Feedback for May 2000

Macroevolution *was* proposed before Darwin. See the Darwin's Precursors and Influences FAQ". However, one interesting point is that humans evolved to deal with a stable environment and a limited number of living kinds. We didn't evolve to understand evolution, and the work of thousands of researchers is required to come to grips with a complex and changing biological world for that very reason.

It is commonly held that speciation processes are largely, if not totally, independent of natural selection. In this Davison is simply part of the crowd. I recently heard a talk given by Kurt Benirschke which attributed most speciational changes in mammals to chromosomal fusion events. So, when properly delimited, saying that much of the speciation we see in mammals (or perhaps even vertebrate animals) is due to some sort of chromosomal rearrangement is plausible, since that is what the karyotype data seems to show.

In looking at Davison's "manifesto", I personally found some reasons for concern about the validity of various points. Since I have long heard similar claims about chromosomal rearrangement and speciation, the claimed novelty of Davison's hypothesis seems more hype than substance. There seems to be a lot of textual interpretation within the work which purports significance in the real world. Quotations seem to be treated much as "proof-texts" are in apologetics. Many of his claims about what "Darwinism" must entail are arguable, and some are simply wrong. I think that in Davison's particular case, he might hold a correct position with regard to speciation events being often due to chromosomal rearrangement without having grounded his other corollaries in much besides his personal prejudices, buttressed with some quotes from others having congruent prejudices.

In general, when evaluating non-mainstream claims, it is good to keep one's skepticism sharp. The taint of self-aggrandizement is a clue that should not be overlooked. Something of a field guide for such behavior in physics can be applied with a few changes to biological topics.

Wesley

As evolution is true, but it is a highly contingent process that is not regular in its behavior, we cannot predict what the future evolution of any species, including humans, much further than in the range of decades. A billion years is a bit more difficult...

However, we can make some prediction if we assume constant conditions, stable ecologies, and no massive die-off or isolation of peripheral populations: humans will remain pretty much the same as they are now. Excluding possible genetic engineering scenarios, of course.

Evolution is a process that we model theoretically. It occurs, and how it occurs is modelled in the equations of population genetics.

It is not a faith. Nobody is required by catechism to believe in evolution, but if you are a scientist working in the field of biology and you wish to explain how organisms in all their diversity came to be, you had better either accept that evolution occurs or come up with a better (scientific) explanation. Declarations of faith are no good as science.

Many biologists have looked at the evidence and found it convincingly supports evolutionary theories concerning adaptation, biogeography, behavior, and descent.

The assertion that transitional fossil sequences are absent falters upon examination of the evidence. The Vertebrate Transitional Fossils FAQ discusses some of this evidence.

If the reader wishes to speak out without fear of an editing process, there are many fora available. Of course, the Usenet talk.origins newsgroup is one of those.

The phenomenon of suicide predates modern evolutionary biology, and as a problem could as simply be ascribed to the idea of the person contemplating it saying, "I'm just a sinner who God hates and is punishing, so I have nothing to live for." That could also be the last thought a suicidal individual has before their death. Given the numbers on belief touted by various anti-evolutionists, the overwhelming majority of US citizens believes in some form of Christianity. Unless one comes up with numbers showing a disproportionate percentage of unbelievers takes up suicide, I'd say that the alternative "last thought" is the more likely one.

Wesley

Back in 1998, a post on the Calvin College evolution mailing list talked about how difficult the transition from theistic anti-evolutionist to theistic evolutionist could be. In my response to that letter, I used the same "magic bullet" concept:

I tend to think of SciCre argumentation, and even some of the ID argumentation, as a search for a "magic bullet". By this, I don't mean it in the sense that Ehrlich did when searching for a cure for syphilis. I mean it in the sense of werewolf movies. There, the magic bullet is simply a silver slug that will destroy the lycanthrope on contact. Those wielding the magic bullet need invest no other effort in dealing with the lycanthrope, are not required to be pure in spirit, and certainly have no need to *understand* lycanthropy in any deep sesne. Similarly, the SciCre "professionals" are engaged in the peddling of "magic bullets", which retain their magic only so long as they aren't used on real lycanthropes. The magic bullet users, as Scott relates, remain secure in their faith that the evil lycanthropes can be held at bay or vanquished, right up until the time the magic bullet is fired -- and is found to have lost its virtue.

