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]

You wouldn't believe how hard I had to work to hit that one.

This thread wasn't supposed to go beyond 37 posts anyway.

[Elsie]

And.........

We are not playing NICE!


(Where are the Mod's? ;^)

[Elsie]

From indy, huh?

[js1138]

You need instruction in "commas" yourself.

I'm genuinely interested in what comma faults you found in my post. I'm not being sarcastic.

I find it amusing that you are giving English lessons.

Conversing with you is like communicating through Babelfish.

[muawiyah]

Oh, I see what you're saying now. You missed the thread on the higher level coding a few weeks back. I happen to have a copy of the article as it appeared in the NYT (because it was "important", not because the NYT is a peer reviewed journal).

I think this snippet gives you enough information to search for it, or the discussion thread on FR:

""Scientists Say They’ve Found a Code Beyond Genetics in DNA NY Times ^ | July 25, 2006 | NICHOLAS WADE

Loren Williams/Chemistry and Biochemistry, Georgia Institute of Technology

In a living cell, the DNA double helix wraps around a nucleosome, above center, and binds to some of its proteins, known as histones.

Researchers believe they have found a second code in DNA in addition to the genetic code.

The genetic code specifies all the proteins that a cell makes. The second code, superimposed on the first, sets the placement of the nucleosomes, miniature protein spools around which the DNA is looped. The spools both protect and control access to the DNA itself. ...."

The article goes on to say that this needs to be proved out by other studies.

Next step, finding out where the electronic wiring diagram is for this stuff. Enough of chemistry!!!!

You guys can duke this one out on your own.

[muawiyah]

Yup ~ way long time ago.

[muawiyah]

Previous posts ~ you don't use enough of them. Commas, like hard returns, are our friends.

[ahayes]

Oh my. When I first read 5'-3' problem I figured you were talking about DNA duplication and the way length is continually lost from a DNA strand during successive duplications unless telomerase is there to fix it. But no. . .

You have two major flaws in your reasoning. The first I think is probably explained best by a diagram. Closest I can figure you think that you can't chop a piece of DNA out of a sequence, reverse it, and reinsert it because the directionality of DNA won't allow it. It will, the duplex that is excised is just flipped and reinserted so that a gene that was previously on strand 1 of the duplex is now on strand 2 (this you also assume is a problem when it isn't, but I'll handle that later).

So here's a DNA duplex that we're going to attach another one to the end of, we'll let this stand in for chromosome 2p:

5' ----->---->------>- 3'
3' -----<----<------<- 5'

The arrows are just to show the coding direction of the strand. So now here is our second duplex, which will stand for chromosome 2q:

5' -->-a--b->---- 3'
3' --<-------<---- 5'

The a--b indicates the start and stop codons for a gene. Now we could splice this onto the end of 2p as it is, but we want to reverse it. So let's do that:

3' ----<-b--a-<-- 5'
5' ---->------->-- 3'

Note that although when you're reading left to right the gene looks like it's backwards, when the ribosomes actually come along the duplex they will travel 5'->3' and thus the gene is still forwards to them. Now we can splice this on, but because of the way it's written we need to flop it front to bottom, which again changes none of the information present on this duplex.

5' ---->------->-- 3'
3' ----<-b--a-<-- 5'

Now the DNA segment is reversed and oriented properly for splicing onto the other chromosome.

5' ----->---->------>------->------>-- 3'
3' -----<----<------<------<-b--a-<-- 5'

Voila! Human chromosome 2!

The reversal of the second duplex doesn't affect insertion or splicing at all, and the information on both chromosomes is still intact. This is because although you seem to think that one strand of this duplex is coding, that is, has all of the working genes on it and the other one is noncoding junk, in reality both DNA strands of a duplex have genes on them. The terms "coding strand" and "noncoding strand" only have meaning so far as you are talking about a particular gene. Here--let's put another gene in and label the strands:

1: 5' ----->---->-1--2->------>------>-- 3'
2: 3' -----<----<------<------<-b--a-<-- 5'

So far as gene 1-2 is concerned, strand 1 is the coding strand and strand 2 is noncoding. So far as gene a-b is concerned, strand 2 is the coding strand and strand 1 is noncoding.

