Feedback for December 2005

Sorry. I like answering rhetorical questions.

I highly recommend the book Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay. Some of the follies it covers merely result in strange fashions, but others destroy people's livelihoods, and some kill people on large scales. It was written in 1841 but is still amazingly timely today.

"Intelligent design" has not yet, to the best of my knowledge, resulted in loss of life, but if it becomes prevalent, it surely will. The theory of evolution is used in medicine, for example, in tracking the spread of diseases in order to combat them more effectively. ID wants to destroy such science.

But it is not just ID we are fighting. An anti-science attitude is uncomfortably common in this country. Such an attitude will result in slowing of technical advances, reversion to some harmful superstitions, loss of expertise as competent scientists move overseas, and poor planning resulting in costs of countless billions of dollars spent cleaning up after avoidable disasters. You can see most of these starting already.

Thinking outside the box is important to solve these problems, but so is thinking that is grounded in reality. ID abandons reality, or at least any ties to it. And ID's thinking is not even original; its design hypothesis has been around 2000 years at least and has contributed absolutely nothing useful in all that time.

Incidentally, Darwin did not cease to believe his theory.

Males and females are compatible because they evolved together - any species in which the males cannot inseminate the females is going extinct pretty fast! Another way to look at this is that the genes in a male's body were very recently genes in a female's body. Their genetic interests coincide.

The convergently evolved organisms you mention are very unlike each other, except superficially and ecologically. This is expected if they have distinct phylogenetic histories, but not for any other candidate explanation, including ID. There's no reason why a design that worked in placental wolves shouldn't be repeated exactly in Tasmania and the mainland of Australia. There is a reason, though, why distantly related lineages won't be identical except superficially. I quote Darwin:

Nothing can be more hopeless than to attempt to explain th[e] similarity of pattern in members of the same class, by utility or by the doctrine of final causes. The hopelessness of the attempt has been expressly admitted by Owen in his most interesting work on the 'Nature of Limbs.' On the ordinary view of the independent creation of each being, we can only say that so it is;--that it has so pleased the Creator to construct each animal and plant. [On the Origin of Species, first edition, 1859, Chapter XIII, p 435]

It is so easy to hide our ignorance under such expressions as the "plan of creation," "unity of design," &c., and to think that we give an explanation when we only restate a fact. [On the Origin of Species, Chapter XIV, p 482]

And argumentum ab CAPSLOCK has never been all that convincing.

My own thoughts on the Mirecki affair are available here.

Schrodinger's equation applies to the change of a quantum mechanical system over time. It has been solved to describe a single particle in certain special conditions, and it can be used to approximate somewhat more complicated conditions. No physicist would dream of using it to analyze anything even as complicated as stretching a rubber band. Trying to use it to determine anything about the mind is way beyond its scope and will tell you nothing, except perhaps that you have lost yours.

Would you apply mathematical equations of quantum mechanics to determine when a tomato is ripe or to figure out whether smoking is bad for you? What Cordova is doing is sillier still; he is claiming (falsely) that he has applied his quantum mechanics equations on an even larger scale, and somewhere they show something that is somehow wrong. But god forbid he ever say where, what, or how.

Evolution depends on a few simple requirements: reproduction, variation, and differential selection. To prove evolution impossible, physics would have to prove that one or more of those requirements is not met. Given that all of them have been directly observed, disproving them does not seem terribly likely.

See: Haeckel’s Embryos by Troy Britain (and the Richards article linked below) for more on the trial myth.

As for the supposed confession (not associated with any sort of trial) that is often referred to by antievolutionists it is little more than a sarcastic retort published in an early 20th century German newspaper that Haeckel made in response to one his contemporary critics, Arnold Brass. Here is his supposed “confession”:

[Source Warning : the following is taken from an antievolutionist/anti-Haeckel book, so I cannot vouch for its accuracy, the accuracy of the translation, for the missing context or what might be missing in the ellipses (…)! I unfortunately do not have access to the original (or the ability to read German).]

