Feedback for February 2001

And why do you think a professor of statistics would have a valid opinion of a biological issue, in the apparent absence of any significant knowledge of biology?

As for your second question, see this archive's Transitional Vertebrate Fossils FAQ.

Faith means different things to different people, and different people have different concepts of God. When talking about faith on more than a personal level, one must be open-minded enough to accept all these different perspectives. The origins of life and of the universe are not determined by anyone's personal decision of what religion to follow. Science, including evolution, is based on objective evidence, evidence which is the same for everyone.

I'm not sure that anyone wishing to argue for a view of organisms as "biological robots" would have to engage in any contortions at all in order to accommodate the findings of the Human Genome Project. Nor do I stipulate that this accurately reflects Dawkins' position.

The fact of the matter is that certain behavioral traits or tendencies have been found to have contributing factors in heritable genes. There is controversy over how completely the genetics determine behavior, and also over how general such determination might be. The Human Genome Project findings do not set aside the body of research that tells us that genes have a role (whose extent we might argue about and research) in the determination of at least some of the behavioral traits of individuals.

Wesley

Your question seems to go more toward god's motive for action, to which I have no possible answer.

Keep up the good work.

Flour, sugar etc. are not living organisms that are subject to natural selective pressures. They do not compete to pass on their genes to later generations. Congratulations-- you have just presented a false analogy.

Evolution is not entirely governed by chance. You need to learn more before you make such uninformed, dismissive comments.

The Bayesian likelihood of life occurring depends entirely on what information you bring into the equation - if, for example, chemistry is such that in the right circumstances life will occur just out of the properties of molecules, then if you can show that the right conditions obtained, the probability is one (ie, is certain). But we just do not know enough to state clearly what the likelihoods (the "priors") are. We do not know the conditions under which life first arose on earth - the information is largely lost and what we do know is only indirect. This is a fact about us, not life itself.

The frequentist version requires that to calculate the probability of life we need to know how many planets might have evolved life (ie, had closely similar conditions to Earth in its infancy) and how many did. Neither information is available. It might be that 96 out of every hundred possible sites of planetary life do result in independent life. We can't, as of now, know this.

The objections by anti-evolutionists like Dembksi and Hoyle tend to be simplistic and subjective - simplistic in that the "calculation" is based on a simple step from one state (non-life) to some other (complex life as we now know it), which is unrealistic, and subjective in that the "odds" they use in their calculations are plucked from thin air, and are neither legitimate as Bayesian nor frequentist probabilities.

Hovind's money is quite safe and he knows it. He has designed his challenge in such a way that it would be impossible for anyone to EVER meet his criteria. This is, of course, intellectual dishonesty of the highest rank, but coming from a man who has an unaccredited store bought degree that he uses to bill himself as "Dr" in order to make people think he has more credibility than he does, this is hardly a surprise. Here are the reasons why his challenge is (deliberately) impossible to meet:

1. He defines evolution to mean, basically, all of modern science. He demands that one prove that "matter created itself out of nothing" as a part of proving evolution to be true. This is impossible, of course, and he knows it.

2. He defines empirical as "based solely on expirement or observation". Since much of evolution deals with events in the past, it is not subject to being put into a lab. You cannot test the reptile-to-mammal transition in a lab. You can, however, look at the evidence from paleontology, molecular biology, anatomy and biogeography, design a theory and then test it by using it to make predictions about the nature of new evidence. This is how theories in science are tested, and the theory is very successful at such predictions. And you certainly can't put the sorts of demands he makes for proving the origin of the universe into a lab expirement.

3. Here's the most important reason why it is impossible to meet. He refuses to consider it proven until you can "prove, beyond any reasonable doubt, that the process of evolution is the only possible way the observed phenomena could have come into existence." He then states, "As in any fair court of law, the accuser must also rule out any other possible explanations." Perhaps Mr. Hovind has recently purchased a law degree that is as useless as his doctorate. It is simply not possible to "rule out" all possible explanations for anything. There are always hypothetical explanations that are within the realm of possibility - and of course he knows that.

