As fundamentalist-religionist mumbo jumbo sweeps the world, they stuff
their
discredited and outmoded views down our throats....well, fight their
ignorance
with real science:



http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanId=sa003&articleId=000D4FEC-7D5B-1D07-8E49809EC588EEDF


quote

June 18, 2002

15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense

Opponents of evolution want to make a place for creationism by tearing
down
real science, but their arguments don't hold up



By John Rennie


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.

Many people learned in elementary school that a theory falls in the middle
of
a hierarchy of certainty--above a mere hypothesis but below a law.
Scientists
do not use the terms that way, however. According to the National Academy
of
Sciences (NAS), a scientific theory is "a well-substantiated explanation
of
some aspect of the natural world that can incorporate facts, laws,
inferences,
and tested hypotheses." No amount of validation changes a theory into a
law,
which is a descriptive generalization about nature. So when scientists
talk
about the theory of evolution--or the atomic theory or the theory of
relativity, for that matter--they are not expressing reservations about
its
truth.

In addition to the theory of evolution, meaning the idea of descent with
modification, one may also speak of the fact of evolution. The NAS defines
a
fact as "an observation that has been repeatedly confirmed and for all
practical purposes is accepted as 'true.'" The fossil record and abundant
other evidence testify that organisms have evolved through time. Although
no
one observed those transformations, the indirect evidence is clear,
unambiguous and compelling.

All sciences frequently rely on indirect evidence. Physicists cannot see
subatomic particles directly, for instance, so they verify their existence
by
watching for telltale tracks that the particles leave in cloud chambers.
The
absence of direct observation does not make physicists' conclusions less
certain.

2. Natural selection is based on circular reasoning: the fittest are those
who
survive, and those who survive are deemed fittest.

"Survival of the fittest" is a conversational way to describe natural
selection, but a more technical description speaks of differential rates
of
survival and reproduction. That is, rather than labeling species as more
or
less fit, one can describe how many offspring they are likely to leave
under
given circumstances. Drop a fast-breeding pair of small-beaked finches and
a
slower-breeding pair of large-beaked finches onto an island full of food
seeds. Within a few generations the fast breeders may control more of the
food
resources. Yet if large beaks more easily crush seeds, the advantage may
tip
to the slow breeders. In a pioneering study of finches on the Gal¿pagos
Islands, Peter R. Grant of Princeton University observed these kinds of
population shifts in the wild [see his article "Natural Selection and
Darwin's
Finches"; Scientific American, October 1991].

The key is that adaptive fitness can be defined without reference to
survival:
large beaks are better adapted for crushing seeds, irrespective of whether
that trait has survival value under the circumstances.

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.


This blanket dismissal of evolution ignores important distinctions that
divide
the field into at least two broad areas: microevolution and
macroevolution.
Microevolution looks at changes within species over time--changes that may
be
preludes to speciation, the origin of new species. Macroevolution studies
how
taxonomic groups above the level of species change. Its evidence draws
frequently from the fossil record and DNA comparisons to reconstruct how
various organisms may be related.

These days even most creationists acknowledge that microevolution has been
upheld by tests in the laboratory (as in studies of cells, plants and
fruit
flies) and in the field (as in Grant's studies of evolving beak shapes
among
Galapagos finches). Natural selection and other mechanisms--such as
chromosomal changes, symbiosis and hybridization--can drive profound
changes
in populations over time.

The historical nature of macroevolutionary study involves inference from
fossils and DNA rather than direct observation. Yet in the historical
sciences
(which include astronomy, geology and archaeology, as well as evolutionary
biology), hypotheses can still be tested by checking whether they accord
with
physical evidence and whether they lead to verifiable predictions about
future
discoveries. For instance, evolution implies that between the
earliest-known
ancestors of humans (roughly five million years old) and the appearance of
anatomically modern humans (about 100,000 years ago), one should find a
succession of hominid creatures with features progressively less apelike
and
more modern, which is indeed what the fossil record shows. But one should
not--and does not--find modern human fossils embedded in strata from the
Jurassic period (144 million years ago). Evolutionary biology routinely
makes
predictions far more refined and precise than this, and researchers test
them
constantly.

