Feedback for May 2005

To claim that death and disease merely come from corruption is plain ignorance of biology. Without death, life simply could not exist in anything remotely resembling its present form. Disease-causing parasites are highly sophisticated organisms, and much of that sophitication comes from parts that are essential to their virulence. See the recommended readings with CH321 for more details.

My statement that design aims for simplicity is, admitedly, and oversimplification. (I was aiming for simplicity.) Most design aims to be as simple as possible, but that, of course, is subject to design constraints. A Swiss Army knife can have one blade that does three functions, but if you want twenty functions, you have to add more blades. Complexity also comes in when designers get lazy or careless, especially when adding something to an existing design when a simpler, more elegant design could be done by starting from scratch. But deisgners do not (usually) go out of their way to make things complex. Designers (usually) need to understand their designs, so they break necessarily complex designs up into simple modules which can be dealt with seperately before being assembled into the whole. The exceptions to simplicity as a design principle are artwork, which gets to be very complex only when it is nonfunctional as anything but art, and designs done by evolutionary mechanisms such as genetic algorithisms.

There are many different types of retroviral sequences in the human genome. The most common class is called LINES (Long INterspersed Sequences). There are several subclasses. One of the common subclasses is the L1 subclass - there are about 30,000 copies of this type of LINE in the human genome.

You can view the human genome using the USCD Genome Browser selecting for a view that shows you repetitive sequences. Here's an example of an L1 LINE on Chromosome 9. If you click on the solid black bar in the middle of the image you'll see that it represents a stretch of DNA that's 6168 bp long. It resembles a retrovirus sequence but it has diverged by 3.6%.

First of all, the origin of life is conceptually distinct from the evolution of life subsequent to that event. Bear that in mind.

Second, the issue is not spontaneous generation. That has a particular meaning (the origin of modern or modern-like organisms from non-living matter) which is not relevant here. The correct term is "abiogenesis".

The original living systems would necessarily have been pretty simple. The reactions would need to have included something like metabolism (acquiring energy for chemical reactions to sustain life), and replication (reproduction of some components to a high degree of accuracy), as well as compartmentalisation (the formation of cell-like structures).

Metabolic processes that might have occurred in early life include the use of a sulphur reaction, which has been recreated in the lab, as well as seen in very primitive organisms. Other processes have been demonstrated in the lab as well.

Replicating molecules have been produced in the lab under reasonable conditions that might have obtained in the early earth. They include protein-nucleoside hybrids as well as RNA, which, it turns out, can self-replicate.

And the existence of compartments has been shown by Sidney Fox to occur under again realistic early earth conditions.

What hasn't been done yet is to have all three processes occur in a realistic series and a single system. It is, in my view, only a matter of time; but you may be more skeptical. At the least all our research points to a natural origin of life.

Saddened by feedback I am
Three kooks, one good laugh
Sad you are losing your form

Now you try.

Feedback saddens me
A winter of kooks, one laugh
You are losing form

The kind of Naturalism that creationists object to is either a metaphysical kind (there is only the natural world) or a methodological kind (we can only find out the natural world by science). It is the latter kind that science is committed to, and the former kind they think it is committed to.

This is not the case here, as you note. Evolutionary theory makes no moral claims, and the truth of the theory does not rely on whether it leads to good consequences or not.

Your question addresses a different point. You are asking whether there is a common ancestor of all modern living species. The answer is "yes," the evidence for a common ancestor is overwhelming and it's accepted by all scientists who understand it. (I need to add a minor caveat. It is possible that there were two or more common ancestors that swapped genes during the early stages of evolution.)

Everybody agrees that the first primitive common ancestor arose from non-life. Most scientists would argue that this process was entirely natural. This is especially true of the majority of scientists since they are not religious. Some religious scientists believe that God had a hand in creating the first living organism from non-living material.

I can assure you that neither Professor Lewontin or I were arguing in favor of an intelligent Creator and there's nothing in Lewontin's statement that supports such a claim.

There was a feedback that asked about the DNA is a language claim. But that clearly was not submitted by Mr. McInroy.

Yes he did write this, it is from the final sentence of the book: 

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.

The interesting thing is that this is how the sentence read in the second and all subsequent editions of the Origin of Species. The first edition was slightly different:

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.  

Darwin, apparently concerned by accusations that his work might be considered irreligious, added “by the Creator” to the sentence in the second edition.

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As to "Nebraska Man", you should know that pig teeth and human teeth are actually quite similar. This is not too surprising given pigs and humans are both omnivores, and thus have a generalist dentition. It's one of the reasons so many schools use fetal pigs for dissections in biology laboratories. Second, the tooth was quite worn. That happens as they animal ages, especially with a diet composed mostly of tough vegetation. If you have a dog or cat, you can verify this wear and tear for yourself. Finally, if you read up on the sequence of events, the tooth was tentatively identified as coming from a hominid. After closer examination, and an examination of similar teeth from a variety of species, paleontologists at the American Museum of Natural History revised to source.

The point I was trying to make was not that there is NO evidence for natural selection. That would be silly. My point was that there is much less direct evidence for selection than most people realize. This is still true.

