Feedback for October 2003

It is a puzzle how one should respond to this kind of thing. We could track down what Darwin really said; to show how to research the views of nineteenth century scientists; and as a contrast to the creationist technique of passing erroneous quotes from one to another without ever looking them up. And then there is the problem that anything from Darwin is from the nineteenth century. It may have been true then that there was no instance of speciation on record: it is certainly false now.

And then we still have an avalanche of errors in the rest of the feedback. Sigh. A responder's work is never done.

Most creationists using this misquote give no reference. When they do, it is usually to "Life and Letters". This is a collection of primary source materials collected and edited by Darwin's son, in two volumes. They are available on-line from the Gutenburg project. One creationist source, the Handbook of Personal Evangelism, indicates page 210 of Volume 1. Nothing of the kind appears on that page. However, in Volume 2, on page 210, in a letter to G. Benthan written in 1863, we have this in a postscript:

When we descend to details, we can prove that no one species has changed [i.e. we cannot prove that a single species has changed]; nor can we prove that the supposed changes are beneficial, which is the groundwork of the theory.

To read about many instances of speciation observed since Darwin’s time, see Observed Instances of Speciation and Some More Observed Speciation Events. If you are not inclined to trust anything told to you from a scientific perspective, you may find Answers in Genesis more persuasive. From Speciation Conference Brings Good News for Creationists, by Carl Wieland (AiG CEO):

Demonstrating that speciation can happen in nature, especially where it can be shown to have happened rapidly, is thus a positive for creation theorists.

As for the rest of the feedback: it is false that the only proof of evolution is recessive genes. See, for example, 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution, and many other files in the archive. It is false that Lucy is a chimpanzee, or that Lucy has been debunked. Lucy remains a superb Australopithecine fossil, trivially distinguished from a chimpanzee. There is a wealth of fossil evidence both prior to and subsequent to Lucy. Where the nonsense about an artist comes from I have no idea. No creationist source to my knowledge says anything about artists in this context; artists have nothing whatsoever to do with the matter. Evolution works entirely with life from life; the reader has mixed up models and is thinking of biogenesis. Evolution does not conflict with any thermodynamic laws. The claim about the Sun shrinking by five feet per day is an old creationist error. See also The Legend of the Shrinking Sun by the ASA.

The paranoia about atheistic agendas and declining morals is not persuasive when presented by someone who takes so little care to check their own accuracy.

This archive does give a solid and comprehensive view of all sides of the evolution debate, and we keep trying to extend it and make it more thorough. It does not give the view from all sides; it looks at the various sides as carefully and rigorously as we can. (There are more than two sides. Behe does not reject an old earth or the principle of common ancestry.)

Scientists do not only ask questions. They also answer them. This site endorses answers which have been accepted as valid by the mainstream scientific community. We consider that science properly applied validates those answers. Pride has little to do with it. Scientists are also good at finding errors within their own ranks, and recognizing what we don't know as yet.

It is fine to be skeptical of pronouncements from anyone; scientist or otherwise. If you are not yet satisfied with the answers given, then you should continue to check it out. We have plenty of links to the advocates of other views; and you can find more yourself. But in the end, if you ever find answers to your questions — and surely you recognize that finding answers is possible — you also will have to decide which side gives the solid view of the matter. It can't be all of them.

Without apology or qualification we endorse the following plain statement:

Evolution is a vital, well-supported, unifying principle of the biological sciences, and the scientific evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of the idea that all living things share a common ancestry. Although there are legitimate debates about the patterns and processes of evolution, there is no serious scientific doubt that evolution occurred or that natural selection is a major mechanism in its occurrence. It is scientifically inappropriate and pedagogically irresponsible for creationist pseudo-science, including but not limited to "intelligent design," to be introduced into the science curricula of our nation's public schools.

Is that statement really the accepted view within the scientific community? To an overwhelming extent, yes. It has been signed by 400 scientists named Steve.