Additionally, Mr. Hovind also refuses to reveal the identities of the committee who will decide whether one has met the challenge, but of course they are picked by him. He will not entertain any idea of a neutral group to evaluate the evidence, and he reserves the right to refuse to even send your challenge to the committee at all if he so chooses.

So again, Hovind's money is quite safe. A couple of years ago I made a similar challenge to which neither Hovind nor anyone else has ever replied. I will gladly offer $1 million to anyone who can prove ANY claim using such criteria. If one is forced to disprove any and all hypothetical alternative explanations, one cannot even prove their own existence. The challenge is a fraud and so is Hovind for making it and using it for dishonest purposes for his followers.

Ed Brayton

I pray that you yourself will diligently search for the truth. In particular, I hope you will learn enough microbiology to come to realize how utterly bizarre it is to refer to asexual microbes as "few."

No scientific theory makes any judgement on the question of whether there is or is not a god. Such questions are outside the scope of science. Those are questions for individuals to answer for themselves.

Evolution is not an idea that excludes the possibility of a god. It's up to you to decide whether or not you are going to include a god into evolution.

"Ancient tribes and nations had many gods, often one for almost every phenomenon of Nature. The Hebrews have the credit of inventing the conception of our monotheistic Jewish-Christian God, who, however, is represented as jealous, cruel, vindictive and having most of the weaknesses and bad habits of primitive man; this was a step in the path of evolution towards man's present conception of God; the God within us is the only available God we know, and the clear light of Science teaches us that we must be our own Saviours, if we are to be found worth saving; in other words, to depend upon the "kingdom within.""

Luther Burbank, "My Beliefs", page 27-28

I do feel compelled to respond to your letter. What I wrote in December of 2000 is still true. The Genesis account of creation and the Flood ARE in direct conflict with mountains of physical evidence.

It's all well and good to say that there is no conflict between the bible and nature, but the fact is that there is no physical evidence whatever that there was a Global Flood, and much evidence that there was not. There is also irrefutable evidence that the plants and animals did not appear on earth in the order that Genesis claims they did, and that the earth itself is far older than the bible specifies.

This isn't the forum for biblical criticism. I'm not going to get into details about the problems of translations. If a translation is wrong, then the bible is wrong. But when Genesis says "and the evening and the morning were the second day", the evening and morning of WHAT, precisely? The evening and morning of a millenium?

The Hebrews didn't have any other word besides YOHM (day) to describe a long period of time? Well, that is simply not true. How about SHANEH, or YEAR? The bible says that Methusela was 969 years old, not 353,685 days old.

Genesis does not give a step-by-step account of the origin of the earth. It is mythology.

It speaks of god dividing the light from the darkness. Before this, were they mingled?

It says that the earth was totally covered with water at one point. Science does not agree-- we have no evidence of such a thing. Genesis also says that there was created a firmament in the midst of the waters... the waters being both above and below the sky. This is untrue, to say the least.

The bible says that THE WHOLE WORLD was submerged in a flood. It's up to you to take it literally or figuratively-- but that's what it says. And it is wrong.

Genesis says that plants existed before the sun. This is totally at odds with what science has to say. This is not to mention the fact that Genesis has two contradictory accounts of the creation.

By the way, Moses did not write Genesis, nor any book of the bible.

You will find answers to your questions regarding speciation by clicking on the SEARCH button, and typing in "speciation", and then by reading.

I am at a loss to understand how you could regard quantum mechanics as highly speculative. It has withstood a century of extensive tests. It is the basis for such useful instruments as lasers and scanning tunneling microscopes. It has made predictions that have proved accurate to 11 decimal places. To the best of my knowledge, no other science has matched this precision. As with all good sciences, there are still areas to speculate about, but the basics of quantum mechanics are as factual as facts get.

Explanation of morality is quite a large field which I will not go into here. I will simply note that nobody has found an objective reason why morality could not have natural causes, so using morality as an argument against naturalism is an argument from ignorance.

