Fact, Fable, and Darwin, Part 2

When The Origin of Species was published it aroused immense interest, but initially it did not provoke antagonism on religious grounds. Although many criticized Darwin's lack of evidence, none raised religious objections. Instead, the initial response from theologians was favorable. The distinguished Harvard botanist Asa Gray hailed Darwin for having solved the most difficult problem confronting the Design argument – the many imperfections and failures revealed in the fossil record.

Acknowledging that Darwin himself "rejects the idea of design," Gray congratulated him for "bringing out the neatest illustrations of it." Gray interpreted Darwin's work as showing that God has created a few original forms and then let evolution proceed within the framework of divine laws.

When religious antagonism finally came, it was in response to aggressive claims, like Huxley's, that Newton and Darwin together had evicted God from the cosmos. For the heirs of the Enlightenment, evolution seemed finally to supply the weapon needed to destroy religion. As Richard Dawkins confided, "Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist."

Atheism was central to the agenda of the Darwinians. Darwin himself once wrote that he could not understand how anyone could even wish that Christianity were true, noting that the doctrine of damnation was itself damnable. Huxley expressed his hostility toward religion often and clearly, writing in 1859: "My screed was meant as a protest against Theology & Parsondom ... both of which are in my mind the natural & irreconcilable enemies of Science. Few see it, but I believe we are on the Eve of a new Reformation and if I have a wish to live 30 years, it is to see the foot of Science on the necks of her Enemies."

According to Oxford historian J. R. Lucas, Huxley was "remarkably resistant to the idea that there were clergymen who accepted evolution, even when actually faced with them." Quite simply, there could be no compromises with faith.

Writing at the same time as Huxley, the leading Darwinian in Germany, Ernst Haeckel, drew this picture:

On one side spiritual freedom and truth, reason and culture, evolution and progress stand under the bright banner of science; on the other side, under the black flag of hierarchy, stand spiritual slavery and falsehood, irrationality and barbarism, superstition and retrogression.... Evolution is the heavy artillery in the struggle for truth. Whole ranks of...sophistries fall together under the chain shot of this ... artillery, and the proud and mighty structure of the Roman hierarchy, that powerful stronghold of infallible dogmatism, falls like a house of cards.

These were not the natterings of radical circles and peripheral publications. The author of the huge review of The Origin in the Times of London was none other than Thomas Huxley. He built his lectures on evolution into a popular touring stage show wherein he challenged various potential religious opponents by name. Is it surprising that religious people, scientists as well as clerics, began to respond in the face of unrelenting challenges like these issued in the name of evolution? It was not as if they merely were asked to accept that life had evolved; many theologians had long taken that for granted. What the Darwinians demanded was that religionists agree to the untrue and unscientific claim that Darwin had proved that God played no role in the process.

Among those drawn to respond was the Bishop of Oxford, Samuel Wilberforce, who is widely said to have made an ass of himself in a debate with Huxley during the 1860 meeting of the British Association at Oxford. The relevant account of this confrontation reported: "I was happy enough to be present on the memorable occasion at Oxford when Mr. Huxley bearded Bishop Wilberforce. The bishop arose and in a light scoffing tone, florid and fluent, he assured us that there was nothing in the idea of evolution. Then turning to his antagonist with a smiling insolence, he begged to know, was it through his grandfather or his grandmother that he claimed descent from a monkey? On this Mr. Huxley ... arose ... and spoke these tremendous words. He was not ashamed to have a monkey for an ancestor; but he would be ashamed to be connected with a man who used his great gifts to obscure the truth. No one doubted his meaning and the effect was tremendous."

This marvelous anecdote has appeared in every distinguished biography of Darwin and of Huxley, as well as in every popular history of the theory of evolution. In his celebrated Apes, Angels and Victorians, William Irvine used this tale to disparage the bishop's snobbery. In his prize-winning study, James Brix went much farther, describing Wilberforce as "naive and pompous," a man whose "faulty opinions" were those of a "fundamentalist creationist" and who provided Huxley with the opportunity to give evolution "its first major victory over dogmatism and duplicity." Every writer tells how the audience gave Huxley an ovation.

