Evolution Is Practically Useless, Admits Darwinist

Creation Evolution Headlines ^ | 08/30/06 | Creation Evolution Headlines

[DannyTN]

Evolution Is Practically Useless, Admits Darwinist    08/30/2006  
Supporters of evolution often tout its many benefits.  They claim it helps research in agriculture, conservation and medicine (e.g., 01/13/2003, 06/25/2003).  A new book by David Mindell, The Evolving World: Evolution in Everyday Life (Harvard, 2006) emphasizes these practical benefits in hopes of making evolution more palatable to a skeptical society.  Jerry Coyne, a staunch evolutionist and anti-creationist, enjoyed the book in his review in Nature,¹ but thought that Mindell went overboard on “Selling Darwin” with appeals to pragmatics:

To some extent these excesses are not Mindell’s fault, for, if truth be told, evolution hasn’t yielded many practical or commercial benefits.  Yes, bacteria evolve drug resistance, and yes, we must take countermeasures, but beyond that there is not much to say.  Evolution cannot help us predict what new vaccines to manufacture because microbes evolve unpredictably.  But hasn’t evolution helped guide animal and plant breeding?  Not very much.  Most improvement in crop plants and animals occurred long before we knew anything about evolution, and came about by people following the genetic principle of ‘like begets like’.  Even now, as its practitioners admit, the field of quantitative genetics has been of little value in helping improve varieties.  Future advances will almost certainly come from transgenics, which is not based on evolution at all.

Coyne further describes how the goods and services advertised by Mindell are irrelevant for potential customers, anyway:

One reason why Mindell might fail to sell Darwin to the critics is that his examples all involve microevolution, which most modern creationists (including advocates of intelligent design) accept.  It is macroevolution – the evolutionary transitions between very different kinds of organism – that creationists claim does not occur.  But in any case, few people actually oppose evolution because of its lack of practical use.... they oppose it because they see it as undercutting moral values.

Coyne fails to offer a salve for that wound.  Instead, to explain why macroevolution has not been observed, he presents an analogy .  For critics out to debunk macroevolution because no one has seen a new species appear, he compares the origin of species with the origin of language: “We haven’t seen one language change into another either, but any reasonable creationist (an oxymoron?) must accept the clear historical evidence for linguistic evolution,” he says, adding a jab for effect. “And we have far more fossil species than we have fossil languages” (but see 04/23/2006).  It seems to escape his notice that language is a tool manipulated by intelligent agents, not random mutations.  In any case, his main point is that evolution shines not because of any hyped commercial value, but because of its explanatory power:

In the end, the true value of evolutionary biology is not practical but explanatory.  It answers, in the most exquisitely simple and parsimonious way, the age-old question: “How did we get here?”  It gives us our family history writ large, connecting us with every other species, living or extinct, on Earth.  It shows how everything from frogs to fleas got here via a few easily grasped biological processes.  And that, after all, is quite an accomplishment.

See also Evolution News analysis of this book review, focusing on Coyne’s stereotyping of creationists.  Compare also our 02/10/2006 and 12/21/2005 stories on marketing Darwinism to the masses.

---

¹Jerry Coyne, “Selling Darwin,” Nature 442, 983-984(31 August 2006) | doi:10.1038/442983a; Published online 30 August 2006.

