Feedback for June 2000

The objections are: why would God deceive us in this way? What does he get out of it? How would we know this scientifically? Shouldn't science just continue to use the evidence to draw the conclusions the evidence supports? Why accept (scientifically) that the evidence sure points to a world that is 4.5 billion years old, in a universe that is close to 14.5 billion years old, only God wants us to think it is very much younger than that?

Scientists have to work only on the basis of the evidence. As Christians, Muslims or whatever they can reconcile their science with their scriptures any way they like, but that is not a matter for science, and it should not affect the way science proceeds in any way. Otherwise you are mixing up religious belief and scientific knowledge and both will suffer for it.

1. Thermodynamics not does equal "degeneration." Thermodynamics is the study of heat flows ("thermo" = heat + "dynamics" = change). A common creationist misconception is that the laws of thermodynamics (in some vaguely defined way) prevent the spontaneous generation of order. But they most certainly do not. Critiques of evolution based on thermodynamics are simply wrong, and show that the person making the critique understands neither evolution nor thermodynamics. See the Thermodynamics FAQs.
2. Evolution does not equal "simple to complex." A common misconception is that evolution makes "simple" creatures into "complex" ones. Besides the extreme difficulty of rigorously defining "simple" and "complex," this argument is false because evolution requires no such thing. Evolution is change — any change — in the genetic makeup of a population of organisms. See the Introduction to Evolutionary Biology FAQ under the heading "Common Misconceptions about Evolution."
3. Evolution does not equal "life came from non-life." The origins of life on Earth are the study of abiogenesis. Although this process may have involved selection effects among the chemical precursors to life, evolutionary biology is primarily concerned with the diversity of life on Earth, that is, what happened after the first living organisms appeared.

Most of their other claims (polystrate fossils, the second law of thermodynamics, the supposed lack of transitional fossils, etc., etc.) are tired rehashes of claims made by other creationists and have been thoroughly discussed on this site. Check the index or use our search facility to find material on specific claims.

Just because they don't rant like Kent Hovind doesn't mean that they're any more correct in their scientific claims.

1. We received over one hundred feedbacks that month. Many of the people responding to feedback on the Archive's behalf are academics, who have end-of-year activities such as finals to grade and so on. Though I am not an academic, I was out of town for a good portion of that month.
2. The responses come from volunteers, who answer questions that look interesting to them. If yours didn't get answered, it might just be that it didn't capture anyone's attention in particular.
3. Now that I review it, your feedback shows that you didn't carefully read the article in question. You say, among other things, "Did these beetles go around blowing themselves up until they perfected it?" As specifically addressed in the article, and as addressed in several prior feedbacks, the chemicals that the bombardier beetle uses for defense do not explode.

Finally, we make no claim to wisdom. In fact, we direct our visitors to consider our extensive list of other links and, most importantly, to check our articles against the primary scientific literature referenced in those articles. See the Archive's welcome message for more details.

Actually, I personally disagree that the 6-day creation model is a "correct" interpretation of Genesis. As our Various Interpretations of Genesis FAQ describes, there are many ways by which Christians reconcile Genesis with the findings of modern science. As for myself, I believe that proper Biblical exegesis must take into account the knowledge, lifestyle, and worldview of Biblical authors and the people at the time. This is the complaint that many Christians have against young-earth creationism: they feel it's bad theology, not just bad science.

But this is my personal view alone. Science and this archive take no position as to matters of Biblical interpretation. What they can do is determine that a particular Biblical interpretation, young-earth creationism, contradicts the physical evidence we see in nature. One is left with two alternatives: either God has faked the evidence, or the interpretation is incorrect. Creationists, of course, attempt to insert a third possibility -- science is incorrect -- but they have been woefully unsuccessful in their attempts.

1. It's nice to get such warm feedback - we really do try to be even handed and sensitive to others' beliefs, without compromising the science, and

2. I learned a new word - hebetudinous, which The Merriam-Webster Dictionary On-line defines as "lethargy, dullness".

Realize first that this archive is a strictly volunteer effort. We do this out of the goodness of our hearts and pocketbooks; the archive receives no other source of funding as far as I'm aware.

