Posted on 06/17/2002 3:10:50 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
Opponents of evolution want to make a place for creationism by tearing down real science, but their arguments don't hold up
When Charles Darwin introduced the theory of evolution through natural selection 143 years ago, the scientists of the day argued over it fiercely, but the massing evidence from paleontology, genetics, zoology, molecular biology and other fields gradually established evolution's truth beyond reasonable doubt. Today that battle has been won everywhere--except in the public imagination.
Embarrassingly, in the 21st century, in the most scientifically advanced nation the world has ever known, creationists can still persuade politicians, judges and ordinary citizens that evolution is a flawed, poorly supported fantasy. They lobby for creationist ideas such as "intelligent design" to be taught as alternatives to evolution in science classrooms. As this article goes to press, the Ohio Board of Education is debating whether to mandate such a change. Some antievolutionists, such as Philip E. Johnson, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley and author of Darwin on Trial, admit that they intend for intelligent-design theory to serve as a "wedge" for reopening science classrooms to discussions of God.
Besieged teachers and others may increasingly find themselves on the spot to defend evolution and refute creationism. The arguments that creationists use are typically specious and based on misunderstandings of (or outright lies about) evolution, but the number and diversity of the objections can put even well-informed people at a disadvantage.
To help with answering them, the following list rebuts some of the most common "scientific" arguments raised against evolution. It also directs readers to further sources for information and explains why creation science has no place in the classroom.
1. Evolution is only a theory. It is not a fact or a scientific law. [Rebuttal omitted to save space. See the original article.]
2. Natural selection is based on circular reasoning: the fittest are those who survive, and those who survive are deemed fittest. [Rebuttal omitted to save space. See the original article.]
3. Evolution is unscientific, because it is not testable or falsifiable. It makes claims about events that were not observed and can never be re-created. [Rebuttal omitted to save space. See the original article.]
4. Increasingly, scientists doubt the truth of evolution. [Rebuttal omitted to save space. See the original article.]
5. The disagreements among even evolutionary biologists show how little solid science supports evolution. [Rebuttal omitted to save space. See the original article.]
6. If humans descended from monkeys, why are there still monkeys? [Rebuttal omitted to save space. See the original article.]
7. Evolution cannot explain how life first appeared on earth. [Rebuttal omitted to save space. See the original article.]
8. Mathematically, it is inconceivable that anything as complex as a protein, let alone a living cell or a human, could spring up by chance. [Rebuttal omitted to save space. See the original article.]
9. The Second Law of Thermodynamics says that systems must become more disordered over time. Living cells therefore could not have evolved from inanimate chemicals, and multicellular life could not have evolved from protozoa. [Rebuttal omitted to save space. See the original article.]
10. Mutations are essential to evolution theory, but mutations can only eliminate traits. They cannot produce new features. [Rebuttal omitted to save space. See the original article.]
11. Natural selection might explain microevolution, but it cannot explain the origin of new species and higher orders of life. [Rebuttal omitted to save space. See the original article.]
12. Nobody has ever seen a new species evolve. [Rebuttal omitted to save space. See the original article.]
13. Evolutionists cannot point to any transitional fossils--creatures that are half reptile and half bird, for instance. [Rebuttal omitted to save space. See the original article.]
14. Living things have fantastically intricate features--at the anatomical, cellular and molecular levels--that could not function if they were any less complex or sophisticated. The only prudent conclusion is that they are the products of intelligent design, not evolution. [Rebuttal omitted to save space. See the original article.]
15. Recent discoveries prove that even at the microscopic level, life has a quality of complexity that could not have come about through evolution. [Rebuttal omitted to save space. See the original article.]
CONCLUSION
"Creation science" is a contradiction in terms. A central tenet of modern science is methodological naturalism--it seeks to explain the universe purely in terms of observed or testable natural mechanisms. Thus, physics describes the atomic nucleus with specific concepts governing matter and energy, and it tests those descriptions experimentally. Physicists introduce new particles, such as quarks, to flesh out their theories only when data show that the previous descriptions cannot adequately explain observed phenomena. The new particles do not have arbitrary properties, moreover--their definitions are tightly constrained, because the new particles must fit within the existing framework of physics.
In contrast, intelligent-design theorists invoke shadowy entities that conveniently have whatever unconstrained abilities are needed to solve the mystery at hand. Rather than expanding scientific inquiry, such answers shut it down. (How does one disprove the existence of omnipotent intelligences?)
Intelligent design offers few answers. For instance, when and how did a designing intelligence intervene in life's history? By creating the first DNA? The first cell? The first human? Was every species designed, or just a few early ones? Proponents of intelligent-design theory frequently decline to be pinned down on these points. They do not even make real attempts to reconcile their disparate ideas about intelligent design. Instead they pursue argument by exclusion--that is, they belittle evolutionary explanations as far-fetched or incomplete and then imply that only design-based alternatives remain.
