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Teaching Darwin
Weekly Standars ^ | March 21, 2005 | Paul McHugh

Posted on 03/22/2005 6:56:35 AM PST by metacognative

Teaching Darwin Why we're still fighting about biology textbook. by Paul McHugh 03/28/2005, Volume 010, Issue 26

EIGHTY YEARS AGO THIS SUMMER, the Scopes trial upheld the effort of the state of Tennessee to exclude the teaching of Darwinian evolution from Tennessee classrooms. The state claimed Darwinism contradicted orthodox religion. But times change, and recently a federal judge ruled that a three-sentence sticker stating that "evolution is a theory not a fact" must be removed from Georgia high school biology texts because it contradicts orthodox science and represents an unconstitutional endorsement of religion. Both legal mandates--no Darwin yesterday, nothing but Darwin today--look less like science than exercises in thought control.

Everyone agrees that the Scopes trial (viciously caricatured in the play and movie Inherit the Wind) was a setback for the teaching of scientific reasoning. But the same is true of the Georgia ruling, Darwinism being quite obviously a biological theory and open to dispute. To claim otherwise is to be woefully misinformed.

Science, as high school students need to know, is a logically articulated structure of beliefs about nature that are justified by methods of reasoning one can evaluate. It is whether the methods pass muster that counts for or against a scientific opinion, not how the opinion fits our preconceptions.

Charles Darwin proposed that random variation within life forms, working together with natural selection ("the preservation of favorable variations and the rejection of injurious variations") across the vast expanse of time since the earth was formed, explains "how the universe created intelligence," as Francis Bacon had stated the problem a few centuries before. To judge whether the matter is now closed to all criticism, such that Darwinism stands with scientific facts like "the earth is a planet of the sun" or "the blood circulates in the body," demands we consider Darwin's method of reasoning.

The leading Darwinist in America, Ernst Mayr, describes the method:

Evolutionary biology, in contrast with physics and chemistry, is a historical science--the evolutionist attempts to explain events and processes that have already taken place. Laws and experiments are inappropriate techniques for the explication of such events and processes. Instead one constructs a historical narrative, consisting of a tentative reconstruction of the particular scenario that led to the events one is trying to explain.

Darwin, Mayr goes on, "established a philosophy of biology . . . by showing that theories in evolutionary biology are based on concepts rather than laws."

After noting Mayr's fearless use of the words "tentative," "philosophy," and "theory," one surely is justified in responding: No wonder Darwinism, in contrast to other scientific theories, seems an argument without end! It's history--indeed, history captured by that creative-writing-class concept narrative. If historical narrative--and the "philosophy" it propounds--are what justify the Darwinian opinions, the textbook writers of Georgia can legitimately claim that Darwin's "tentative reconstruction" is not only a theory but a special kind of theory, one lacking the telling and persuasive power that theories built on hypothesis-generated experiment and public prediction can garner.

DARWIN HIMSELF UNDERSTOOD that questions raised about his narrative had substance. In Chapter IX of On the Origin of Species, he noted that the fossil record had failed to "reveal any . . . finely graduated organic chain" linking, as he proposed, existing species to predecessors. He called the record "imperfect" and went so far as to say, "This, perhaps, is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory." Darwin presumed that the problem rested on the "poorness of our palaeontological collections" and would be answered when more of "the surface of the earth has been geologically explored."

In the same Chapter IX, Darwin also acknowledged that the fossil record does suggest the "sudden appearance of whole groups of allied species all at once." He noted that if this fact were to stand, and "numerous species belonging to the same genera or families have really started into life all at once, . . . [it] would be fatal to the theory of descent with slow modification through natural selection." He forestalled that fatal blow to his theory by asking his readers not to "over-rate the perfection of the geological record."

Any sympathetic reader of Darwin's history would readily allow him the point--that earlier life forms might have all come and gone elsewhere than where later forms emerged and might have done so without leaving a fossil record to demonstrate the smooth gradation between species. But such a reader should admit, as Darwin did, that the absence of the record is a serious matter--especially when it persists to this day, nearly a century and a half after Darwin's book was published. This imperfection of the historical record was, after all, sufficiently embarrassing to provoke some evolutionary biologists nearly 100 years ago to try to improve on the record by manufacturing the counterfeit fossil Piltdown Man.