You heard it right here.  We didn’t have to say it.  One of Darwin’s own bulldogs said it for us: evolutionary theory is useless.  Oh, this is rich.  Don’t let anyone tell you that evolution is the key to biology, and without it we would fall behind in science and technology and lose our lead in the world.  He just said that most real progress in biology was done before evolutionary theory arrived, and that modern-day advances owe little or nothing to the Grand Materialist Myth.  Darwin is dead, and except for providing plot lines for storytellers, the theory that took root out of Charlie’s grave bears no fruit (but a lot of poisonous thorns: see 08/27/2006).
    To be sure, many things in science do not have practical value.  Black holes are useless, too, and so is the cosmic microwave background.  It is the Darwin Party itself, however, that has hyped evolution for its value to society.  With this selling point gone, what’s left?  The only thing Coyne believes evolution can advertise now is a substitute theology to answer the big questions.  Instead of an omniscient, omnipotent God, he offers the cult of Tinker Bell and her mutation wand as an explanation for endless forms most beautiful.  Evolution allows us to play connect-the-dot games between frogs and fleas.  It allows us to water down a complex world into simplistic, “easily grasped” generalities.  Such things are priceless, he thinks.  He’s right.  It costs nothing to produce speculation about things that cannot be observed, and nobody should consider such products worth a dime.
    We can get along just fine in life without the Darwin Party catalog.  Thanks to Jerry Coyne for providing inside information on the negative earnings in the Darwin & Co. financial report.  Sell your evolution stock now before the bottom falls out.
Next headline on:  Evolutionary Theory

[muawiyah]

None of it's ID ~ it just is.

Did you see my post concerning the microscreen that just fell out of the application of some organic chemicals to a hot copper plate?

You could have used that sucker as a mask for television and cut the power requirement way, way back if they'd known about it.

Most of the little gadgets we find in cells are most likely the ordinary artifacts that occur as a consequence of the intersection of two or more processes or forces in this particular universe.

The deal isn't that God has to walk around sticking the parts together to make them work ~ they'll do that on their own since that characteristic is built into the universe. God's job is something else entirely ~ maybe pinning down the two ends of each of the dimensions of time perhaps while simultaneously pulling knots out of the vacuum.

[b_sharp]

"It's the evolutionists that want to suppress competing ideas like intelligent design.

Sure we do. We all get together every couple of months, scientists and lay people, and agree to disrupt all of that research done by IDists, unfairly debunk IDist papers published on the Web instead of in journals like 'Nature' and diseminate information grounded in years of research on the unsuspecting masses.

The fact that 'evolutionists' have considered and accepted controversial new ideas such as Punctuated Equilibrium, genetics and mutations while rejecting other controversial ideas such a Lamarckism, based on the evidence against it (even though Lamarckism would provide a very good mechanism to dispute special creation), means nothing of course. Its not the lack of evidence for ID, nor the lack of research by ID fellows that's the problem, no it's because 'evolutionists' are so utterly biased against ID that they won't accept it.

Well, 'evolutionists' are also biased against Homeopathy, Astrology, Scientology and the Raelians because of a lack of evidence but only ID has been singled out for rejection for its...umm...what? Because it suggests a designer?

Why would 'evolutionists' reject a possible explanation for 'macro-evolution' if not because of a lack of evidence?

Perhaps 'evolutionists' are afraid that ID will dry up all the funding for the study of evolution?
That is doubtful. If ID were to prove out, and there is indeed a designer, there will still be need for research into fossils, the age of the Earth, the genomes of organisms, population dynamics, adaptation and pretty much everything else that is currently being researched. It appears that a very few disciplines would be affected by acceptance of ID, yet scientists in all of those fields which contribute to evolution but aren't likely to be affected by ID are among those that do not accept ID as it stands. The rejection of ID by those scientists is a pretty good indicator that a fear of funding loss is not the reason 'evolutionist' scientists reject ID.

Perhaps 'evolutionists' are afraid that ID will prove a currently unknown race of extraterrestrial aliens is responsible for 'macro-evoluton'?
Why would the existence of aliens capable of producing 'jumps' in the evolution of Earthly organisms be a problem for 'evolutionists'? It is common knowledge, even among 'evolutionists', that the universe is much older than the Earth. It is also common knowledge that a number of complex molecules, including many of the building blocks for DNA have been found in space, just floating about in large clouds.
Do 'evolutionists' accept the possibility that life could exist elsewhere? I suspect that the vast majority would say yes.
Do 'evolutionists' accept that extraterrestrial life could be as complex as life on Earth? Again I suspect a big yes.
Do 'evolutionists' accept that complex extraterrestrial life could be more technologically advanced as us? Again a big yes is likely.
In fact there are a number of scientists, many who would class themselves as evolutionists', who are actively looking for evidence of intelligent life on other planets.

