Posted on 12/18/2004 5:56:30 PM PST by PatrickHenry
Professional danger comes in many flavors, and while Richard Colling doesn't jump into forest fires or test experimental jets for a living, he does do the academic's equivalent: He teaches biology and evolution at a fundamentalist Christian college.
At Olivet Nazarene University in Bourbonnais, Ill., he says, "as soon as you mention evolution in anything louder than a whisper, you have people who aren't very happy." And within the larger conservative-Christian community, he adds, "I've been called some interesting names."
But those experiences haven't stopped Prof. Colling -- who received a Ph.D. in microbiology, chairs the biology department at Olivet Nazarene and is himself a devout conservative Christian -- from coming out swinging. In his new book, "Random Designer," he writes: "It pains me to suggest that my religious brothers are telling falsehoods" when they say evolutionary theory is "in crisis" and claim that there is widespread skepticism about it among scientists. "Such statements are blatantly untrue," he argues; "evolution has stood the test of time and considerable scrutiny."
His is hardly the standard scientific defense of Darwin, however. His central claim is that both the origin of life from a primordial goo of nonliving chemicals, and the evolution of species according to the processes of random mutation and natural selection, are "fully compatible with the available scientific evidence and also contemporary religious beliefs." In addition, as he bluntly told me, "denying science makes us [Conservative Christians] look stupid."
Prof. Colling is one of a small number of conservative Christian scholars who are trying to convince biblical literalists that Darwin's theory of evolution is no more the work of the devil than is Newton's theory of gravity. They haven't picked an easy time to enter the fray. Evolution is under assault from Georgia to Pennsylvania and from Kansas to Wisconsin, with schools ordering science teachers to raise questions about its validity and, in some cases, teach "intelligent design," which asserts that only a supernatural tinkerer could have produced such coups as the human eye. According to a Gallup poll released last month, only one-third of Americans regard Darwin's theory of evolution as well supported by empirical evidence; 45% believe God created humans in their present form 10,000 years ago.
Usually, the defense of evolution comes from scientists and those trying to maintain the separation of church and state. But Prof. Colling has another motivation. "People should not feel they have to deny reality in order to experience their faith," he says. He therefore offers a rendering of evolution fully compatible with faith, including his own. The Church of the Nazarene, which runs his university, "believes in the biblical account of creation," explains its manual. "We oppose a godless interpretation of the evolutionary hypothesis."
It's a small opening, but Prof. Colling took it. He finds a place for God in evolution by positing a "random designer" who harnesses the laws of nature he created. "What the designer designed is the random-design process," or Darwinian evolution, Prof. Colling says. "God devised these natural laws, and uses evolution to accomplish his goals." God is not in there with a divine screwdriver and spare parts every time a new species or a wondrous biological structure appears.
Unlike those who see evolution as an assault on faith, Prof. Colling finds it strengthens his own. "A God who can harness the laws of randomness and chaos, and create beauty and wonder and all of these marvelous structures, is a lot more creative than fundamentalists give him credit for," he told me. Creating the laws of physics and chemistry that, over the eons, coaxed life from nonliving molecules is something he finds just as awe inspiring as the idea that God instantly and supernaturally created life from nonlife.
Prof. Colling reserves some of his sharpest barbs for intelligent design, the idea that the intricate structures and processes in the living world -- from exquisitely engineered flagella that propel bacteria to the marvels of the human immune system -- can't be the work of random chance and natural selection. Intelligent-design advocates look at these sophisticated components of living things, can't imagine how evolution could have produced them, and conclude that only God could have.
That makes Prof. Colling see red. "When Christians insert God into the gaps that science cannot explain -- in this case how wondrous structures and forms of life came to be -- they set themselves up for failure and even ridicule," he told me. "Soon -- and it's already happening with the flagellum -- science is going to come along and explain" how a seemingly miraculous bit of biological engineering in fact could have evolved by Darwinian mechanisms. And that will leave intelligent design backed into an ever-shrinking corner.
It won't be easy to persuade conservative Christians of this; at least half of them believe that the six-day creation story of Genesis is the literal truth. But Prof. Colling intends to try.
No! Say it ain't so!
Oh, that's right. Somehow, they're allowed. It's OK. It's cool, even. The others will clap the blind eye to the telescope. They can do that. We're being mean and nasty in even noticing.
Genetic Analysis of Coordinate Flagellar and Type III Regulatory Circuits in Pathogenic Bacteria
From the paper: Behe argues that natural selection and random mutation cannot produce the irreducibly complex bacterial flagellar motor with its ca. forty separate protein parts, since the motor confers no functional advantage on the cell unless all the parts are present. Natural select can preserve the motor once it has been assembled, but it cannot detect anything to preserve until the motor has been assembled and performs a function. If there is no function, there is nothing to select. Given that the flagellum requires ca. 50 genes to function, how did these arise? Contrary to popular belief, we have no detailed account for the evolution of any molecular machine. The data from Y. pestis presented here seems to indicate that loss of one constituent in the system leads to the gradual loss of others. For progression to work, each gene product must maintain some function as it is adapted to another.