To cut short this unsavory dispute, I begin at once with the contrite confession that a small fraction of my numerous drawings of embryos (perhaps 6 or 8 per cent.) are really, in Dr. Brass’s sense, falsified – all those, namely, for which the present material of observation is so incomplete or insufficient as to compel us, when we come to prepare a continuous chain of the evolutive stages, to fill up the gaps by hypotheses, and to reconstruct the missing-links by comparative syntheses … After this compromising confession of “forgery” I should be obliged to consider myself ‘condemned and annihilated’ if I had not the consolation of seeing side-by-side with me in the prisoner’s dock hundreds of fellow-culprits, among them many of the most trusted observers and most esteemed biologists. For the great majority of all the figures – morphological, anatomical, histological, and embryological – that are widely circulated and valued in the best text – and handbooks, in biological treatises and journals, would incur in the same degree the charge of “forgery.” All of them are inexact, and are more or less “doctored,” schematized, or “constructed.” Many unessential accessories are left out, in order to render conspicuous what is essential in form and organisation. (Haeckel 1908)

The readers can judge for themselves as to whether this appears to be an actual sincere confession of wrongdoing.

See: The Struggle over Evolution and Religion in the Nineteenth Century, with Ernst Haeckel as the Anti-Pope by Robert J. Richards, for an excellent discussion of the controversy which was the context for Haeckel’s “confession”.

With regards to the accuracy of Haeckel’s drawings, and here I am speaking of the (in)famous plates from the 3rd edition (1876) of Haeckel’s book Anthropogeny (The Evolution of Man was the English title) which are so often reprinted, they slightly exaggerate the similarities between the different vertebrate embryos that they depict, but only slightly and they do not deviate from the actual embryos in any material way. That is if one were to substitute photographs of corresponding embryos this would not lessen their value as evidence of common descent.

Recent comparisons of Haeckel’s drawings to photographs of embryos, ostensibly to show how inaccurate Haeckel’s drawings are (Richardson et al, 1997), are themselves, in my opinion, flawed. Earlier stage embryos, without extraembryonic tissues (umbilical stocks, yolk-sacs etc.) are a much closer match to Haeckel’s drawings than those used by Richardson et al.

Finally evolution is not any more atheistic than any other part of science and many if not most theists have no particular problem reconciling their faiths with the findings of science.

See:

Statements from Religious Organizations in Voices for Evolution on the NCSE web site.

The Clergy Letter Project, signed by over ten thousand members of the clergy stating that they have no problem with evolution.

References

Haeckel, Ernst (1908) from newspaper article in Berliner Volkszeitung (12-29-1908), quoted in Assmuth, J. & Hull, Ernest R. (1915) Haeckel's Frauds And Forgeries, pp14-15.

Richardson, Michael K. (et al.) (1997) “There is no highly conserved embryonic stage in the vertebrates: implications for current theories of evolution and development”, Anatomy and Embryology, 196:91-106

But I think you want to be a bit careful about claiming that indigenes are somehow better off. It's not that they live in "balance with nature" or whatever, so much as that they lacked the technology to overexploit ecological resources the way we did, and so the resulting cultural evolution left only those who were able to live on the basis of accessible resources.

All human populations, given half a chance, will overexploit their environment. It takes an act of will and education to prevent it.

Dr. Cabrera has told people that his father found some of these stones in various local tombs. Other Ica Stones, he claimed were found in an unidentified cave. He has repeatedly refused to show professional archaeologists the locations of either the tombs or cave. As a result, neither the cave nor tombs, where the stones were allegedly discovered, have ever been either identified or examined in any way by either professional archaeologists or other investigators. Other local people claimed that Ica Stones also have been recovered from the bed of a local river, which they have also neither named nor given the location to outside investigators. As a result, there exist only vague second hand accounts, which nobody has been able to either verify or document, of where the people promoting the Ica Stones as real, allegedly found them.

A local couple admitted in an article published by Mundial magazine in 1975 that they manufactured Ica Stones and sold them to Dr. Cabrera. These people stated they created the "yellowish ancient" patina on the stones by burying them and letting them "age" in a poultry pen filled with chickens. Recent examination of these stones revealed the use of modern sandpaper in the manufacture some of these stones.

Conventional scientists and the Peruvian government consider the Ica Stones to be a complete hoax, which were created to earn money by selling them to Dr. Cabrera and gullible tourists. Four groups of people still argue for the authenticity of the Ica Stones. They are: (1.) supporters of the idea that extraterrestrials have repeatedly visited the Earth in the prehistoric past and influenced ancient civilizations; (2.) advocates of a lost prehistoric technologically advanced civilization, i.e. Atlantis, wiped out by a global catastrophe; (3.) Young Earth creationists looking evidence of Pre-Flood civilizations and dinosaurs living with human beings, and (4.) alternative historians, who argue that ancient myths are accurate historical records.

