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The Talk.Origins Archive: Exploring the Creation/Evolution Controversy

Feedback for July 1997

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Response: The tree of life in evolution is a metaphor for the common descent of all living creatures from shared ancestors, and also a fascinating web project well worth a look. You might, however, be looking for the Sephiroth; which is totally unrelated to talk.origins.
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Response: First of all, your challenge is not based on real thermodynamics, but rather a pseudo-thermodynamics taken directly from Chapter III of the ICR publication "Scientific Creationism." The concepts of "directing program" and "energy conversion system" are creationist inventions to create a diversion away from the basic mathematical relationships of thermodynamics. The mathematics of thermodynamics is perfectly clear: it is only the over-all entropy of a collection of interacting systems that must increase for spontaneous change; the individual systems can undergo either entropy loss or entropy gain.

Thermodynamics is a mathematical science. How else could you calculate the efficiency of a compressor or the power of a steam turbine?

For all its pompous rhetoric, the Institute for Creation Research provides no mathematics to back its voodoo thermodynamics claims. You will find a fairly complete description of the actual relationship between thermodynamics and probability in my web page: The Second Law of Thermodynamics, Evolution, and Probability and Probability and the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

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Response: The feedback responses for a given month usually appear sometime within the first two weeks of the following month.
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Response: It has long been the policy of the talk.origins archive that the credentials of the argument's author are less important than the quality of the argument. However, we understand that biographical information can provide a useful way for readers to quickly check to see what kind of experience an author has in the field he or she is writing about. Hence, from this point forward, the archive will solicit voluntarily-provided biographical information from its authors.

In the meantime, you can check Wesley Elsberry's talk.origins bibliographica file, which contains some brief biographical information about many of the authors represented in the archive.

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Response: This sounds like a great idea for an addition to the archive. The issue is mentioned briefly in The Age of the Earth FAQ, but in my opinion there is scope for a file that focusses on the issues you mention. The procedure for making a submission is described in the submission guidelines. Basically, you reflect, write the document, and post it to talk.origins, so that anyone can make suggestions. You don't have to be the most qualified person around. Qualified folks are bound to give you useful feedback: the really crucial step is finding some willing person like yourself able to write a good readable explanation.
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Response: The Evolution is a Fact and a Theory FAQ is mainly concerned with terminology; it does not provide lists of evidence for evolution. For lists of evidence and sources justifying the status of evolution as the process known to be responsible for the diversity of life, I recommend you look at Evidence for Evolution: An Eclectic Survey, Transitional Vertebrate Fossils, Jury-Rigged Design, and Plagiarized Errors and Molecular Genetics.
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Author of: Creation Science and the Earth's Magnetic Field
Response: There is no "new proof" that the universe has an axis of rotation. There is a new suggestion of such, but there are some real problems with this suggestion. UCLA cosmologist Ned Wright, for instance, shows a summary of the disagreements, which demonstrates that some researchers see the axis, but most do not, and that the odds of obtaining their results by random chance are on the order of 30%. So don't rely on news reports and the popular press for your cosmological theories.

You say that It is also obvious that the red shift does not indicate an expanding universe with all the anomalies now known. But you don't tell us what these anomalies are. I will tell you that there are in fact only a few anomalies, and they are not very serious. The evidence in favor of the redshift being cosmological in origin, and therefore indicative of both distance and an expanding universe, is overwhelming. Ned Wright again shows us a number of errors in popular alternatives to expanding universe or big bang cosmologies. He also gives a nice cosmology tutorial. There is also a nice explanation of the big bang theory in the web pages of the Microwave Anisotropy Probe (MAP) mission.

Finally, inflationary theory is an integral part of the expanding universe cosmology. It is also, in fact, exactly the opposite of what creationists have been saying that God did in the beginning. If you are going to try to produce an anti-big-bang or anti-expanding-universe cosmology, you will have to do better than this.