(Here is where your argument comes in)
To counter this argument, particularly as it applies to the flagellum, others have used the TTSS. Since the secretory system that forms part of the flagellar mechanism can also function separately, Miller [18, 19] has argued that natural selection could have “co-opted” the functional parts from the TTTS and other earlier simple systems to produce the flagellar motor. And, indeed, the TTSS contains eighteen proteins that are also found in the forty protein bacterial flagellar motor. Miller thus regards the virulence secretory pump of the Yersinia Yop system as a Darwinian intermediate, case closed.
This argument seems only superficially plausible in light of some of the findings presented in this paper. First, if anything, TTSSs generate more complications than solutions to this question. As shown here, possessing multiple TTSSs causes interference. If not segregated one or both systems are lost. Additionally, the other thirty proteins in the flagellar motor (that are not present in the TTSS) are unique to the motor and are not found in any other living system. From whence, then, were these protein parts co-opted? Also, even if all the protein parts were somehow available to make a flagellar motor during the evolution of life, the parts would need to be assembled in the correct temporal sequence similar to the way an automobile is assembled in factory. Yet, to choreograph the assembly of the parts of the flagellar motor, present-day bacteria need an elaborate system of genetic instructions as well as many other protein machines to time the expression of those assembly instructions. Arguably, this system is itself irreducibly complex. In any case, the co-option argument tacitly presupposes the need for the very thing it seeks to explain—a functionally interdependent system of proteins. Finally, phylogenetic analyses of the gene sequences [20] suggest that flagellar motor proteins arose first and those of the pump came later. In other words, if anything, the pump evolved from the motor, not the motor from the pump.
You? Being mean and nasty? Naaaah...I don't believe it.
From above, no pump can suck more than thirty feet. From below, a pump can lift a column ... well ... that its horsepower will lift.
Havoc == Hovind. BTW, nice Lord Nelson analogy.
No real Ph.D. would act like Havoc...
OK! Never mind!
So why are you here, and she's not? Not that you being here is much use, since you won't answer the question either...
Well I'm jus a dum cretioest how wuld i kno? You big smart scitists shuld anser my dum questins
Yeah, right. They only buy 100%-Certified, Thought-Free, Bible-Brand BSã.
If you say so.
You big smart scitists shuld anser my dum questins
You haven't asked me any questions, other than "what does chaos theory have to do with it?", which I already answered for you. How am I supposed to answer questions you haven't asked?
Um,,, for starters read the posts. But if you're too lazy to don't jump into the middle just to change the subject, though I guess it does divert attention from the questions asked.
As for the rest, since you obviously didn't notice, the suddenly-obdurate Doctor posted a bit about Alfred Wallace, which I chose to ask her about. It's not really "changing the subject" to ask about something she brought up. If she didn't want to talk about it, perhaps she shouldn't have posted it, and if you don't want to talk about it, then don't talk about it - let her come forth and speak for herself.
Even in Darwin's day, the credence given his ideas was not based upon any prior claim to fame he may have had. He had fairly little then, and would be unknown now, had he not published On the Origin of Species.
In other words, you have it backward. He got famous for making a good theory. He did not make a theory good by putting his prestige behind it. You really cannot do the latter in science. Science is not argued by personally attacking (or praising, for that matter) the "founder" of a theory. Darwin was only the first Darwinist.
Your problem is with the evidence for Darwin's theory. We can put that in two parts. The tiny part is the data which Darwin had in his day. A much bigger part is the data that has turned up since Darwin's day. A big item which I will lift out separately is the way all the big part lines up with and confirms the little part. That alignment makes Darwin something of a prophet if you think he was a charlatan and had no scientific basis for predicting things like Precambrian fossils, transitional whale ancestors, transitional human ancestors, etc. In attacking Darwin for being a charlatan, one should feel compelled to explain how he was so doggoned lucky. Somehow the creationist always skips that part.
There was already visible in Darwin's day a tree of life. There were gaps in the data, some of them large, but Darwin said the tree was a real tree of common descent and more data arriving in the future would only confirm the fact. In late 2004, we not only have far more extant species cataloged, and far more fossils, but we have a wealth of molecular and genetic evidence whose existence Darwin never suspected. All these sources continue to confirm common descent.
That's how science is argued. The theory is apart from the man. Funny you didn't know that. Creation science doesn't look much like science.
Is that the first known picture of F-dot in captivity, or is it G3k?
I've made my point, none of you can come up with an intelligent rebuttal and none of you can refute what I have posted. I suspect Eckleburg went Christmas shopping and I have a party to go to. It's been fun, if not very enlightening, seeya
Satan believes in God and he has no faith in Him.
Faith is a gift from God alone.
You haven't posted anything to me that needs refutation.
I suspect Eckleburg went Christmas shopping and I have a party to go to.
No doubt. Remember - no dancing.
We know, DEJ, we know.
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