I wish you well as you seek answers. I hope you are also willing to find them.

Open up the February 2003 feedback and search for "spheroid". That's not news to us, either.

Yours in pedanticism,

Wesley

I assume that this refers to my response to the plagiarized text posted by Tim Ferris.

I certainly did trim Ferris's post. I'm not in the habit of letting plagiarism slide.

"?" is barking up the wrong tree with the assertion that I'm a God-denier. It is because I'm not a God-denier that the patent dishonesty of many antievolutionists, including many a plagiarist, seems so despicable to me.

It's also part of the student rules at Texas A&M University, where I earned my Ph.D.:

An Aggie does not lie, cheat, or steal or tolerate those who do.

Plagiarism is stealing. I would be amused by the squirming contortions that antievolutionist plagiarists go through to justify their unjustifiable acts of lying, but in the end it is sad to see all these people with degaussed moral compasses.

The TalkOrigins Archive already addresses Jehovah's Witness materials ([1], [2], and [3]). The Archive also has materials on the age of the earth which touch upon the cosmological issues raised in the Jehovah's Witness text. It's not like the plagiarized material posted by Ferris was in any way a novelty.

Wesley

If Kent Hovind had something of scientific import to say, he would be publishing papers in the peer-reviewed literature. He would at least be submitting such for review.

But Hovind doesn't have anything to say about scientific matters that would be of interest to scientists.

I'm fine with the idea of discussing issues with Hovind -- in writing. Anytime he feels like responding to my essay on Hovind's incompetence in the field of genetics, I'll make time to discuss it.

Wesley

I'm all for coverage of these hearings. Unlike science, where the evidence can exclude certain conjectures conclusively, socio-political issues can remain contentious despite certain factions having no evidential basis for their stances.

That said, I will remind readers that acceptance of evolutionary biology does not necessitate rejecting religious belief. Please also see our God and Evolution FAQ.

Wesley

I don't recall anything in the scriptures saying that ignorance got anyone a pass into heaven, either.

Please have a look at the God and Evolution FAQ for how accepting evolutionary biology does not equate to rejecting God.

Wesley

Especially good is their section on Dinosaurs. Children often find dinosaurs especially interesting, and the information available is useful to adults as well. I have used it as a resource myself.

They also have a page of Classroom Activities For Preschool, Kindergarten, and Early Elementary School Grades (K-2).

More generally, they have a feature called Little Explorers, which is intended to help young children surf for topics they find interesting, using a picture dictionary with links. I don't know how well it will work for children, but check it out. Lots of biology related stuff is there, and subjects like extinction and deep time and classification shows up very naturally.

Children are often good at finding out about what interests them. The only reason to worry about evolution in particular is if children are being fed a pile of misinformation on the matter of origins. If that is a problem, it is good to give childen a background in astronomy and earth sciences as well; both of which they find naturally interesting. Children who know about the Earth and the Universe are well equipped to see the absurdity of creationist notions. So you may also like to check out Zoom Astronomy and Introduction to the Earth.

(This was not on our list of links, but I have just now submitted Zoom Dinosaurs for inclusion.)

Hmmm. I'll borrow a cliche' from sports: Maybe next year.

Wesley

That's interesting, but I fear that I haven't grasped the force of the argument that you obviously see in it. Making mathematical formulae sit up and beg doesn't necessarily mean that reality follows. That still requires taking a look at the evidence, which is anathema to antievolutionists.

Wesley

The information came from the environment. It is falsehood that no new information has ever formed.

"Who has not found the Heaven -- below --
Will fail of it above --
For Angels rent the House next ours,
Wherever we remove."
    - Emily Dickinson

The inestimable John Pieret has done just this thing in the The Quote Mine Project: or, Lies, Damned Lies, and Quote Mines pages. If you find any quotes we haven't covered, send us the full quote and details of where it is found, and we will chase it up and place it on the page.

Full kudos to John for this work. Glad to see it is useful.

