Feedback for March 2004

The actual definitions used in science are available in our FAQ What is Evolution?.

Some scientists are atheists, and consider that there is no involvement of God or gods in the processes of the natural world. Some scientists are Christians, and believe in a supreme creator God who ordained and created all the natural world, including any process scientists may study. Other scientists come from other religious traditions, and there is a great diversity of metaphyiscal perspectives; but science itself is not able to distinguish them.

Science does, of course, refute various concrete models about histories and events. To take a very extreme example, available empirical evidence shows plainly that the Earth is very ancient; and thus it was not made over the space of six days some six thousand years ago.

But science does not, and cannot, refute or confirm the metaphysical notion of a supernatural and divine creator being the foundation of the natural world which we study, and the definitions of scientific theories like evolution or anything else do not include metaphysical riders like the one you present.

As a straightforward counter example to your perspective on evolution, consider Theodosius Dobzhansky. He was a geneticist and an evolutionary biologist of enormous importance, instrumental in development of the new synthesis in evolutionary biology (in the 1930s) which amalgamated the fields of genetics and evolutionary biology. His groundbreaking book Genetics and the Origin of Species (1937), along with major works by Mayr, Huxley, Haldane and others, gave evolutionary biology a solid foundation which synthesized the two critical notions of selection and mutation; previously seen mainly as distinct alternatives. He continued to be prolific in work and insight up to his death in 1975. He also considered human evolution, in Mankind Evolving: The Evolution of the Human Species and other works. (See Modern evolutionary synthesis and Theodosius Dobzhansky in the wikipedia.)

Dobzhansky is famous for the remark Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution, which is the title of an essay he wrote in 1973. Read the essay. It reveals another aspect of Dobzhansky of which you should be aware.

Dobzhansky was all his life a devout Christian (Russian Orthodox). In the article above, he says:

Does the evolutionary doctrine clash with religious faith? It does not. It is a blunder to mistake the Holy Scriptures for elementary textbooks of astronomy, geology, biology, and anthropology. Only if symbols are construed to mean what they are not intended to mean can there arise imaginary, insoluble conflicts. As pointed out above, the blunder leads to blasphemy: the Creator is accused of systematic deceitfulness.

His essay concludes (citing Teilhad de Chardin) with the following phrase:

...the Creation is realized in this world by means of evolution.

That is not a conclusion of science. It is a position of faith. But it is a position entirely consistent with science; and it is a serious misunderstanding of science to write into the definitions a metaphysical presumption that there is no role for a God or creator in the processes we see in the natural world and study by the tools of science.

There is an entire FAQ section (Frequently Asked Questions) about the difference between evolution the fact, and evolution the theory. I recommend it to your attention: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/evolution-fact.html

In short, we observe evolution. The genetic nature of populations changes. That is a fact. Facts need no proof; they are observations in the real world; they simply are; they exist. Many observations about life on this planet beg for an explanation: why are some organisms similar to one another, and others different? Why are some organisms found in certain places but not others? The theory of evolution- which draws on information from biology, geology, paleontology, and other fields- explains those data. So while no scientist would claim that common descent (which is what most people object to about evolution) is a fact, and none would say it has been proven, almost every scientist (including hundreds named "Steve") would say there is overwhelming evidence to support it, and no evidence to support special creation.

Various properties of life on Mars, such as finding its genetics not to be DNA-based, could bolster evolution. Creationism, in its general sense, can accomodate absolutely anything, so it would not be seriously hurt, though creationists might want to adapt and include Mars as part of where God created life. Finding a large black obelisk, on the other hand, could seriously challenge our understanding of evolution.

Wesley

The reason that these methods work is this: minerals typically have a distinct structure and chemical makeup when they first form. For example, quartz is made of molecules of silicon dioxide locked together in a characteristic way. Because minerals are solids, the different atoms and molecules which make up the mineral are locked into place relative to one another. When an atom of, for example, uranium decays, it turns into an atom of something else (in the case of uranium, the product is lead). The "new" (or daughter) atom remains locked in the same place in the mineral that the "old" (parent) atom was. As a result, the chemical makeup of the mineral changes. For example, if enough time passes, a mineral which is normally rich in uranium but poor in lead will become rich in lead and poor in uranium. If you know what the ratio of the parent atom to the daughter atom would have been when the mineral formed, and you know how fast the parent is converted into the daughter, you can find out the age of the rock by determining what the ratio is now. This is a gross oversimplification of the process, of course, but it should give you an idea of the basic theory behind the process.

There is ongoing discussion in other byways of the net. Here are two relatively comprehensive sites and with quite different perspectives.