It appears that the discovery of extraterrestrials capable of manipulating the genomes of Earthly creatures would not be a problem for 'evolutionists'.

So what about genome designing aliens would be a problem for 'evolutionists'? Would that impact the jobs of scientists in evolution related fields?
If aliens meddled in the genomes of Earthly organisms over the 4.2 billion year history of life on Earth then we would have to wonder how often they found their input to be be necessary. Did they need to tweak each and every speciation event? Or did they just have to tweek the genome when a species' inherent adaptation limits needed to be exceeded? If we suppose that they did not directly modify the genome of each and every species but stepped in only when large changes were necessary then the question becomes: what are the limiting factors of speciation and which morphological changes are within those limits?
Placing limits on the degree of morphological change would not appreciably affect the scientific disciplines which contribute to the SToE. All the work in Geology, Geophysics, Chemistry, Astronomy, Genomics, Biology, Biochemistry (and many others) would remain the same, yet the majority of the scientists in those fields are among those that reject ID.

Again, it appears that 'evolutionists' do not reject ID because the existence of intelligent aliens would affect their work.

Perhaps 'evolutionists' reject ID because it could provide evidence of God?

Its already been shown that the existence of an intelligence capable of producing complex changes to the genome is not the reason scientists reject ID. Whether the intelligence is a group of aliens or God does not matter to the study of science within contributing fields, the adjustments necessary to those fields would be the same. God would just be a special case within the 'intelligent designer' framework. The upshot is that the vast majority of fields would have too little change for the existence of God to be a problem.

This leaves the possibility that 'evolutionists' reject ID not because of the affect to their work but because of the potential impact on their belief systems.
This cannot be the reason for a goodly number of 'evolutionist' scientists because they already believe in God. Whether their belief in God is acceptable and considered a 'true' belief by IDists does not affect the argument because we are considering the motivation for scientists to reject ID. As long as God is part of their belief system, the potential for ID to prove the existence of God cannot be part of that motivation. They already believe in the existence of God, additional proof would be welcome. Yet they are among those that reject the current version of ID.

That leaves those who have no belief in a god, the atheistic 'evolutionists'. The question now becomes: is the fear of the existence of God a larger motivator than the quantity and quality of evidence.

If the existence of God was a larger motivator than evidence, those 'evolutionists' who don't believe in God would be likely to accept hypotheses based on their ability to 'disprove' God. Lamarckism is an hypothesis that if it were true would lend itself to a naturalistic philosophy even more than natural selection. If disproof of God was such a large motivator, atheistic 'evolutionists' could even propose a more extreme version than that proposed by Lamarck. There would be absolutely no God if an organism could purposely adapt to a changing environment.
Yet we see no adoption of an hypothesis such as Lamarckism.

There is a additional problem with proposing that atheistic 'evolutionists' reject or accept hypothesis based on their desire to reject God. That problem comes from the theistic 'evolutionists'. If the atheistic 'evolutionists' were to reject or accept an hypothesis based on a rejection of God rather than on the quantity and quality of evidence, the theistic 'evolutionists' would reject that hypothesis and we would see a large disparity between accepted hypotheses. That both the theistic and atheistic 'evolutionists' accept the StoE, and reject Lamarckism because of a lack of evidence, is a strong indicator that the acceptance of God, or the consideration of God, is not as much of a motivator to accept or reject hypotheses as is the quantity and quality of evidence.

What this means is that the rejection of ID is not based on any considerations other than the quantity and quality of evidence. ID simply does not have enough evidence to go beyond an interesting hypothesis. When it starts making predictions that can be potentially falsified, is backed by real research and can produce a coherent theory then bring it back to the table. So far all that has happened is that the IDists have attempted to sidestep the necessary work and get ID accepted as a science through popular vote.

"This article is not about suppressing knowledge. It's about disputing the claim made by evolutionists that evolution is a bedrock of science and all science depends on it.

Nice strawman. There has been no suggestion that evolution is the bedrock of science nor that all of science depends on it. What has been said is that the SToE is the basis for Biology.