We would absolutely love to include more photographs on this site. The reason that we don't have more (besides the hominind illustrations and scattered pictures elsewhere) is that it is difficult for us to get royalty-free pictures that we can place on the site. We would have to negotiate with the copyright holders for that access.

That said, we would certainly appreciate any suggestions or contributions of useful photographs and illustrations to the archive.

One final point: "Lucy" (more properly Australopithecus afarensis) has not been proven to be a fraud. See the Lucy's Knee Joint FAQ for information on one bogus creationist claim regarding Lucy.

1. Your Internet service provider (ISP) does not give you access to a Usenet feed. If that's the case, you'll have to change ISPs. Or you can access Usenet over the Web at deja.com [now Google Groups] or reference.com [now defunct].
2. You do not have Usenet newsreading software installed on your computer. Both Netscape Communicator and Microsoft Internet Explorer include a Usenet newsreader, but it might not have been installed on your system. There are also other newsreading programs available, including Forté Free Agent for Windows and Yet Another NewsWatcher for the Macintosh.
3. You have newsreading software, but it is not configured properly for your ISP. I can't help you there; you'll have to contact your ISP for instructions.

For more information about Usenet, see the Usenet FAQs.

• The Shroud of Turin
• Shroud Links
• Council for Study of the Shroud of Turin

Even at the very beginning of the chemical evolution that led to biological evolution, the processes began on existing chemicals, and then began to metabolise each other as well as them.

Some of these macroevolutionary taxa are thought to be, by their proponents, such things as developmental constraints, species selection or sorting, or "laws of form".

The matter is not as clearly defined as this suggests. And it is neither Darwinian nor non-Darwinian. Some biologists have gone so far as to claim that their macroevolutionary ideas are non-Darwinian, but in nearly every case this just means non-neo-Darwinian, or that evolution is not always selectionist or acting on genes.

There are no proofs either way. Selection and drift - the two staples of population genetics evolution - have been shown mathematically to make the evolution of species possible. Moreover, gradual selective processes can result in dynamics very like Punctuated Equilibrium Theory predicts (or claims - PE is not so much a mathematical model as a generalisation from the paleontological evidence).

However, speciation is generally thought to be due to geographical isolation rather than by selection. So in one sense, speciation and thus all macroevolution, is not due to the classic mechanisms of neo-Darwinism.

Your creationist friend is likely to have misunderstood this debate. PE-theorists like Eldredge do not say that evolution has not occurred, or that selection is not the mechanism of adaptation. All they are saying is that the lineages of species evolving from species happens at variable rates ranging from geologically quickly to almost not at all. This is a long-held Darwinian view - indeed, it is mentioned several times in the Origin of Species.

See the following FAQs for more information:

Punctuated Equilibria

Random Genetic Drift

Evolution is a Fact and a Theory

The Modern Synthesis of Genetics and Evolution

and Macroevolution

for more information and references.

I'm not sorry to say that I don't believe in Evolution, either. That is to say, I do not believe in evolution the way one might believe in God or angels or everlasting life. Evolution isn't something that one believes or disbelieves; it is something that one accepts given the overwhelming scientific evidence — and it is overwhelming — supporting it.

The point I am trying to make, and which is made in various places throughout this archive, is that while some people try to contrast God and evolution, they aren't really mutually exclusive. Accepting evolution doesn't mean that one must necessarily fail to believe in God, or that one cannot be a Christian. See the God and Evolution FAQ.

As for your final challenge, it's hard to answer it... since you didn't supply a reference and didn't give enough detail for me to be sure of the exact case that you're referring to. If I were forced to guess, I'd guess that you refer to creationist claims on the Hualalei lava flows. If so, Don Lindsay has refuted that claim.

Many people who accept a Creator God also accept the evidence of evolution as how God created. Evolutionary biology does not require giving up faith in God, nor does it require an excess of pride.

Please have a look at the God and Evolution FAQ. It summarizes how evolutionary biology is compatible with faith.

Also, it is worth having a look at what evolutionary biology really is before dismissing it. There are many FAQ entries here that help give an accessible introduction to a variety of topics in evolutionary biology.