Judging by the grammar, or lack of it, this looks like projection on the reader's part.

Wesley

I'm afraid that the reader must have us confused with somebody else. We haven't "blocked" anything, and certainly have no interest in blocking truth. The truth is that antievolution arguments are mostly very bad indeed, and we go to some effort to demonstrate why those antievolution arguments are often less than truthful. We also link directly to those arguments when they are offered online. There's no "blocking" going on here.

Wesley

Could the reader be less specific? That seems doubtful.

Many, if not most, of the FAQs and essays on the TalkOrigins Archive utilize a little-known convention called references. These references are bits of text that specify other materials that may be found in a big building called a library. To the initiated, references and libraries are part of a secret means of gaining knowledge called, arcanely enough, research. It involves thinking of mechanisms of how things might work, going out and looking at evidence which might bear on whether the proposed mechanism could possibly work, writing up a description of how the mechanism was tested and how the test turned out, and exchanging views in print with other researchers who might disagree. This process, and why it forms an adequate epistemology, seems to be a complete mystery to many an antievolutionist.

Wesley

Hmm. It seems that they can't even find their CAPS LOCK keys.

I'm not for either the path of ignorance favored by ideological antievolutionists or for the path of arrogance favored by evangelical atheists. Evolutionary biology is a well-supported science, but it doesn't make a dispositive case in theological issues as the reader asserts.

Wesley

Why don't you stop beating your wife?

False premises don't make for good questions.

Please read our God and Evolution FAQ.

Wesley

If all of that is too difficult you can also ask the feedback column...

One of the first people to explore this question by careful examination of fossilized sea shells themselves is the great renaissance scholar Leonardo Da Vinci. There is a brief extract from his writings at our historical FAQ on Changing Views of the History of the Earth.

Leonardo looked at the evidence, and saw mountaintop sea shells that were clearly deposited in a minimally disturbed shallow marine environment; not debris from a flood. The FAQ gives this quote from Leonardo's notebooks:

"If the Deluge had carried the shells for distances of three and four hundred miles from the sea it would have carried them mixed with various other natural objects all heaped up together; but even at such distances from the sea we see the oysters all together and also the shellfish and the cuttlefish and all the other shells which congregate together, found all together dead; and the solitary shells are found apart from one another as we see them every day on the sea-shores.

"And we find oysters together in very large families, among which some may be seen with their shells still joined together, indicating that they were left there by the sea and that they were still living when the strait of Gibraltar was cut through. In the mountains of Parma and Piacenza multitudes of shells and corals with holes may be seen still sticking to the rocks..."

The short answer to your question as far as modern science has been able to discover is that shells get on mountain tops by being first fossilized in sedimentary deposits of a marine environment. Mountains formed subsequently; and an ancient sea bed becomes the top of a mountain.

There are many discussions of Leonardo's geological insights on the web, and they generally describe him as a prescient genius who anticipated many insights from modern geology. This is only half the story. For more detail, I recommend the essay collection:

• "Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms: Essays on Natural History"
  by Stephen Jay Gould, (Harmony books, 1998)

I have but one question for the reader: Where might the objectionable article be? Please, feedback writers, give us a break and include the URL of the page you are writing to us about in your feedback letters.

Wesley

A problem with this particular subject area is that a focus on credentials often ends up as a red herring. There are some notorious cases of bogus or worthless credentials; and we have documented instances of this. There are also notorious cases of people with excellent and legitimate credentials who, in spite of this, turn out pseudoscientific claptrap of no merit whatsoever. The upshot is that in this area, there is no real alternative to the hard work of checking arguments themselves.

The credentials of some of our writers; including some who simply write under their own name with no further detail, turn out to be excellent and directly relevant. Some of our writers are interested amateurs. Some have become experts in a particular subject area simply by immersing themselves in all the relevant literature over an extended period, without ever obtaining formal qualifications. In all cases, the worth of the material depends on the arguments and evidence themselves; and can only properly be evaluated by the hard work of checking the information provided, checking the references, and following up on related literature. That is the basis of the peer review process.