Even among committed Darwinists, the imperfection of the fossil record has been a source of huge argument. The Darwinian fundamentalist Richard Dawkins of Oxford believes in smooth and gradual evolutionary processes. He became a vicious antagonist to Stephen Jay Gould of Harvard, who championed "punctuated equilibrium," with abrupt species generation after millennia of stability. Dawkins attacked Gould in large part because Gould's idea greatly shortened the time evolutionary processes had to generate species.

All the more reason, then, for our sympathetic reader to look for other means of supporting Darwin's narrative. Perhaps the demonstrable variations that occur in species living under altered circumstances might answer objections.

With this in mind, Darwin devotes the very first chapter of On the Origin of Species to describing variations in plants and domestic animals produced over time by methodical selective breeding by farmers and fanciers. Plainly their practice of permitting only the most choice individuals to reproduce and so "enhance the breed" demonstrates how hereditary modification of members of a given species is possible--indeed, it displays the process.

Darwin, however, then makes an extrapolation. Beginning with the reasonable presumption that the hereditary mechanisms involved in producing these enhancements in the barnyard must be available and randomly active in nature, he proposes that from such random variation can spring new species. Variation--repeated ad infinitum down the ages, with its products culled by natural selection rather than by artful human breeding--is the process by which Darwin links up all of biologic creation. This is the Darwinian narrative in its clearest form--history by extrapolation--and it is not problem-free.

MANY OF US were taught these Darwinian extrapolatory links to the evolutionary narrative in high school, usually with photographs of the European peppered moth (Biston betularia), which became darker with environmental pollution and thus less conspicuous to bird predators in industrial areas. The same idea springs up in discussions of the development of bacterial resistance to antibiotics, or of the transformation of the beaks of finches under the pressure of drought. We were taught in high school that these observable biologic changes display evolution "in front of your eyes."

But not everyone agreed with this conclusion. Many criticized the Darwinists for extrapolating too far, and now the Darwinists confess that actual, observable variation--whether in the barnyard or in nature--demonstrates only the capacity of a species population to vary within limits. The original species picture reappears when either the farmer's selective enterprise or the natural environmental pressure on the species population stops and crossbreeding recurs. The finches' beaks never turn into pelican pouches but revert to their original shape when the rains arrive.

No farmer or experimental scientist has ever produced a new species by cultivating variations. The peppered moth didn't become a butterfly, and the closely and repeatedly studied fruit fly, despite gazillions of generations producing varieties in the laboratory, always remains a fruit fly. Again, Darwin himself was more honest than his followers have been. He knew the distinction between variations that could be observed and those posited according to the theoretical extrapolation that was key to his narrative. For this reason he repeatedly notes, as in Chapter IV of On the Origin of Species, that "natural selection will always act very slowly, often only at long intervals of time, and generally on only a few of the inhabitants." In this way he puts the process of species generation outside the reach of experimental demonstration.

At this point, the sympathetic reader eager to secure Darwin's narrative might resort to searching the "biochemical record." Surely the molecular structures of DNA, RNA, and proteins contain the long-sought evidence. Again, though, molecular biology helps in some ways in that it shows commonalities across species--just as other aspects of anatomical structures show commonalities--but again it's the distinctions--and the means by which they are generated--rather than the similarities that must be explained to support the theory.

If one turns to DNA to show how Homo sapiens gradually emerged by small and random variations from predecessors, one faces an immediate problem. At the level of DNA, humans and chimpanzees differ by a mere 1 percent, yet the chimpanzee is not 99 percent human in body, brain, or mental faculties--far from it. We need something more than the DNA record to support a narrative linking chimps and men.

Perhaps it's enough for the friendly guardian of the Darwinian narrative to propose that the genes that control the switching on and off of other genes simply changed in some random way, allowing humans to branch off the primate line. And maybe they did. But again, notice, this is a molecular narrative, not a proposition demonstrable by experiment. It's a story that fits the facts--but so might another.

