Re: my little essay on the evolution vs. intelligent design case

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>"My little essay on the evolution vs.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>intelligent design case"
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>[snip]
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Hey, Don, how did it go?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Pretty good.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Yeah?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Yeah, they seemed to appreciate my report on
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>all those ID articles.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>You sure? They sounded a little gruff.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Oh, I developed a resistance years ago.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>So you've evolved.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Yes, a changed man.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>But they all think you're a creationist.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>I'll survive.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>They couldn't see you deploring the invocation of an
>>>>>>>>>>>>>intelligent designer?
>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>You had to read pretty close.
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>You addressed some mighty screwy anti-ID logic in
>>>>>>>>>>>those newspaper articles.
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>Yeah, I guess t.o. activists tend to confuse
>>>>>>>>>>antidiscreationarianism...
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>That's a big word.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>...with creationism.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>But your little poke at Big Bang creationism - that showed
>>>>>>>'em?
>>>>>>
>>>>>>I don't think they view it the same way.
>>>>>
>>>>>No? Why?
>>>>
>>>>Biblical creation leaves a 17.6 degree background radiation;
>>>>Choctaw, 1.8; etc.
>>>
>>>Gotta be 2.7.
>>
>>Right.
>
>Any point in responding if all they can see is creationists?

Nothing to lose.

Donald Sauter (ds)


>>ds: The articles make much of America's backwards
>>fundamentalism, but when they supply statistics for European
>>countries, they don't look all that different:
>>
>> The situation is much different in Europe. More than 75
>> percent of Danish and French citizens and more than 60
>> percent of adults in Germany, Austria, Britain, Spain, Italy
>> and the Netherlands said they believed evolution was
>> "definitely" or "probably" true, according to a study by Jon
>> D. Miller, director of the Center for Biomedical
>> Communication at Northwestern University's medical school.
>>
>>ds: *60* percent? *Probably* true? Sounds pretty pathetic to
>>me. If evolution is so rock solid, why can't biologists get
>>themselves understood? After all, polls on both sides of
>>the Atlantic would show 100 percent belief that the earth is
>>*not* flat, and 100 percent belief that the earth is *not*
>>the center of the universe.
>
>John Harshman: Afraid not. There are a few flat-earthers around,
>and lots of people don't know that the earth goes around the sun
>rather than the other way around.

ds: I was rounding off to the ones place.


>>ds: And we haven't even gotten to the question, if life is so
>>easily and naturally formed, and highly sophisticated
>>species are so easily and naturally evolved, how is it in
>>any way conceivable that we have not been contacted by any
>>alien civilization, thousands, millions, or billions of
>>which may have had billions of years headstarts on us?

Two responses to the above:

>Bob: who knows? what possible relevance does this have to
>evolution?

>John Harshman: Perhaps the conditions necessary to make life easy
>to form are quite rare. Why does the Fermi paradox cause any sort
>of problem for evolution? You aren't clear on this.

ds: No problem at all if earth is the only place in the universe
where evolution works. But doesn't that raise another question,
such as, why is earth the only place in the universe where
evolution works?


>>ds: Species appear in the record; they disappear
>>from the record. There are no little, teensy-weensy line
>>segments, even, connecting two or three species by smooth
>>transitions.
>
>Bob: really? hmmm...then i guess we better toss out the
>transitional sequences showing the evolution of the horse and the
>evolution of the whale

ds: You will say I am being unreasonable, but my point is that 5
points do not make a line segment. There are still jumps to
negotiate, such as from three-toed to one-toed, for example.
Very easy to explain with hand-waving, I'm sure, but maybe a
little tougher using neo-darwinian micro-mutational theory.


>>ds: A frequent anti-ID argument goes along the lines, if there's
>>an Intelligent Designer, how come there's AIDS (back pains,
>>sniffles, hurricanes, etc.)? Far be it from me to argue
>>ID's position, but this is so simple-minded that I can't
>>keep quiet. Where in intelligent design does it say
>>anything about "benevolence", or "people-friendly"??? If it
>>was my job to create an AIDS virus, or a hurricane, you can
>>bet I would try to make it the best darn stuff you ever saw.
>>ID is just pointing out that the steps from space dust to
>>bacteria to little critters to humans are *doozies*, never
>>mind whether we get stung, or get honey, out of the deal.
>
>Deadrat: Please quote a scientist who uses your "frequent anti-
>ID" argument. The argument is that if the designer is supposed
>to be so intelligent, how come his creations are designed so
>badly?

ds: You've got me baffled, but here's another example of this
line of reasoning. From the Harvard Crimson, Nov 29 2005, by
Anton S. Troianovski:

Professor of Biology James Hanken used to tell a story about
rabbits in his organismic biology course that has gained new
significance in recent years.