Denying a young earth or global flood does not deny God or Christ. Most non-creationists have more faith than you give them credit for and are able to believe in a god that can still exist if they are wrong about any detail concerning Him. Would it be so bad if a theory leads people away from one interpretation of God towards another that they find more powerful and robust?

Please remember that the religious path that you prefer is not right for everyone. For other people, the paths of spiritual growth lead through different interpretations and different religions. I don't believe either you or I have the wisdom to determine which paths are right for which people. I do know that trying to hold someone on a path that is not right for them can be very damaging. The loving thing to do is to encourage people along their own ways, not the ways that we decide for them.

Rayl, A.J.S., 2000 (2 Mar.). Mutant gene may curb vascular disease. [USA Today - editor]

Long, P., 1994 (Jan/Feb.). A town with a golden gene. Health 8: 60ff.

Weisgraber KH, Rall Jr SC, Bersot TP, Mahley RW, Franceschini G, Sirtori CR, 1983. Apolipoprotein A-I Milano. Detection of normal A-I in affected subjects and evidence for a cysteine for arginine substitution in the variant A-I [PDF file]. J Biol Chem 258: 2508-2513.

[Since this was posted this Archive posted Apolipoprotein AI Mutations and Information which has more information on the ApoA-I mutation -- editor]

A mutation also gives some resistance to AIDS:

Dean, M. Carrington, M, et al., 1996. Genetic restriction of HIV-1 infection and progression to AIDS by a deletion allele of the CKR5 structural gene. Science 273: 1856-1862. See also: Cohen, J., 1996. Receptor mutations help slow disease progression. Science 273: 1797-1798.

Mutations are also responsible for drug and pesticide resistance in diseases and pests. Although these are ongoing problems for people, such mutations are beneficial to the organisms they occur in. Since mutations ultimately are the only source of genetic variation, we have mutations to thank for all the benefits which come from having diversity in a population. Among other things, diversity means that diseases don't spread to everyone in the world at the same time. The Irish potato blight was so disasterous because there was very little genetic diversity among all the potatoes in Ireland at the time.

For more information, see Are Mutations Harmful?

In fact, the original ordering of the geologic column refutes the claim, as well. It was done by geologists who simply noted the order in which formations overlaid each other across Europe. (Those geologists believed in fixity of species, incidentally, so the ordering could not possibly have been based on "evolutionary assumptions" as creationists often wrongly assert.)

Your other (supporting) claims aren't much more accurate than the primary one. Examples: marble is metamorphic and not sedimentary; most ages come from igneous formations, not sedimentary ones, because in general they are the most suited to isotopic dating; age order matching vertical position is the usual sequence, but relative ages can be established in other ways, and phenomena such as overthrusting can change vertical ordering (though it is fairly uncommon and leaves obvious evidence of its occurrence).

The geologic succession of strata is quite well-established, notwithstanding the wishful thinking (coupled with inexcusably poor scholarship) on the part of the young-Earth crowd.

You are correct that the articles here about abiogenesis lack detail. Part of the reason is that many details are not known yet. Remember, however, that being unknown is not the same as being unsatisfactory. There is nothing in the field of abiogenesis to indicate that the first cells could not have formed spontaneously, and several indications that they could have. For example, we know that complex organic molecules will form spontaneously even in space; see "Raw materials for life may predate Earth's formation." And undersea hydrothermal vents supply all the conditions necessary to create peptides; see Wachtershauser, G., 2000, Life as we don't know it, Science 289: 1307-1308. Remember also that evolution is largely a separate subject from abiogenesis. If it were proved tomorrow that the first cells miraculously appeared fully formed, the evidence still would show that evolution happened, too. Finally, remember that creationists have much, much less detail about the appearance of the first life.

NOBODY, not even evolutionists, believes that complicated structures arose purely by chance. You are right to reject that idea, but remember that it is not evolution you have rejected. See the Five Misconceptions FAQ regarding this and other things which evolution is not.

