Religion

Creationism Stalking the Land

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I was disturbed to read the following letter in this week's Private Eye.

Sir,
    Your reviewer of Richard Dawkin's latest literary fantasy The Ancestor's Tale
(Eye 1118) was correct to point out the religious aspects of Dawkin's effusions. Evolutionism is certainly more a faith than a science. There is still no fossil evidence. Recent advances in molecular science have shown the incredible and irreducible complexity of cell structure and programmed information that rules out any evolutionary progression. Evolutionists now cite cell mutations as a possible means of evolution – yet in all mutations studied  genetic information is always observed to be lost. i.e. what what we observe taking place is actually the opposite of evolution. Discerning Eye readers not yet taken in by this false religious belief will wish to investigate the following more scientifically-balanced books: Evolution: A Theory in Crisis by Michael Denton or Darwins's Black Box by Michael Behe.
George Gorniak

Obviously I'm not having a go at the Eye for printing this letter since it is evidence that they are giving all their readers, no matter
how  loopy, a right to reply. This is a good thing and speaks well of the Eye. No, I'm disturbed because I thought these kinds of
fundamentalist nut-cases only existed in hell-holes like Alabama not within our own green and pleasant land.

This letter encompasses all the Creationist greatest hits. lets enumerate and discuss for fun and profit.

  1. Evolutionism, this is a favourite straw man of the Creationists. Claim that anyone who espouses evolution is actually a
    religious nut just like them. Just to clear this up repeat after me, There is no such thing as Evolutionism. There is a scientific theory
    known as Evolution by natural selection which talks about how species evolve. The exact details of this theory are still the subject of
    massive amounts of research. Want to know more about evolutionary theory?
  2. No Fossil Evidence, this one's so wrong it's almost funny. There is in fact an overwhelmingly huge amount of fossil evidence. I can only assume this is one of those repeat something often enough and people will believe you kind of deals.
  3. Information is always lost,  this is a riff on the old tune of evolution is in contravention of the second law of
    thermodynamics. To start off I'll point out that contrary to what the author claims evolution has often been convincingly demonstrated in the petri dish. This EMBO report has a useful section entitled Evolution in the Laboratory. Anyway evolution doesn't break the 2nd law of thermodynamics although
    it clearly breaks the fragile little minds of Cretinists. Talk Origins address this in their massively helpful FAQ.
  4. There are scientific alternatives, particularly insidious is the suggestion that there are serious scientists with alternative
    explanations. Having read the Behe book I know this is not so (in case you are interested it was bought for me by my creationist grandmother). These are usually variations on the theme "God did it" clouded by some badly mis-informed pseudo science and careful avoidance of using the word God. For your edification here is a careful dismanteling of Behe's empty box. The evolution in crisis book was new to me so I had to look around for almost thirty seconds before a could find an answer.

After Blair happily started funding schools that teach creationism I am worried that this sort of thing may start becoming more common here in blighty. The only thing you can do about ignorance is to correct it when you see it.

8 thoughts on “Creationism Stalking the Land”

  1. [can of worms]

    I’m not advocating the teaching of creationism in schools over here, but this just asks the question that Dawkins is currently peddling – can a scientist have deeply held religious views?

    [/can of worms]

    Reply

  3. other websites: http://www.Bagnoloart.com
    http://bagnolosprophetics.blogspot.com/
    Among a variety of ubdergraduate and graduate degrees, (I loved chasing coeds and so lingered in colleges and universities until military serve called) is a BA and MA in Cultural Anthropology, for which I was awarded a Ford Foundation Fellowship.
    In your above comment, “No Fossil Evidence, this one’s so wrong it’s almost funny. There is in fact an overwhelmingly huge amount of fossil evidence. I can only assume this is one of those repeat something often enough and people will believe you kind of deals.”

    Of what species (species) are you speaking when you cite the above?

    Reply

  4. Dear Peter,
    “Among a variety of ubdergraduate and graduate degrees, is a BA and MA in Cultural Anthropology, for which I was awarded a Ford Foundation Fellowship.”

    Good for you.

    I’ve fixed the link in the post so that you can now see the summary of fossil evidence that I linked to.

    Reply

  5. Hi Huw,

    Good to see you reprinting my old letter – albeit in retrospect a clunky attempt at satire. Historical or ‘origins’ science is a very different animal from operational or testable laboratory based science. It is impossible to know with any certainty what happened millions of years ago and this will always involve a lot of speculation. The Big Bang theory itself is full of speculative ideas such as dark energy and dark matter. As such there should be less dogmatic teaching in this whole area. In addition scientific theories by their nature are always changing. Cell biologists will point out the unbelievable complexity of biochemical processes being discovered at the cellular level and which are only touched upon by Michael Behe in his books.

    Prof Anthony Flew is very much a product of England’s green and pleasant land. As professor of philosophy at Oxford he was the Richard Dawkins of his day and scorned any suggestions outside humanistic thinking. He always maintained that he would be led by the scientific evidence. In 2004 he overturned his earlier ideas on the basis of the new discoveries at the molecular level and is now an advocate for some form of intelligent design. An interesting book on this whole subject is the Cambridge University Press volume ‘Debating Design’ in which the leading scientists from both camps discuss the pros and cons of Intelligent Design.

