Feedback for January 2002

1. Marx did send a copy of the second edition of Das Kapital to Darwin in 1873, though not secretly. The version was in German, not English, as the English translations did not appear until after Marx's death. Darwin responded to the gift politely, but the book (which was in his death) had not been fully read, as most of the pages were uncut.

   See this link from the Friends of Charles Darwin.

2. This is always a possibility. Several of the contributors to this site are, in fact, former creationists.
3. It is unlikely that we will publish these FAQs in book form. Beyond the copyright issues, much of their usefulness comes from the ability to keep them current that the Internet allows. But we shall see.

Darwin's views on Marxism are not recorded, but his codiscoverer of selection, Alfred Wallace, was a socialist, and was one of Marx's pallbearers, having made friends with Marx's son-in-law, Edward Aveling.

Colp, Ralph Jr. (1982) "The myth of the Darwin-Marx letter" History of Political Economy 14(4):461-482

Thanks for bringing this to our attention.

The alert reader noted that this no longer linked to the site which was promised, which had to do with the text of a letter from Colin Patterson to Luther Sunderland.

It is interesting that an anti-evolutionist, David Buckna, originally challenged the FAQ author to include that link. So, even though the resource is apparently no longer available, the note showing that Lionel did link it will be retained.

I've disabled the link by prepending "no" to "http", and I've added an editorial comment to the box explaining the situation.

Wesley

Ken Ham's comment is very silly. Fossil finds are nothing like a huge global flood deposit. A list of many differences between what is expected from a flood and what is actually found is available in a FAQ on Problems with a Global Flood: Producing the Geological Record.

Yes, by far the most fossils are marine. But wait: are you not proposing that the flood killed off all the land life as well? Why then the over abundance of marine life? What the abundance of marine fossils shows is that the marine environment is more conducive to fossilization, and that land based animals mostly died on the land: not in a flooded marine environment.

Also, marine fossils are not typically crushed; and many show signs of very gentle deposition indeed. Again, see the FAQ.

But to say in the example cited that "this reorganization had nothing to do with the egg's DNA" is a bit too much hyperbole. The DNA was absolutely necessary for encoding the proteins and most of the other regulatory components that made up the system. The DNA itself contains regulatory coding information which affects the expression of the genes it carries.

What about the statement: "So DNA does not program the development of the embryo..."? Well I suppose the binary instructions in computer programs don't run computers by themselves. After all, you need a computer with a compatible microprocessor that is pointing the relevant section of instructions to get a computer to operate. This observation neither novel nor controversial.

So just what point is Wells trying to make?

I suspect that he's trying to make the case that evolution not only involves changes in DNA but changes in the cytoplasmic environment as well and that this just increases the difficulty of evolutionary transitions. So maybe the fact that chimp and human DNA sequences differ by only about 4% (protein sequences differ by less than 1% on average) isn't telling the whole story. After all, in some species that amount of variation is seen within the population. So perhaps humans and chimp differ by 80% at the "cytoplasmic level" (I'm making the last number up: There is no metric of cytoplasmic homology), and this explains the large morphological distance instead.

But the fact is that small genetic changes are known to be capable of producing large morphological changes. Also, cytoplasmic determinants and signals tend to be far more plastic and susceptible to change than DNA sequences. They don't need to follow Mendelian rules of inheritance; Indeed, they can even be Lamarkian. So rather than being a roadblock to adaptation and evolution, their added flexibility could actually allow organisms to accommodate and buffer a larger amount of change than a purely hardwired genetic program would allow. After all, a single mutation may cause an overproduction of growth hormone during puberty. But even as the bones grow longer than normal they don't ghoulishly erupt through the skin. That is because the total number of skin cells is not hard-coded into the DNA -- The skin responds to cellular signals and grows to cover the body. That is also why a person who is 20% taller than another doesn't need a DNA sequence that is 20% longer. The system (DNA & accessory regulatory components) provides more flexibility than the individual parts alone could provide.

While the experimental results that Wells presents are uncontroversial, much of his hype and his intentions of twisting the information into some sort of an anti-evolutionary maxim remain poorly supported.

This is not to say that "soul" means nothing - it just means nothing in science. The answer to your question should be available from the theologians of the religion of your choice.

There are several resources here that you should read.

Chris Colby's Introduction to Evolutionary Biology should help you learn about evolution. You might try Larry Moran's What is Evolution? as a starting point.

The concept of a Creator is not at odds with evolutionary biology. Try Warren Kurt VonRoeschlaub's God and Evolution essay.

You might then move on to John Wilkins's Evolution and Philosophy essay, which addresses some of your stated concerns.

