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

Feedback for June 2005

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Response: Contrary to what you believe, the latest research in genetics shows that most mutations cause change but not sickness. The Human Genome Project has mapped more that 10 million single nucleotide polymorphisms in the human genome. You can see the results of this latest research at dbSNP Build 124. The vast majority of these mutations have absolutely no effect on the people who carry them and they can only be detected by sequencing their genome.
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Response: Your feedback is identified as having been sent from the main Frequently Asked Questions list.

The kinds of questions that appear frequently change over time, and this FAQ is updated from time to time to address new common questions. The question you ask might be well suited for an addition to list. In the meantime, there are answers in several other places in the archive.

In brief, new information arises frequently in the genetic code. For more detail, you can also check out the following files in the archive.

There is also an excellent set of articles on information theory in relation to this whole debate that has just been added to the archive.

[This response updated on August 14 2005]

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Response: Of course not. You just don't understand what is being proposed very well, which is perfectly normal.

The Big Bang is not proposing something from nothing. It proposes that the universe has expanded over time from a state of extreme density. It's not an arbitrary idea, but the surprising conclusion of many lines of evidence.

There is no incorporation of a "from nothing" step. There are still many unanswered questions. Existing physics diverges to unbounded density and infinitesimal scale a finite time into the past. This is called a "singularity", which means a condition in which equations are divergent or ill-defined. This is not a condition in which there is "nothing"; it is rather a condition in which time and space are not the concepts we are used to and which we can handle with known physics.

There is no basis for dispute here with mathematicians; the mathematics used is perfectly fine. The trouble is simply that some common intuitions turn out to be a very poor guide to how the universe works. Even in simple experiments in a lab we can explore phenomena right now that conflict violently with intuition. But the phenomena are not in question; it is our intuitions that need to be revised.

For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways, says the Lord.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.

Is 55:8-9

We cannot figure out how the world operates by sitting back and thinking about what makes sense for us. We have to look and see, and be willing to be surprised, and willing to learn from what we see shown in the world itself. It is good to bear in mind that although we have learned many things about the universe, there is no assurance that we will ever get it all figured out.

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Response: Sorry, you are dead wrong. Mention the "Theory of Evolution" to any respectable scientist and you can be certain that they don't include things like "Time, space, and matter came into existence by themselves," "Planets and stars formed from space dust," and "Matter created life by itself." Furthermore, the modern Theory of Evolution does not require the denial of God. On all these points Hovind is way off base, and so are you.

If you want to see how real scientists define evolution then read "What is Evolution?". For a brief summary of the modern Theory of Evolution read "The Modern Synthesis". Once you realize that Kent Hovind has lied to you about the definition of evolution you will begin to appreciate why he doesn't even have much respect among Creationists.

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Response: We would need to know the specifics of what is being claimed.

Claims about carbon-14 in dinosaur bones have been made by creationists, but usually without sufficient detail to know what tests were done, how well protected the fossils were against contamination, and so on. You can get contamination in various ways, from ground water, bacteria, rootlets, and so on.

Fossil bone does not generally have carbon present at all, which makes carbon dating problematic. Most of the arguments relating to invalid dates refer to other kinds of material.

Fossils can sometimes have carbon. For dinosaur fossils such preservation is rare, and scientists are unlikely waste such precious material on a radiocarbon test.

This issue is likely to continue to appear. Radiocarbon dating is not perfect; and critics will continue to inflate the degree of imperfection, and focus upon the exceptions. What is lacking, however, is any consistent alternative model able to explain the vast bulk of results that show radiocarbon dating to be a useful and accurate technique.