Your feedback was in relation to claim number CH101 (The Bible is inerrant). The extract you singled out has now been removed. The revised text uses a much less controvertial example of syncretism.

Many Biblical stories show Sumerian and Canaanite influence, for example.

And here is some background for other readers of this column. David is a writer who has put together a very interesting web page on his own area of expertise. It is Ceisiwr Serith's Homepage, and includes some essays relating to religion in the ancient world.

I didn't "make the point" asserted by the reader. What is being referenced is my post on probability that shows that extreme improbabilities can be reached very shortly in considering human reproduction. That's a rather different discussion.

Yes, typing is not accomplished by random pounding on the keyboard. However, I did not propose that method, and referred to other posts in that thread that took up that fallacy in some detail. The only way I see that this error could come about is if the reader were unfamiliar with the usual method of quoting previous messages in Usenet posts, which is to prepend a character like ">" before each quoted line.

I doubt that my post gives any fuel to "intelligent design". At least, the reader appears incapable of providing the logic that would go from true premises to his desired conclusion.

Wesley

I'm sure that we'd like to have that, too.

Unfortunately, unless we can convince Bruce McFadden to contribute a super-FAQ on horse evolution, it is not likely to happen. Pictures are an especially difficult bit. Photographs are copyrighted materials. Many, if not most, institutions with fossil collections may restrict how photographs taken of their specimens may be distributed.

But you should be able to find Bruce McFadden's excellent book on horse evolution at a library near you, or order it through interlibrary loan. Good luck with your studies.

Wesley

Taking points in order...

1. Classifying hominid fossils into the "ape" and "human" bins is not as straightforward as the reader asserts. At least, prominent creationists disagree as to which categories some of these fossils belong. This is exactly what one would expect of a lineage with transitional forms.
2. We don't think that a global flood is nearly as good an explanation of the fossil record as modern theories geology. Our many FAQs on the matter tell why.
3. Can you tell the date of origin of the first human life by the numbers of the current human population? This fiction is common in antievolution argument, but this response briefly lays out the case against such shenanigans.
4. The Big Bang does not pose the sort of problems the reader thinks it does.
5. It is not necessary to give up faith in God to accept that evolutionary biologists just might have a clue. Our God and Evolution FAQ provides more detail on this topic.
6. We've been to Google, and AltaVista, and Deja News, and Hotbot, and Yahoo, and to search engines now lost in the misty depths of the dot-com crash. What we have is a large collection of links neatly split into categories covering all aspects of the evolution/creation controversy.
7. No, I don't think we will be surprised. Nor have we been surprised.

Wesley

I'm all for openmindedness in polite society. Science classrooms, though, are not polite society. Science classrooms need to be filled with science, and to exclude those things which are not science.

There are plenty of people who reject evolutionary biology for personal ideological reasons having to do with their understanding (or misunderstanding) of religion, and who also do not push to have their personal beliefs taught as if science in science classrooms. I have no beef with that class of person, and I certainly would not care to "attack" such a person.

On the other hand, there are quite enough people who reject evolutionary biology (and much of the rest of science) in favor of their ideological predispositions, who have taken it upon themselves to attempt to force their non-scientific notions into science classrooms. They have aa number of ways of phrasing such requests: "creation science", "scientific creationism", "equal time", "balanced treatment", "intelligent design", "evidence against evolution", "teach the controversy", "academic freedom", and "viewpoint discrimination". These all amount to the same thing: have evolutionary biology treated differently from other science in the classroom and treat the alternative non-science proposed as if it were science.

This latter class of people is working to harm the public welfare, with malice aforethought, and I for one see no point in "playing nice" with such miscreants. If they choose to put themselves in the thick of public policy disputes, then they need to accept the reality that those who disagree with them may well state their own case forcefully. Some measure of the extent of antievolution activity intersecting with efforts to influence public policy can be seen in posts at the Antievolution.org discussion board.