Until the teaching schedule for the team-taught Biological
Sciences 51, "Integrative Biology of Organisms," changed this
year, Hanken would talk about rabbits' digestive systems in
lecture. The animals can absorb the nutrients from plant matter
only in the small intestine, but food is digested in a part of
the gut that's farther "downstream." So how do plant nutrients
finally get into the rabbit's bloodstream having already passed
through the small intestine undigested?

"They secrete these things through their anus, eat them," and
pass them back through the small intestine, Hanken explains.

And then he adds, "Now you tell me, where's the intelligence in
that design?"

Answer 1: Sounds like half the computer programs ever written.

Answer 2: Maybe professor rabbits sit around wondering why on
earth humans are designed so stupid they don't eat their feces.

So rabbits have an even *more* complex design than what humans in
their infinite knowledge would deem the most sensible. Such a
digestive system makes it even *harder* to whip up a darwinian
just-so story. How could the rabbit arrive at such a state via
micro-mutations and natural selection? Which came first, the
rabbit with a taste for his own feces whose intestines start to
operate out of order; or a rabbit whose intestines operate out of
order, and over the millenia developed a taste for his feces?
Hint: at least the latter is a clear impossibility. Or did these
"malfunctions" develop simultaneously - snowballing mistakes in
the taste buds matching snowballing mistakes in the intestine
operation, mutation for mutation?

Again, don't misinterpret the antidiscreationarianism here. I'm
not an ID-er or creationist; I'm just trying to help you not look
silly when some future historian looks into this 21st-century
controversy. (Yes, that's a straight line - go to town!)


>>ds: Pretending there was a Big Bang, what was there
>>before it, and what was before that? What caused the Big
>>Bang?
>
>Deadrat: I see your physics and math isn't quite up to this.
>Asking what came before the big bang is like asking what's north
>of the north pole.

ds: That's how the other astronomy teaching assistants at the
University of Maryland "answered" such cosmological questions
from the students - just chuckle at its boneheadedness. From the
north pole you can move in any spatial dimension. The moment one
arrives at the north pole is preceded by the moment before, and
followed by the moment after.


>>ds: Over and over we read in all this cheerleading for evolution
>>that it is the "fundamental principle of biology", or the
>>"foundation of all biology", or the "fundamental rule that
>>drives all biology", or the "central unifying concept of
>>biology", or "one of the most basic tenets of biology".
>>These statements go completely unchallenged. Am I the only
>>one who hasn't the vaguest idea what they're talking about?
>>Are you telling me that nobody bred sheep, grew a stalk of
>>corn, or watered a petunia before 1859???

Two responses to the above:

>Deadrat: Why would anyone tell you that? The statement means
>that one cannot understand modern biology without understanding
>evolution. That's why we teach evolution. Because educated
>people should understand the basis of current science.

>John Harshman: Indeed they did. But of course none of this is
>the science of biology, is it? Farmers aren't biologists. Perhaps
>if you learned a little biology, you would be able to see why the
>claims are correct. Evolution provides explanation and pattern
>for what otherwise would be a great mass of unconnected facts.

ds: Consider the book "The Coil Of Life" by Ruth Moore. It
covers all the great work in the life sciences, from the
discovery in the 18th century that breathing was a form of
combustion, through the discovery of DNA's structure and
operation. Evolution is mentioned on about 6 of the 420 pages.
Only three of those mentions are with regard to the scientific
work being discussed - and in two of those cases, considerations
of evolution *misled* the researcher to some extent. Scientists,
Pasteur included, thought that a vinegar fungus that apparently
changed into a yeast when immersed in sugar represented a
"remarkable case of the mutability of species for which Charles
Darwin had argued in the Origin Of Species, published a few years
earlier." (p131) Hugo De Vries studied the primrose
extensively. In the second summer he was "rewarded by finding
ten specimens of a new type... Without any transition they had
suddenly come into being! A new species had been created by
mutation - the word De Vries used in preference to Darwin's
'sport'." But a footnote tells us, "Some of the changes that De
Vries considered new species were later found to be only
modifications." (p179)

In her own opening chapter, Moore says of this mindboggling
advancement in the life sciences, "The work was so vast and
unfathomable that many sciences sprang up to specialize in phases
of it. Among them were biochemistry, biophysics, genetics,
cytology, embryology, biology, physiology. Only now, with
the discovery of DNA, are all beginning to converge." N.B. -
discovery of DNA, *not* evolution.