Wesley

Let's simplify. If a doctor were to give you a census of E. coli bacteria in your gut, could you then work out your birth date from that information? The answer, of course, is "No."

Trying to find the date of the first appearance of humans from human population data fails for exactly the same reasons.

Wesley

Another relatively common mechanism of speciation in sexually reproducing species is through change of karyotype. This mode of speciational change does pretty much arise through a single individual having some sort of change in karyotype. (One will find two groups, "fusionists" who hold that most such speciation events are due to "Robertsonian translocations" or other means of fusing chromosomes, and "fissionists" who hold that fission of chromosomes is more common. The weight of evidence appears to give the "fusionists" the edge currently.)

OK, let's say some individual has such a change in karyotype. (In humans, the species from which we have the most data, such changes appear to be at about 1 in 1000.) How, then, can such an individual propagate. The answer is, "With a bit more difficulty than usual." Such changes may reduce but not eliminate fertility with individuals having an unmodified chromosome complement. To produce individuals with a stable karyotype in the new mode just requires a bit of incest, not necessarily two individuals changing in the same manner at the same time and location.

Dr. Kurt Benirschke gave an interesting presentation recently which touched on the pattern of karyotype differences in swine and peccaries. Such patterns support the view that karyotype change as described above is an important mechanism of speciational change in sexually reproducing organisms.

Wesley

Speciation — at least, allopatric speciation — can occur when a population of organisms is geographically separated from the main population. In that case, any mutations that propagate throughout one population do not propagate through the other. At any particular time, the organisms can reproduce within a population, so a population's organisms remain genetically close. (We'll ignore asexual populations for the moment.) But one population as a whole may over time collect and propagate enough genetic changes through it that none of its individuals can any longer procreate with any individual from the other population.

Do you see the difference? You don't need two individuals coincidentally having the same "speciation mutation" at the exact same time. You only need two populations that are isolated for a long enough time such that each builds up enough genetic differences with the other population.

The other point, that Wesley discusses in more detail, is that the definition of "species" is not quite as black-and-white as we may normally think it is. A particular mutation may reduce an organism's chance of breeding with other members of the population without eliminating it entirely. That is, an organism may be able to breed with some, but not all, members of a population.

Suppose I come up with a hypothesis that X causes Y. You can come up with X+A causes Y, X+B causes Y indefinitely. Logically, there are an infinite number of hypotheses you can generate in this way. To make it more concrete, suppose I say that one god causes the universe. It competes not only with the idea that no god causes the universe, but that 2 gods, 3 gods, ... do. Eventually, there is an infinite number of gods invoked. This can be repeated for any hypothesis quite easily.

So in order to use a process of elimination in Sherlock Holmes' sense, we have to be able to restrict the number of viable hypotheses to some manageable number (say, two or three). Then elimination is useful and scientific.

With respect to your three alternatives, other possibilities include

4. We mis-observed the phenomena (malfunctioning instruments, drunk observer, mass hysteria, cultural imposition, etc)

5. There is a natural explanation that some scientists know but others do not

6. It is not, really, an anomaly

The latter is common in science. For example, people keep "observing" Lamarckian processes in biology which, on close examination and reflection turn out to be quite Darwinian. The "anomaly" is due to a failure in the theoretical equipment of the scientists rather than in the actual event.

The problem with ID claims is that they are an admission of failure from the beginning. If you cannot explain it on current knowledge, abandon all hope of doing it at all, is the ID message. That would make any science impossible. You just would not ever find these explanations because nobody would ever look if ID were the ruling paradigm.

However, I agree that self-correction is what drives science. The problem is that you can only correct if there's a reason to investigate further, and ID blocks that option for "rational" investigators.

We are obliged to seek natural explanations not because we weight them higher than supernatural investigations, but because supernatural explanations are outside the domain of science altogether, from an epistemological (method and knowledge) perspective. In the same way, we are not able to use science to generate new case law. Legal argument is not a scientific matter. The two fields may interact in some manner, but that is not the issue.