Trouble is, it never happened. The quotation above was the only such report of this story and it appeared in an article titled "A Grandmother's Tales" that was written by a non-scholar in a popular magazine 38 years after the alleged encounter. No other account of these meetings – and there were many written at the time – made any mention of remarks concerning Huxley's monkey ancestors, or claimed that he made a fool of the bishop. To the contrary, many thought the bishop had the better of it, and even many of the committed Darwinians thought it at most a draw.

Moreover, as all of the scholars present at Oxford knew, prior to the meeting, Bishop Wilberforce had penned a review of The Origin in which he fully acknowledged the principle of natural selection as the source of variations within species. He rejected Darwin's claims concerning the origin of species, however, and some of these criticisms were sufficiently compelling that Darwin immediately wrote his friend the botanist J. D. Hooker that the article "is uncommonly clever; it picks out with skill all the most conjectural parts, and brings forward well all the difficulties. It quizzes me quite splendidly." In a subsequent letter to geologist Charles Lyell, Darwin acknowledges that "the bishop makes a very telling case against me." Indeed, several of Wilberforce's comments caused Darwin to make modifications in a later revision of the book.

The tale of the foolish and narrow-minded bishop seems to have thrived as a revealing "truth" about the incompatibility of religion and science simply because many of its tellers wanted to believe that a bishop is wrong by nature. J. R. Lucas, who debunked the bishop myth, has suggested that the "most important reason why the legend grew" is, first, because academics generally "know nothing outside their own special subject" and therefore easily believe that outsiders are necessarily ignorant, and, second, because Huxley encouraged that conclusion. "The quarrel between religion and science was what Huxley wanted; and as Darwin's theory gained supporters, they took over his view of the incident."

Since then the Darwinian Crusade has tried to focus all attention on the most unqualified and most vulnerable opponents, and when no easy targets present themselves it has invented them. Huxley "made straw men of the 'creationists,'" as his biographer Desmond admitted. Even today it is a rare textbook or any popular treatment of evolution and religion that does not reduce "creationism" to the simplest caricatures.

This tradition remains so potent that whenever it is asked that evolution be presented as "only a theory," the requester is ridiculed as a buffoon. Even when the great philosopher of science Karl Popper suggested that the standard version of evolution even falls short of being a scientific theory, being instead an untestable tautology, he was subjected to public condemnations and much personal abuse.

Popper's tribulations illustrate an important basis for the victory of Darwinism: A successful appeal for a united front on the part of scientists to oppose religious opposition has had the consequence of silencing dissent within the scientific community. The eminent observer Everett Olson notes that there is "a generally silent group" of biological scientists "who tend to disagree with much of the current thought" about evolution, but who remain silent for fear of censure.

I believe that one day there will be a plausible theory of the origin of species. But, if and when that occurs, there will be nothing in any such theory that makes it impossible to propose that the principles involved were not part of God's great design any more than such a theory will demonstrate the existence of God. But, while we wait, why not lift the requirement that high school texts enshrine Darwin's failed attempt as an eternal truth?

When creationists talk about "random" or "chance" they don't mean to discount the predictable impacts of natural selection. At least many of them don't. I think think sometimes the evolutionists take failure to use the prescribed terms for stupidity.

The problem is, that again and again creationists on these forums characterize evolution as entirely random; and when you ask them to explain ToE they dismally and signally fail to do so (they often either refuse, or explain a 747 in a junkyard parody of ToE, or start talking about cosmology etc (where the YEC are utterly deluded of course)). I have asked creationists to state ToE numerous times in these forums and only on 1 single occasion have I had a correct answer. I cannot think that Spetner is unaware of this yet he panders to this mischaracterization.

However, if you want to determine if there is something new or if there is adequate evidence supplied you'd probably do well to read the book the two are discussing.

I'll pass. I hope he does better with this than he did with his proof that Archioptrix was a fraudulant demonstration.

From what I can tell of this argument, it is the complexity argument applied to the micro/macro song. It took me years to force my way through Behe's and Dempski's technically steeped books, and I'm not about to subject myself to that again, for a physicist who gets published by Judaica press, and has already demonstrated some of the clear signs of being a serious science crank, until some noticable fraction of the biological community touts him.

