times that there is no longer a compelling reason to keep testing or looking for examples. The occurrence of evolution in this sense is a fact. Scientists no longer question whether descent with modification occurred because the evidence supporting the idea is so strong.

Why isn't evolution called a law?
Laws are generalizations that describe phenomena, whereas theories explain phenomena. For example, the laws of thermodynamics describe what will happen under certain circumstances; thermodynamics theories explain why these events occur. Laws, like facts and theories, can change with better data. But theories do not develop into laws with the accumulation of evidence. Rather, theories are the goal of science.