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Author of: Evolution and Philosophy
Response: I have discussed this a bit in my Evolution and Philosophy FAQ (which I must revise some day soon) section on Metaphysics, in which I said

Philosophers of science mostly conclude that science is metaphysics neutral, following the Catholic physicist Pierre Duhem [1914]. Science functions the same way for Hindus as for Catholics, for Frenchmen as for Americans, for communists as for democrats, allowing for localised variations that are ironed out after a while. However, science does indeed rule out various religious etiological myths (origin stories), and often forces the revision of historical and medical stories used in the mythology of a religion. And when cosmologies are given in ancient scriptures that involve solid heavens, elephants and scarab beetles, science shows them to be unqualifiedly false as descriptions of the physical world as it is observed.

In short, when religion and science conflict, if you want to retain any sense that science uncovers the world in some way, then so much the worse for religion. But that does not immediately make religion false. No elaborate system of ideas is so rigid that problems in one area immediately force a crisis of confidence. Christianity and other religions have been dealing with the problems caused by the unreasonable success of science for a very long time - evolution is no worse for religious belief than any other scientific success (for example, gravity or atomic theory).

A religious perspective that required its adherents to reject science is in trouble. But no religion has remained constant and frozen, ever. All religions adapt to social change, technlogical change, and of course scientific change. It may or may not be acceptable in your view, but it is inevitable, and it has always happened.

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Response: What published work? To be taken seriously in science, and that is what makes something worthy of being taught in science class, you have to publish in peer-reviewed (and that means reviewed by scientists, not other creationists). And there are none. When creationists do manage to get something published in a technical journal (let alone a scientific journal), they certainly don't publish anything on creationism.

Tolerance is only a virtue in broader society. Science is neither tolerant nor democratic, and that is the way it ought to be.

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Response: There is only one possible explanation for your prayers being answered: You are more powerful than God and are able to force God to your bidding. I bow to you.
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Author of: Problems with a Global Flood, 2nd edition
Response: Two factors make a valid calculation of rainfall impossible. First, the rain need not have been uniform. The rain could have been twice as heavy as you calculate over half the globe and a light drizzle over the other half. Second and more important, Genesis says some of the waters came from the "fountains of the deep," and it does not say what proportion was not from rain.
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Response: The problem with your argument is that in adult human beings, these features have been so highly derived that they no longer bear any resemblance at all to their homologs in other animals. It's all well and good to claim that it's an example of reuse by a designer, but why would a designer think the most efficient way to build a tiny ear bone is to reorganize a substantial chunk of branchial structure in an embryo? It's as if a designer of laptop computers decided to build an LCD screen by reusing an old tube CRT -- so every time they make a laptop, they contract Sony to send them a 19" monitor, which they then melt down and rearrange and completely restructure to create a flat screen that uses entirely different imaging principles.

It makes sense if every feature of an organism is the product of its history, but it doesn't make sense if you want to argue independent design with appropriate reuse of common elements. Unless, that is, you're willing to argue that the Designer is wasteful, incompetent, and lazy.

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Response: Please do send your embarrassing Darwin quote. I can think of quite a few where Darwin was flat-out wrong.

Why do you think this would perturb anyone? Darwin was a very smart man who had some great insights, but he isn't revered as a saint, and evolutionary theory has progressed to an amazing degree since Darwin (you do realize he wrote in the 19th Century, and it is now the 21st, right? Or do all of our far-future modern ideas blur together from your perspective in the 12th?)

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Author of: Ancient Molecules and Modern Myths
Response: I would recommend Endless Forms Most Beautiful a new book about "evo/dev' or evolutionary developmental biology, written by Sean B. Carroll. Yopu will particularly like Chapter 2, "Monsters, Mutants, nad Master Genes."
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From: Chris Stassen
Author of: Isochron Dating
Response: The cite is the 1953 entry in the isotopic dating timeline. The 1953 entry includes some facts not demonstrated until later; it is the first entry that mentions meteorites, and stresses their importance up to today.

The reader's question is answered a few paragraphs later, under 1956. Briefly, the whole-Earth isotopic ratios falling on the meteorite isochron indicates a common origin.