SURELY AT THIS POINT the friendly reader might agree that, like any historical account, the Darwinian narrative can fairly be challenged--not to say that it must be wrong, only that it needs more supportive evidence. Perhaps there are statistical proofs or engineering concepts that could be found, or something else that might emerge that would be subject to verification by the scientific method.

But our would-be friend to evolution will soon discover that any questioning of the Darwinian narrative, no matter how sympathetic, is shouted down. If mathematicians try to say that even with the immense span of geological time available for random genetic variations to act, there is not time enough to produce the human eye, the response--typical for historians, who routinely argue backward from observations to their causes--is, Since the eye exists the math must be wrong.

If Michael J. Behe, the cellular biochemist who wrote Darwin's Black Box, proposes that the complicated molecular mechanisms sustaining the integrity of the cell seem impossible to explain as the result of random variations, the president of the National Academy of Sciences counters by pronouncing, "Modern scientific views of the molecular organization of life are entirely consistent with spontaneous variation and natural selection driving a powerful evolutionary process." That is, he affirms the Darwinian narrative by restating it, not by offering compelling proof that it is true. Lots of views are consistent with the cell's complexity--including the view Behe explores, that an intelligent creator designed the cell to work. But cellular formation needs identified generative mechanisms, not simply a consistent narrative, to explain it--a problem both for those who call on Darwin and those who call on an "intelligent designer."

Official science is too much at ease with the Darwinian narrative--primarily because it can't come up with anything better. As a result, many scientists are driven by an ideological bias and by fear--the thought that any challenge to the narrative will plunge the republic back into some dark age. Richard Dawkins and his associate Niall Shanks predict that, as Shanks wrote, "discriminatory, conservative Christian values [will be imposed] on our educational, legal, social and political institutions" should the public schools permit any airing of questions about the Darwinian narrative. This fear is way over the top, but it's of long standing, and in the past has provoked some loss of judgment among scientists.

When the most distinguished biological scientist of the 20th century, Francis Crick, saw the same complications as Michael Behe, he also concluded that time on Earth and random variation were not adequate to produce the viable cell. Crick resolved the dilemma, in a fascinating book called Life Itself published in 1981, by suggesting that living cells arrived on an unmanned spaceship from another planet, perhaps sent by intelligent beings facing extinction. He called his concept "directed panspermia," and this strange concept (I prefer to call it "life from Krypton") received a respectful hearing from biologists. With this imaginative device Crick could keep the narrative alive. He explained life's cellular origins without worrying about time, kept the God he hated out of the picture, and preserved the possibility of random variation and natural selection working their magic from these "seedlings" from a "galaxy far far away."

BY NOW, it would seem that a sympathetic reader of Darwin, if honest, could conclude the following. Darwinism is an imperfect theory, based as it is on a historical narrative, and carrying as it does the remarkable capacity to explain anything and exclude nothing. It has great strengths, and it has great evidential lacunae that seem no closer to resolution than when Darwin himself called attention to them 146 years ago.

The biological evidence--life rests on the cellular organization of nucleotides and proteins--compels the conclusion that all the various forms of life on Earth derive from a common source, as Darwin emphasized. Life is not recreated with every new species--this is now undeniable. The Darwinian concept of descent with modification seems the most plausible way to relate life and its varieties. Modifications within species are often responses to environmental challenges, and they sustain a species with the variety of expressions necessary for it to survive these challenges.

But when one tries to grasp how the distinct species, as against varieties, are generated--by what mechanism they separate--a pause to reflect is warranted. Darwin's random variation and natural selection may well offer the best available narrative, the most compelling theory. Yet something seems missing--for example, any sense of what propels life's forms toward a progressive complexity, rather than toward a simplicity of design that would guarantee survival come what may.

The discipline of evolutionary biology today resembles astrophysics when Galileo was attempting to explain the planetary orbits and the oceanic tides but lacked the concept of the force of gravity. His observations were accurate enough, but explanations awaited an Isaac Newton.

Evolutionary biology awaits its Newton. And until such a thinker emerges--to provide a fuller conception of the history of life and especially the forces at play that explain how things happened as they did--those who would expel all challenges to the Darwinian narrative from the high school classroom are false to their mission of teaching the scientific method.