On bad design, again, the measures for an engineering perspective are objective. Energy use, stress distribution, photon capture and so forth are not subjective criteria. Of course, you are free to say that the purpose of the eye is to behold the Lord or attract comely women rather than see objects, and I cannot disprove that, but if it is to visually assess the environment, it is a less than optimal design. The argument from creationists is that the eye is intended (motivated by the desire to have an organ) to see. It is thus bad design, since photon capture could be increased by reversing the retina and the blood flow that feeds it (and how that arrangement helps one to behold the Lord or whatever is also unclear).

But ask how we can, in purely scientific terms, know the designer's intentions? If you say that we need revelation for that, and I would agree it is the only source of such knowledge, then you agree with me that science cannot entertain such rarified notions of design. If you say we can know it empirically, then give a methodology that does so (the designer's email address will do just fine, if he/she/it has PGP and a digital signature). Then we can investigate these matters using science.

What the spine staying the same or not has to do with the topic is not clear. Post in the talk.origins newsgroup and we can discuss it. This is not the forum for such extended discussions.

The relevant criterion is not "reproducibility". Rather, the relevant criterion is "intersubjective experience". If different observers can agree upon their experience of the evidence concerning an event or phenomenon, then we have the basis for making scientific inferences based upon it. If "reproducibility" were the criterion, then for every homicide investigation the detectives might have to commit several similar murders in order to justify their conclusions. Astronomers working on the phenomena of supernovas would have to blow up one or more stars in order to refine their hypotheses, and they would probably start with the closest one available for convenience sake. Archaeologists digging up the mummified remains of child sacrifices in Peru might have to raid the orphanages in order to confirm their findings. And I shudder to think of what cosmologists working on the "Big Bang" theory might need to do...

I'm happy to say that "reproducibility" is not necessary to scientific or forensic research. "Intersubjective experience" appears to work just fine. The evidence left by history speaks clearly to observers, and what it tells us accords well with mainstream science, and argues against various and sundry claims made by anti-evolutionists. The claim that "faith" is necessary for accepting the findings of evolutionary biology, in any significant and meaningful sense of the term, is unjustified.

Wesley

1. The talk.origins Welcome FAQ explains that the Usenet newsgroup talk.origins "is a newsgroup devoted to the discussion of issues related to biological and physical origins." This Archive is named after the newsgroup. We do have a section on hominid origins, however.
2. The Talk.Origins Archive collectively holds no view beyond that expressed in our welcome message. Some of those who contribute to this Archive may hold a view of scientism; but I, for one, personally do not.

The actual history of racism - which I here define as the view that the different races of humanity are different biological species or of different levels of "perfection" - goes back a long way. Prior to Darwin, there were two views (both of which adduced Genesis as "evidence" from time to time. These were "monogenism" and "polygenism". The monos argued for a single origin for all humans, while the polys claimed that only the white race was descended from human stock.

Darwin of course argued for the monogenist position, while creationists such as Louis Agassiz argued for the polygenist position. But not all did - a number of creationists in the nineteenth century argued for monogenism, and some evolutionists argued for polygenism.

The issue is not whether acceptance of the Bible leads to one or the other view, but whether racist views have been espoused by creationists, and they have. Evolution clearly does not lead to racism in itself.

Moreover, what a "popular" theory of Darwinian evolution leads to is no more evidence against Darwinism than what "popular" views of Christianity have led to are evidence against Christian religion. In fact a proper understanding of evolution leads to the rejection of racism, and many leading evolutionists were strong opponents of it in the course of the 20th century. "Evolution" does not teach racism.

The consensus of science, including such disciplines as biology, physical anthropology, linguistics and so forth, all predicated upon the assumption of evolution, is that the human species has only shallow geographic variation. Call these races if you like, but the taxonomic sense of "race" is much deeper than that, and includes reduced gene flow and ecological adaptation that human "races" do not have.

It has been known since the end of the 18th century, with Buffon, that the "racial differences" of humans are not identical to the races we find commonly referred to - "African" is more genetically and physiologically diverse than the rest of the entire world. In effect the human species has only two races, Sub-Saharan Africans and everybody else, if it has any at all. This is the result of biological investigation.

An entertaining and informative account of the history of race in the nineteenth century and its relationship to Darwinism is

Alter, Stephen G. Darwinism and the linguistic image: language, race, and natural theology in the nineteenth century, New studies in American intellectual and cultural history. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999.