For Dr. Patterson's original 1953 calculation, though, he only assumed that meteorites without uranium retained the original Pb isotopic ratios of the solar system. Even at the time, that was known to be a solid assumption, because all iron meteorites had the same Pb isotopic ratios.

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Response: Biological development does not work the same as building something from scratch. There are genes which control many parts of the body and others which fine-tune such controls to smaller areas. To lengthen the left anterior leg would probably require three changes: one to lengthen legs in general, one to limit that change to just the anterior legs, and one to limit it just to the left legs. See CB751 for references with more details. I cannot say how many mutations would be needed to make an ant stick-like (how stick-like?), but it is fewer than you imagine. More to the point, it takes only one mutation to make the ant more stick-like, however stick-like it is already.
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Author of: Evolution and Philosophy
Response: That's about the size of it. Often when this canard is made, there is a subtle or not-so-subtle shift from we know the fact of evolution to how do we know the theory is right? The answer of course is that the theory is tested against evidence and experiment, and is refined to match that. But then the challenge (for example, the "were you there?" challenge) is made that we don't know the facts.

We do know the facts, though. We see evolution occurring. We see the results of evolution (in the molecular structure of organisms, for example). So we were there in the relevant way. But it is hard to explain this to those who do not wish to hear it.

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Response: Thanks, Mike. It is nice to have a civil comment from a creationist.

On the Woodpecker's skull - it is indeed a wondrous structure. Read about it here.

On Wegener, you are right that the land bridges were a desperate attempt to explain biogeography, but they were only posited because the geologists said Wegener was wrong and continents couldn't move. In fact Wegener wasn't the first to propose it either.

On Hawking, if you can comprehend what he says, you are a better man than I. But his ideas are not directly of relevance to evolutionary theory, as evolution occurs some ten billion years after the events he is discussing (apart from black holes, and so far as we know, evolution has nothing to do with them, either).

On males, it is true we love to play in the mud, and watch insects. That is the basis of science. Quite a lot of females do, too. But on all other aspects of female motivations, I am fully in the dark.

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Author of: Evolution and Philosophy
Response: It is question-begging and uninformative. Hope this helps.
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Response: No. This is a longstanding theoretical issue in evolutionary theory, and it is included in any standard textbook on evolution. This site does not aim to or pretend to cover all of evolutionary theory.

A short summary can be found at Brown University's site.

Nature Genetics has a collection of technical papers available.

Sexual reproduction is a modification of the mechanisms for cell division (mitosis) in which the chromosomes are not duplicated after division (meiosis). The resulting cell forms a gamete which then introduces its genes into another cell, or is the other cell. There are examples of all kinds of intermediate forms of sex from occasional sharing of small bits of the genetic component (plastids) among bacteria, through to complete sharing (conjugation), through to partial crossover of genetic complements, through to the most amazing array of lifecycles.

Margulis and Sagan, in their book What is Life? (pp137-139) say

Meiotic sex evolved in mitotic protocists [single celled organisms] long before any animal appeared in the record of life. ...

Meiosis is a variation on the theme of mitosis. Meiosis likely evolved in doubled cells that had already divided by mitosis. The first fertilization event probably satisfied an urge not to merge but to eat. This could have happened if the protist cannibals ate one another. Microscopists sometimes witness microbial wranglings in which a hungry cell engulfs a neighbor .... But the cells do not always digest what they engulf. ...

Once upon a time, we think, eating and mating were the same.

This is also how cells acquired and domesticated our cellular organelles, such as mitochondria.

This is widely known. It is disingenuous in the extreme for creationists to say evolutionary theory cannot explain sex.

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Response: We have a Feathers FAQ. You might also make good use of our Search function. If we don't have a direct piece on it, we almost always have references somewhere. Moreover, you will find pretty well every creationists objection, canard or claim in Mark Isaak's Index to Creationist Claims, which has just been published as The Counter Creationism Handbook, although the paperback is not yet available.
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