Scientists as they engage in dialogue with others should abhor attempts to close off the conversation by excessive claims for any privileged access to truth. Scientists should tell what they actually know and how they know it, as distinct from what they believe and are trying to advance. If all of us, scientists and non-scientists alike, accepted that guiding principle, the 80-year history of attempts to use law to stifle the teaching of science--stretching as it does from the courtrooms of Dayton, Tennessee, to those of Cobb County, Georgia--could perhaps finally be brought to a close.

Paul McHugh is a university distinguished service professor of psychiatry and behavioral science at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and former psychiatrist in chief of the Johns Hopkins Hospital.

© Copyright 2005, News Corporation, Weekly Standard, All Rights Reserved.


TOPICS: Philosophy
KEYWORDS: creation; crevolist; evolution; id; realscience; scienceeducation
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To: Terriergal
Evolution never throws out a good thing once it's developed. So we're supposed to believe us losing our 'fur coats' is a good thing? Our ability to move swiftly with the agility of an animal? How come there are SO many animals that have these 'good handy developments' that they lost? If you say "they lost it because they developed something better" then how come WE lost all those good things just because we developed intelligence? Surely a fur covering and agility/precociousness doesn't interfere with that?

Actually it does. The human body retains a lot of infantile traits. The large head in proportion to body mass, relative lack of hair, playfulness into adulthood. These are developmental delays that give benefits in trade for the loss of other traits. The primary benefit is brain size.

You might be interested in knowin that tame foxes have been bred for wild foxes. The primary method of breeding tame animals is to select ones that keep juvenile traits into adulthood. In the case of foxes, one of the traits linked to tameness (and intelligence) is the quality of the fur. Why fur should be liked to intelligence and behavior, I don't know, but it is.

101 posted on 03/22/2005 9:45:59 AM PST by js1138
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To: metacognative
I don't think the Old Time Darwin Believers know that Ontogeny no longer recapitulates Phylogeny. [sp?]

I don't think the IDist have yet heard there's a disciple called Evolutionary Developmental Biology.

102 posted on 03/22/2005 9:46:25 AM PST by VadeRetro (Liberalism is a cancer on society. Creationism is a cancer on conservatism.)
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To: hosepipe

Oh. I get it.


103 posted on 03/22/2005 9:46:31 AM PST by metacognative (eschew obfuscation)
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To: Thatcherite

"You didn't actually answer my question. What religion is that then?"

Actually I answered your question you simply do not have eyes to see or ears to hear. We are told be wiser than serpents and harmless as doves.

Your method of questions tells me what your state of mind is. I don't play little evolutionary fairy tale games.


104 posted on 03/22/2005 9:47:25 AM PST by Just mythoughts
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To: VadeRetro
... a disciple called Evolutionary Developmental Biology.

"... discipline ..."

Just when I think my fingers have finally learned to fly while touch-typing...

105 posted on 03/22/2005 9:47:41 AM PST by VadeRetro (Liberalism is a cancer on society. Creationism is a cancer on conservatism.)
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To: VadeRetro

So what's E.D.B. done for me lately?


106 posted on 03/22/2005 9:47:59 AM PST by metacognative (eschew obfuscation)
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To: metacognative
and I don't mean LIMITED science as defined by darwinite fanatics ...

And what alternative science do you propose that is actual science?

107 posted on 03/22/2005 9:48:09 AM PST by js1138
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To: js1138

Well, would you include this in the curriculum:
"I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them. . .I will lay it on the line, There is not one such fossil for which one might make a watertight argument."
-- Dr. Colin Patterson, senior paleontologist at the British Museum of Natural History.


108 posted on 03/22/2005 9:52:18 AM PST by metacognative (eschew obfuscation)
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To: SCALEMAN

Give us the scientific definition of "theory."


109 posted on 03/22/2005 9:53:44 AM PST by Junior (FABRICATI DIEM, PVNC)
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To: js1138

The Patterson misquote hasn't turned up for at least three years. Brings back memories of long-banned freepers.


110 posted on 03/22/2005 9:54:33 AM PST by PatrickHenry (<-- Click on my name. The List-O-Links for evolution threads is at my freeper homepage.)
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To: PatrickHenry

Why don't you give us the true quote instead of dreaming about banning points of debate?