Here are the two most obvious reasons I don't consider this a serious enough argument to read the book:

The micro-macro chasm is being pushed here, on The argument that random variations cannot produce "new" genes because information theory sez mutation can only be "decay" of information. This is oft-retreaded shallow poppycock that depends for what little pursuasive force it has on the irrelevent theory that the current environment is "perfect" for any set of genes. There are lots of observed counterexamples: Did you know that Haemoglobin predated creatures with bloodflow? Just to knock down one of Behe's feature players in this argument. Did you know that there is an entire chromosome's worth of genes difference between us and our nearest relative? Mutation takes place along many parameters, few of which we probably presently know about. This is just another, harder-to-discern argument that "because my giant brain can't imagine how something could have happened, it must be a miracle.". And I am, frankly, opposed to spending any more human energy on the arrogant claim than has already been spent on Dempski's and Behe's long-winded, time-consuming versions of it.

the author claims there is "no evidence" in support of macro-evolution. Now, he might have reasons for rejecting the available evidence. But claiming that it doesn't exist pretty much puts him outside the realm of serious consideration. There is far more abundant and profound evidence in support of evolutionary theory than of any other major theory in the natural sciences, and the creationist argument for dismissing all this evidence: that it is a record of the past, is completely bogus--all evidence is, practically by definition, a record of the past.

I've tried to read this stuff carefully with a layman's insight and the non-directed nature of mutation is a very key point.

It might help you to vett these arguments if you realize that random distributions come in flavors. UNIFORMLY random genetic variation (which we probably don't have, but I'll grant you for argument's sake) Produces what statisticians call a uniform distribution (which is what I suspect you are erroneously picturing when you say random about genetic issues): any possible variation is just as likely as any other. After some winnowing function is applied to the resulting population, the distribution is no longer uniform. The selection pressure will shape the resulting population so that it is no longer uniformly distributed: if the pressure was of a uniform, linear nature, the result will be shaped curve, usually called a bell curve by statisticians, and a gaussian distribution by more serious math honks. If, then, the environment gradually changes in some direction--what do you think that will do to the creatures in the environment?

So...the unsuprising upshot of this is that environmental pressure shapes the creatures in the environment in directions favorable to surviving that environment, without any necessity to envoke an intelligent designer.

Rippin is wrong that Evolutionary theory doesn't assume random mutation

Uh, that's not what I said. I said that it is not "essential to Darwinism" that mutations are non-directed (i.e. random wrt to adaptive effect).

These propositions -- not essential vs does assume -- are not equivalent. In fact I entirely agree that evolutionary theory does indeed "assume" mutations are random wrt adaptive effect, but it's the same as any other scientific assumption: It's a default presumption or a null hypothesis; it's assumed absent some persuasive evidence to the contrary and/or some plausible mechanism which would provide for the phenomena.

I apologize that I can't recall details or the outcomes, but I know there have been occasions when scientists have pointed to data suggesting or have proposed mechanisms to produce directed mutations, and the issues were addressed so far as I know in the normal mode of spirited scientific debate without any visible panic over the possible demise of Darwinism.

There seems to be plenty of data at the present time to indicate that the vast majority of mutations are non-directed. But if there are some special cases and some particular mechanisms out there that do sometimes produce directed mutations, well, then fine. It's no problem. Or rather it will doubtless be an interesting problem to investigate and resolve.

"The major tenets of the evolutionary synthesis, then, were that populations contain genetic variation that arises by random (ie. not adaptively directed) mutation and recombination

Fine. As I said, that's the default assumption. Exceptions are allowed. They always are in science, and especially in biology, being a science that deals with objects that are characterized by high levels of complexity and diversity. There are in biology (even leaving evolution entirely aside) very, very few generalizations or "rules of thumb" that don't have exceptions.

Even (what is arguably) the single most basic and foundational generalization in all of biology -- the cell theory, claiming that all biological organisms are cells or are composed of cells -- has exceptions, for instance organisms that don't contain cells walls so that multiple nuclei are dispersed in a single mass of cytoplasm.

Also please note that the "evolutionary synthesis" Futuyma refers to was constructed circa 1940. Are there any other sciences you would restrict to the dicta of their pre-WWII status?

I said: "I apologize that I can't recall details or the outcomes [of past experiments or proposals regarding possible directed mutation]."

But now a name just popped into my head which may or may not be correct. I want to say a prolific experimentalist named "Hall," publishing in major journals like Cell and The Journal of Molecular Biology and so on, had some results suggesting directed mutation. I also *think* this may have been around the early to mid 80's. After reading furball4paws quote from the latest Futuyma textbook in msg #123:

"Environmental factors may affect the rate of mutation, but they do not preferentially direct the production of mutations that would be favorable in organism's specific environment" p.26, 3rd edition.