The importance of random genetic drift is difficult to grasp if you are only interested in adaptations. However, there is no doubt whatsoever concerning the data. The vast majority of allelic differences in humans, for example, are neutral by any definition you prefer. Most of them are outside of any known genes. This means that their frequency in the human population is only influenced by random genetic drift. They are invisible to natural selection.

Studies of homologous proteins in different species reveal that the vast majority of differences have no effect on function. Those difference must have become fixed in the species by random genetic drift. Indeed, the whole idea of a molecular clock, which ticks stochastically, depends on evolution by drift. There aren't many scientists who deny the importance of random genetic drift. Almost all modern evolutionary biologists recognize that drift is the predominat mechanism of evolution.

The reason why I wrote the FAQ is to explain to people like you that there's more to evolution than natural selection. This is important because we don't want evolutionists to make mistakes when they defend evolution. It makes us look bad to the the anti-evolutionists.

The evidence you give is a classic creationist disinformation. None withstands scrutiny, and I urge you to scrutinize it for yourself. Here is some information to get you started:

• Human population growth
• Oldest tree
• Magnetic field decay
• Earth's rotation slowing
• Moon receding
• Assumption that evolution is atheistic
• Big Bang
• Everything from nothing
• Some planets revolve backwards
• Retrograde planets and the big bang

Your Hitler quote is appropriate, if ironic. You have been lied to, repeatedly and on many subjects. The creationism that you have been exposed to often drives people away from religion when people discover its dishonest foundation. You may want to read some of the personal accounts at Glenn Morton's web site to see how others have dealt with the disillusionment.

Evolution is a fact. The Theory of Evolution is a theory about how evolution occurs - just as VonRoeschlaub says in the "God and Evolution" FAQ.

This means that evolution is both a fact and a theory, just like gravity, economics, and continental drift. This is explained in Evolution is a Fact and a Theory.

1839 W. H. LEIGH Reconnoit. Voy. S. Austral. 93-4 (Morris) Here [in Kangaroo Island] is also the wallaba... The young of the animal is called by the islanders a joè. 1845 MOORE Tasman. Rhymings (1860) 15 He was a ‘joey’ which, in truth, Means nothing more than that the youth Who claims a Kangaroo descent Is by that nomenclature meant. 1866 Cornhill Mag. Dec. 762 Large flocks of kangaroo..the larger males..towered above the flying bucks, flying does and joeys, the half-grown bucks, does, and young ones. 1887 All Year Round 30 July (Farmer), Joey..is applied indifferently to a puppy, or a kitten, or a child, while a wood-and-water-joey is a hanger about hotels, and a doer of odd jobs.

However, a "joey" was also a slang term for a threepenny piece, and typically marsupial babies are very small, so perhaps it has something to do with that. Rhyming slang was very common in Australia, and often followed the London patois.

I suggest that you take a look at the FAQ on Wells. He is an exceedingly poor biologist who exhibits some shockingly bad scholarship -- although one should not attribute to malice that which is best explained by incompetence, his record of distortion is so awful that it's inescapably intentional.

And I must say that I'm rather shocked that a Catholic school is using Wells' dreadful tripe in a classroom. My experience with kids from Catholic schools is that they've usually been given a solid grounding in the basics of biology, and haven't wasted much time on that kind of creationist garbage. You have managed to reduce my respect for the Catholic school system in Minnesota. Should I say thanks?

You might mention to your teacher that you need some instruction in the scientific method, as well. Science doesn't deal in "proofs".

If you are concerned, I suggest two actions; 1) talk with your child about their school work- you should anyway, 2) talk with the teacher about your specific concern- the format should be: Hi, I am ____'s Father. I was reading your lesson plan PDF and I was confused by page 12. Would you please let me know how you impliment this? Thanks.

Still Mr. Witt's charges are false. Neither we nor "No Answers in Genesis" ignore Hovind's claims in any way. We have an entire section on Kent Hovind that includes a detailed refutation of many of his arguments as well as to links creationists who also find Hovind's arguments lacking.

The charge that we can't give an explaination for polystrate fossils is also false: the geological explanation has been known for well over a century. See our "Polystrate" Fossils FAQs.

And one has to find it amusing that someone who rants that our side does not address Hovind's "truths" devotes most of his message to a threat of Hell fire.

Moreover, "fact" doesn't mean "absolute certainty"; there ain't no such animal in an exciting and complex world. The final proofs of logic and mathematics flow deductively from stated premises and achieve certainty only because they are not about the empirical world. Evolutionists make no claim for perpetual truth, though creationists often do (and then attack us falsely for a style of argument that they themselves favor). In science "fact" can only mean "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional consent."

All of science is in this boat. An extreme skeptic, a Pyrrhonian skeptic as Hume called it (Enquiry, Sect XXI, Part II), could doubt any scientific fact at all. And as Hume noted, "all human life must perish, were his [the extreme skeptic's] principles universally and steadily to prevail."

Chromosomes are not a lock-and-key system - quite large changes can be matched up in pairing.