Instead of magic bullets like "too little moon dust" or "materialistic philosophy", more good would come of trying to understand what exactly evolutionary biology is. As it is, creationist belief has tended more and more to resemble evolutionary biology. In little more than a century and a half, we have seen a change from general adherence to the doctrine of special creation to a range of beliefs, at the most different from evolutionary biology, creation of each separate "kind" (which when defined at all, tends to be defined such that the evolutionist term "clade" comes close to fitting the concept), and at the least different, a belief in physical common descent but separate imbuement of spirit.

[ Personal paradigm shifts]

Wesley

We know a fair bit about nature, but not enough to say "this event is not possibly natural". At best we can say "this event is inexplicable on the basis of what we know about nature now". We might even say "this event is in direct contradiction to all known laws of nature". But we can't say that an observed event is supernatural, at least not just on the basis of science.

What design we do know is entirely natural. If something begins to look to us like it is designed, then we are obliged to seek a natural explanation for it, unless the analogy to ordinary design doesn't hold, in which case why make the analogy in the first place?

On bad design (which as Pratchett has said is evidence of a blind watchmaker): if we can envisage better (more efficient or more fault tolerant or making better use of natural principles) designs, then we are entitled to say that a design is faulty. The agent's motives (which are hidden to us in scientific terms anyway) are besides the point, unless the designer we are inferring is a very bad designer. Perhaps that is the argument IDers want to make. I find that (subjectively) unsatisfying as a substitute for evolutionary theory.

Tree leaves that are high above the ground represent a food resource. Mammalian species have utilized a variety of adaptations to take advantage of this resource. Koalas and sloths climb the trees to get the leaves. Elephants may use their trunk to pull down tree limbs. Giraffes have an elongated neck and a specialized tongue.

The okapi is an extant relative of the giraffe. As a browser, it utilizes food resources both near the ground and on shrubs or trees. It also has a long tongue which is used to collect leaves from tree branches.

The giraffe is simply a specialist browser utilizing a food resource for which it need not compete with many other browsing or grazing species. The route to specialization is not discontinuous, as the example of the okapi shows.

Wesley

The reader's argument hinges upon taking the Bible as a unitary item, "all one piece", as it were. However, history indicates otherwise. The composition of the Bible is not agreed upon universally. There are several books in the Roman Catholic bible taken as canon which are absent from the King James Version and its derivatives. Further, the inclusion or exclusion of specific books for the Catholic canon was a matter decided at the Council of Hippo, sometime about 400 AD. Such items as the "Gospel of Thomas" failed to make the cut. It is obvious that such "books" were considered scriptural to some degree or other and required further human judgment to either accept or reject as canon. This argues strongly against the "all or nothing" stance taken by the reader. Obviously, there were doubts about some previously included "books of the Bible", and rather than discarding all of them, various editors excluded some of them. The Bible's composition is due to a selection process.

Wesley

That can be an amusing pastime. See my essay, Enterprising Science Needs Naturalism, where I utilize a howler from one of Wilder-Smith's books as a case study in how not to infer supernatural intervention.

Wesley

Don't complain to us about your choice of association. Intelligent Design Creationism (IDC) is intellectually allied with various young-earth creationist views. Phillip Johnson's "wedge" strategy seeks to utilize the larger numbers of YEC adherents to further the IDC political movement. Essentially, Johnson is calling for all theistic anti-evolutionists to gather behind the IDC banner until Darwinian theories of evolution are excluded from classrooms or only present for the purpose of ridicule. After that is accomplished, then it will be an appropriate time to take up the internal doctrinal disputes that currently divide theistic anti-evolutionists.