111 posted on 03/22/2005 9:59:59 AM PST by metacognative (eschew obfuscation)
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To: Terriergal
Evolution never throws out a good thing once it's developed. So we're supposed to believe us losing our 'fur coats' is a good thing? Our ability to move swiftly with the agility of an animal? How come there are SO many animals that have these 'good handy developments' that they lost? If you say "they lost it because they developed something better" then how come WE lost all those good things just because we developed intelligence? Surely a fur covering and agility/precociousness doesn't interfere with that?

Actually it does. The human body retains a lot of infantile traits. The large head in proportion to body mass, relative lack of hair, playfulness into adulthood. These are developmental delays that give benefits in trade for the loss of other traits. The primary benefit is brain size.

You might be interested in knowin that tame foxes have been bred for wild foxes. The primary method of breeding tame animals is to select ones that keep juvenile traits into adulthood. In the case of foxes, one of the traits linked to tameness (and intelligence) is the quality of the fur. Why fur should be liked to intelligence and behavior, I don't know, but it is.

While I'm correcting my HTML, I might as well add that the changes required to make humans human reveals some thuings about how biology and evolution work. DNA is not a blueprint in thae way that designers make blueprints. DNA does not specify outcomes; it specifies a growth algorithm. Large changes in outcome occur with tiny changes in regulator genes. In the case of humans, small changes in the regulation of growth allow our big adult heads to fit through the birth canal. But the tradeoff is we never reach maturity in the same way that most wild mammals reach maturity. We retain childlike traits throughout our lives.

112 posted on 03/22/2005 10:00:01 AM PST by js1138
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To: b_sharp

Relative hairlessness appears to be the result of sexual selection over the past hundred thousand years or so.


113 posted on 03/22/2005 10:01:16 AM PST by Junior (FABRICATI DIEM, PVNC)
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To: metacognative

How do you know a Christian is lying?

When he types quotations with ellipses.


114 posted on 03/22/2005 10:03:04 AM PST by js1138
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To: hosepipe
Not a lot separates modern man from the most primitive tribal society's..

Except maybe the proper use of apostrophes and ellipses. BTW, "devolution" means nothing in biology. "Evolution" literally means "change." No matter how you perceive a specific change, it is still evolution.

115 posted on 03/22/2005 10:04:19 AM PST by Junior (FABRICATI DIEM, PVNC)
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To: metacognative; Elsie; AndrewC; jennyp; lockeliberty; RadioAstronomer; LiteKeeper; ...
Mar 10:6 But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female. (red letters indicate words spoken by Jesus Christ)

Being that Jesus Christ states that life was created in it's mature form -- male and female -- Evolutionists, in every form, are disagreeing with God.

It is always good to point out to people the ramifications of their reasoning. It is not good to reject the statement of the only available witness who was at the Beginning. Choosing to reject His plain statement can have adverse effects on ones eternal destiny.

John 1:1-5
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
2 The same was in the beginning with God.
3 All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.
4 In him was life; and the life was the light of men.
5 And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.

116 posted on 03/22/2005 10:04:27 AM PST by bondserv (Sincerity with God is the most powerful instigator for change! † [Check out my profile page])
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To: bondserv

There is no way to reconcile creation with evolution. It is sad that so many Christians submit to the whims of "science or things falsely so called" and abandon their trust for the Word of God.


117 posted on 03/22/2005 10:06:53 AM PST by biblewonk (Neither was the man created for woman but the woman for the man.)
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To: metacognative
What does having your head all the way up do for you?
118 posted on 03/22/2005 10:07:09 AM PST by VadeRetro (Liberalism is a cancer on society. Creationism is a cancer on conservatism.)
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To: VadeRetro

Try opening your eyes, you'll see.


119 posted on 03/22/2005 10:08:46 AM PST by metacognative (eschew obfuscation)
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To: metacognative
Well, would you include this in the curriculum:
"I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them. . .I will lay it on the line, There is not one such fossil for which one might make a watertight argument."
-- Dr. Colin Patterson, senior paleontologist at the British Museum of Natural History.