We may not know what selective advantage, if any, the intermediate stages of the mammalian middle ear had over their precursor arrangements. What we do know is that these intermediate stages did exist and that the final state of the system has the property of irreducible complexity with respect to the function of impedance matching in the mammalian auditory system. While IC arguments may not in principle say that intermediate states cannot exist, in practice Dr. Behe and others invoking IC routinely imply that IC-ness is incompatible with accounts premised on natural selection and that genetic drift is insufficient to explain such systems. We don't know whether natural selection or genetic drift was operating exclusively or alternately in the production of the irreducibly complex impedance-matching system of the mammalian middle ear, but we do have evidence from the fossil record that it evolved over a period of some millions of years, and was not inserted at any one point by an "intelligent designer". If even genetic drift can be said to lead to IC structures (as rejection of selective pathways in this case would suggest), then the exclusionary logic of IC as evidence for an intervening intelligent designer is in even more trouble than if one simply assumed natural selection as an operative mechanism.

That said, there certainly is a prospect that selective advantage of intermediate steps could be approached as a topic for research based upon models of hearing. The field of modeling functional morphology in audition has several publications in determining the probable hearing range of extant odontocetes. It may only be a matter of time before someone turns their attention to this interesting set of fossil data to determine the auditory properties of the various systems as recorded in the fossils of the transitional sequence.

Wesley

But one must also remember that the admontion from the laws of thermodynamics applies only to the universe as a whole, and on average, but not necessarily to any particular part of the universe as any particular time. Once we get specific, then we need to examine the details of the specific time & place, in order to decide what the "order" and "disorder" are actually doing. So your admonition, about the admonition from the laws of thermodynamics, is sort of wrong.

As for the 747, to paraphrase Pauli (or some famous scientist), "That's so bad it's not even wrong". The tornado is a source of entropy, and so it is quite natural that it adds entropy to its surroundings, making the spontaneous 747 pretty danged unlikely. However, the processes of evolution derive from processes that are not sources of entropy, and so evolution does not suffer from that weakness. In fact, entropy and thermodynamics, actually force evolution to happen, rather than the other way around.

Science is not founded on some set of arbitrary assumptions about the world. It is founded on our experience that certain assumptions (such as, any event was caused by some other events) work, and work better than any others (such as, a text written by semi-nomadic herders 3000 years ago, and revised by a priesthood several centuries later, is a good source of knowledge about the natural world). That isn't arbitrary, except in the sense that not being schizophrenic in one's worldview is arbitrary.

However, I think you are blowing smoke. Many of the FAQs are written by mainstream scientists, and the archive is widely recommended as an excellent resource by mainstream scientists and universities.

Here are some implicit testimonials.

Harvard University Dept of Molecular and Cellular Biology puts this archive at the front of its list of links for General Evolution Resources.

The Geological Society of America also puts us at the front of their list of recommended sites for evolution/creationism.

We are the first link supplied by the National Center for Science Education.

The University of California (Berkeley) Museum of Paleontology puts as at the front of their recommended list of links.

In fact, if you look on the web for mainstream science presentations of evolution which provide a list of links for recommended further reading, this archive is, I am pretty sure, by far the most common first choice.

Also, have a look at the feedback received by the fossil hominids FAQ collection, maintained by Jim Foley as a part of this archive, and see how main top class universities are using this material as a useful teaching resource.

I think you should look again at whatever it is which you think is poor logic and bad science, and reconsider. Perhaps you are mistaken on this matter....

Circle in Isaiah 40:22 is Strong's Ref. # 5475

Romanized cowd Pronounced sode

from HSN3245; a session, i.e. company of persons (in close deliberation); by implication, intimacy, consultation, a secret.

NO bible translates that verse using the word "sphere". They meant circle. A flat, disc-shaped earth was the conception in those days. Such an understanding was probably learned by the Israelites during their captivity by the Babylonians, who held such a view.

See: Thermodynamics, Evolution and Creationism.

Essentially, the easiest statements of the second law refer to the fact that net entropy will not decrease in isolated systems. There are more detailed statements of the law for open systems, in which entropy can decrease, depending on heat exchange at the system boundary.