I'm concerned about truth. Truth is not served by anti-evolutionists spewing falsehoods.

Wesley

The "Law of Conservation of Information" (LCI) is not "as real as" the Law of Conservation of Energy. At least, it is easy to find counterexamples to this supposed "LCI" under the most commonly applied definitions of information. When "information" is defined rigorously, as by Shannon or Algorithmic Information Theory, one finds that real-world examples of genetic changes can and do increase information. Obviously, if there were such a thing as the "LCI", one should not be able to find any such examples. See my pages Evolutionary increases in information and Spetner Info.

Scientists should have no difficulty in verifying the accuracy of what I've said here.

Wesley

This does not happen often among animals, largely because animals do not generally allow selfing (exceptions include some frogs and salamanders). Speciation among animals is usually due to many generations of populations being kept geographically separate from the main body of a species, and accruing random and selective changes to the point where they cannot, or will not, interbreed with the original gene pool.

Other mechanisms of speciation include rearrangements of chromosomes (through mechanisms called "inversions", "deletions", and "insertions") and selection in the same region for adaptation to different ecological niches. These are thought to be rarer than the isolation model.

There are too many examples to list here. One good recent text that lists many such cases is

Berlocher, S. H. (1998). A brief history of research on speciation. In Endless forms: species and speciation. Eds D. J. Howard and S. H. Berlocher. New York, Oxford University Press: 3-15. I recommend the entire book to you on this subject.

It's one thing to speak in vague generalities about authors here having "filmed their own eyes from the truth", and quite another to point out an actual problem in one or more FAQs archived here. I notice that Gideon fails to do the latter.

It should be obvious to anyone browsing the archive that our authors have looked at more than one aspect of the controversy. It is because we have looked at more than one aspect that we are able to make criticisms. Further, we encourage readers to view the arguments made by antievolutionists, in their own words, by maintaining an extensive set of links to antievolution materials online (click here). In my perusal of antievolution sites, I find it rare that they will point to mainstream science views or sites.

Personally, I tend to doubt the truthfulness of the disclaimer that Gideon makes that he is "a supporter of Darwin's theory". I've seen too many antievolutionists use this ploy in online discussions to simply accept it at face value. Perhaps Gideon would care to point out where this "support" can be seen by others via a post to the talk.origins newsgroup.

Wesley

Dave Matson detailed the flaws in the "shrinking sun" argument in response to Kent Hovind's bunk. (Just search for "shrinking" on that page.) Sverker Johansson's Solar FAQ also discusses the "shrinking sun" argument.

Likewise as it regards Piltdown man and Nebraska man, what matters is what is true. Piltdown man was a fraud. If you were to actually read Jim Foley's FAQ on Piltdown man, you will see that it is called a fraud and that it was "horribly embarrassing" to the paleontological community. We call it what it is. Nebraska man was NOT a fraud, so we do not call it such. It was a mistaken identification of a specimen that was corrected by HF Osborn a couple of years later when new evidence came to light. There is no dishonesty there, so why should we call it that?

The early evolutionist Lamarck believed that these "base" species were constantly being generated and that they then "ascended" the scale of being over time - in short, he did not think that species arose via common descent.

You can read the details of the spontaneous generation debate in the excellent Investigations into Generation 1651-1828 by Elizabeth Gasking, Hutchison 1967. For an introduction to the history of evolutionary theory, read Peter Bowler's excellent Evolution: The history of an idea, rev. edn, University of California Press 1989.

I'll note that sometimes, when I can beat the atheists to the response, I have made replies to those kinds of comments in feedback in the past. But the message, that it is possible for belief in God and acceptance of the findings of evolutionary biology to coexist, is true whether the respondent pointing it out is a theist or an atheist.

Actually, I think that the "theist/agnostic/atheist" set of descriptors is incomplete. Let me propose a more complete list.

Evangelical theist

The sorts of theists who aren't satisfied with believing in God; you must believe, too. Some are content to proselytize, others have employed more effective methods (e.g., Torquemada).

Theist

Believes in God or gods.

Agnostic

Hasn't decided, personally, whether God exists.

Apatheist

Doesn't care whether God exists.

Atheist

Does not, personally, believe that God exists.

Evangelical Atheist

The sorts of atheists who are not satisfied with their own non-belief in God; you must doubt in the same way they do. Some are content to argue, others have employed more effective methods (e.g., Stalin).