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Response: The reader makes an excellent point, although he could have gone further. By positing that Noah's Ark contained a small number of kinds from which all modern species later evolved, creationists have inadvertantly tied themselves to a rate of evolution far faster than any evolutionist has ever proposed. Ironic, isn't it?
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Response: Free debate takes place in the newsgroup talk.origins. There is no editor, the only moderation applied is to limit cross posting, and anyone can participate, or respond as they see fit to other participants. It is very much a free-for-all.

This archive, on the other hand, is not a place for debate. This archive is provided by individuals who saw a need for a collection of responses to common questions and misconceptions that arise within the free debate of the newsgroup.

The information presented is intended to be correct and useful; it is not a random collection of views from anyone with an opinion. The maintainers of the archive are confident that the best available information is from the perspective of mainstream science; and that is explicit on the archive home page and the welcome FAQ.

This archive has no official standing with respect to the newsgroup. If this archive stands out, it is because of the quality of information available, and the hard work of many people in putting it all together. You can also find here extensive links to other sites with alternative and/or supporting views.

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Response: Thanks very much! If you (or anyone else out there) finds other outdated links in the archive, they can be reported with electronic mail to .
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Response: Thanks for the good suggestions! There is a review of Behe's book in the archive, which also contains a number of links to other related sites on the web.

Ronald Number's book, The Creationists is listed in the recommended reading file, with two lines of (positive) commentary. Speaking for myself, I believe that the archive could really benefit from a review of this book, or (even better) a file on the history and variety of creationism with suitable references. You may like to consider writing such a contribution! The archive submission guidelines suggests how you could do this.

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Response: No true bird fossil older than Archaeopteryx has ever been found. Some possible bones were found in rocks which were though to be of similar age, but not only did the bones turn out to be probably reptilian, but the rocks are know thought to be younger than the Solnhofen rocks in which Archaeopteryx was found. No "fully feathered" bird fossil has ever been found.

The juvenile hoatzin - the "South American jungle fowl" has two claws on each wing (Archaeopteryx has three). This has been used by some to claim that the presence of claws in the ADULT Archaeopteryx cannot be used as a reptile character. Basically the person is very confuse, and wrong.

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Author of: Creation Science and the Earth's Magnetic Field
Response: That's 15.07969 billion inches, and indeed at 1.5 inches per year [3.82 +/- 0.07 cm/year = 1.5 in/year] that comes out to 10 billion years. This is just one of a litany of possible examples of the poor quality of what passes for young-earth science. Not only can we model the real earth-moon tidal interaction quite well, but we can read its history in geological evidence left behind. As an example, see the paper Late Proterozoic and Paleozoic Tides, Retreat of the Moon, and Rotation of the Earth, Science, vol 273, 5 July 1996, pages 100-104. By studying tidal rhythmites the authors are able to show that 900 million years ago the day was about 18 hours long, and that the rate of retreat of the moon from the earth [1.5 in/year] has remained essentially constant over that period. This is only briefly mentioned in the FAQ, but then it does not take much of a FAQ file to deal with this one anyway.
From: Chris Stassen
Author of: The Age of the Earth
Response: The calculation in question is probably not a linear extrapolation. Creationists argue (probably correctly) that tidal torque would be greater when the Moon was closer to the Earth. (See, for example, Walter Brown's calculations). However, their calculations "conveniently" ignore significant factors that can greatly impact the recession rate, rendering such extrapolations useless.
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Response: There are a number of possibilities. For example, evolution would be disproven if it could be shown that the Earth was only a few thousand years old.

Basically, however, your question is a bit like asking what evidence is necessary to disprove the atomic theory of matter. It makes an interesting speculation; but the question fails to take account of the fact that many independent lines of evidence have already been investigated over a long period of time, with the result that evolution is confirmed to such a degree that any conceivable alternative theory would extend or generalise evolutionary theory as it stands at present.