There is no mention of "intelligence" in the second law. If an intelligent person builds a house from a pile of bricks, they do not somehow violate the second law, or get a special exception because they are a designer. Intelligence is just as constrained as any other natural phenomenon. Also, the kind of order imposed on a pile of bricks to make it a house has little to do with entropy. The laws of thermodynamics are more concerned with the termperature of the bricks, the chemical reactions in motar, and whether the final height of the house is above or below the initial pile of bricks. Thermodynamics is about energy and temperature and entropy; it simply does not even refer to order in the sense of design or complexity. It rather deals with how much work was required to build the house.

You grew to an adult from a tiny embryo. This certainly involved an enormous increase in complexity and order. And yet, at no time in this process was there the slightest violation of any thermodynamic laws. Similarly, whatever other problems you may have with evolution, it is simply not the case that the development of complex systems as part of the natural working of the universe is in violation of any thermodynamic laws.

As for theory: I refer you to "The theory of thermodynamics" by J.R. Waldram, (Cambridge University Press, 1985) as an example of how the word theory is used in science.

(2) Yes, I know about the dimensions of the ark.

(3) Actually, according to the bible there were seven of some kinds of animals (the clean animals) on the ark. This was important, as Noah needed some of these for a sacrifice afterwards.

The bible does not, however, say anything about whether or not there were dinosaurs on the ark. That is something you have chosen to add to the story, for some reason.

I do not consider the story of Noah to be a plain account of actual history, but I am certainly well aware of the details, and have read them many times, over many years.

(4) Your feedback will be on record here in the archive now, probably for many years. Many people have observed how incredibly rude creationists tend to be; and use feedback like yours as an example. You would have been wiser, I suggest, to be a bit more friendly and temperate in your phrasing. It may feel good to call me a fool, but when you do so in a public forum like this, you will find it does your credibility and position considerable damage.

Thanks so much for your account. I think your assessment is accurate-- that this represents a typical biblical literalist. It sounds like you handled it well.

P.S. The lawyer was probably Philip Johnson.

However, one alternative theory - the Multiregional Hypothesis argues that erectus and sapiens are the same species because they interbred in place until sapiens characters had spread through the world. Although I am not personally an adherent of this view (the rival is the Out of Africa hypothesis which seems better supported by the evidence), this is not to say that erectus and sapiens need have been infertile. Some good species are able to, but usually do not, interbreed with each other.

See the Observed Instances of Speciation FAQ for a discussion of what species are.

But here goes.

(1) Order comes from disorder all the time. This is in fact fundamental to Christian belief. The universe began with chaos and order was imposed on it by God. Whether one chooses to attribute this to God or not, it continues today. Watch crystals forming for a simple example. No violation of natural laws required: it is a part of how our universe works that order arises spontaneously in many ways. This is not, by the way, in any conflict with the natural law called the second law of thermodynamics.

(2) Intelligence is remarkably bad at producing intelligence. Artificial intelligence isn't nearly as intelligent as what arises quite naturally by natural processes. We observe a baby grow from an embryo to an infant to a child to an adult. She starts out without intelligence, ends up with heaps; and all in the natural way of things to grow. You can attribute this to God, or not, as you choose. But if God is involved, He is using natural everyday processes, not in any violation of His own natural laws, for this wonderful transformation from unintelligent cells to an intelligent adult. This is how our universe works.

(3) Living things do not spring fully formed from dead matter. The whole foundation of evolution is that living things are the result of cummulative changes to other living things. How life first began is not known, but it seems likely that the boundary from living to non-living is grey, and that the natural processes of change and development were involved throughout. We don't know exactly how life first began; but an evolutionist would generally NOT think life was suddenly formed from dead matter. That is more like the creationist position.

(4) The amoeba is a very complex and sophisticated organism, as much the end result of a long process of evolution as we are. There is no reason to think it is any like our distant one-celled ancestors. That we are related, by some remote common ancestor, is evidenced by commonalities in the genetic code used by humans, ameoba, and other life; but it is a very distant distant relationship all the same.