Sex evolved before there were multicellular organisms. Even now nearly all single celled organisms have a mechanism which enables them to mix their genes, ranging from inserting small amounts of genetic material in a process called "conjugation", through to complete half-and-half mixing.

Sex has an evolutionary advantage, because it mixes mutations that might assist a lineage, so that at least one lucky lineage will get more than one of these mutations. This aids in resisting predators and pathogens.

There are more refs in the Index to Creationist Claims CB350 and in this discussion list.

But the existence of PA is not a problem. Of course, there are people whose behaviour is altruistic. The evolutionary explanation is that such psychologies are genetically selfish, even if the individual doesn't breed because of their behaviour. That is to say, PA is either an advantage to the genetic traits overall, not just in that individual (a concept known as "inclusive fitness"), or it doesn't actually cause much harm to the genetic fitness of the individual (for example, if I give $1 to a beggar).

Is there PA? Yes there is. Is there GA? Not if the game theory account of evolution is a correct model, no. Does genetic selfishness explain psychological altruism? That's the claim.

"The Imminent Demise of Evolution: The Longest Running Falsehood in Creationism". by G.R. Morton should fit your request. The article is also found on Glenn's home website.

Enjoy!

PS: Thanks for the praise on behalf of the TO volunteers.

1. Transmutationism - that species change form to become other species. To disconfirm this, we'd need to show that no species ever changed from one to another. Since this is, in fact, a matter of observation, it cannot be disconfirmed. But we might find reason to think that only a certain amount of transmutation can occur. I cannot conceive now what sort of evidence that might be. So leave it open. But it would need to be a theoretical reason, and not merely an assertion, as the creationists "argue".

2. Common descent - that similar species have common ancestors. Again, this is well-established. We need to show that apart from the observed common descent that there is areason to think this is limited to some scale. Same problems as for transmutation.

3. Struggle for existence - that more are born than can survive. Observed. But you might show that many, if not most, cases are in fact optimal in terms of birth rates - this would need to be a large empirical study.

4. Natural selection - that the relatively better adapted have more successful offspring. This is a logical deduction from the facts of biology - that there is variation, struggle for existence due to more being born than survive, and hereditable traits that have economic success. To disconfirm it, you need to show that these conditions fail to apply to most cases.

5. Sexual selection - that the more "attractive" organisms of sexual species mate more (and have more offspring), causing otherwise unfit traits to spread. To disconfirm this, you'd need to show that the cases explained by it, such as the peacock's tail, have a better (adaptive) explanation, in each singular case.

6. Biogeographic distribution - that species occur close by related species, explaining the distributions of various genera. This could be shown false by mapping related species and seeing that they don't tend to be adjacent to their nearest living relatives.

7. Heredity -

a. Darwin's own theory was called "pangenesis" and is no longer accepted (it was a form of what we now call "neo-Lamarckism", or the inheritance of aquired characters). It has been shown false.

b. Weismannism - the more modern view that genes don't record information about the life of organisms. This has been shown to have important exceptions, in what is known as "epigenetic" inheritance. One very important example of this is maternal imprinting, where non-genetic molecules that are attached to the DNA can restrict the expression of genes, and which often comes from the mother's egg, and is acquired in her life. The research program now is how often and ho this happens.

8. Random mutation - the notion that changes in genes aren't directed towards "better" alternatives; in other words, that mutations are blind to the needs imposed by the ecology in which organisms find themselves. If a mechanism were found by which organisms did encode information in their mutations - such as a bias for mutations to be ecologically useful, that would tend to disconfirm it as a general rule, but it may still remain a good first approximation.

9. Genetic drift/neutralism - the view that some changes in genes are due to chance or the so-called "sampling error" of small populations of organisms. Molecular neutralism is the view that the very structure of genes changes in purely random ways. Drift can be disproven by showing, for example, that all interesting cases are due to selection. Neutralism can be disproven by showing that all interesting cases are not random and have a strong selective bias.

10. Functionalism - the view that features of organisms are neither due to or are constrained by the shapes (morphology) of their lineage, but are due to their functional, or adaptive, benefits.

This last one is contentious now. At the extreme it is the claim that anything on an organism is selectively advantaged. This is clearly false. Some organs that were once adaptive are no longer (such as cave fish eyes). So a distinction is made between "adaptation" (which eyes are or were) and adaptive (which cave fish eyes aren't). But the idea that everything is or was an adaptation is debated too. How to prove it one way or the other? I can't say.

I hope this helps.

Late Note: Dr Seng replied in email that he wanted a more concrete case, like a fossil human in a dinosaur. Here is my response:

"In order to falsify a theory, you need to know what the theory says. Finding an out-of-sequence fossil or an "impossible" animal may not falsify evolution, but it would falsify the particular theories (in this case historical theories) about that group of organisms - for example, if we found a modern rabbit in the Cambrian Era, we would have a massive problem with existing phylogenies. We might even say that if the program of constructing phylogenies based on the theory of common descent were that wrong, there might be a problem with common descent, and abandon that theory. But this, in itself, would be insufficient to falsify the entire set of theories of evolution, although it might be enough to make people think twice about the general set of assumptions on which they are based."

You'll need to be more specific about the tu quoque claims.