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Response: You are referring to the Suspicious Creationist Credentials FAQ, which provides extensive references and citations that allows anyone to check the evidence.

You are also mistaken about Einstein. He completed all his schooling in a fairly straightforward progression. You may be thinking of the occasion in 1885 when he failed an entrance exam to Zurich Polytechnic; but after a further year of secondary schooling in Aarau he gained entrance in 1886, and duely graduated in 1890 as a secondary school teacher of mathematics and physics. He gained his doctorate from the University of Zurich in 1905, and his habilitation thesis was accepted in 1908. (This is a European post-doctoral qualification for becoming a professor). You can check the evidence for this in any encyclopedia, or on the web at Albert Einstein Online.

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From: Chris Stassen
Author of: The Age of the Earth
Response: The simplest isotope dating methods involve a basic computation on the ratio of parent to daughter. Such methods give incorrect ages as a result of contamination (or any other violation of the dating methods' requirements). Even though these methods don't have built-in safeguards, the unsuitability of a sample is often indicated independently of the dating result. For example, creationists often cite potassium-argon (K-Ar) dating of samples from the Hualalei lava flows of 1801 (which give a wide range of K-Ar "ages" up to three billion years). These flows contain inclusions which were not molten at the surface, whose chemistry indicates formation at significant depth. It is obvious from visual inspection that such lavas do not meet the requirements of K-Ar dating.

Note that isochron and equivalent methods tend to avoid such problems automatically. They are not prone to yielding incorrect ages as a result of contamination or other unsuitability. (This is discussed in much more detail in the Isochron Dating FAQ.)

When the creationists obtain an obviously incorrect date on their own, the reason is usually a deliberate violation of the requirements of the dating method. (This is a bit like smashing a wristwatch with a hammer, complaining about the fact that the crushed watch does not keep time properly... and then suggesting that all wristwatches must therefore be incapable of keeping time.) For example, see my Critique of ICR's Grand Canyon Dating Project -- or my note on carbon dating in The May 1997 Feedback.

If you have a different specific example in mind, give me a reference (or at least a description), and I will put together a more specific response for you.

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Response: I can't speak for the whole organization, but I'm sure we would welcome your copying and distributing talkorigins information. If the material is copyrighted, that information should be included. I would also strongly recommend that you get in touch with the National Center for Science Education; they have the experience and expertise to assist you in stopping creationist takeovers. NCSE addresses are:

Eugenie Scott, Ph.D. 925 Kearney St. El Cerrito, CA 94530-2810 510-526-1674 FAX 510-526-1675 800-290-6006 [Archive maintainance note: this contact information is out-of-date. Use the link above for current information -- February 21, 2004]

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Author of: Creation Science and the Earth's Magnetic Field
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I do not know what the common ancestor was. According to Jim Foley, in the Fossil Hominids FAQ file, the oldest known Homind species is the Ardipithecus ramidus, which dates from about 4.4 million years ago. On the presumption that apes are primates, but not Hominds, then I would presume that the common ancestor in question predates Ardipithecus ramidus by some unknown period of time. Of course, it may also be possible that modern apes are descendent from one of the earlier Hominid species, I really do not know.

Of course, nobody can recreate the scenario of natural selection on genes, to reconstruct human evolution, but I do not find this embarrassing. The story is a morphological one, and that which you dismiss as telling stories is in fact a powerful weapon in the demonstration of human evolution. The details are well described in the Fossil Hominids FAQ file, and in other locations around the web, such as The Institute for Human Origins, or the Origins of Humankind Website.

Not knowing all of the answers is neither a crime, nor a weakness. There is a lot that I do not know about human evolution, and a lot that the community of scientists studying the problem do not know. But that human evolution has occurred, and that such a common ancestor does in fact exist, seems to me a perfectly obvious fact of nature.

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Author of: Evolution and Philosophy
Response: You are right to suspect the creationist usage of the term: they literally do not know what "neo-Darwinism" actually means.