So there is not 5'-3' problem, and the merging of ape chromosomes 2p and 2q to give human chromosome 2 is eminently reasonable.

[RightWhale]

It might be that statements do not make sense at first, but if thought about might be understood and discourse might be possible.

[Quark2005]

ALREADY POSTED FOUR TIMES THIS WEEK! THAT'S SPAM! SPAM I TELL YOU!!!!

</Spamzelle mode>

[Jaguarbhzrd]

LOL, that was a funny post.

Please stop.

[js1138]

Previous posts ~ you don't use enough of them. Commas, like hard returns, are our friends.

You have a tendency to post assertions that sound specific, but which have no content. You criticise my grammar without providing an example. (I'm not saying I don't make errors, but you are not nitpicking typos. You are asserting something about my style without providing evidence.)

Your comments about evolution vs change are just nuts. You routinely exhibit misunderstanding of the most elementary concepts in evolution -- starting with the absurd notion that evolution is not primarily a matter of changes in DNA. After making such boneheaded blunders, you have the nerve to talk about what biologists do.

[muawiyah]

Look, I can read as well as you can. NOWHERE is anyone, not even biologists, using the word "evolve" to mean the word "change".

Heretofore it has been used exclusively to mean a conceptual process of a very special kind.

When you elect to change a word you'd best be careful to try to escape the notice of the nomenclatura.

I'm sorry you have no sense of humor.

On the other hand, you don't use enough commas. I know you think you do, but you don't. Listen to how you speak sometime. Certainly you don't talk the way you write, else you'd suffocate.

[js1138]

On the other hand, you don't use enough commas. I know you think you do, but you don't. Listen to how you speak sometime. Certainly you don't talk the way you write, else you'd suffocate.

And you post rubbish without providing evidence.

[js1138]

Look, I can read as well as you can. NOWHERE is anyone, not even biologists, using the word "evolve" to mean the word "change".

No?

One of the most respected evolutionary biologists has defined biological evolution as follows:

"In the broadest sense, evolution is merely change, and so is all-pervasive; galaxies, languages, and political systems all evolve. Biological evolution ... is change in the properties of populations of organisms that transcend the lifetime of a single individual. The ontogeny of an individual is not considered evolution; individual organisms do not evolve. The changes in populations that are considered evolutionary are those that are inheritable via the genetic material from one generation to the next. Biological evolution may be slight or substantial; it embraces everything from slight changes in the proportion of different alleles within a population (such as those determining blood types) to the successive alterations that led from the earliest protoorganism to snails, bees, giraffes, and dandelions."

- Douglas J. Futuyma in Evolutionary Biology, Sinauer Associates 1986

[muawiyah]

So far you've managed to misread or misread and misrepresent everything I said about things that affect the expression of genes and drive "evolution".

Certainly you are aware that DNA methylation has an impact.

Or, maybe you don't.

The lady who got the Nobel for her discovery of "jumping genes" (Dr. Barbara McClintock) probably would not agree with you that reshuffling DNA strands actually "changes" the DNA in those strands itself.

All I've said is what I've read that was written by experts in the field who argue that reordering of DNA, not mutations, effectuates more evolutionary change than any other process.

Nearly half our genome is composed of transposons according to this site: http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/faq/faqs1.shtml

Now, come back and tell us again that moving a gene from one spot to another "mutates the DNA".

Just gotta' hear it ~ no wonder you can't understand the English language.

[muawiyah]

Your friends in Wikipedia provide sufficient information, to wit: "Futuyma is the author of the widely used textbook Evolutionary Biology and Science on Trial: The Case for Evolution, an introduction to the creation-evolution controversy." that I'd suggest the reason he wants to change the meaning of the word "evolve" is political.

I guess he figures that if he controls what words mean he controls the debate.

Bet he doesn't have the guts to show up in FR.

[ahayes]

Bet he doesn't have the guts to show up in FR.

Is it scary here for evolutionists? I hadn't noticed.

[ahayes]

DNA structural changes can have immense effects on an organism.

And yes, insertion or removal of a segment of DNA is a mutation. Are you trying to change the definitions?

[Hoplite]

This prime is practically useless, admits Hoplite.

Like my appendix, useless, but mine!