"There are a lot of people who just don't believe evolution is a good fit with the observations. In other words, we don't think evolution is good science. And we want to see science open up to other ideas, instead of holding onto darwinistic dogma.

Indiscriminately opening up any field of science to other ideas validates such crap as homeopathy, astrology, the Electric Universe', Expanding Earth, and all other half baked nonsensical ideas. It is necessary for science to discriminate and only accept those 'ideas' which are founded in evidence and accepted physical constraints. To do otherwise is at a minimum a waste of resources.

If you want ID to be accepted by science, do the research and propose falsifiable tests. Don't attempt to force the issue through political games.

[b_sharp]

"Evolution only adds evolutionary lineage, based also on morphology, but that lineage is questionable. Evolution mistakes species variability for transition from species to species."

Define 'species'. You apparently don't accept that used by 'evolutionists, you must have your own version. Share it with the rest of us.

Do you consider bears, dogs and raccoons to be the same or different species?

[<1/1,000,000th%]

Yes!

Another 1000-post thread.

Congratulations!

[b_sharp]

"Nope, Haldanes's dilemma is a concern whenever genes move to fixation in a population. The excess reproductive capacity must exist and must be used to fix the allele.

Are you saying that genetic drift cannot move an allele to fixation?

Are you saying that sexual selection does not move alleles to fixation?

Are you saying that all movement of an allele to fixation is the result of large numbers of deaths during a small number of generations?

"You are correct that ERV's are not observable, by defintion.

You seem to be having trouble with this definition. ERVs are observable. We can see sequences in a genome that we label an ERV. What is not observable is their insertion into the genome. This is because, by definition, they are passed on from one generation to the next. They effectively come from within. I thought you understood this distinction

"Be careful whenever you deal with things that are not observable, by definitin.

Nice equivocation. Unconvincing though.

Let's try a little imaginary experiment to clarify the definition.

We are in a lab, wearing some rather tattered lab coats (mine has my name across the front) dealing with some cute (according to my daughter) but smelly mice and a specific highly contagious but nonlethal virus. We know the genome of the virus and the genome of each of the mice.

We introduce the virus into the mouse population and as expected all of the mice come down with a mild flu giving us evidence that, as expected, the virus has indeed replicated itself in every mouse.

A few weeks later, all of the mice have gotten over their flu, been removed to a virus free environment and have paired off and are 'doin' their thing'.

A few weeks later a pile of baby mice are born and placed into an environment where the virus has never been and has no chance of infecting them. The genome of each mouse is checked and it is found that two of the babies have a new segment in their DNA that is identical to the DNA of the virus. We have just observed the insertion of a retrovirus into the genome of those two mice. Neither parent had that particular sequence so could not have passed it on to their offspring.

We then isolate the two baby mice with the retrovirus and wait for them to develop into adult mice. When adults we observe them 'doin' their thing' (nice that one is male and the other is female ain't it?).

Some weeks later they have a pile of babies. We check the genome of each baby mouse and find that about 1/4 of them have this same pattern at the same place. Since that sequence was passed on from the parents it is no longer called a retrovirus but an endogenous retrovirus (ERV). We have not observed the ERV entering the genome from outside the lineage, so it has 'come from within' (endogenous). We do know where it came from.

Just like your concern with selection costs, you are making the difference between a retrovirus and an ERV bigger and more important than it is.

[b_sharp]

"Aren't those dates obtained through nuclear chemistry?"

Dang! You're right. I guess you got me, it's all from 'evilutionist' corrupted chemistry.

Wait!Wait!Wait! Aren't some of those calibrations and cross checks done outside of chemistry? Supernovas and trees and varves and ice layers and celestial background noise/temp and such?

[b_sharp]

"Simple defining evolution as 'any change in allele frequecy' makes it applicable to a population that is accumulating deleterious mutations.

The definition of a deleterious mutation is one that reduces the number of successful offspring. Hmm...reduces the number of offspring... Looks like it kind of takes care of itself, doesn't it?

"That qualifies a 'any change in allele frequency'.