There's an interesting history to the term. Darwin himself moved away from the all-sufficiency of natural selection in successive editions of the Origin, but his co-discoverer Alfred Russel Wallace was what is now called a panselectionist - that is, he thought selection was all the mechanism needed to explain evolution.

Those who followed Wallace were sneeringly called "neo-Darwinians" by one Prof. Remanes, who was more pluralistic in his views, as Darwin came to be. The term stuck for anyone who makes selection the main mechanism of evolution. It is also applied to anyone who accepts the model of germ-line heredity developed by Weismann, because the opponents of this theory were called neo-Lamarckians. So, neo-Darwinians differed from their supposed hero, and it turns out that neo-Lamarckians were agreeing with Darwin, and that very little of their views were derived from those of Lamarck.

In the period from 1930 to 1947 or so, when the current views were being thrashed out after a period of eclipse by Mendelism, the term was carried over to cover the followers of RA Fisher, who wrote the first major fully Darwinian analysis of evolution, The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection in 1930. Fisher was also a panselectionist. His views were adopted by the so-called "Oxford School" of evolutionists, of which Maynard Smith and Dawkins are modern representatives. However, those who accept the theories of the modern evolutionary community are called "modern synthesists", because their views synthesised Mendelian genetics with Darwinian evolution, which were very much held to be opposed before that.

Because terms like "modern" date quickly, most refer now to the Synthetic View of Evolution, which has been developing since about 1950, and which has since incorporated the neutral theory of molecular evolution, the endosymbiont theory of cell structures, and the punctuated evolutionary theory of Gould and Eldredge et al, all of which were first presented as challenges to the "neo-Darwinian" or "synthetic" theories.

So, to answer your simple question simply, "neo-Darwinian" mainly refers to modern Darwinian views after the synthesis, but this is historically incorrect.

A good history of Darwinism is Peter Bowler's 1984? Evolution - the History of an Idea.

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From: Chris Stassen
Author of: The Age of the Earth
Response: It is difficult to judge whose facts are "TRUE and COMPLETE" solely by watching videos. Some of the contributors to this archive have put a good deal of effort into researching Mr. Hovind's claims -- involving lengthy trips to the library and a lot of wading through the technical literature. Many of Mr. Hovind's "facts" do not stand up to inspection.

Indeed, there is some evidence that even Mr. Hovind knows this. Jim Lippard confronted him when he repeated a false claim regarding Lucy's knee joint. In an audio tape dated 11/5/1993, Mr. Hovind agreed to stop using the claim. More than a year later, he was caught repeating it -- a claim which he then knew to be false -- in a public lecture. (This is documented in the Lucy's Knee Joint FAQ.)

Elsewhere in this archive, there is an extensive evaluation of many of Mr. Hovind's claims, by Dave Matson. If you really want to know who has the "TRUE and COMPLETE" facts, you are welcome to follow the references in that file and find out for yourself. (Unfortunately, it isn't possible to obtain an informed opinion on the topic merely by watching television and trustingly accepting all of the claims presented.)

Incidentally, I think you have a good point about Chris Colby's Introduction to evolutionary biology FAQ, which is where the "100% crap" phrase is found. Readers who are really seekers of the truth shouldn't resort to complaining about overly blunt wording as a rationalization for ignoring the data presented... but writers of the FAQs can easily take away that lame excuse simply by choosing words carefully.

One last thing: if you think evolution is about denying God, you have been misled. Several of the contributors to this archive are Christians. See Warren Kurt VonRoeschlaub's excellent God and Evolution FAQ for more information.

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Response: This feedback is apparently directed to Charles Johnson, of the Flat Earth Society. Mr Johnson is unlikely to see your feedback comments here.
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Response: The word mistake carries a misleading implication of intent. Evolution is just something that happens, with no deliberate goal. But for what it is worth, the fossil record is full of species which evolved and subsequently became extinct.
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From: Chris Stassen
Author of: The Age of the Earth
Response: Judging by your proposed "classifications," you seem to think that anyone who disagrees with you is either a materialistic atheist or "confused." As a counter-example, old-Earth anti-evolutionists are neither -- in fact, they are a good deal less "confused" about geology than the young-Earth crowd.