More detailed discussions of the above points and other aspects of the history and backround of the Ica Stones can be found in:

Polidoro, M., 2002, Notes on a Strange World: Ica Stones: Yabba-Dabba-Do! Skeptical Inquirer Magazine (September/October 2002) http://www.csicop.org/si/2002-09/strange-world.html

Domesticated Dinosaurs?, Weekly Column #56, May 27, 2000. By David Mathews http://www.geocities.com/athens/agora/3958/weekly/weekly56.htm

By hind leg bones the writer is probably referring to the vestigial pelvic bones like those pictured here from a white-beaked dolphin.

Picture source: The Island Institute

Most odontocetes, or toothed whales, seem to have small rod like pelvic bones like those pictured above. Mysticetes, or baleen whales, seem to have more varied and more elaborately shaped pelvic bones. For example here is a picture of those belonging to a Greenland right whale.

Picture source: The University of Aberdeen

For lots of interesting pictures of whale pelvic bones checkout this page on the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution’s website.

Yes, these small bones still apparently serve a secondary function (at least in some species) as an anchor point for muscles and/or ligaments of the reproductive organs (just as pelvic bones do in terrestrial vertebrates) but this does not detract from the fact that they are vestigial as pelvic bones used as support structure and attachment point for hind legs.

An analogous situation exists with the wings or ostriches. Despite the fact that ostriches use their wings for mating displays (and perhaps to shade their young) they are nevertheless vestigial as wings (an organ used for flight).

This isn’t some new re-definition of what vestigial structures are; in fact Darwin talked about this in the The Origin of Species (only he referred to them as “Rudimentary, Atrophied, and Aborted Organs”).

An organ, serving for two purposes, may become rudimentary or utterly aborted for one, even the more important purpose, and remain perfectly efficient for the other. - Darwin, The Origin of Species, Chap 14.

So the antievolutionist arguments that claim that vestigial structures must have absolutely no function in order to count as vestigial are attacking a straw-man.

About now our antievolutionist friends might be objecting that none of this proves that the vestigial pelvic bones have anything to do with whales having legs. Alright then let us move on to embryology.

Picture source: Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine

Here we have dolphin embryos; the small green circles indicate the hind limb buds. Please note that these are photographs not a drawing by Haeckel or any other antievolutionist whipping-boy.

Now we move on to something called “atavisms”. An atavism is the reappearance in a living organism of a characteristic that would be found in the organism evolutionary ancestors. For example horses are occasionally born with small side toes (on one or both sides of their hooves) reflecting their three toed ancestors.

In the case of whales some are occasionally born with hind legs developed to varying degrees. Sometimes it is just a small bit of femur extending off the vestigial pelvis and sometime it is a fairly well developed set of hind leg bones like those pictured here:

Picture source: Talk Origins Archive

These atavistic legs can sometime even extend outside the body of the whale giving them small hind limb buds as adults.

For more on vestigial structures, atavisms, and comparative embryology see: 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution Part 2: Past History by Douglas Theobald

Next we have fossil evidence to look at. Below is a picture of an extinct whale called Basilosaurus which had tiny hind limbs complete with toes (note the small bones about half way between the end of the tale and the rib bones).

Picture source: PALAEOS: The Trace of Life on Earth

Here is a close up drawing of its hind legs (note that the picture of the whole skeleton and that of the leg bones are facing in opposite directions).

Picture source: PALAEOS: The Trace of Life on Earth

To see a picture of the actual fossil foot bones check out this page by paleontologist Phillip Gigerich. See also his original description of the fossils here:

• Gingrich, Phillip D. et al. (1990) " Hind Limbs of Eocene Basilosaurus: Evidence of Feet in Whales", Science 249:154-157

And of course there are several fossils intermediate between fully aquatic animals like Basilosaurus (and modern whales), and more terrestrial mammals with fully developed hind legs with which they were able to walk with (see links at bottom for more on this).

Finally the genetic evidence indicates that the closest living relatives to whales are hippos. This tracts nicely with earlier predictions based on comparative anatomy that the whales should be related to the artiodactyls (even toed ungulates, cows, pigs, camels etc.) the group to which hippos belong.

