Evidence, not motive, weighs in favor of giving schoolchildren all sides

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-by Stephen C. Meyer

Cynical lawyers have a maxim: When you have the facts on your side, argue the facts. When you have the law on your side, argue the law. When neither is on your side, question the motives of the opposition.

The latter seems to be the strategy of die-hard defenders of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, now that the State Board of Education in Ohio agreed to allow local districts to bring critical analysis of Darwin's ideas into classrooms.

Case in point: A few weeks ago in The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer, Case Western Reserve University physicist Lawrence Krauss attacked the board's decision by linking it to a vast conspiracy of scientists who favor the theory of intelligent design. Design is dangerous, Krauss implied, because the scientists who favor it are religiously motivated. But Krauss' attack and his conspiracy theory are irrelevant to assessing the state board's policies. It's not what motivates a scientist's theory that determines accuracy; it's evidence.

Consider a parallel example: Noted Darwinist Richard Dawkins has praised Darwin's theory because it allows him "to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.'' Does this scientist's anti-religious motive disqualify Darwinian evolution from consideration as a scientific theory? Obviously not. The same should apply when considering design.

The leading advocate of intelligent design, Lehigh University biochemist Michael Behe, has marshaled some intriguing evidence: the miniature motors and complex circuits in cells.

But Krauss did not argue with Behe's evidence; he questioned the motives of Behe's associates. Krauss claims to speak for science in Ohio. Yet he stoops to some very unscientific and fallacious forms of argument.

Krauss also distracts attention from the real issue. The state board has acknowledged that local teachers and school boards already have the freedom to decide whether to discuss the theory of intelligent design. But apart from that, the board did not address the subject. The board does not require students to learn about the theory of intelligent design in the new science standards. Nor will students be tested on the theory. How, then, are the motives of scientists who favor intelligent design at all relevant?

The new standards do require students to know about evolution and why "scientists today continue to investigate and critically analyze aspects of evolutionary theory.'' This is a good policy, one that has the facts and the law on its side.

First, the facts: Many biologists question aspects of evolutionary theory because many of the main lines of evidence for evolutionary theory no longer hold up. German biologist Ernst Haeckel's famous embryo drawings long were thought to show that all vertebrates share a common ancestry. But biologists now know that these diagrams are inaccurate. Darwin's theory asserts that all living forms evolved gradually from a common ancestor. But fossil evidence shows the geologically sudden appearance of new animal forms in the Cambrian period. Biologists know about these problems.

The state board wisely has required students to know about some of these well-known problems when they learn about evolutionary theory. That's just good science education. Students have a right to know.

Law also supports the board's decision. In 1986, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Edwards vs. Aguillard that state legislatures could require the teaching of "scientific critiques of prevailing scientific theories.'' Last year, in the report language of the new federal education act, Congress expressed its support for greater openness in science instruction, citing biological evolution as the key example.

The state board's decision is very popular with the public. Knowing this, opponents argue that majority opinion does not matter in science. They are right. In science, it's evidence that decides questions. But, ironically, that is an argument for allowing students to know all the evidence, not just the evidence that supports the view of the majority of scientists. Because evidence, and not the majority opinion of scientists, is the ultimate authority in science, students need to learn to analyze evidence critically, not just to accept an assumed consensus.

On the other hand, the majority does decide public-policy questions. And, according to many public-opinion polls, an overwhelming majority of Ohio voters support the policy of telling students about scientific critiques of Darwinian evolution. Others have complained that evolution has been unfairly singled out in these standards. Why not insist that students critically analyze other theories and ideas?

First, there is now more scientific disagreement about Darwinian evolution than about other scientific theories.

Second, evolution, more than other scientific theories, has been taught dogmatically. Scientific critics, as we have seen, are routinely stigmatized as religiously motivated. Fortunately, the State Board of Education's decision will make it more difficult to stigmatize teachers who present the evidence for and against evolutionary theory.

Had other stuff going on or I'd have got back to you sooner.

You're slip slidin' away again. You said "one natural explanation after another" had been ruled out. You cannot support this statement with there is no known genetic mechanism .... If you want to switch to that point instead, OK, but let's just make it clear that is a different statement.

BTW, just a side question. You mention pseudogenes. From your prior comments I assume you think the human race was specially created some tens of thousands of years ago and has no common ancestor with chimps or other apes. Yet I understand chimps and humans are not only closely related genetically in the coding sense but share pseudogenes too. If there is no family relationship, how do you explain that?

Now, what is a family? I know that its one level of the seven in taxonomic classification but not much more. Isn't the distinction between the levels arbitrary? I don't think they're even defined genetically, are they? If not why would you expect a genetic mechanism?

But let's assume (and I think this is generally accepted) that there is a strong correlation between taxonomic relatedness and genetic relatedness. To answer your question off the cuff, I'd say that there is no distinct genetic mechanism to account for family groupings. I expect that families groupings will naturally appear as a consequence of speciation and extinction. I expect that could even be modelled without too much trouble in a computer program. Might need some reality thrown in like mass extinctions. I'm guessing you won't like this answer.

When you paste together such a fabrication as that bibliography and represent it to the Ohio board in the manner that Meyer and cohorts did, that's lying about the state of scientific opinion.