Logically, this is misleading: even if one naturalistic explanation is flawed, it does not mean that all are. Moreover, it does not make one intelligent-design theory more reasonable than another. Listeners are essentially left to fill in the blanks for themselves, and some will undoubtedly do so by substituting their religious beliefs for scientific ideas.
Time and again, science has shown that methodological naturalism can push back ignorance, finding increasingly detailed and informative answers to mysteries that once seemed impenetrable: the nature of light, the causes of disease, how the brain works. Evolution is doing the same with the riddle of how the living world took shape. Creationism, by any name, adds nothing of intellectual value to the effort.
The Author(s):
John Rennie is editor in chief of Scientific American.
You aren't serious are you?
They have in fact evolved to rule their specific niche. They are experts at catching fish, swimming, insulating themselves from the cold and are perfectly happy where they are. They aren't adapted to live in other climate/locales etc. Those spots were already taken. This should be obvious.
I think this may in part have something to do with a higher rate of mutation and chromosome crossover events during sperm meiosis (compared to egg production in females). Y chromosomes should be subject to more changes as a result of being produced exclusively in sperm (as opposed to X chromosomes and the somatic set). This is just a guess though!
I did not say it never happens, it does. But it is not common at all and it is certainly a lot less common that plain point mutations. My argument is not at all that any of the steps mentioned are totally impossible by random chance. Heck a person can buy one lottery ticket in their life and get the big prize, but it does not happen very often.
Re #6 (post#1605) - You are still greatly underestimating the ability of the genome to respond to change! Who are you to say that when new genes arise naturally that they will not be tolerated by the genome?
You are completely missing the point I am making. Let me repeat - a new gene will do absolutely nothing unless it is expressed. So a) you still do not have your 'selective advantage' to help it be perfected - even it miraculously hit on the exact code completely at random. Now this totally separate from the gene. It requires (for evolutionists) some more mutations, genome additions, etc to make the gene work. It needs in other words to become an integral part of the organism and everything that implies. In other words, what I am saying is that even a single gene is an irreducibly complex entity which needs the help of many other functions, systems, in the organism. It needs to be expressed in certain cells. Those cells need to be formed specifically in the correct quantity, in the correct places (amongst the 3 trillion or so sells in a human), they need to get nourishement, they need to be connected to the system that sends messages back and forth to other cells, they need to be turned on and off at the proper time when the function is needed and not needed, they need to be put in the correct order when a baby is growing and during other stages of human development, etc., etc., etc. Now by what magical, miraculous process are you saying that this happens in a materialistic, evolutionary way?
The reproductive cells are quite unique, together with blood cells and another kind of cell, they are the only cells that do not have a complete copy of the genome. In addition, the reproductive genes are the only ones that do not have paired alleles. So your point is not relevant to what I was discussing. Nice try though, no cigar.
No, that seems to be correct, the male sperm seem to be more unstable than the female egg. However, to counterbalance this there is the question of insemination. I am sure that many mutants are rejected at insemination just because of being mutants, so probably the rate of mutations passed by each sex are fairly even (if they make it alive).
I think you need to re-read post# 1605. I was not talking about genes that are functioning, I was speaking of just duplicated genes which are adding no new functionality to the organism and the process up until the time when they supposedly do develop a new function in an evolutionary way. So your statement above is not relevant.
BTW - is that what the female sea-lions told you? They told me otherwise, but it is not fit for publication in a family forum. :)
...because they are too smart for you?
And of course the above is from someone who never contributes anything to the discussion except insults. Why don't you refute my statements if you are so smart? Cat got your tongue?
That might seem so were it not for the fact that the other chromosomes go through the same mixmaster. Now you might suppose you can purchase the other products at the local quiet grocery store, but where does she get her stock?
The boys: Louie, Joey, Tony, Peter, Johnny, Danny
The girls: Cindy, Mimi, Patty, Lisa.
Hmmm... 6 boys & 4 girls. Pretty close to 50%, wouldn't you say? Interesting, though: Where once there was only one male, now there are 6 males. How could that be... how COULD that be...
Wait... wait... Here's something from my grandmother's memoirs:
The most significant thing of my birth was that I was a girl. My mother had given birth to six sons. All relatives, especially my great grandfather (paternal), were waiting with great anticipation -– so I was told. The joyful news spread fast. My Great Grandfather Hendrix, my father’s maternal grandfather, traveled far and near on horseback to spread the news that “Sallie’s given birth to a baby girl.” In 1898 there were no telephones, no cars, nor any other fast way of imparting either good or bad news. ...After me, my mother gave birth to four more daughters. Nancy came two years later; then two years after Nancy, Mary and Mada were born. When the twins were four, Una, the baby of the family made her appearance. Thus were the girls of Tilman Arnold and Sarah Elizabeth Brown Wheat.