I'm now *thinking* that *maybe* this was how the issue of Hall's (?) seemingly directed mutations in bacteria was eventually resolved: That is that some stress induced hyper-mutation mechanism kicked in, so the calculations saying that the mutations were too improbable to be random were wrong.

Warning: these are *very* hazy recollections.

This is the main problem with discussing science with those who are neophytes in science. There is almost always an exception, especially is biology. We have generalizations to help frame problems, but there are always outliers. It comes from trying to "force" order where there is only a semblance.

E.coli has what are called mutator genes. These genes produce a product that causes high levels of mutations to occur - say they facilitate mutations. But the mutations they "facilitate" are the same ones that occur naturally, just at higher frequencies. There are "hotspots" also in bacteria where high mutation frequencies occur, but again they don't do anything that doesn't happen naturally. I could dig up some references if you want them.

There are also quite different frequencies for mutation between genes. Some mutate at high frequencies (as high as 10^-4) and some are quite resistant and mutate only at lower frequencies (as low as 10^-9). Because of all this mixing together, it would be quite difficult to prove some direction in mutation.

Having said that, I have left out transposons (the infamous "jumping genes") since they are another complicating factor. Their mutation sites are known, but I can't see much predictability in this area. Perhaps there's a molecular biologist out there that can clear this stuff up?

I didn't realise that he claimed that. I'd got the mistaken impression from reading reviews of his work that he accepts macro-evolution and that he is arguing about mechanisms. If he truly does claim that there is no evidence for it then he is either ignorant of the mountains of evidence (which is unforgivable in someone writing a scholarly book proposing a theory to account for biological diversity) or for religious reasons he manages to pretend to himself that it doesn't exist. Does he not address the fossil record at all?

There are also antievolutionists, and/or those oppposed to scientific versions of evolutionary theory, on the left. Somewhere I've got about a half a file box full of books by "new age" and leftwing antievolutionists, but off the top of my head:

Francis Hitching The Neck of the Giraffe. As I recall this one pretends to be merely anti-Darwin, not antievolution per se, but it then ends up making a number of typical "creation science" type arguments. It's among the more frequently cited by "mainstream" creationists. Hitchings (sp?) has also writen on "ley lines" and other new age stuff.

William Fix The Bone Peddlers. Many typical creation science type arguments concentrating of human evolution. I don't recall exactly what Fix believes, but it was something stupid like aliens did it, or the gods or some such.

Algeny and other works by Jeremy Rifkin. Famous lefty luddite. Nuff said.

On the Hare Krishna, here's something from floppy I found in the attic, something I wrote for a BBS echo in 1991, in the dark days before the internet:

Hindus -- Don't know about "mainstream" or "traditional" Hinduism (or even what the appropriate terms are here) but do know that the founder of the International Society For Krishna Consciousnes rejected evolutionary theory. Although "scientific evidence" is offered in the manner of our own "creation scientists" the real reasons are likewise religious. As explained in _Life Comes From Life: Morning walks with His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada_ (The Bhaktivedanta Book Trust, 1979) biological evolution contadicts reincarnation as taught by the Bhagavad-gita and the Vedas. Reincarnation teaches that the soul "evolves" but the "species" it inhabits are constant and unchanging. The Swami engages in some classic scientist bashing and anyone with an anti-evolution library ought to pick up a copy of the book next time they go to the airport. A. C. not only says that scientists "are not nice men" but even "that they are not human beings" (p.14)!!! Well, that last quotation may be just *slightly* out of context...
BTW, did you know that the Vedas number the "species of life" at 8,400,000? This is actually right in the probable range of the total number of extant species (somewhere between 5 and 10+ million). Hmm...

Remarkably Spetner does not straightforward deny macro-evolution, he claims that neo-Darwinism (accumulation of small changes) cannot account for macro-evolution. This would imply macro-evolution exists. What is clear (is) that he denies that macro-evolution is an extension of micro-evolution. Further he claims that NREH is a better explanation for micro-evolution. Spetner accepts that micro-evolution occurred. He disagrees about its causes
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Korthof's explanation from here...

http://home.wxs.nl/~gkorthof/kortho36.htm#Par3

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