IDC uses many of the very same invalid arguments that have been put forward by YECs for decades. IDC lectures are featured items in YEC calendars-of-events. IDC tactics are derived from YEC political action policy, and have certain features to avoid pitfalls that were exposed in the decades of YEC losses in court cases. There is at least one well-known YEC, Paul Nelson, who is one of the leading IDC proponents, which certainly argues against the position that IDC excludes YEC belief. There is no tenet adhered to by IDC proponents that would exclude simultaneously holding a YEC belief system. IDC proponents simply advance weaker claims than YEC types do, which makes them somewhat harder to rebut. One will notice that IDC seeks out gaps in our knowledge. Although IDC proponents deny that they pursue "God-of-the-gaps" type arguments, it is pretty plain that this is in fact the preferred style of argument within IDC.

An extended look at the IDC phenomenon can be found in Robert Pennock's "Tower Of Babel".

Fortunately, no biologist believes that adaptation occurs "completely at random". If that is what IDC proponents object to, then they can easily get the biological community behind them on that point. On the other hand, the implication that something outside of "normal laws" must be at work would be something that biologists in general would disagree with. I discussed how the appeal to supernatural causation is always premature in my paper at the 1997 Naturalism, Theism, and the Scientific Enterprise conference. Also, see my page on criticisms of the views of William A. Dembski, one of the foremost IDC proponents.

Wesley

If the implication is that the full title is somehow too embarrassing, the reader is wrong. The full title is referenced in several places on the archive.

It is, though, disconcerting that the full title is not on the pages that actually show the text of the book. I will look into it.

Wesley

The etext of Darwin's first edition of "On the Origin of Species..." now lists the complete title on that URL, thanks to Brett Vickers.

Wesley

"How do I know the contents of this archive are reliable?"

Visitors to the archive should be aware that essays and FAQs appearing in the archive have generally not undergone a rigorous peer review procedure by scientific experts. Rather, they have been commented on and critiqued by the readership of the talk.origins newsgroup. While many of the participants in talk.origins are well regarded scientists, this informal procedure is not as demanding as the process a scientist goes through to publish a paper in a scientific journal. It is important to keep this fact in mind when reading the contents of this archive. Because most of the essays have not undergone rigorous peer review, some of them may contain errors or misstatements of fact. Any errors you identify should be reported to the authors or to the editor.

As a general rule, you should never rely too heavily on anything you read on the Internet. Read the primary, reviewed literature before making up your mind on any topic. Most of the archive's essays provide references to primary sources to make it easier for you to do this.

I'm sure that many people who sport the "Darwin fish" logo do so to express the idea that Darwin is right and various literalist anti-evolution interpretations are wrong. But that is not necessarily true of all users of the "Darwin fish" logo.

The Christian fish symbol came about as a means of identifying those with similar beliefs. Some "Darwin fish" users may do so in a similar manner, saying, "Here is how I view the evolution-creation controversy."

Eugenie Scott pointed out an instance of a car that sported both the Christian fish and a "Darwin fish" logo side-by-side on the rear bumper.

As for what is commonly seen, I see far more "Christian fish eating Darwin fish", "dead Darwin fish" (legs up in the air, eyes X'ed out), and other such variants. I haven't yet encountered a "Darwin fish eating Christian fish" logo. One vehicle that stands out in my memory was a battered Dodge Charger sporting a "Christian fish eating Darwin fish" logo painted on the side, and on the front quarter-panel was noted a score: "Charger: 3, Deer: 0".

The "Darwin" logo users should be given the benefit of the doubt. The logo seems to me to be a very mild parody.

Wesley

I'm afraid I don't see evolution "religiously defended". What I do see is that various concepts in evolutionary biology are attacked by those with some religious agenda. That scientists choose to defend concepts that have passed empirical muster should come as no surprise. It takes a lot of chutzpah to then invert reality to claim that the defense is "religious".

Wesley