Hey, that's 6 boys and 5 girls! Still close to 50%.
And then of course there's my family: Dick, Ann, Barb, and Jenny. Uh-oh, that's only 25% males! You guys must be disappearing fast...
Sorry to destroy your dreams about the extinction of males, but you are wrong on this and on my being incorrect(see the article below). Essentially the reason we get an equal proportion of males and females is that the Y chromosome is dominant (men rule!) and the X chromosome is recessive. If you read the article on genetics, you will remember that there are dominant and recessive genes. A pairing between a dominant and a recessive ends up with the dominant being expressed - every time. A pairing between two recessives of course ends up in the recessive being expressed. In the examples I gave, because there is only one copy of the mutated or duplicated gene in the entire species the chances are only 50% of its being passed on (even recessive genes have a 50-50 chance of being selected for being passed on for procreation) the dominant part comes with which one will be expressed in the progeny.
In most animals, those who possess XX chromosomes are female while male animals possess an X and a Y chromosome. However, this is not true of all organisms, as it can be reversed in some species.
Sex Determination
A humans' sex is predetermined in the sperm gamete. The egg gamete mother cell is said to be homogametic, because all its cell possess the XX sex chromosomes. sperm gametes are deemed heterogametic because around half of them contain the X chromosome and others possess the Y chromosome to compliment the first X chromosome. In light of this, there are two possibilities that can occur during fertilisation between male and female gametes, XX and XY. Since sperm are the variable factor (i.e. which sperm fertilises the egg) they are responsible for determining sex.
From: Biology Online
Why you hounding him? How come none of your evolutionist friends back you up? Maybe, just maybe, because you are wrong? Has that occurred to you?
You mean the article titled "The page cannot be displayed"?
Sorry, but the article worked when I copied and pasted the link and I just tried it and it works now. As you know, sites sometimes burp and cannot be reached for a while. Lots of times they do maintenance on weekends and they go down for a while then. Anyways, there are dozens of sites explaining Mendelian Genetics. Just go into your favorite search engine, type Mendelian Genetics and pick and choose. You will learn so much that perhaps you will give up evolutionism!
If you purchased a lottery ticket once a day for the next 50 years....maybe not. If you purchased a lottery ticket once a day for the next 50,000 years.....it would be a virtual certainty. And that would be a blink of an eye in the time frames we are dealing with.
Let me repeat - a new gene will do absolutely nothing unless it is expressed.
Often they are expressed. If the upstream promoter elements are duplicated as well then what is the problem? Remember the example of the bacteria in xylose I gave you before? Those duplicated genes were expressed just fine and confered a definite survival advantage. In time enough changes will take place on the duplicated genes so that those enzymes will have a higher affinity for the xylose metabolites than for glucose.
Here is the key - those changes which will optimize the gene for xylose metabolism do NOT have to happen all at once. You (and many others) have a hard time with this concept. If just ONE point mutant now allows the gene product to metabolize xylose more efficently, it will quickly predominate in the population. Now ANOTHER mutation makes the site have an even higher affinity. Keep in mind, during this time, there are MANY MORE mutations which have a NEGATIVE effect on the xylose binding site will cause the bacteria carrying them to die - we will never see the "mistakes" . Over many generations eventually you end up with a gene which was apparently "designed" to metabolize xylose.
In other words, what I am saying is that even a single gene is an irreducibly complex entity which needs the help of many other functions, systems, in the organism.
Why are you having such a hard time conceptualizing that even a change as simple as a duplication could not be tolerated by the system? You end up with a slightly different animal perhaps. You just cant predict what will happen when you start deleting or adding genes to the genome! I remember several instances where a gene which was shown in tissue culture to be important in many diverse processes in a variety of cell types. Many predicted its loss would have a drastic effect on development and function of the adult mouse. Yet Lo and behold, they knockout the gene and the mice are perfectly viable. The genome has a lot of built in redundancy. Conversely, extra genes can and do sometimes find a role in the system. The genome isnt a delicate house of cards or even a "blueprint" in a strict sense.
Gee Vade, who can argue with such positively unrefutable scientific arguments!
You need to post more, I need a few laughs.
Like I said earlier, sometimes the duplicates are expressed and lead to an increased level of the gene product. This could conceiveably have a benefical effect. Even if it is silent for the time being, it will be carried due to its proximity to the parental gene. Eventually it might find a function.
BTW - is that what the female sea-lions told you? They told me otherwise, but it is not fit for publication in a family forum. :)
I think that was a female bonobo chimp. Read about them if you want really want a shock.
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