Maybe you think Moore is simply weak in evolution, or just not a
big Darwin fan, for all this lack of attention. But consider two
of her earlier books: "Man, Time, And Fossils: The Story Of
Evolution" (1953), and "Charles Darwin: A Great Life In Brief"
(1955).

Evolution pops up again in the irradiation of fruit flies, and
here, I would argue, Moore makes a totally unjustifiable leap. A
few screwed up fruit flies and she gushes, "For the first time
men could comprehend how the new comes into the world - the new
character, the change that in the shaping of natural selection
has enabled living things to fill most of the niches of the
earth, the air, and the water around them, and to survive when
the climate turned markedly wetter or drier or hotter or colder.
Mutation was a major force in evolution." Yowch.


>>ds: Cheerleaders for evolution assure us that "there is simply
>>no controversy", and "there is no debate", and posit the
>>Alfred E. Newmanesque, "What controversy???" But - talk
>>about great timing! - halfway through the trial, on Oct 19
>>2005, the book that finally explains how evolution works was
>>published! It's called "The Plausibility of Life: Resolving
>>Darwin's Dilemma", by Marc W. Kirschner, John C. Gerhart,
>>and John Norton.
>
>Deadrat: A brief look on the web shows that this book is about the
>mechanism of evolution. Of course, there's controversy about
>that. Add how science works to the list of things you don't know.
>There's no scientific controversy about the fact that life evolved.

ds: I believe that you are touching on the very essence of the
controversy. I believe that the "mechanism", or the "process",
or the "What's going on???" of evolution is of primary importance
to the doubters. I believe it is the *thing*. To you, the fact
that there is no agreement on the "mechanism" of evolution is no
big deal. Whatever the answer turns out to be, evolutionists are
taking credit for it now. I think that's a big, non-scientific
cheat, myself. You have to know how hard it is for a thinking
person to swallow the explanation of 73 umptillion
micromutational mistakes getting us from Lizard X to Bird A.
Even if we imagine big steps (which nobody does) and could get
feathers in one jump, and wings in another, and a beak in
another, etc., etc., you still have the daunting job of
explaining plausibly how the new weirdo at each step manages to
survive, propagate and establish a new population with all his
new characteristics. (And where's the featherless winged lizard,
and the feathered wingless lizard, and the featherless lizard
with bird legs, etc., etc.?)

Repeating an argument in my evolution "faq" page, if all this
natural selection acting on a mutation is so easy and expected,
does Wilt Chamberlain represent the first step in the evolution
of the human race into one of giants? That should be a cinch -
height variations are a breeze compared to new body parts. And
if Wilt Chamberlain didn't have a survival advantage, *nobody* or
nothing ever did.

I believe that when evolutionists can put forth a compelling
"mechanism" - one that produces eyeballs and pea*** tails as
well as drug resistance (yawn) - for the origin of new species
that derives from more basic chemistry and physics, is consistent
with the fossil record, is observable in nature and can be
demonstrated in the laboratory, even the most staunchly religious
of the doubters would have no trouble reconciling evolution with
their beliefs.

It's as if we're looking at a huge mountain strewn with pebbles
and stones and rocks and paste jewels and emeralds and diamands
and even a huge solid gold boulder on top, and the explanation
is, "Sure, that's the natural result of a little speck of dust at
the bottom rolling uphill over the eons." (I apologize to any
t.o. trooper who just busted a blood vessel or split his sides,
but I think many outsiders will catch the analogy.)

It's too easy finding people with apparently strong credentials
who have given the matter much thought and are not satisfied with
the current state of evolutionary theory. I'll leave you with
one example, a recent article I found on google news about the
work of physicist Eshel Ben-Jacob and "quorum-sensing".

Bacteria cooperating in a colony create what Ben-Jacob calls a
'genomic web' in which the information-processing power of each
strand of DNA in every bacterium is shared. Such a unit, he
theorizes, would be capable of some degree of self-directed
mutation, a principle he calls 'cooperative evolution.'

The article ends with this quote:

'It's unlikely that the revolution in biology will come from
within biology, because (biologists) lack the abstraction,' Ben-
Jacob said. 'But physicists are intrigued, and I believe that it
will happen. I believe that it will happen soon.'

Take that, will you.

Donald Sauter

.

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