[aclug-L] Re: Linux and Creationism...

["Burt Humburg" <bhumburg@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Now we are going very far afield of Linux...

>>The "evidence" you mention below points to the age of the universe, but
says absolutely nothing about genetic mutations leading to the evolution of
new species.

I agree with what you have said: a method of creationism that acknowledges a
very old earth might still fit the data. When I wrote that blurb about the
sun and fusion power, I implied - and will here state - that it was but one
of the evidences in favor of evolution. As far as genetic mutations, that is
a much different thing than talking about the age of the earth.

>>This is also where evolutionists make their error--they assume that
because some/most (young-earth) creatonists dispute their ideas of the age
of the earth with "silly science" that it means anyone who believes in a
creator is scientifically inept.

I agree. Not all creationists are scientifically inept. There are many ways
to support creationism, only some of them involve ignorance or stupidity.
(These are also reasons to support evolution. As a member of KCFS, I assure
you that I have met people who support our cause who wouldn't know an allele
from a hole in their ass. It is enough for them to fight things "Christian."
So, too, is it enough for some creationists to know that creationism is
"Christian" to get them to support it. Neither situation is optimal and
ignorance/stupidity remain situations to rebuke.)

However, it is also straightforward that evolution is supported by the
evidence. I know that you don't agree, but we can talk about it. The point I
want to get to is how creationism survives despite a scientific consensus
that overwhelmingly supports evolution, if not through ignorance or
stupidity.

I believe that creationism can also be supported by people or practices that
do not share the epistemological beliefs as scientists. Alternative values
can be political (politicians voting for creationism despite data from
science), religious (examples are intuitive), philosophical (at least one
critic of evolution argues from a sort of intellectual nihilism, where since
we never *prove* anything in science, we therefore don't really know
anything and therefore his truth - creationism - is just as good as anyone
else's), etc.

Long story short, there are many ways to support creationism and only a few
of them involve appeals to ignorance or stupidity. All of them, however, are
in spite of - and not because of - scientific data.

>>Moving along, there is practically no solid evidence to suggest that one
species has ever evolved into another independant species.  The logic behind
the argument against darwinian evolution is very simple, and could be
explained to any grade school student.  In the book "Darwin's Black Box"
(the author's name I don't recall at the moment, but can find it if anyone
is interested), evolution is approached from a purely scientific (i.e.
non-religious) biological standpoint.  The complexity of even some of the
simplest biological beings is great enough that Darwin's theory falls apart
rather quickly.

Au contraire, there is much "solid" evidence to support evolution. Humans
and chimpanzees, for one relevant example, share over 98% homology in their
genes. That's not just the same genes, BTW. That's the same genes in the
exact same order on nearly the exact same chromosomes. (Two of the human
chromosomes have to be combined and then they would be exact: chimpanzees
have 22 pair and humans have 23.) That's just one line of evidence. Look
here for more. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/

In any case, the book you mention I know well. The book is _Darwin's Black
Box_ and the author is Michael Behe, a biochemistry teacher who teaches at
Lehigh College in PA. We can discuss the faults of his notion of
"irreducible complexity" in a minute, but for now I think it is important to
point out that Behe has often stated that he is no enemy of common descent,
which is to say that he endorses evolution generally. Specifically, he has
stated directly and unequivocally that he has no reason to doubt the claim
that humans and great apes shared a recent common ancestor. For him to be
touted as an example of anti-evolutionary thought, then, concedes a great
deal to evolution, which you may or may not know.

Of course Behe objects to proponents of evolution who draw metaphysical
claims from science. People like Richard Dawkins argue that since science
hasn't shown there is a God, there is no God. I also object to these claims,
so that's no news.

Where Behe parts company with modern proponents of evolution is in the
workings of the cell. He doubts whether "unguided" natural selection is
enough to account for the formation of the intricate mechanical/chemical
workings of the cell. Once a cell has such a feature, Behe argues that
evolution takes over and the rest happens as "Darwinists" see it happening.
Essentially, then, Behe's argument contradicts not evolution but gradualism:
he thinks design interventions occur every so often which pump up the genes
in an animal or plant. He then sees examples of "irreducible complexity" in
organisms and consider them as evidence for design and evidence against
evolutionary gradualism for that structure or gene.

There are many problems with irreducible complexity. At a very low level, it
doesn't fit the data we find in nature. (See, e.g.,
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/behe.html , and the complement cascade and
others, wherein Behe's idea of "irreducible complexity" is shown to exist in
things that are known to have evolved.) Another example is the existence of
bacteria which breakdown PCP, a xenobiotic that man made first in the early
part of this century. This detoxification system is shown to be the result
of co-option of other enzymes and, though it be irreducibly complex, is not
easily explained by "design," unless the designer has intervened since the
early part of this century. Hence, Behe's "irreducible complexity" fails
*the* test for scientific theories: they have limited usefulness in the
observable and measurable "natural" world for the prediction of new
findings.

The main problem I would mention, here in this not-necessarily-scientific
listserv, is the problem that Behe's logic is a restatement of William
Paley's "Argument from Design." (The Linux and creationism website I
referred everyone to was written, suspiciously, by a "Paley." William Paley
died several years before Darwin was born.) While Paley never said so much,
the argument from design boils down to an argument from ignorance: if
science hasn't yet figured out how something arose via natural processes,
then it must not have arose through natural processes and only God could
have done it.

Here's another good site for would-be Behe fans.
http://biocrs.biomed.brown.edu/Darwin/DI/Design.html Kenneth Miller, BTW, is
a committed Catholic and his book "Finding Darwin's God" is recommended
reading for anyone who is worried about evolution as an attack on
Christianity. It's also a good primer on why "intelligent design"
creationism sucks theologically.