BTW, ;-)

Wesley

Also, Darwin himself made the point that languages evolve like species - he said, quoting Max Müller, that a "struggle for life is constantly going on amongst the words and grammatical forms in each language. The better, the shorter, the easier forms are constantly gaining the upper hand, and they owe their success to their inherent virtue..." (from the Descent of Man, 1871; I owe this quote and these observations to a talk by G. M. Radick). His next comment is intriguing: "The perfectly regular and wonderfully complex construction of the languages of many barbarous nations has often been advanced as proof, either of the divine origin of these languages, or of the high art and former civilisation of their founders." So Darwin addressed this issue over 130 years ago.

Darwin also argued that selection was to be the account for the existence of linguistic abilities, of course, but that is a different topic.

Christ decides who is a true Christian. The Sermon on the Mount tells us that some people who believe that they are true Christians are going to be surprised to discover that Christ does not consider them so.

Contrary to Aaron's claim, there are plenty of people of faith, including Christians, who are able to reconcile belief in God with an acknowledgment of the findings of evolutionary biology. Check out the God and Evolution FAQ on this site. Another good resource is Ken Miller's "Finding Darwin's God".

Wesley

About the turnip mosaic virus and the impatiens spotted wilt mosaic virus (Don't you mean the impatiens necrotic spot virus? I know of a tomato spotted wilt virus -- These are both Tospoviruses):

The "mosaic virus" designation is not a terribly useful (or appropriate?) taxonomic indicator. These viruses are actually in separate families. The turnip mosaic virus is a positive-strand RNA virus (Family: Potyviridae) while the impatiens necrotic spot virus is a negative-strand RNA virus (Family: Bunyaviridae). Their life-cycles are consequently significantly different (look it up on the web). I don't see why anyone would consider such a transformation to be more experimentally "simple".

I don't know the relative degree of similarity between the Yersinia and Erwinia genera but it doesn't seem that they would be much more closely related than the Escherichia and Salmonella genera.

With 25 million years of separation and a very conservatively estimated reproductive rate of one generation per day, we're talking about 9 billion generations separating the genera listed above. Contrast this to laboratory experiments where runs of less than 100 generations are typical. Even continuous culture experiments rarely get out to 1000 generations (With 30 minute doubling times, a thousand generations is 20 days!). The difference in experimental and actual timescales is thus a factor of about 10-100 million.

So no, I doubt that the experiment proposed is actually "simple".

What about the virus evolution suggestion? The potyviruses are very small (~8 kilobases; ~20 proteins) and are positive-strand RNA viruses,. Their reproduction does not go through a DNA intermediate. In contrast, the pox family of viruses are quite large double-stranded DNA viruses (~185 kilobases; ~200 proteins).

In other words, these two families of viruses are quite different. In fact, given their completely different methods of reproduction, they may have arisen from different parts of the cell. Last "common ancestor"? How does a billion years ago sound? I know of no microbiologist for whom a billion-year research program sounds like an "easier test."

The paragraph you quote describes talk.origins, which is a newsgroup where you can find participants of all persuasions.

The second paragraph then explains this web site, as follows:

This archive is a collection of articles and essays, most of which have appeared in talk.origins at one time or another. The primary reason for this archive's existence is to provide mainstream scientific responses to the many frequently asked questions (FAQs) and frequently rebutted assertions that appear in talk.origins.

That is: this web site is an archive of information intended mainly to response to frequently recurring questions that show up in the newsgroup. The archive is very much from the mainstream science perspective.

You are very welcome to participate in the newsgroup. We have a good FAQ on the newsgroup, and advice for getting the most from your participation. It is called Welcome to talk.origins!. However, you should be aware that many participants in the newsgroup have been involved in this for a long time, and are well aware of the usual arguments. In fact, that is why this archive was set up in the first place.

There would be nothing to stop someone doing the same thing from a creationist perspective, and from time to time there have been attempts along that line; some of which are still active. I can't resist pointing out one case of a creationist talk.origins contributor who put together quite a good quality site intended to perform the same function as this web site but from a creationist perspective. The author eventually became an evolutionist as well; it is actually very difficult to become really familiar with the arguments and evidence from all sides, but to remain a creationist!

His site is now called Genesis Panthesis.

Although I'm not a die-hard evolutionist (I am always eager to find evidence that contradicts my beliefs), I will address your questions.