1. Aquatic Ape Theory, maintained by Dewi Morgan (Elaine Morgan's grandson). Supportive, but admirably unpretentious and fairminded.
2. Aquatic Ape Theory: Sink or Swim by Jim Moore. This page is critical of the model, and is a bit more up to date.

The TalkOrigins Archive gives an unofficial offhand endorsement of the second site in our links collection. It includes a rather blistering review of Morgan's 1997 book: The Aquatic Ape Hypothesis.

Chemistry, whether it is organic or not, is deterministic in a fashion - it means that if you bring two or more molecules of kind X, Y and Z in the right pressure, temperature and in the presence of catalysts and the like, a reaction is certain to happen, or will happen in some set percentage of cases. However, we just do not know if the whole class of reactions that can give rise to self-reproducing chemical systems is large or small, if only one of the trillions of combinations of the basic building blocks of life as we know it can cause life to begin, or if many can. It is beginning to look like the possibilities are rather large.

Moreover, we just do not know how often these conditions, in which life can arise, occur in nature. Perhaps earth was entirely covered by oceans of the stuff life needs to begin, or perhaps it happened once, in a single small place. So we just can't assess those probabilities. The usual creationist "calculations" assume that everything is equally likely - but if life is more likely if a common set of chemical reactions occur than random chance, then life is more likely than not.

In short, don't take the claims that life is likely or unlikely at face value.

Darwin deserves full credit for a thorough examination of the evidence and the possibilites, and he stands out as one of the great scientific minds of the era. But the discovery was in the wings, and many other naturalists were starting to understand the processes that Darwin was also studying. Indeed, Darwin had to rush Origin of Species to print because very similar ideas were due to be published by another naturalist, Alfred Wallace; and there was also a host of other naturalists working on related ideas.

For more details on the relevant history, on Darwin's original contributions, and the contributions that were made by others, see our FAQ Darwin's Precursors and Influences.

You don't have to be a naval engineer to figure out that a vessel as long and narrow as the ark would need an incredible amount of ballast and would still be very unstable. With no mode of propulsion or steering to counter a storm produced by the effects of a worldwide flood this is a disaster waiting to happen. I would challenge anybody to try to build a boat the size of the ark, by themselves, using stoneage tools--and float it.

Zheng He was reported to be over 8 feet tall. You can make your own assessment if the size of his ships were exaggerated as well.

J.E. Hill (Licensed Mariner and former shipboard Navigator for Nation Ocean Survey, NOAA.)

*Thanks to Paul in Baton Rouge for bringing this book to my attention.

However, there are some processes that look a bit like Lamarckism on the surface, depending how you define it.

The sense in which evolutionary biologists of the period from around 1890 to 1930 rejected Lamarckism is the sense that what happens to the organism as it individually adapts is passed on to the progeny, so that individual adaptation affects species adaptation. This has been proven false, with some exceptions.

Under the influence of maternal genes, the material that surrounds the DNA strands, the chromatin, can be modified to match the way it is patterned in the mother, in placental animals. This can affect how genes are expressed and when.

Also, it has been shown that immunological particles, called antibodies, can be passed on by many animals to their progeny. These do not stay in the children's systems for very long, at least in mammals, and so they don't form an evolutionary lineage. However, they protect the young until their own immune system has matured and can protect them.

Another possibility is that immune cells which have variable genetic regions that make them better or worse at binding to invaders could in theory have that genetic sequence passed on to sex cells through the action of a class of viruses. This is not impossible, but has yet to be shown to occur to everyone's satisfaction.

Any harm or changes made to the sex cells (sperm and eggs) in parental bodies can of course be passed on to progeny. This is not Lamarckian.

But, I would suggest that you look through the archive, or even better take some geology and biology courses at your local college. If you are in a hurry, I would recommend 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution.

Enjoy.

The word you've given, neonatology, refers to the study of newborn children.

Neontology refers to the study of currently living organisms (as opposed to paleontology which is the study of extinct organism).

Unintelligent Design, Mark Perakh

God, the Devil, and Darwin: A Critique of Intelligent Design Theory, Niall Shanks and Richard Dawkins

Intelligent Design Creationism and Its Critics: Philosophical, Theological, and Scientific Perspectives, Robert T. Pennock (Editor)

Why Intelligent Design Fails: A Scientific Critique of the New Creationism, Matt Young, Tanner Edis (Editors), (available July 2004)

If you mean "proof" that it is a far-right end-run around the US Constitution, I would recommend the following book:

Creationism's Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design, Barbara Carroll Forrest, Paul R. Gross

If you prefer websites, let me suggest:

http://www.talkdesign.org/

But thanks; biology and poetry are too rarely combined.