Evolution could be disproved in other ways, too. If we could document the
spontaneous generation of just one complex life-form from inanimate
matter,
then at least a few creatures seen in the fossil record might have
originated
this way. If superintelligent aliens appeared and claimed credit for
creating
life on earth (or even particular species), the purely evolutionary
explanation would be cast in doubt. But no one has yet produced such
evidence.

It should be noted that the idea of falsifiability as the defining
characteristic of science originated with philosopher Karl Popper in the
1930s. More recent elaborations on his thinking have expanded the
narrowest
interpretation of his principle precisely because it would eliminate too
many
branches of clearly scientific endeavor.

4. Increasingly, scientists doubt the truth of evolution.

No evidence suggests that evolution is losing adherents. Pick up any issue
of
a peer-reviewed biological journal, and you will find articles that
support
and extend evolutionary studies or that embrace evolution as a fundamental
concept.

Conversely, serious scientific publications disputing evolution are all
but
nonexistent. In the mid-1990s George W. Gilchrist of the University of
Washington surveyed thousands of journals in the primary literature,
seeking
articles on intelligent design or creation science. Among those hundreds
of
thousands of scientific reports, he found none. In the past two years,
surveys
done independently by Barbara Forrest of Southeastern Louisiana University
and
Lawrence M. Krauss of Case Western Reserve University have been similarly
fruitless.

Creationists retort that a closed-minded scientific community rejects
their
evidence. Yet according to the editors of Nature, Science and other
leading
journals, few antievolution manuscripts are even submitted. Some
antievolution
authors have published papers in serious journals. Those papers, however,
rarely attack evolution directly or advance creationist arguments; at
best,
they identify certain evolutionary problems as unsolved and difficult
(which
no one disputes). In short, creationists are not giving the scientific
world
good reason to take them seriously.

5. The disagreements among even evolutionary biologists show how little
solid
science supports evolution.

Evolutionary biologists passionately debate diverse topics: how speciation
happens, the rates of evolutionary change, the ancestral relationships of
birds and dinosaurs, whether Neandertals were a species apart from modern
humans, and much more. These disputes are like those found in all other
branches of science. Acceptance of evolution as a factual occurrence and a
guiding principle is nonetheless universal in biology.

Unfortunately, dishonest creationists have shown a willingness to take
scientists' comments out of context to exaggerate and distort the
disagreements. Anyone acquainted with the works of paleontologist Stephen
Jay
Gould of Harvard University knows that in addition to co-authoring the
punctuated-equilibrium model, Gould was one of the most eloquent defenders
and
articulators of evolution. (Punctuated equilibrium explains patterns in
the
fossil record by suggesting that most evolutionary changes occur within
geologically brief intervals--which may nonetheless amount to hundreds of
generations.) Yet creationists delight in dissecting out phrases from
Gould's
voluminous prose to make him sound as though he had doubted evolution, and
they present punctuated equilibrium as though it allows new species to
materialize overnight or birds to be born from reptile eggs.

When confronted with a quotation from a scientific authority that seems to
question evolution, insist on seeing the statement in context. Almost
invariably, the attack on evolution will prove illusory.

6. If humans descended from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?

This surprisingly common argument reflects several levels of ignorance
about
evolution. The first mistake is that evolution does not teach that humans
descended from monkeys; it states that both have a common ancestor.

The deeper error is that this objection is tantamount to asking, "If
children
descended from adults, why are there still adults?" New species evolve by
splintering off from established ones, when populations of organisms
become
isolated from the main branch of their family and acquire sufficient
differences to remain forever distinct. The parent species may survive
indefinitely thereafter, or it may become extinct.

7. Evolution cannot explain how life first appeared on earth.

The origin of life remains very much a mystery, but biochemists have
learned
about how primitive nucleic acids, amino acids and other building blocks
of
life could have formed and organized themselves into self-replicating,
self-sustaining units, laying the foundation for cellular biochemistry.
Astrochemical analyses hint that quantities of these compounds might have
originated in space and fallen to earth in comets, a scenario that may
solve
the problem of how those constituents arose under the conditions that
prevailed when our planet was young.