You unashamed liar.  I know, whenever you post a quote from an "evolutionist" you're taking it out of context or flat out lying about its provenance.  Of course, you never bother to check the latter, do you?  Well, guess what, you're wrong again.

 

Patterson Misquoted
A Tale of Two 'Cites'
Copyright © 1997 by Lionel Theunissen
[Last Update: June 24, 1997]

 

Other Links:
Carl Wieland of the Australian Creation Science Foundation was reluctant to provide the author of this article with a copy of this letter from Dr. Colin Patterson to creationist Luther Sunderland.
[Note: The link listed above was originally provided to the FAQ author by anti-evolutionist David Buckna, who challenged Lionel to include it in the FAQ.  The link is disabled because it no longer links to that letter (as of 2002/01/06).  -- Wesley R. Elsberry]

In 1993 I attended a public lecture on the Queensland University of Technology (Australia) campus by Carl Wieland, the director of the Creation Science Foundation here in Brisbane. That was my first encounter with Carl Wieland and the CSF, and it wasn't to be my last. In his lecture Wieland made a string of absurd claims, to which I objected vocally much to his chagrin. On each point Wieland refused to answer my objections and stated that questions would be allowed at the conclusion of the lecture (where I was allowed to ask one whole question!). Anyway that's another story...

During the lecture a quotation of Dr. Colin Patterson was used to justify the standard creationist argument that 'there are no transitional forms.' Numerous other creationists I have encountered have used the quote, and an extended version (which fills in the text between the ellipsis) appears in the CSF "Revised Quote Book", published in 1990. So the quote is in wide usage, at least in Australia:

 

"I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them. . .I will lay it on the line, There is not one such fossil for which one might make a watertight argument."

-- Dr. Colin Patterson, senior paleontologist at the British Museum of Natural History.

I decided to get to the bottom of the matter. The quote is from a personal letter dated 10th April 1979 from Dr. Patterson to creationist Luther D. Sunderland and is referring to Dr. Patterson's book "Evolution" (1978, Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd.). My first step was to read the book. (I believe it is now out of print, but most university libraries should have a copy.) Anyone who has actually read the book can hardly say that Patterson believed in the absence of transitional forms. For example (p131-133):

 

"In several animal and plant groups, enough fossils are known to bridge the wide gaps between existing types. In mammals, for example, the gap between horses, asses and zebras (genus Equus) and their closest living relatives, the rhinoceroses and tapirs, is filled by an extensive series of fossils extending back sixty-million years to a small animal, Hyracotherium, which can only be distinguished from the rhinoceros-tapir group by one or two horse-like details of the skull. There are many other examples of fossil 'missing links', such as Archaeopteryx, the Jurassic bird which links birds with dinosaurs (Fig. 45), and Ichthyostega, the late Devonian amphibian which links land vertebrates and the extinct choanate (having internal nostrils) fishes. . ."

Patterson goes on to acknowledge that there are gaps in the fossil record, but points out that this is possibly due to the limitations of what fossils can tell us. He finishes the paragraph with:

 

". . .Fossils may tell us many things, but one thing they can never disclose is whether they were ancestors of anything else."

It is actually this statement which is the key to interpreting the Sunderland quote correctly; it is not possible to say for certain whether a fossil is in the direct ancestral line of a species group. Archaeopteryx, for example, is not necessarily directly ancestral to birds. It may have been a species on a side-branch. However, that in no way disqualifies it as a transitional form, or as evidence for evolution. Evolution predicts that such fossils will exist, and if there was no link between reptiles and birds then Archaeopteryx would not exist, whether it is directly ancestral or not. What Patterson was saying to Sunderland was that, of the transitional forms that are known, he could not make a watertight argument for any being directly ancestral to living species groups.

Of course, my opinion on the interpretation was never going to impress a creationist -- I don't think anything is enough to convince a creationist -- so I decided to see if I could get the full text of the letter and see if it would clarify the context. Since the quote appears in the "Revised Quote Book", and the editor claims in the introduction that the text of each quote is held in full, I faxed the CSF and asked if they would supply me with the text of the letter. I received the following fax back from Carl Wieland (Dated 18 June 1993) who apparently remembered our exchange at QUT:

 

FAX to: Lionel T
From: Carl Wieland

Re: Your requests.