(If you can't tell, I live, eat, and breathe this stuff.)

>>For Darwin's theory to stand the test of logic, every mutation between
Species A and Species B must yield a "workable" or "usable" body. It is easy
to see this is not biologically possible if you take a known organ,
cell, or other biological entity, and try to 'step backwards' to a simpler,
yet functional, version.

This argument kinda makes sense, till you dissect it. One of the easy ways
for evolution to give rise to "irreducible complexity" is through the
process of co-option. IOW, a protein that will eventually be used to
(whatever) may not necessarily have (whatever) function all through its
phylogeny: the function can change while a gene is evolving. By "co-opting"
genes that do other functions, evolution can "create" (English is such a
clumsy language) structures that are irreducibly complex.

Another way that irreducible complexity can arise from evolution is through
the process of optimization. Consider the St. Louis arch, which was built by
human hands "brick by brick," if you will. But knowing that the arch was not
capable of supporting itself during construction (one arm cannot hold itself
up until it is completely made) is not an argument that it was plopped down
fully functional in one piece. Rather, scaffolding was used to support the
weight during construction. At some point during the development, both the
arms of the arch and the scaffolding were accomplishing the same function of
support. When the scaffolding was removed and the structure was "optimized,"
the support of the arch was no longer redundant and it became irreducibly
complex, such that a removal of a single brick would result in the
structure's collapse.

With explanations like these, and because irreducible complexity does not
adequately explain data from the natural world, Behe's idea of irreducible
complexity has been discarded by the scientific community. Again, evolution
remains not because of any philosophical bias, but because the data have
robustly supported its maintenance.

>>Using the example of an eye, there are other, simpler "seeing" instruments
found in animals.  Flatworms, for instance, can detect intensity and
direction of light, although they cannot make out color or clarity of images
as we can. The problem is in the fact that to get from a flatworm's eye to a
sheep's eye, you must add mechanisms that serve no useful puprose until the
product is "complete." Now, if a person can find for me some scientific
evidence that it is possible to go incrimentally from a flatworm's eye to a
sheep's eye, within Darwin's theory, then I'd be more than happy to listen.

If you are interested in eye evolution, swing by
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/behe/publish.html and have a look at the
relevant literature. A more narrative form is here
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/vision.html . A user-friendly essay on PBS's
_Evolution_ website is here http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/change/grand/
(I also recommend putting "eye" into the search field above and seeing the
other results.)

>>But the fact of the matter is, Darwin proposed his theory at a time when
the sort knowledge of biology we have now was not available to disprove his
theory.  In fact, Darwin himself said (paraphrased) that if it were ever
possible to demonstrate that it is not possible to go from one distinct
species to another by way of incrimental changes, that his theory would not
hold.

Darwin also couldn't account for recessive traits. The fact that some trait
would hide itself in one generation, which would then not manifest itself to
be selected for or against, only to reappear in the next generation was a
great bugaboo to him. Since the publication of _Origin_, we've learned all
about Mendelian genetics and they have been integrated into Darwin's work.
(Which, incidentally, is why "Darwinism" is not a useful word, unless you
mean evolution as Darwin described it without such modernizations. The
"Modern Synthesis" also called "Neodarwinism" is most aptly described as
"evolution.") So Darwin had other problems to overcome than just the
evolution of the eye.

In any case, Darwin's dictum remains accurate and if any structure cannot be
explained by his theory in the fullness of time, then evolution will have
effectively been refuted. Note, please, that you cannot substitute our
waning scientific ignorance in here and pronounce evolution dead: simply
because we don't yet know how the eye evolved cannot reasonably be taken to
mean that the eye *could not* have evolved. There must be reliable evidence
to show that the eye did not evolve, and not simply an appeal to ignorance.

In any case, data exist to support the evolution of eyes. Notably, the
proteins that make up fish lenses (I think it was fish) have been found to
be modified from other proteins (digestive or something). (Put "crystallin
evolution" in a google search and see what comes up.) While co-option is not
impossible for an act of special creation or creator, it certainly lends
itself to an explanation involving co-option.

>>He himself realized his theory was __just a theory__, and that, at its
time of conseption, it could not be proven nor disproven.  It now, by his
own standard, _can_ be disproven.

Nonsense. Recall, please, the Hoyle quote from above. When Darwin was
living, it was thought that the sun would have burned itself out long before
the time that Darwin needed for his theory to work would have happened.
Enter fusion chemistry into our story and Darwin had more than enough time
to work.

>>Why then are we, as a society and a world, so afraid to accept it as
disproven?  Probably because most Darwinists think the only alternative is
illogical "creatonism."  Whether you believe in a god or not, though, there
are many other theories of creation--both religious and secular.  Perhaps we
should all take a look at some of them, instead of this stupid
trench-warfare between the two most common theories--neither of which holds
any water.

Not to be a broken record, but evolution has not been disproven, hence why
abandon it. Frankly, it hasn't even been challenged, unless you consider the
political rhetoric of modern creationists a scientific challenge. (It's not;
it's postmodernist tripe.) There is no controversy about the validity of
evolution in science: scientists today are asking *how* evolution happened,
not *whether.* There is a controversy in the religious, political, and
non-scientific realms, however, and it is here where creationism develops
its support base.

In any case, as a theist (Christian), I assure you that I have no qualms
against creationism, per se. It's just that the data do not support it and,
as a personal viewpoint, my Christianity needs to sync with the scientific
understanding that I have.

Recognizing that I'm pushing the patience of many on this list who don't
have a rat's ass about this issue, :)

BCH


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