Creationists sometimes try to invalidate all of evolution by pointing to
science's current inability to explain the origin of life. But even if
life on
earth turned out to have a nonevolutionary origin (for instance, if aliens
introduced the first cells billions of years ago), evolution since then
would
be robustly confirmed by countless microevolutionary and macroevolutionary
studies.

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.

Chance plays a part in evolution (for example, in the random mutations
that
can give rise to new traits), but evolution does not depend on chance to
create organisms, proteins or other entities. Quite the opposite: natural
selection, the principal known mechanism of evolution, harnesses nonrandom
change by preserving "desirable" (adaptive) features and eliminating
"undesirable" (nonadaptive) ones. As long as the forces of selection stay
constant, natural selection can push evolution in one direction and
produce
sophisticated structures in surprisingly short times.

As an analogy, consider the 13-letter sequence "TOBEORNOTTOBE." Those
hypothetical million monkeys, each pecking out one phrase a second, could
take
as long as 78,800 years to find it among the 2613 sequences of that
length.
But in the 1980s Richard Hardison of Glendale College wrote a computer
program
that generated phrases randomly while preserving the positions of
individual
letters that happened to be correctly placed (in effect, selecting for
phrases
more like Hamlet's). On average, the program re-created the phrase in just
336
iterations, less than 90 seconds. Even more amazing, it could reconstruct
Shakespeare's entire play in just four and a half days.

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.

This argument derives from a misunderstanding of the Second Law. If it
were
valid, mineral crystals and snowflakes would also be impossible, because
they,
too, are complex structures that form spontaneously from disordered parts.
The Second Law actually states that the total entropy of a closed system
(one
that no energy or matter leaves or enters) cannot decrease. Entropy is a
physical concept often casually described as disorder, but it differs
significantly from the conversational use of the word.

More important, however, the Second Law permits parts of a system to
decrease
in entropy as long as other parts experience an offsetting increase. Thus,
our
planet as a whole can grow more complex because the sun pours heat and
light
onto it, and the greater entropy associated with the sun's nuclear fusion
more
than rebalances the scales. Simple organisms can fuel their rise toward
complexity by consuming other forms of life and nonliving materials.

10. Mutations are essential to evolution theory, but mutations can only
eliminate traits. They cannot produce new features.

On the contrary, biology has catalogued many traits produced by point
mutations (changes at precise positions in an organism's DNA)--bacterial
resistance to antibiotics, for example.

Mutations that arise in the homeobox (Hox) family of
development-regulating
genes in animals can also have complex effects. Hox genes direct where
legs,
wings, antennae and body segments should grow. In fruit flies, for
instance,
the mutation called Antennapedia causes legs to sprout where antennae
should
grow. These abnormal limbs are not functional, but their existence
demonstrates that genetic mistakes can produce complex structures, which
natural selection can then test for possible uses.

Moreover, molecular biology has discovered mechanisms for genetic change
that
go beyond point mutations, and these expand the ways in which new traits
can
appear. Functional modules within genes can be spliced together in novel
ways.
Whole genes can be accidentally duplicated in an organism's DNA, and the
duplicates are free to mutate into genes for new, complex features.
Comparisons of the DNA from a wide variety of organisms indicate that this
is
how the globin family of blood proteins evolved over millions of years.

11. Natural selection might explain microevolution, but it cannot explain
the
origin of new species and higher orders of life.

Evolutionary biologists have written extensively about how natural
selection
could produce new species. For instance, in the model called allopatry,
developed by Ernst Mayr of Harvard University, if a population of
organisms
were isolated from the rest of its species by geographical boundaries, it
might be subjected to different selective pressures. Changes would
accumulate
in the isolated population. If those changes became so significant that
the
splinter group could not or routinely would not breed with the original
stock,
then the splinter group would be reproductively isolated and on its way
toward
becoming a new species.