Our past exchanges would have served to show you (if your intention was bona fide) not only the bona fides, but the validity of many of the things you were challenging. Instead of coming back for a genuine discussion in the interests of discovering truth, you have sidestepped these issues and are moving into a totally unrelated area.

I can only assume that your intention is not, and is unlikely to become, bona fide and will therefore not permit our staff to give you the references etc you seek as you are clearly simply looking for the negative and cannot be relied upon to give an objective assessment (not meant as any personal disrespect, but from our encounter at Uni you are clearly so emotionally involved and hostile to our platform that it would serve no useful purpose for us to do your work for you. the quotes in the RQB are extensively referenced, and you have access to public libraries, etc. You are even free to write to the authors yourself, since most would be still alive.

The very reason the RQB is the Revised Quote Book is that the original "Quote Book", published in 1984, had been withdrawn due to an embarrassing number of errors. (Some quotes even seem to have been fabricated.) The introduction of the RQB coyly refers to that fiasco as follows:

 

"With CSF, as usual, sorely under-funded and overworked at the time, the original Quote Book had been hastily put together from quotes sent in by a number of people. Some of these turned out to have been simply written down on a card after listening to a creationist speaker at a lecture. . ."

It is ironic that so-called Creation 'scientists' (including those of the CSF) often complain that they are not treated with the respect they feel they deserve. Yet any scientist who published a work of such appalling scholarship would probably lose his or her job and certainly would never be taken seriously by the scientific community again. If the sort of 'science' peddled by those responsible for the "Quote Book" is not being taken seriously, it is because creationists are treated exactly the same way that any scientist who acts incompetently would be.

Looking through the RQB does not inspire any confidence that it is any better than the original "Quote Book". Many of the quotations are clearly out of context. Also, out of the 130 quotes, at least 13 (10%) are secondary references. Secondary quotes are a convenient way to misrepresent. Sure, the 'quote' might accurately reproduce the secondary text, but does the secondary text accurately reflect the original text? Then there are the 'uncheckable' quotations: sources like personal letters, lectures, TV interviews, etc. which cannot be referenced in a library. Interestingly, Dr. Colin Patterson is quoted five times. Every single one is from a source uncheckable in a library.

Hence the onus was clearly on the CSF to prove its own 'bona fide' intentions and allow its references to be checked. After all, what is the point of claiming to have the full text on file if no one is allowed to see it?

I wrote back to Carl Wieland and explained that the quote I was interested in was from a personal letter, and as such could hardly be referenced in a library. He was unsympathetic and so as a last resort I took Wieland's own advice and set about contacting Dr. Patterson personally. Wieland only has himself to blame for the response.

I phoned the British Museum of Natural History and to my delight discovered that Dr. Patterson was still working there. I faxed him the text of the quote and asked him whether my interpretation, the creationist interpretation, or some other interpretation of his words was correct. Here is his reply dated 16 August 1993:

 

Dear Mr Theunissen,

Sorry to have taken so long to answer your letter of July 9th. I was away for a while, and then infernally busy. I seem fated continually to make a fool of myself with creationists. The specific quote you mention, from a letter to Sunderland dated 10th April 1979, is accurate as far as it goes. The passage quoted continues "... a watertight argument. The reason is that statements about ancestry and descent are not applicable in the fossil record. Is Archaeopteryx the ancestor of all birds? Perhaps yes, perhaps no: there is no way of answering the question. It is easy enough to make up stories of how one form gave rise to another, and to find reasons why the stages should be favoured by natural selection. But such stories are not part of science, for there is no way to put them to the test."

I think the continuation of the passage shows clearly that your interpretation (at the end of your letter) is correct, and the creationists' is false.

That brush with Sunderland (I had never heard of him before) was my first experience of creationists. The famous "keynote address" at the American Museum of Natural History in 1981 was nothing of the sort. It was a talk to the "Systematics Discussion Group" in the Museum, an (extremely) informal group. I had been asked to talk to them on "Evolutionism and creationism"; fired up by a paper by Ernst Mayr published in Science just the week before. I gave a fairly rumbustious talk, arguing that the theory of evolution had done more harm than good to biological systematics (classification). Unknown to me, there was a creationist in the audience with a hidden tape recorder. So much the worse for me. But my talk was addressed to professional systematists, and concerned systematics, nothing else.