The reason why you will often see folks here take the time to point out the difference between, for example, abiogenesis and (biological) evolution, is that creationists often try to cultivate and profit from the misleading impression that attacks on the former are actually refutations of the latter, or uncertainty in the former implies uncertainty in the latter. As you correctly note, pointing out the distinction is not a substitute for also answering the question. Still, it is worth calling attention to the sleight-of-hand which is being used to score debating points, rather than letting it slide as an "irrelevant semantic distinction."

I'm not aware of a good answer to the original writer's specific question, by the way... unless "I don't know" is considered a good answer. Though I'm not quite up to date on the field, all the answers I've seen have been fairly complex and quite speculative. Our creationist claims index entry CF-101: Origin of the Universe could use a brief version of a good answer to that question.

So I checked it out; a googlewhack is a two word google query, using legitimate dictionary words and no quotes, which returns exactly one match on google. See googlewhack.com. I've decided I can live without knowing the query that whacks talkorigins. And repeating it here would, of course, mean it is no longer a googlewhack.

Completely non-biased, I take it.

I'll tell you what: come to the Usenet group talk.origins. There are many knowledgeable people that read those posts.

Chris

Supernova remnants are also an aspect of this evidence, and this is no particular secret. The Supernovae, Supernova Remnants and Young Earth Creationism FAQ details the information and gives seven examples of third stage (radiative) SNRs. Quite likely more have been found since then given rapid developments in space based observation. No one bothers to cite them as evidence for an ancient universe. There is already evidence which is far easier to comprehend for novices, and experts routinely discuss ages in many thousands of years for faint SNRs without drama or surprise.

SNRs cannot possibly be evidence for the big bang, which occurred some 13.7 billion years ago. The evidence for the big bang is also plain and compelling and readily available from many sources; but SNRs are not part of that evidence. SNRs are important evidence for understanding supernovae; that some of them also show great age is unsurprising and incidental.

The wonderful Astronomy Picture of the Day site has some images of SNRs. Mostly they provide images of remnants in earlier stages, since these are much more easily visible and spectacular. However, you may like to see this image of Semeis 147, an SNR which has an apparent age of 100,000 years.

This is not quite the dramatic evidence you think. Third stage SNRs do refute creationist time scales, but to appreciate the evidence requires a fair degree of background on the details of how remnants develop over time, which is far from immediately intuitive. The development of an SNR is not nearly as simple as Davies' article suggests, with all remnants passing through the listed phases at the same ages. The observational evidence is also not particularly dramatic, giving the difficulty of observing very faint ancient SNRs, and it is actually very difficult to estimate the ages of older SNRs. A very thoughtful and comprehensive answer to your underlying question is available from the Ask a High Energy Astronomer page, in a question specifically about claims that SNRs are all under 10,000 years old. See Can you refute claims that the Universe is only 10,000 years old? in the SNR question category.

Finally, your count of references is incorrect. The FAQ on this subject references 9 books and 406 technical papers.

The major creationist article on this is not by Sarfati, but by Mr Keith Davies, a creationist and amateur astronomer with no formal scientific qualifications at all. Dr Sarfati simply wrote a short summary for Answers in Genesis of Davies' article. The article by Keith Davies is dreadful as an introduction to this topic. The FAQ by Dave Moore shows many of the errors, and Davies also gets a gong in an amusing compendium of all kinds of crank astronomy: Bad Astronomy, by astronomer Dr Philip Plait.

Your comment about "no references" applies to a brief non-technical exchange with Sarfati, in which neither Sarfati nor Moore used references. That exchange is given with links to the main FAQ article; it is the main FAQ you should focus upon for the evidence and details.

TalkOrigins.org makes no pretense of being anything except a mainstream science site. We present the creationists arguments fairly, and show that they do not stand up to evidence. That is objective. Your claim about satan sort of indicates to me that you are the one who might not be completely objective in the matter.

However, that isn't science, and it does not belong in a science classroom. That is our main point concerning the flood.

But you should also consider that there really is compelling physical evidence against the flood. Are you ready to believe that the all-powerful deity destroyed all evidence of the flood to test our faith, or fool us? Or that the deity constructed evidence that would lead us astray in our conclusions?

The great break in the organic chain between man and his nearest allies, which cannot be bridged over by any extinct or living species, has often been advanced as a grave objection to the belief that man is descended from some lower form; but this objection will not appear of much weight to those who, from general reasons, believe in the general principle of evolution. Breaks often occur in all parts of the series, some being wide, sharp and defined, others less so in various degrees; as between the orang and its nearest allies- between the Tarsius and the other Lemuridae- between the elephant, and in a more striking manner between the Ornithorhynchus or Echidna, and all other mammals. But these breaks depend merely on the number of related forms which have become extinct. At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked,* will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.