The TalkOrigins Archive has resources like the FAQ on suspicious creationist credentials specifically because these people have made a point of flogging questionable, if not fraudulent, credentials as a means of impressing audiences to take their pronouncements as being authoritative on the issues.

Your mileage may vary.

Wesley

Coelacanths have evolved for life in deep water, and there is no such thing as an evolutionary tendency towards walking, or a specific evolutionary cycle. Species never finish evolving. Evolution is not something you can ever halt.

See claim number CB930.1, "The coelacanth, thought extinct for ages, is still living.".

Also relevent is the Sept 2002 POTM, on Fish Fossils.

...our own sun, which is in class G, has a surface temperature of 5,780 Kelvin (this corresponds to approximately 5510 degrees Celsius or 9950 degrees Fahrenheit)

Critiques of Biblical prophecies can be found by searching The Secular Web for the term "prophecies." Support for Biblical prophecies can be found at many sites, including Prophecy Central.

Nor does evolution rule out the existence of a creator God. Indeed, many of those who study evolution do so because they wish to know more about the universe God created and the rules He set up governing it.

You should read our articles on Evolution and Philosophy and God and Evolution.

Creationism ("creation science" and/or intelligent design creationism) are not in the scientific mainstream (they're not even in a scientific tributary), hence they are not included here.

Now before you go off half-cocked about how we're trying to hide something please note that the articles in the Archive are thoroughly reference and hyperlinked to antievolutionist literature, and that we have an extensive links page, here, from which interested surfers can access innumerable articles written from an antievolution perspective.

While you're surfing through the antievolution pages check to see how many (or how few) return the favor of linking back to the Talk Origins Archive or similar pro-mainstream sites.

However, I am going to respond to your comments on mammoths by quoting a rather surprising source of information.

1. Number of frozen mammoths: However, most mammoths have left no trace: there are fewer than 50 known woolly mammoth carcasses, only about a half-dozen of which were complete. But an estimated 50,000 tusks have been found.
2. On being encased in ice: They are always found in frozen ‘muck’ in Alaska and ‘yedomas’ in Siberia, near the surface throughout the mid and high latitudes, mostly in river valleys, and occasionally in ice wedges. Despite the myths, most mammoths are not encased in ice.
3. On being buried in a flood: Most frozen mammoths show signs of scavenging and decay. Many years in the ice caused the flesh to dry out (just like a stew left in a freezer for years), resulting in a mummy. Note that my quoted source would have been a bit more accurate to say in permafrost than in ice. As shown in the previous point, my source recognizes that the mammoths are not encased in ice. Ice is not found under water; because water freezes from the top down. Ice which is under water will rapidly melt. These mammoths were freeze-dried; which requires very dry conditions.
4. On whether mammoths were killed in the flood: The location of the mammoths makes it unlikely they were formed during Noah’s Flood.

Now for the big surprise. The source I am quoting is the major young earth creationist organization Answers in Genesis. You can read their full article at Mammoth — Riddle of the Ice Age. Basically, their model (which is also in conflict with the evidence, by the way) is that mammoths were frozen about 4000 years ago, and about 700 years after the flood.

As for sea shells, we had another feedback making the same mistake about shells this month. You should read the response to that feedback as well. In brief, floods don't leave large deposits on the tops of mountains, but in valleys. Furthermore, the details of deposited shells often shows that they were fossilized in place in a shallow marine environment; not as debris from a violent flood. This was first recognized nearly five hundred years ago by the great renaissance scholar Leonardo da Vinci. This is the essence of the scientific method; you need to actually look carefully at the evidence in detail, to test if the form of evidence is consistent with your model or not.

What the evidence shows is mountains that are built up over long periods of time from sediments initially laid down in an ancient sea bed.