Natural selection is the best studied of the evolutionary mechanisms, but
biologists are open to other possibilities as well. Biologists are
constantly
assessing the potential of unusual genetic mechanisms for causing
speciation
or for producing complex features in organisms. Lynn Margulis of the
University of Massachusetts at Amherst and others have persuasively argued
that some cellular organelles, such as the energy-generating mitochondria,
evolved through the symbiotic merger of ancient organisms. Thus, science
welcomes the possibility of evolution resulting from forces beyond natural
selection. Yet those forces must be natural; they cannot be attributed to
the
actions of mysterious creative intelligences whose existence, in
scientific
terms, is unproved.

12. Nobody has ever seen a new species evolve.

Speciation is probably fairly rare and in many cases might take centuries.
Furthermore, recognizing a new species during a formative stage can be
difficult, because biologists sometimes disagree about how best to define
a
species. The most widely used definition, Mayr's Biological Species
Concept,
recognizes a species as a distinct community of reproductively isolated
populations--sets of organisms that normally do not or cannot breed
outside
their community. In practice, this standard can be difficult to apply to
organisms isolated by distance or terrain or to plants (and, of course,
fossils do not breed). Biologists therefore usually use organisms'
physical
and behavioral traits as clues to their species membership.

Nevertheless, the scientific literature does contain reports of apparent
speciation events in plants, insects and worms. In most of these
experiments,
researchers subjected organisms to various types of selection--for
anatomical
differences, mating behaviors, habitat preferences and other traits--and
found
that they had created populations of organisms that did not breed with
outsiders. For example, William R. Rice of the University of New Mexico
and
George W. Salt of the University of California at Davis demonstrated that
if
they sorted a group of fruit flies by their preference for certain
environments and bred those flies separately over 35 generations, the
resulting flies would refuse to breed with those from a very different
environment.

13. Evolutionists cannot point to any transitional fossils--creatures that
are
half reptile and half bird, for instance.

Actually, paleontologists know of many detailed examples of fossils
intermediate in form between various taxonomic groups. One of the most
famous
fossils of all time is Archaeopteryx, which combines feathers and skeletal
structures peculiar to birds with features of dinosaurs. A flock's worth
of
other feathered fossil species, some more avian and some less, has also
been
found. A sequence of fossils spans the evolution of modern horses from the
tiny Eohippus. Whales had four-legged ancestors that walked on land, and
creatures known as Ambulocetus and Rodhocetus helped to make that
transition
[see "The Mammals That Conquered the Seas," by Kate Wong; Scientific
American,
May]. Fossil seashells trace the evolution of various mollusks through
millions of years. Perhaps 20 or more hominids (not all of them our
ancestors)
fill the gap between Lucy the australopithecine and modern humans.

Creationists, though, dismiss these fossil studies. They argue that
Archaeopteryx is not a missing link between reptiles and birds--it is just
an
extinct bird with reptilian features. They want evolutionists to produce a
weird, chimeric monster that cannot be classified as belonging to any
known
group. Even if a creationist does accept a fossil as transitional between
two
species, he or she may then insist on seeing other fossils intermediate
between it and the first two. These frustrating requests can proceed ad
infinitum and place an unreasonable burden on the always incomplete fossil
record.

Nevertheless, evolutionists can cite further supportive evidence from
molecular biology. All organisms share most of the same genes, but as
evolution predicts, the structures of these genes and their products
diverge
among species, in keeping with their evolutionary relationships.
Geneticists
speak of the "molecular clock" that records the passage of time. These
molecular data also show how various organisms are transitional within
evolution.

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.

This "argument from design" is the backbone of most recent attacks on
evolution, but it is also one of the oldest. In 1802 theologian William
Paley
wrote that if one finds a pocket watch in a field, the most reasonable
conclusion is that someone dropped it, not that natural forces created it
there. By analogy, Paley argued, the complex structures of living things
must
be the handiwork of direct, divine invention. Darwin wrote On the Origin
of
Species as an answer to Paley: he explained how natural forces of
selection,
acting on inherited features, could gradually shape the evolution of
ornate
organic structures.