Based on surveys that I have seen (for example those referenced in Harrold and Eve's book, The Creationist Movement in Modern America), there would probably be relatively few people in either of your first two categories. You have merely identified the two extremes of a wide spectrum of belief.

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From: Chris Stassen
Author of: The Age of the Earth
Response: Yes. This is discussed in detail, in this archive's Speciation FAQ.
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Response: Good luck with setting up your web site. When you are ready, you can send us the URL. There is a simple form at the bottom of our links page which you can use to submit new links.

In science, the word proof does not refer to a formal deductive argument as in mathematics, but to confirmation by an overwhelming weight of evidence. The mainstream scientific consensus on the status of evolution (including its macro and micro aspects) is discussed in the Evolution is a Fact and a Theory file.

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

This is again emphasized at the start of the Welcome FAQ.

I am not sure how this could be expressed more clearly or emphatically; nor is it inconsistent with describing this collection as an archive.

We do provide an extensive collection of links to creationist pages, and you will also find many of the files provide prominent links to alternative pages which discuss the relevant topic from a creationist perspective.

We do strongly encourage people to investigate and compare the information available on the internet and elsewhere.

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Author of: Evolution and Philosophy
Response: Originally, I used the phrase "essentially infinite, to use a Holdenism" after a famed (infamed?) contributor to the newsgroup, but decided that this sort of in-joke was inappropriate to the FAQ. I guess malapropism came naturally to mind. My, admittedly parochial, dictionary defines a malapropism as a ridiculously misused word or phrase. I think my usage is correct, but somebody with a better classical education could no doubt correct me on that. God is in the details, as they say.
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Author of: Creation Science and the Earth's Magnetic Field
Response: I think there is some confusion here, I doubt that any of the FAQ authors think that Earth is flat. Try directing your inquiry towards the (International) Flat Earth Society, or the Flat Earth Society of Australia.

From the flag bridge of the USS Belleau Wood, during a tiger cruise from Pearl Harbor, Hawaii to San Diego, California, I was able to duplicate the "columbus" observation. Using the large binoculars mounted on the ship, I observed two destroyers 100 miles out ahead of the convoy. The ship hulls were below the horizon and invisible, but the ship masts were not. And the visible masts included parts far smaller than the ship hull, so the old "it was just too far away" line won't work here. I saw the curvature of the earth with my own eyes.

One of the reasons given by flat-earthers for this belief is the claim that they can survey large distances and prove the surveyed ground was flat, that they found no sign of the earth's curvature. But this does not work as an excuse either. See the paper Measure the earth's radius while boating on one of its lakes, Frank O. Goodman, American Journal of Physics, 61(4), April 1993, pp. 378-379.

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Response: has graciously offered to convert a number of the archive's best FAQs into an easily printable format and has already begun working on the task. Watch the What's New page for an announcement of their availability.
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Response: I am not aware of any dictionary that uses such a definition. Indeed, it is self-referential! The "definition" refers to a process without ever defining it, and instead focusses on the notion of a "belief" in evolution. This is merely pandering to the confusions those who seem unable to come to grips with the idea that scientists use the theory of evolution for the same reason that they use the atomic theory of matter: it works, and explains such a wealth of observation that it become an essential framework for understanding.

Evolution does not address the origin of life from inanimate matter: though many general concepts of evolutionary theory (such as selection) are of importance in this area as well. A useful term for origins of life itself is abiogenesis. Howewer, there is no one generally accepted theory for how it occurred. That life at some point arose from inanimate matter is accepted by everyone: even those who hold that the step from dust to vitality involved the deliberate intervention of an already existing intelligent creative entity.

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