    Let me pick up on the two points you mention. Concerning the fossil record Darwin wrote in ‘Origin of Species’, “Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of intermediate fossil links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and serious objection which can be argued against the theory.” With so many millions of fossils around there should be even more millions of intermediate fossils. Darwin expected future generations to find these transitional fossils. One hundred and fifty years on the situation remains the same. The late Stephen Jay Gould had this to say: “the dearth of transitional fossils is the trade secret of the palaeontologists”. There are very few intermediate fossils and they are all hotly diputed.

    You also mention evolution at the microbiological level. Bacteria and viruses are changing all the time and these changes are often referred to as microevolution. However in most cases genetic information is transferred between cells. It is a mixing of existing information. Where mutations take place they are either information neutral or in most cases lead to a loss of information. There is no example of cells generating new genetic information – and this is what is required for Darwinian evolution. In addition no scientist is suggesting that these bacterial cells will change into anything else. In a million years they will still be bacterial cells.

    Interestingly it has been Richard Dawkins pushing his theories so strongly that has brought this whole debate to the forefront and made eveyone think about origins. Whether we are here by design or by accident could hardly be more important – so the ongoing debate can only be a good thing. However as mentioned before this is historical science we are dealing with and therefore it will always be open to debate.

    Hope this letter is more helpful

    George

    Reply

  6. G Gorniak :

    Let me pick up on the two points you mention. Concerning the fossil record Darwin wrote in ‘Origin of Species’, “Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of intermediate fossil links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and serious objection which can be argued against the theory.” With so many millions of fossils around there should be even more millions of intermediate fossils. Darwin expected future generations to find these transitional fossils. One hundred and fifty years on the situation remains the same. The late Stephen Jay Gould had this to say: “the dearth of transitional fossils is the trade secret of the palaeontologists”. There are very few intermediate fossils and they are all hotly diputed.

    Hello George, you deceitful, quote-mining, charlatan.

    Here is that Darwin quote in context.

    Darwin:

    But just in proportion as this process of extermination has acted on an enormous scale, so must the number of intermediate varieties, which have formerly existed, be truly enormous. Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and serious objection which can be urged against my theory. The explanation lies, as I believe, in the extreme imperfection of the geological record.

    Good day sir.

    Reply

  7. George quoted Stephen Jay Gould as saying: “the dearth of transitional fossils is the trade secret of the palaeontologists”. He also said, and please forgive the full quote but I’d rather just present his argument with editing (see http://www.stephenjaygould.org/library/gould_fact-and-theory.html for more):

    The third argument is more direct: transitions are often found in the fossil record. Preserved transitions are not common—and should not be, according to our understanding of evolution (see next section) but they are not entirely wanting, as creationists often claim. The lower jaw of reptiles contains several bones, that of mammals only one. The non-mammalian jawbones are reduced, step by step, in mammalian ancestors until they become tiny nubbins located at the back of the jaw. The “hammer” and “anvil” bones of the mammalian ear are descendants of these nubbins. How could such a transition be accomplished? the creationists ask. Surely a bone is either entirely in the jaw or in the ear. Yet paleontologists have discovered two transitional lineages of therapsids (the so-called mammal-like reptiles) with a double jaw joint—one composed of the old quadrate and articular bones (soon to become the hammer and anvil), the other of the squamosal and dentary bones (as in modern mammals). For that matter, what better transitional form could we expect to find than the oldest human, Australopithecus afarensis, with its apelike palate, its human upright stance, and a cranial capacity larger than any ape’s of the same body size but a full 1,000 cubic centimeters below ours? If God made each of the half-dozen human species discovered in ancient rocks, why did he create in an unbroken temporal sequence of progressively more modern features—increasing cranial capacity, reduced face and teeth, larger body size? Did he create to mimic evolution and test our faith thereby?

    Faced with these facts of evolution and the philosophical bankruptcy of their own position, creationists rely upon distortion and innuendo to buttress their rhetorical claim. If I sound sharp or bitter, indeed I am—for I have become a major target of these practices.

    I count myself among the evolutionists who argue for a jerky, or episodic, rather than a smoothly gradual, pace of change. In 1972 my colleague Niles Eldredge and I developed the theory of punctuated equilibrium. We argued that two outstanding facts of the fossil record—geologically “sudden” origin of new species and failure to change thereafter (stasis)—reflect the predictions of evolutionary theory, not the imperfections of the fossil record. In most theories, small isolated populations are the source of new species, and the process of speciation takes thousands or tens of thousands of years. This amount of time, so long when measured against our lives, is a geological microsecond. It represents much less than 1 per cent of the average life-span for a fossil invertebrate species—more than ten million years. Large, widespread, and well established species, on the other hand, are not expected to change very much. We believe that the inertia of large populations explains the stasis of most fossil species over millions of years.

    We proposed the theory of punctuated equilibrium largely to provide a different explanation for pervasive trends in the fossil record. Trends, we argued, cannot be attributed to gradual transformation within lineages, but must arise from the different success of certain kinds of species. A trend, we argued, is more like climbing a flight of stairs (punctuated and stasis) than rolling up an inclined plane.

    Since we proposed punctuated equilibria to explain trends, it is infuriating to be quoted again and again by creationists—whether through design or stupidity, I do not know—as admitting that the fossil record includes no transitional forms. Transitional forms are generally lacking at the species level, but they are abundant between larger groups.

    Reply

  8. “can a scientist have deeply held religious views?”

    If you don’t take religion, or specifically, the religious texts literally, you probably can. Many have. It’s not meant to be taken so literally, surely not, that way be madness! Many Americans seem to have this problem, whilst I feel that in the UK this isn’t the case, even amongst the clergy.

    Reply

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