The very notion of "race" in humans is probably the result of the way in which humans classify their world naturally:

Hirschfeld, Lawrence A. Race in the making: cognition, culture, and the child’s construction of human kinds, Learning, development, and conceptual change. Cambridge, Mass.; London, England: MIT Press, 1996.

Julian Huxley, "The emergence of Darwinism", in Callender, Charles, and Sol Tax eds. Evolution after Darwin : the University of Chicago centennial. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960, volume 1 pp1-21.

The quote can be found on page 18. However, I do not know what is exactly wrong with the statement. It is perhaps not specific enough for a description of biological evolution, but it is a common usage of the term, and certainly various authors think that evolution is not restricted to biology, eg

• Boyd, Robert, and Peter J. Richerson. Culture and the evolutionary process. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985.
• Campbell, DT. "Variation and selective retention in socio-cultural evolution." In Social change in developing areas, a reinterpretation of evolutionary theory, ed. H.R. Barringer, G.I. Blanksten, and R.W. Mack. Cambridge Massachusetts: Schenkman publishing company, 1965.
• Dunbar, R. I. M., Camilla Power, and Chris Knight. The evolution of culture: an interdisciplinary view. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999.
• Hull, David L. Science as a process: an evolutionary account of the social and conceptual development of science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988.
• Plotkin, Henry C. Darwin machines and the nature of knowledge. Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1994.
• Taylor, Gary. Cultural selection. New York: Basic Books, 1996.
• Wilkins, John S. "The appearance of Lamarckism in the evolution of culture." In Darwinism and evolutionary economics, ed. J Nightingale and J Laurent. Cheltenham UK: Edward Elgar, forthcoming.

Huxley treated what he called "psycho-social evolution" as a process that was distinct from biological evolution but occurred along the same lines.

What Larry sees as "quite formidable" I see as "pretty pathetic". The summary of Ross's "model" seeks to deploy a variant of the doctrine of "special creation" with some Cuvier thrown in for spice. This stuff is over a hundred years dead, not a "new" model at all. The claimed "predictions" in no way follow from the premises. All in all, it appears to be yet another theological creed simply given the label, but not the content, of science. The only novelty I see here is rolling it out at a conference with a $59 registration fee. I suppose that having paid for the conference might give the attendees the mistaken impression that the information presented there was valuable.

This isn't really a forum. If Larry wants an extended discussion, he should post to the Usenet talk.origins newsgroup.

Wesley

The other kind is more relevant. Science is a human enterprise of getting to know and understand the world. Therefore it relies upon evidence as information about the world. It must be epistemologically naturalistic (epistemology is the standard term for the study of how we know things about the world).

Consequently, so far as science is concerned, there are two modes of knowledge: ignorance and successful explanation on the basis of evidence. If an evidentiary explanation comes along, of course it is going to be preferred.

Of course, science may be a futile exercise. We may all be in the thrall of an Evil Demon who deceives us, or Brains in a Vat. But so long as we seek to know the world in which we live through evidence, we must prefer epistemologically natural explanations.

Of course there are an indefinite number of theories we can propose given any set of data. But if that is the game you are playing, then you are not playing "knowing the world", you are playing something like "reinforcing my worldview". The data certainly excludes some hypotheses, even if only on the basis of background theories.

Finally, what exactly is a "theistic explanation" in the context of knowing the world? I can understand that the actions of God may have theological import, moral import, or inspire hope for future or present redemption and salvation. But how does God's existence explain, for example, the mutation rates of organisms in toxic environments? Only biological investigation does that.

As for www.creationscience.com, properly known as "The Center for Scientific Creation", the home pages of Walter Brown, I've already been there. Indeed, the "calculations" are "real", in the sense that they do exist, but alas for the creationist, they are not "real" in the sense of making sense (which they do not). For instance, see my own refutation of Brown's absurdities regarding plate tectonics, in " On Walter Brown & Plate Tectonics (1997)" and "On Creationism and Plate Tectonics". And elsewhere in the Talk.Origins Archive, see "The Recession of the Moon and the Age of the Earth-Moon System", which refutes Brown's not very good argument about the recession of the Moon from the Earth.