Yah, it does. That is why changes such as loss of function are also considered evolution. However, an immediately deleterious mutation quickly removes itself from the population.

"How you gonna get humans out of an accumulation of deleterious mutations?

Simple. Deleterious mutations don't accumulate unless the mutation is only deleterious when homozygous. Or if the mutation does not become deleterious until a change of environment.

You know, you seem to be confused. On one hand you claim that Haldane's dilemma applies in all instances of allele fixation where large portions of the population are so poorly fit that they die off quickly, yet you believe that a deleterious mutation that will reduce fitness will somehow accumulate.

Let's try another experiment. Actually since you have such confidence in selection costs decimating a population perhaps you could do the calculations.

We have a group of 100 mice, half male and half female. Of those, 10 mice, 5 male and 5 female, have a beneficial mutation that increases their number of offspring by 20% and 10 mice, again 5 male and 5 female, have a deleterious mutation that reduces their number of offspring by 20%. The mice without either mutation have on average 10 babies. Just for the sake of simplicity the mutations are dominant, each pair of mice has one litter and then dies and all litters are born at the same time. We'll also assume random pairing.

To help you with calculating how many offspring will have either mutation I'll give you the Hardy-Weinberg formula.

p = the frequency of the dominant allele
q = the frequency of the recessive allele
p²+2pq+q²=1
p+q=1

How many generations before the deleterious mutation is removed from the population?

How many generations before the beneficial mutation fixes in the population?

What is the least number of members experienced by the population?

[balrog666]

Wow!

More ignorant goofballs on parade placewmarker!

[ahayes]

Where do you get that, dear?

[ahayes]

"How you gonna get humans out of an accumulation of deleterious mutations?

I would have said, "Sex, and lots of it," but your post is somehow more elegant.

[ahayes]

If you think only one strand contains genes, please go here and examine the sequence of the human chromosome. You can see that some genes are oriented in one way and some in the other. Examination of the tooltip there says, "Orientation--Down arrow: Positive strand, Up arrow: Negative strand."

You might also examine this viral DNA. You can see one open reading frame runs the opposite direction from the other two. That's because it's on the other strand. Some viruses have to pack the information in so tightly that they've managed to overlap open reading frames, so one segment of DNA will produce one product and its complement on the other strand will produce a different product. The presence of genes on both strands is easily demonstrated by examining a variety of different plasmids.

Now we can also go back and zoom in on a gene in the Y chromosome. You can see here that the selected gene, SRY (the sex-determining master switch, errors in this gene can result in a female with and XY genotype), runs in the opposite direction from the surrounding genes (SRY is on the minus strand, the others on the plus strand). Of course you know that this means they can't be on the same strand, since strands are transcribed 5'->3'.

I wonder how you got the idea that only one strand has information on it, and why you think this is required. If we mentally examine the two DNA strands of a duplex, both strands are pretty much the same so far as a ribosome is concerned--they both have the four bases and they both run 5'->3'. An open reading frame on either strand will be transcribed.

[js1138]

Simple defining evolution as 'any change in allele frequecy' makes it applicable to a population that is accumulating deleterious mutations.

The point is that evolution included both beneficial and neutral changes. There are lots of mutations and chromosome changes that are synonyms or which have no immediate noticable effect.

[csense]

[csense]

Ooops

[Jaguarbhzrd]

Sex, and lots of it Placemarker

[GourmetDan]

You analogy; PC, Operating System, Application System are all ID.

You are forced to use ID systems to describe life, yet cling to the idea that life is not ID.

Interesting.

[GourmetDan]

No, I'm saying that Haldane's dilemma is a concern however genes move to fixation in a population.

I'm not having a problem with the defintion of ERV. I'm merely pointing out that ERVs are defined. Obviously scientists have not had the time or tools to observe these genomes over the time-frames proposed to say scientificaly that they are ERVs. The definition of an ERV is based on finding certain markers that are then *defined* as coming from single infections in imaginary common ancestors that moved to fixation. It is a defined truth, not an observed one.