For info on the whale/hippo relationship see:

• Gene Study Shows Relationship Between Whales and Hippos

• Hippo is whale's cousin

• Different Species With The Same "Junk DNA" by Don Lindsay

The above evidence, from several different lines of research (comparative anatomy, embryology, paleontology and genetics), all point in the same direction. They all point to the conclusion that whales evolved from ancestors that had hind legs, and beyond that ancestors that lived on land. No other scientific explanation logically and coherently explains this data.

One could argue that it simply pleased a creator to design whales this way (to appear as if they evolved from land mammals) but such an argument is completely untestable and falls outside the realm of science.

For more on whale evolution see:

• The Origin of Whales and the Power of Independent Evidence by Raymond Sutera

• The Whale Origins Research page on the Thewissen Lab web page.

• Mark D. Uhen's Cetacean Research page.

• Research on the Origin and Early Evolution of Whales (Cetacea) by Phillip Gingerich

• The section on whales in the Transitional Vertebrate Fossils FAQ Part 2B by Kathleen Hunt

For example, if an animal's average tibia length was 5.0 cm 10,000 years ago and is 5.2 cm today, it grew at a rate of (ln(5.2) - ln(5.0)) / 0.01 = 3.9 darwins.

For probably more than you want to know about the darwin and measurement of evolutionary change in general, see "Analysis of rates of morphologic evolution" by P. D. Roopnarine, Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics 34:605-632 (2003). Its abstract is freely available online.

We get roughly 100 responses per month, and a substantial portion are people who haven't even bothered to read the FAQs on the topics they bring up triumphantly. If we published them all, nobody would even read Feedback.

Argument from Scripture is not convincing unless you are of that faith community, and we have to hold in abeyance such arguments or else we'd have to accept Hindu, Islamic and Christian (all tens of thousands of denominations and theological and exegetical traditions) views. Of course, what matters in science is observation, evidence and useful theory.

I'm no tfamiliar with Peretti's book, sorry.

Do we “dare publish it for all to see”?

We already have several links to this site-O-pseudoscience in the Archive. In fact we publish a whole page full of nothing but links to such bilge (including that very one).

See:

Pro-Creationism or Anti-Evolution: Web sites that approach the creation/evolution controversy from a creationist or anti-evolution perspective.

What gave you the idea that we were afraid to link to sites that promote pseudoscience?

The primary reason for this archive's existence is to provide mainstream scientific responses to the many frequently asked questions (FAQs) that appear in the talk.origins newsgroup and the frequently rebutted assertions of those advocating intelligent design or other creationist pseudosciences.

So yes, this site is a site which defends evolution against antievolutionist attacks.

As for why, speaking personally I don’t like the fact that antievolutionists spread falsehoods and misinformation, and I really don’t like that they want those things taught in public school sciences classes.

I should think that defending truth from falsehood wouldn’t need an explanation.

• While some of Haeckel’s embryo drawings are slight exaggerations they are not completely “fake”.
• There is no evidence that Haeckel was ever convicted of anything, he retired in 1909 from his teaching position of 44 years and his house is a museum at Jena University to this day.
• Yes the vestigial pelvic bones of whales serve a limited function this does not detract from the fact that they are vestigial as pelvic bones.

See:

• Index to Creationist Claims - Claim CB360 Claim CB360
• 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution (Prediction 2.1: Anatomical vestiges) by Douglas Theobald

See:

• It’s a Horse, of Course: A creationist view of phylogenetic change in the equid family by creationist Paul Garner
• Fossil Horses FAQs
• Horse Evolution by Kathleen Hunt
• The Florida Museum of Natural History’s Fossil Horse Cybermuseum

For more advanced reading see:

• MacFadden, Bruce J. (1994) Fossil Horses - Systematics, Paleobiology, and Evolution of the Family Equidae, Cambridge University Press

Most evolutionary novelty is in fact recombination of pre-existing mutations. Mutations can remain in populations for a long time before they become paired with other genes that together make a novelty, even over several speciation events, or until an environmental change makes it a useful variant.

Preachers and teachers across the world will gladly say that the Scriptures are inspired by God — will hold their Bible high in the air and proclaim "this is God's word!" But do they really believe that? Almost every "fundamental" statement of faith reads that God's word is perfect and inspired in the original autographs.

But isn't that a statement of unbelief? What good is God's word if it only exists in manuscripts which no longer exist? Why would God inspire Scripture just to let it wither to dust?
[King James Bible Page]

There is a variety of evidence for life about 3450 million years old, though, so the first life must have appeared in something less than a billion years.