(5) Not an accident -- but adaptation. Evolutionary processes lead to life forms which are well adapted to their environment, and hence not adapted to different environments. If you were an evolutionist, you would actually have a rather different perspective on this matter of the Sun's distance.

(6) Speaking of an intricate design of the universe is begging the question. The processes by which the universe unfolds are studied by science, and are rather different to the deliberate but flaky constructions made by human design. There may, of course, be a grand design behind the laws which modulate the development of the universe, but that is not a question accessible to science; nor is the answer given by evolution.

(7) No you wouldn't say that about dolphins. If you were an evolutionist, you'd have a rather better understanding of the fossil record of dolphins, and primates, and would not confuse them in that way.

(8) This has nothing to do with evolution. Evolution is only concerned with how things form from other things. The word itself means "change".

(9) This is a metaphysical question, having nothing to do with evolution. Laws of nature are our way of describing the regularities we observe in the way nature behaves. The notion that a law "comes into being accidently" seems a bit incoherent.

(10) Huh?? This has nothing to do with evolution, and it is incorrect anyway.

That's why.

Cell theory does not contradict evolution in any way. Spontaneous Generation has nothing to do with evolution. You need to stop reading the creationist tracts, and start reading some true information.

Finally... with a useful range of less than 100,000 years and limited geological applicability, carbon dating is the least of your worries. Check out our Isochron Dating FAQ for dating methods and results that are a lot more "inconvenient" to the young-Earth position, and a lot harder to dismiss.

As for your other complaint, well... The feedback forum is for feedback (gasp!), not for lengthy debates. If you want a debate, try the talk.origins newsgroup. In any event, I'd recommend you worry more about quality of arguments, than about quantity.⁵ So far, your feedback submissions have been easily demonstrated to be full of elementary errors of fact. That sort of low-quality material won't fly online.⁶

Footnotes:

1. The value that Libby used was 5,568 years, so he wasn't far off. His incorrect value introduces an error of about 3% in computed dates, which is probably not nearly as much as you were led to believe.
2. Godwin, H., 1962. Half-life of radiocarbon, in Nature vol 195, p. 984.
3. See Be careful and explicit in your use of quotations in the talk.origins welcome FAQ.
4. For example, see Figure 22.3 on p. 391 of Faure's Principles of Isotope Geology (2nd ed, 1986, ISBN 0-471-86412-9)
5. See Don't submit scatter-shot posts in the talk.origins welcome FAQ.
6. See Understand the limitations of USEnet, part (d) in the talk.origins welcome FAQ.

• his claim that only one curve could possibly fit the data points
• after stating the specific mathematical formula that describes the decay precisely, he subsequently backpedals to claim the curve doesn't fit modern data
• he claims the curve fits the data points "perfectly", with an r² value of 1.000000000, yet none of the points in his data set actually falls on the line
• his bizarre assertion that "X² is the same as r²"

These are rather damning flaws. I personally can't see how you can argue around them -- they suggest a rather serious failure to understand simple concepts in statistics. If, as you claim, Setterfield has revised his work to adequately dismiss these problems, you might have been better off calmly presenting a point by point rebuttal, rather than egotistically (and ironically!) posting a rambling, empty diatribe.

Perloff is simply wrong. All mutations increase information. This is because a mutation doesn't affect all organisms in a population at the same time. When a mutation occurs, you get an individual with the mutation, plus you still have all the others with the original gene -- an increase in information.

Nor do all mutations decrease information in a single genome. This is easily seen from the fact that anything a mutation can do, a muation can undo. If the mutation from A to B decreases information, then surely the mutation from B to A increases it.

In fact, mutations that add information to a genome are quite common. It is common for entire stretches of DNA to become duplicated. When an additional mutation occurs in the duplicated stretch, you then have the original DNA plus a new section of DNA, which is an increase in information by any reasonable definition. For more information, see The Evolution of Improved Fitness and Are Mutations Harmful?

Perloff is seriously wrong in another way as well. Evolution doesn't claim that chance mutations produced "nearly every feature of life." Evolution says that the combination of mutations and natural selection produced most of these features. Considering one without the other is not considering the theory of evolution.