(1) From Asia, if I remember correctly. Erwin (1970), cited in the bombardier beetle article, has a section on this, but I don't have the paper handy.
(2) Depends on which ancestors.
(3) One. Seriously.
(4) The odds of life originating purely on its own are zero. These odds go way up, approximately to one, when sources of energy and raw materials are allowed to contribute.
(5) That is a question for astrophysicists and cosmologists. My understanding is that, by and large, the inflationary period after the Big Bang produced hydrogen and helium, light elements were produced inside stars and spread via novas, and heavy elements came from supernovas.
(6) Another bombardier beetle. Are you under the impression that their bombardier mechanism keeps them from mating? It doesn't.
(7) Sorry, I can't make sense of the question. For one thing, "volatility" isn't an all-or-nothing trait. There is a bombardier beetle today which produces only a foam, not a boiling-hot jet. (Eisner, Thomas, D.J. Aneshansley, M. Eisner, A.B. Attygalle, D.W. Alsop, J. Meinwald, 2000. Spray mechanism of the most primitive bombardier beetle (Metrius contractus). Journal of Experimental Biology 203: 1265-1275.)
(8) Evolutionists say no such thing.
(9) Mutation and recombination produce the complexity, and natural selection produces the organization. Together, they produce organized complexity.

We currently have on-line a very old FAQ called "How Good Are Those Young-Earth Arguments? A Close Look at Dr. Hovind's List of Young-Earth Arguments and Other Claims " where many of Hovind's "questions" are addressed, including the mammoths.

If you searched for mammoths, you would have found also: "Woolly Mammoths: Evidence of Catastrophe? " and "The Mysterious Origins of Man: Atlantis, Mammoths, and Crustal Shift ".

The mammoths a very good case in point for showing how unreliable Hovind and various other cranks are in getting the details correct.

PS. It is not the south pole, but the northern arctic. Possible confusion with the south pole could arise thanks to the abysmal "Mysterious Origins of Man" production which speaks of a lost civilizations buried in the antarctic, and also refers to the arctic mammoths with all the usual errors. See the relevant FAQ cited above.

PPS. Camels? I have no idea what this might refer to. I suspect a confusion between fossils in the arctic and fossils in North America generally; and also a confusion between fossils and frozen remains. Hovind comes out with the most bizarre stuff sometimes.

PPPS. For your further amusement, you might like to look at The wild, wild world of Kent Hovind (off-site).

Brian, is this your web page?

Elephanticity

Wesley

We have two relevant FAQs on this topic. God and Evolution and Various Interpretations of Genesis.

I will add a few comments of my own, however.

A conflict arises when you treat the bible as if it is written directly by a divine being with the intent of explaining (amongst other things) the historical events involved in the origins of life and the universe.

This is by no means the only way the bible is approached, not even by Christians.

A more common position for Christians is that the bible is written by human authors, who were inspired by God. The nature of inspiration is a matter of debate as well.

One approach considers that the authors of the bible, and of the first chapters in Genesis in particular, were not supernaturally endowed with understanding of the ancient past, nor was their primary intent to convey information about the ancient past. Rather, they were focussed on revealing the nature of God, and most importantly the concept of monotheism. There are strong similarities with the Genesis 1 account, and with creation mythologies of of surrounding cultures, most especially the Babylonians. There are major differences as well. And it is in the differences that one might expect to see most clearly the specific concerns of the writer. I am here spelling out in a little bit more detail the reworked myth model of interpretation, mentioned briefly in the FAQs above. If this is the aim and background of the writer, a scientifically accurate account would have been useless. The point was to take familiar cosmological models and recast them into a form that shows up the nature of God for the Israelites, in constrast to the polytheistic Babylonians. Trying to compare with modern evolutionary biology and modern cosmology simply misses the entire point.

This is not the only way of reading the bible, of course; and there will be many Christians who reject this entirely, insisting on a model which *is* in stark conflict with modern science. Why would you choose to take them more seriously?

The claim that Christians have no business calling themselves scientists is nothing but shallow bigotry, based on an impoverished notion of Christianity. There are countless examples of Christians who are superlative scientists, and if you want to be serious about the bible (and you are certainly under no obligation to be serious about the bible) then you perhaps should look more closely at how they treat the bible.

Different religions and religious interpretations are appropriate for different people. I find the "faith" you describe to be downright abhorrent, and I was an atheist for many years because I thought believing in God meant believing in the sort of God you do. Obviously, my religious views would be no better for you than yours are for me. Insisting on any one religious view guarantees your view will be wrong for many people.

It is different with objective reality. Evidence from objective reality applies the same to everybody. And that evidence, and only that evidence, is what evolution is all about.

One doesn't have to attribute guilt to accept the position that all have sinned and have fallen short of the grace of God.

"Original sin" is a doctrine that post-dates Christ, the apostles, and quite a bit of the early church history. It's a "foundation" piece that was slipped under the building after it was built.

Wesley

However, to be more specific as to your question. Here is a collection of statements by several religious organizations, including Episcopal, Lutheran, Methodist and Presbyterian churches. This is from Voices for Evolution maintained by the National Center for Science Education. Statements from Religious Organizations.