Generations of creationists have tried to counter Darwin by citing the
example
of the eye as a structure that could not have evolved. The eye's ability
to
provide vision depends on the perfect arrangement of its parts, these
critics
say. Natural selection could thus never favor the transitional forms
needed
during the eye's evolution--what good is half an eye? Anticipating this
criticism, Darwin suggested that even "incomplete" eyes might confer
benefits
(such as helping creatures orient toward light) and thereby survive for
further evolutionary refinement. Biology has vindicated Darwin:
researchers
have identified primitive eyes and light-sensing organs throughout the
animal
kingdom and have even tracked the evolutionary history of eyes through
comparative genetics. (It now appears that in various families of
organisms,
eyes have evolved independently.)

Today's intelligent-design advocates are more sophisticated than their
predecessors, but their arguments and goals are not fundamentally
different.
They criticize evolution by trying to demonstrate that it could not
account
for life as we know it and then insist that the only tenable alternative
is
that life was designed by an unidentified intelligence.

15. Recent discoveries prove that even at the microscopic level, life has
a
quality of complexity that could not have come about through evolution.

"Irreducible complexity" is the battle cry of Michael J. Behe of Lehigh
University, author of Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to
Evolution. As a household example of irreducible complexity, Behe chooses
the
mousetrap--a machine that could not function if any of its pieces were
missing
and whose pieces have no value except as parts of the whole. What is true
of
the mousetrap, he says, is even truer of the bacterial flagellum, a
whiplike
cellular organelle used for propulsion that operates like an outboard
motor.
The proteins that make up a flagellum are uncannily arranged into motor
components, a universal joint and other structures like those that a human
engineer might specify. The possibility that this intricate array could
have
arisen through evolutionary modification is virtually nil, Behe argues,
and
that bespeaks intelligent design. He makes similar points about the
blood's
clotting mechanism and other molecular systems.

Yet evolutionary biologists have answers to these objections. First, there
exist flagellae with forms simpler than the one that Behe cites, so it is
not
necessary for all those components to be present for a flagellum to work.
The
sophisticated components of this flagellum all have precedents elsewhere
in
nature, as described by Kenneth R. Miller of Brown University and others.
In
fact, the entire flagellum assembly is extremely similar to an organelle
that
Yersinia pestis, the bubonic plague bacterium, uses to inject toxins into
cells.

The key is that the flagellum's component structures, which Behe suggests
have
no value apart from their role in propulsion, can serve multiple functions
that would have helped favor their evolution. The final evolution of the
flagellum might then have involved only the novel recombination of
sophisticated parts that initially evolved for other purposes. Similarly,
the
blood-clotting system seems to involve the modification and elaboration of
proteins that were originally used in digestion, according to studies by
Russell F. Doolittle of the University of California at San Diego. So some
of
the complexity that Behe calls proof of intelligent design is not
irreducible
at all.

Complexity of a different kind--"specified complexity"--is the cornerstone
of
the intelligent-design arguments of William A. Dembski of Baylor
University in
his books The Design Inference and No Free Lunch. Essentially his argument
is
that living things are complex in a way that undirected, random processes
could never produce. The only logical conclusion, Dembski asserts, in an
echo
of Paley 200 years ago, is that some superhuman intelligence created and
shaped life.

Dembski's argument contains several holes. It is wrong to insinuate that
the
field of explanations consists only of random processes or designing
intelligences. Researchers into nonlinear systems and cellular automata at
the
Santa Fe Institute and elsewhere have demonstrated that simple, undirected
processes can yield extraordinarily complex patterns. Some of the
complexity
seen in organisms may therefore emerge through natural phenomena that we
as
yet barely understand. But that is far different from saying that the
complexity could not have arisen naturally.

"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.

end quote

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanId=sa003&articleId=000D4FEC-7D5B-1D07-8E49809EC588EEDF


Local fundie politicians battle every day to shove creationist hocus-pocus
into our schools....be vigilant locally as well as nationally to keep the
forces of religionist ignorance at bay.


ClassWarz