But what about your part? Have you yourself researched these subjects in depth? Are you going to conclude that a point is unanswerable just because you didn't find the answer here? I am flattered that you regard us as a fount of all knowledge, but we are not. Sometimes you will have to look further. For the matters you mention, I recommend professional paleoanthropology journals.

In the case of speciation, you can find further references under CB910: No new species. There is still more evidence in the biological literature; don't forget to look there.

Curved feet are an adaptation for arboreal life. Arboreality is compatible with bipedalism. Furthermore, the Fossil Hominid pages give more positive evidence for bipedalism.

Your discussion of brain sizes shows no understanding of statistics, and in particular of measurements of variation. Until you understand how two populations can overlap on some measurement and still be vastly different, you will not find the argument compelling. But another point one should always consider is that a person's not finding an argument compelling does not mean that argument is wrong, even the the person is you.

The ability to evaluate the quality of arguments is a useful skill which is unfortunately rarely taught. You note that contempuous statements are one consideration. But they are a very minor consideration. Contemptuous statements usually show only that a person perceives that he has been treated rudely to begin with. It is much more important to consider motives. (Creationists have an overt motivation to present arguments that support creationism; scientists have motivation to present accurate data and theories that fit it, regardless of whether it supports or contradicts creationism.) And be sure to consider all the evidence. This requires searching it out and making sure you understand it.

Pardon me, but I have to demur concerning the notion that William Dembski should be the poster boy for civil discourse. The reader has apparently overlooked the juicy bits, like:

My most obnoxious critics have been Internet stalkers (e.g., Wesley Elsberry and Richard Wein), who seem to monitor my every move and as a service to the Internet community make sure that every aspect of my work receives their bad housekeeping seal of disapproval.

Quoted from Intelligent Design Coming Clean by William A. Dembski.

This isn't the only place where Dembski has had a lapse in civility. Nor are other ID advocates reticent about letting people know how they feel about their critics. Check out the thread on invidious comparisons used by ID advocates.

There is plenty of incivility in the arguments over "intelligent design". But I disagree that there is a large disparity in how that uncivil behavior is distributed. The reader may wish to see another response I have this month concerning reasons why no punches should be pulled in dealing with foes of good science education.

Wesley

That is, there is nothing between us and other living apes for the same reason there is nothing between you and your cousin.

Chimpanzees are our closest living relatives. Sadly, we did lose a closer relative about 30,000 years ago; the Neandertals; but they are not between us and chimpanzees either. They were like our sisters; where chimpanzees are like our cousins. Our sister species is now extinct; they died too young.

Your sister is more closely related to you; but no closer to your cousin. In the same way, if Neandertal humans were still living today, they would not be any closer to chimpanzees than we are. This is confirmed by genetic studies using mitochondrial DNA. The genetic distance between modern humans and Neandertal humans is fairly small, but still enough to place Neandertals outside the range of current human diversity. The genetic distance from us to chimpanzees is substantially larger. And the genetic distance from Neaderthals to chimpanzees is almost exactly the same as the distance from us to chimpanzees.

The creatures actually between us and chimpanzees are our respective (extinct) ancestors, back to our common ancestor, probably about 5 or 6 million years ago. In the same same way, what is really between you and your cousin is your parents and their parents (your Uncle) and then your common grandparents.

An example of an ancestral species for humanity almost certainly includes some of the gracile Australopithecines. Australopithecines have long since died out and been replaced by other species in the Homo genus. We don't have any fossil evidence for comparable chimpanzee ancestors. Chimpanzees do not have a good fossil record. But again, the links are to be found in the past.

And finally, no, we don't have the archive available in book form. We do have a version of the Fossil hominids FAQ in pdf, which you are welcome to print out. It is a bit out of date with the html versions, but the basic details remain the same.

My introductory biology professor at college said much the same thing. I think it is a good way to approach teaching the topic.

It is amazing how many people who are active in antievolution have almost no understanding of the topic they try to critique.

Wesley