LOL! I warn you about dealing with things that aren't observable by definition and you give me an imaginary example.

The differences between retroviral infections and ERVs are immense. You just don't want to admit it. That's why you use imaginary examples. You simply can't observe these ERVs in the manner that you use in your imaginary example. You imaginary example would be science and would be testable. ERVs are not.

[muawiyah]

Life is not ID? Life springs up unbidden from the fabric of space-time. You can't stop it.

Given that characteristic you just know it happens frequently, and follows the same patterns ~ makes all those additional "creations" rather invisible to the casual observer.

Life also gets toted in from elsewhere. Earth's rocky mantle is filled with hardy bacteria and archaeobacter that live by reducing metals. Blow this place up and those chunks will make vast trips over vast periods of time across the cosmos and end up somewhere else where they may continue their daring exploits.

The Evos generally don't like this particular viewpoint.

[Liberal Classic]

Claim:

Evolutionary theory is practically useless.

Response:

Micropaleontology is the study of microscopic fossils. It is the largest discipline in paleontology, just as microfossils are by far the most abundant of all fossils. Although nearly invisible, micro-organisms at the base of the food chain make up nearly 90 per cent of the biomass in oceans and lakes. The variety of life forms at this level is almost incomprehensible, and while only a few kinds leave solid remains that fossilize, even these few can be so abundant that in places they form mountains of pure fossil remains. The limestone of the plateau from which the Sphinx and Pyramids are carved is actually a mass of foraminifera, preserved in a vast offshore formation that, 40 million years ago, extended from France to Burma. The Chalk Cliffs of Dover, another microfossil marvel, is a layer hundreds of feet thick all across western Europe that consists of nothing but sub-microscopic coccoliths. In other parts of the world, solidly packed remains of diatoms make up formations of thin-layered diatomite hundreds of feet thick that are quarried for industrial uses.

The abyssal floor of the ocean, which occupies more than half of the earth's surface, is buried under a carpet of microfossils that slowly piles up like layers of dust over the millenia. Changes in the abundance and types of microfossils from year to year, over millions of years of undisturbed accumulation, makes an exquisitely detailed record of climate change, plate tectonics, and biological evolution. Each time a new species of free-floating marine micro-organism evolves, it quickly spreads throughout the oceans in countless billions, forming a worldwide marker in the fossil record. Such marker horizons allow geological events in different parts of the world to be related in a global earth history. For instance, it was the microfossil "tape recorder" that proved that reversals of the polarity of the earth's magnetism were worldwide events. Microfossil data also revealed that changes in sea levels, temperature, and glacial advances were synchronous worldwide, proving the reality of global climate changes more accurately than geochemical dating methods. Recently, micropaleontology has shown how oscillations in the earth's orbit and tilt lead to cycles in global climate, including the Ice Ages.

Microfossils are vital to oil exploration. Because of their tiny size and great abundance, they occur unbroken in the rock fragments brought up by drilling into the deeply buried ocean formations and lake beds where oil is found. By comparing the characteristic fossils from each formation as they are penetrated by the exploratory drills, geologists can unravel the geometry of the strata far beneath the surface and locate the domes and traps that may hold oil. The condition of the fossils, as well, indicates whether the petroleum source rocks have been buried and heated sufficiently to generate oil from trapped organic matter. Most importantly of all, the organic matter itself is almost entirely from ancient micro-organisms that make up the ocean's biomass.

Source: Micropaleontology Press

[Virginia-American]

. The definition of an ERV is based on finding certain markers that are then *defined* as coming from single infections in imaginary common ancestors that moved to fixation. It is a defined truth, not an observed one.

Not exactly. The pattern of distribution is observed to be the same as the already-known phylogenetic tree, and, they just happen to have things that really look like reverse transcriptase and other peculiar retroviral genes. A single infection in a common ancestor is the simplest explanation. Source Figure 4.4.1. Human endogenous retrovirus K (HERV-K) insertions in identical chromosomal locations in various primates (Reprinted from Lebedev et al. 2000, © 2000, with permission from Elsevier Science).