I hope that by now I have learned to be more circumspect in dealing with creationists, cryptic or overt. But I still maintain that scepticism is the scientist's duty, however much the stance may expose us to ridicule.

Yours Sincerely,

[signed]

Colin Patterson

Click here to view a scan of the original letter [113k]

Note that not only does Patterson confirm that the creationist representation of the quote is false and that my interpretation is correct, but he goes on to point out that another quote which appears in the RQB has been misrepresented. (I only sent him the text of the one, but did mention the other four quotes in the RQB.) The quote which claims to be from a keynote address was actually from an informal talk, and is a comment on systematics only, rather than a general comment on evolution as it is represented in the RQB.

I sent Patterson's reply to the CSF requesting that they retract the quotes in question. Carl Wieland sent me a very long letter giving all sorts of contradictory reasons why the quotes were supposedly valid. For example:

 

"Incidentally, if space permitted, I would have been quite happy for the continuation of his quote to also go in to the Quote Book. Because I do NOT agree that the continuation shows clearly that your interpretation is correct. Nor is it fair for Patterson to comment on the creationist interpretation without a clearer definition of what is meant by 'transitional forms'..."

Wieland seems to completely miss the point. How can it be unfair to ask Dr. Patterson to comment on the meaning of his own words? What could be more fair? He is, after all, the only person who truly knows what he meant. Whether Wieland agrees with him or not is neither here nor there. As for the comment about a definition of transitional forms, the exact opposite is true; creationists should supply a clearer definition of 'transitional forms' when they quote scientists. When quoting scientists like Patterson or Gould as saying 'there are no transitional forms' they neglect to mention that they are only referring to transitional forms at the species level. They know full well that Gould has stated that transitional forms between orders and families are in fact abundant, and even a cursory read of Dr. Patterson's book will yield numerous examples of transitional forms.

Wieland's comments on the 'keynote address' were almost comical:

 

"Since we have the entire tape, I assure you that it is a typical example of somebody squirming [I hesitate to use this word re such an honest and genuine scientist as Dr Patterson seems to be] when a quotation has been used by creationists which they didn't want to be used. I assure you, the context does not alter the meaning, and in any case Dr Patterson does not say that it is taken out of context in the sense of a misquote, but merely states that it was an address 'to systematists'. Reading the entire address, it would scarcely matter if it were a girl guides meeting, the comments are valid."

I have to point out that Dr. Patterson certainly does imply that he was taken out of context. He states that his talk concerned systematics only, and nothing else. Yes, the comments are valid. But they are valid comments about systematics, not about evolution in general as implied in the RQB. I will also point out that at least in terms of my understanding of Australian Law, taping someone without their knowledge and then publishing excerpts is illegal. It's certainly unethical.

I think that this whole saga demonstrates just how deceitful creationists can be. Whether they are willingly deceitful or just don't know any better, I don't know. But deceitful they are. To top it off I wasn't surprised when soon after I had released the letter on fidonet, a creationist was posting the claim that I had written to Dr. Patterson and that he had confirmed that the quotes of him in the RQB were genuine, by selectively citing the following sentence:

 

"The specific quote you mention, from a letter to Sunderland dated 10th April 1979, is accurate as far as it goes."

It seems that no matter how thoroughly one destroys a creationist argument, you can be sure that they'll find some twisted way to justify using the same argument tomorrow. It is frustrating to have to repeat the same explanations over and over, but you really do need the patience of a saint to argue with a creationist. I guess the price of truth is eternal patience. Anyway, if there are still creationists who think the quotes of Patterson are valid, I'd like to know what part of the following sentence you don't understand:

 

"I think the continuation of the passage shows clearly that your interpretation (at the end of your letter) is correct, and the creationists' is false..."

120 posted on 03/22/2005 10:10:27 AM PST by Junior (FABRICATI DIEM, PVNC)
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