Scientific American - 15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense - June 17, 2002
Dan Fake
of it, intelligent design) is present as an implied or overt aspect
of some religions, especially fundamentalist ones, the following
excerpts from a recent Scientific American article are provided
to help folks understand the way in which science, evolution,
and open-minded pursuit of verity are inconsistent with the crea-
tionist philosophies and their intelligent design offshoots ...
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http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000D4FEC-7D5B-1D07-8E49809EC588EEDF
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Opponents of evolution want to make a place for creationism
by tearing down real science, but their arguments don't hold up
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A broadcast version of this article will air Wednesday, June 26,
on National Geographic Today, a program on the National
Geographic Channel.
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...
Some antievolutionists, such as Philip E. Johnson, a law pro-
fessor 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.
...
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 repeat-
edly confirmed and for all practical purposes is accepted as 'true.'"
The fossil record and abundant other evidence testify that organ-
isms have evolved through time. Although no one observed those
transformations, the indirect evidence is clear, unambiguous and
compelling.
...
"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.
...
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 microevolu-
tion 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 Galápagos finches). Natural selection and other
mechanisms--such as chromosomal changes, symbiosis and hybrid-
ization--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 his-
torical 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.
...
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.
...
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 sub-
mitted.
...
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 prin-
ciple 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.
...
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.
...
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.
...
Chance plays a part in evolution (for example, in the random muta-
tions 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.
...
the Second Law [of thermodynamics] 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.
...
biology has catalogued many traits produced by point mutations
(changes at precise positions in an organism's DNA)--bacterial
resistance to antibiotics, for example.
...
molecular biology has discovered mechanisms for genetic change
that go beyond point mutations, and these expand the ways in which
new traits can appear.
...
Evolutionary biologists have written extensively about how natural
selection could produce 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.
...
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 organ-
isms that did not breed with outsiders.
...
paleontologists know of many detailed examples of fossils interme-
diate in form between various taxonomic groups.
...
evolutionists can cite further supportive evidence from molecular
biology.
All organisms share most of the same genes, but as evolution pre-
dicts, 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.
...
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 compar-
ative genetics. (It now appears that in various families of organisms,
eyes have evolved independently.)
...
It is wrong to insinuate that the field of explanations consists only
of random processes or designing intelligences.
Researchers ... 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.
...
Time and again, science has shown that methodological naturalism
can push back ignorance, finding increasingly detailed and informa-
tive 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.
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Other Resources for Defending Evolution
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000276B7-6792-1D0A-8E49809EC588EEDF
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Dan Fake, Pro-Humanist FREELOVER
(Freethinking Realist Exploring Expressive
Liberty, Openness, Verity, Enlightenment,
& Rationality)
http://danfake.home.att.net
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