Science is not about opinion, it is about facts. It is the facts that contradict evolution. Scientist's opinions can differ but the facts are there for all to see. The facts discovered by these scientists disprove evolution. Whether they think so (or are willing to say so or not) is totally irrelevant. Let's take the first item on Post# 478 :

" It is widely believed that molecular data confirm morphological data when the history of groups such as the mammals is being reconstructed. Many cases exist, however, where molecules (such as proteins) give “false” or erroneous phylogenies. This paper, by a team of researchers from Japan, Germany, and Australia, demonstrates that different mitochondrial proteins can give different, and contradictory, groupings. In particular, the protein NADH dehydrogenase (ND1) places primates and rodents together as closest relatives, with ferungulates (artiodactyls + cetaceans + perisodactyls + carnivores) as more distantly related to primates -- in contradiction to most other data, which places primates and ferungulates together as closest relatives. The authors conclude that this anomalous phylogenetic grouping “is not due to a stochastic error, but is due to convergent or parallel evolution” (p. 321), suggesting that molecular evidence is not free from the confounding (historically misleading) effects known to plague other types of systematic data, such as anatomical patterns."

In plain English what the above says is that neither the genes nor anatomy supports descent of traits in the manner which evolution requires for it to be true. Evolution is a theory which claims that traits descend from previous traits of ancestor species in a tree-like manner (evolutionists are very good at crayon work and love to draw such trees). This says that the traits do not arise in such a manner and is therefore strong proof against evolution. We also need to explain what convergence is - the undeniable fact that totally unrelated species can perform the same functions even though they clearly could not have been the result of descent. This was known in the case of physical features. Now science has shown that this is also the case with genetic features. In other words, the evolutionist's hope that the genes would prove their theory true has been falsified.

Now regardless of what else these scientists might opine, this is their scientific conclusion on the facts - that genetics does not show descent. They can say a-la Darwin that in the future they will find a solution. The fact is that as of scientific knowledge right now evolutionists have been shown to be wrong. They can talk all they like but the scientific facts prove evolution wrong. Further, the evolutionists had never been able to show that convergence in physical features fits in with their theory, they hoped that examination of the genes would solve their problem, instead it has made it greater. So the trend of science has been to disprove evolutionary claims and therefore there is no reason to believe the claims of evolutionists that the 'future will prove them correct'.

Your point was that new families never appear right away, that it always takes time. You used an analogy of a tree, saying all buds were small at first, that one never gets a middle sized branch at the start, only a tiny twig.

Two tiny sentences, after 24 hours and two restatements of the question. I said it takes time, and I used a tree analogy.

Yes. Pathetic as your attempt is, it's better than I thought you could do, given that you have this Demon, this religious horror of thoughts that go against.

In particular, I told you that it starts with the appearance of a variety--a still reversible change, then a speciation--an irreversible change, then a new genus, etc. You have the advantage in this case of retaining my exact words to you whereas I don't. I suspect I probably pointed to a clear trail in the fossil record of a speciation leading eventually to the appearance of a new genus. If I didn't then, I did just now. I'm sure I must have told you that it's really a dumb strawman argument to say that a new family should pop out from nowhere. Let me now add that it's utterly bizarre to persist in such behavior in the face of all attempts to reason.

Your analogy was flawed and did nothing to address the points in my model, when your argument was refuted you just went to a faith-based defense : IE- we don't see it now because evolution occurs via Punctuated Equalibrium and the last 5K years have been a period of stasis.

"Flawed" how? Are you saying I don't understand evolution? It is your strawman version of evolution that is flawed and irrelevant. Here's all the authentication on exactly this question that I could ask.

Taxonomy, Transitional Forms, and the Fossil Record, by Keith B. Miller. I'll take you through the most applicable parts of this, but you need to read the whole thing very, very carefully.

Another common misperception is that the origin of higher taxa does not take place at the level of populations and species. If the concept of common descent is accepted, then transitions between higher level taxonomic categories must also be species transitions (Fig. 3). This is recognized by all evolutionary paleobiologists, even those who stress the significance of the origin of phyla and classes (Valentine, 1992) ...
The character states used to define higher taxa are determined retrospectively. That is, they are chosen based on a knowledge of the subsequent history of the lineages possessing those traits. They do not reflect the attainment of some objective higher level of morphologic innovation at the time of their appearance. Also, all the features subsequently identified with a particular higher taxon do not appear in a coordinated and simultaneous manner but as character mosaics within numerous closely-related species lineages, many of which are not included in the new higher taxon. In addition, as discussed above, the species associated with the origin and initial radiation of a new taxon are usually not very divergent in morphology. Were it not for the subsequent evolutionary history of the lineages, species spanning the transitions between families, orders, classes, and phyla would be placed in the same lower taxon (Fig. 3).

Taxon assignment of fossil life forms is based upon retrospective significance. That is, the differences which will later be important are small, tiny spikes in the noise of variation, when they first appear. They tend to come in one at a time at various points along the branching.

Moving further up the taxonomic hierarchy, the condylarths and primitive carnivores (creodonts, miacids) are very similar to each other in morphology (Fig. 9, 10), and some taxa have had their assignments to these orders changed. The Miacids in turn are very similar to the earliest representatives of the Families Canidae (dogs) and Mustelidae (weasels), both of Superfamily Arctoidea, and the Family Viverridae (civets) of the Superfamily Aeluroidea. As Romer (1966) states in Vertebrate Paleontology (p. 232), "Were we living at the beginning of the Oligocene, we should probably consider all these small carnivores as members of a single family." This statement also illustrates the point that the erection of a higher taxon is done in retrospect, after sufficient divergence has occurred to give particular traits significance.

What Miller and Romer are telling you is exactly what I'm telling you. You simply persevere in attacking strawmen. Period.

Evolution always seems to be happening somewhere else.

Like in the fossil record?

It must be taken on faith.

Evolution has all the hard evidence there is and there's plenty of it. Creationism and its stealth political arm, Intelligent Design, do no research, no science. They selectively, parasitically, with a total disregard of ethical considerations, coopt the real science of others for propaganda.

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