I have bolded the excerpts you have quoted. There are three things to note:

1. Throughout the Descent, when Darwin refers to "civilised races" he almost always is referring to cultures in Europe. I think Darwin was simply confused at that time about the difference between biological races and cultural races in humans. This is not surprising at this time - almost nobody made the distinction but Alfred Russel Wallace.

2. The Index entry CA0005.2 refers to the title of On the Origin of Species, which almost nowhere refers to Man, and when it does, merely makes a promise that "light will be shed". In that work, "race" refers to any well-defined subspecific variety. It does not refer to human races, and the Origin is simply not being racist in any sense whatsoever.

3. Darwin is talking about intermediate forms. At this time it was common for Europeans (based on an older notion of a "chain of being from lowest to highest") to think that Africans ("negroes") were all of one subspecific form, and were less developed than "Caucasians" or "Asians", based on a typology in around 1800 by the German Johann Friedrich Blumenach. In short, Darwin is falling prey to the same error almost everyone else was, but not in the Origin, in the Descent, which was published around 13 years after the Origin. So far as I can tell, he was not hoping for the extermination of these "races", though. Your version cuts off at the critical point. Throughout his life, Darwin argued against slavery and for the freedom and dignity of native populations under European slavery.

Darwin was not perfect. But he was no racist.

Emancipation–Black and White

Here is some context with the writers quote in boldface:

QUASHIE'S plaintive inquiry, "Am I not a man and a brother?" seems at last to have received its final reply–the recent decision of the fierce trial by battle on the other side of the Atlantic [the American Civil War – TB] fully concurring with that long since delivered here in a more peaceful way.

The question is settled; but even those who are most thoroughly convinced that the doom is just, must see good grounds for repudiating half the arguments which have been employed by the winning side; and for doubting whether its ultimate results will embody the hopes of the victors, though they may more than realise the fears of the vanquished. It may be quite true that some negroes are better than some white men; but no rational man, cognisant of the facts, believes that the average negro is the equal, still less the superior, of the average white man. And, if this be true, it is simply incredible that, when all his disabilities are removed, and our prognathous relative has a fair field and no favour, as well as no oppressor, he will be able to compete successfully with his bigger-brained and smaller-jawed rival, in a contest which is to be carried on by thoughts and not by bites. The highest places in the hierarchy of civilisation will assuredly not be within the reach of our dusky cousins, though it is by no means necessary that they should be restricted to the lowest.

But whatever the position of stable equilibrium into which the laws of social gravitation may bring the negro, all responsibility for the result will henceforward lie between nature and him. The white man may wash his hands of it, and the Caucasian conscience be void of reproach for evermore. And this, if we look to the bottom of the matter, is the real justification for the abolition policy.

The doctrine of equal natural rights may be an illogical delusion; emancipation may convert the slave from a well-fed animal into a pauperised man; mankind may even have to do without cotton-shirts; but all these evils must be faced if the moral law, that no human being can arbitrarily dominate over another without grievous damage to his own nature, be, as many think, as readily demonstrable by experiment as any physical truth. If this be true, no slavery can be abolished without a double emancipation, and the master will benefit by freedom more than the freed-man.

While it is true that Huxley is here expressing the commonly held 19th century racist belief (one shared by many creationists of the time as well) that the average white European was more intelligent that the average black African, he is also arguing for their emancipation from slavery and against their being further oppressed by whites (for the good of both).

It should be noted that the rest of the essay is a passionate argument that women should likewise be emancipated from their second-class status in Victorian society.

The only thing that SAI doesn't do is underwrite a "rarefied" design inference. The most that can be said for a bit string exhibiting high values of SAI is that it is due to a simple computational process.

Nah, it's a very old argument, that has been addressed multiple times. See the Index to Creationist Claims. I've also recently had that argument thrown at me on my own site, and took it apart with some basic genetics.

Chris

www.pandasthumb.org

Chris

One must wonder, though, if the reader made it this fair into the website, how she missed the evidence for evolution documented here. I would hate to think anyone reading this web site might have a closed mind about the issue.

One last item: the distinction between "proof" and "evidence" is of much greater consequence in science than in, say, law. That you are unaware of this is telling.

Chris

And then there is the costs involved. Mucho dinero.

You get the idea. Methods are cross-checked all the time, but not all the methods all the time.

A good (but very expensive) introduction can be found in :

Dalrymple, G. Brent, 1991 The Age of the Earth Stanford: Stanford University Press

(Dalrymple's book is the least expensive and probably better for the average reader than Dickin's highly technical but excellent book).

Dickin, Alan P. 1997 Radiogenic Isotope Geology Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

R. E. Taylor & Martin J. Aitken, Editors 1997 Chronometric Dating in Archaeology New York:Plenum Press.

(This is the best one stop source I know for all dating methods good in the 200 to 200,000 year range. I remember that I spent around $100 for it, so I would suggest that you try a university library.)