Are there any plans to have a showing of Flock of Dodos in South Jersey? Are there plans to offer the video for sale for us high school biology teachers that can’t wait to incorporate your movie into our curriculum? You had made a comment to John (Comment 1) that I have to agree with. I am a high school science teacher and see more and more teachers running away from the idea of teaching evolution becuase they don’t want to offend anyone. I, on the other hand, tackle evolution head on with my students. And I think the reason why more and more educators are running from evolution in the classroom goes back to one of your main ideas – educating and communicating with the public. I hate to say this, but I think our colleges and Universities are doing a poor job in preparing teachers to teach and UNDERSTAND the topic of evolution. Most teachers plain and simple just don’t understand the theory of evolution and therefore misteach or don’t teach it fully – they cut corners. I feel I do have a good grasp of evolution and therefore feel prepared to discuss evolution openly with my students, without offending them and their beliefs. I spend a good amount of time both in school and with my youth throughout the church demistifying evolution and bridging the 2 topics. Continue your great work and keep on COMMUNICATING!

Larry
Vineland, NJ
YouthLeaderUMC@comcast.net

On the SJ Gould controversy I was struck by the fact that Randy found his baseball analogies so helpful. As an English reader, and avid SJG fan of 25 years standing, I always found them the ONLY impenetrable part of his writing! I always felt that his UK publishers should produce parallel editions, substituting explanations of the baseball analogies for the (to my mind) overly didactics explanations of cricket and other aspects of British culture!

Do you accept paternity testing as a valid technique? Why?

That classification study is quite interesting. The pangolin is famous for being all weird and transgressive – anthropologist Mary Douglas has a famous bit about it and the Lele . . .

Hiro! Best swordsman in the Metaverse!

As for Gould being irrelevant and boring- why do we pander to students when teaching. Are you kidding me? It is boring so they don’t learn it? I work with kids, I have done university, and if it is necessary to further understanding, it certainly doesn’t get punted off the curriculum because it is BORING. I have not yet read all the posts on this subject, but I hope that I will see others say the same thing. If I, a layperson, can understand or even appreciate Gould, then kids taking science courses in University should be able to tolerate him.

When government funding for research has gone from 25 percent down under Clinton to five percent under Bush and people would rather accept the stupid religious explanation for things because it is easier than science and Gould, and no-one can figure out a way to “sell science” because they can’t even agree it should be packaged, then I dunno??? What can you do????

This was the opposite of my claim. This was the claim you imposed on creationists in your earlier post. I claimed that when the level of observation was primarily limited to the naked eye, outward physical features would logically be used in grouping organisms. As technology advanced and microscopes became more powerful and gained wider use, the level of observation would advance to the cellular level, the sub-cellular level etc.

I don’t know why you’re under the impression that the creationists must end their scientific advancement with Linnaeus. By that logic, the theory of evolution must hold fast to everything written by Darwin. If you’ve read Origin of Species or Descent of Man, you can undoubtedly see how ridiculous that would be.

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Howdy Theodore
I lived in Texas for about 5 years, and I wish I still did. I was partial to the expression, “I wasn’t born a Texan but I got here as fast as I could!” I still use “Howdy” as a greeting in emails and the like. I don’t much use y’all any more but I can vividly remember the first time. A couple friends and I were driving down I35 in the middle of Dallas and without thinking I said “y’all want to get…” and I couldn’t even finish the sentence when I realized what I’d said. I had to pull over and suffer the ridicule that this Yankee had finaslly become a Texan. Of course being from Tucson I didn’t exactly consider myself a Yank. I guess by Texas definition a Yankee is just about anyone not from Texas.

“All the philosophical arguments over is it God, is it evolution, etc., etc., are fine, but…”
This is along the lines of the mistaken modern belief that science can include only natural explanations or that science and God are mutually exclusive. I don’t presume to know your theistic persuasion but for myself it is illogical to believe there is a God but that He didn’t do anything. Yet this is the only reasonable conclusion when one attempts to explain the universe in purely naturalistic terms, then insists on extending that interpretation back to the beginning of everything.

Regarding the discussion, I try never to make claims of greater knowledge or qualifications than I posess. This is merely a hobby for me. Reading about evolution and creation gives me something to do while I’m watching the idiot box. I may actually read more about evolution from evolution authors than I do about creation. I will seek out the book you suggested.

I have no difficulty interpreting similar DNA sequences and genes as products of God’s design. Before you regard this as the “typical” theistic-scientific “cop-out,” I’ve heard of no possible experiment that would prove that common DNA sequences independently prove the relationship from vastly different organisms. Only when interpreted through evolutionary glasses do they become evidence for evolution. The classic circular argument. It is on this point that we will simply end at stalemate. This interpretation is designated by our respective worldviews.

It has been a pleasure sharing this debate. It is so rare to go on this long without being personally attacked or insulted. I can imagine it having happened over a Shiner Bock or a Lonestar!

Baraminology, or the classification of created organisms, uses “scripture claims” as its prime research guideline. So it would appear that these folks are probably all biblical literalists, or YECs. How they deal with the cognitive dissonance between Genesis and science is pretty interesting.

There is, for example, a Baraminology Study Group (BSG), which holds conferences at various Christian colleges to discuss their research results. Some are very scientific sounding, like a study of Toll-like receptors on earthworm coelomocytes. But the interpretation that “Non-disease fighting functions of Toll may be of interest to creationists since this may represent a remnant of Toll’s function in the pre-Fall environment” gives you a hint that this may not be quite what it seems.

Another (perhaps of interest in light of Doug’s claim that it is easy to classify organisms based on their appearances) was a study where 67 college students were asked to classify organisms from photographs. This was billed as a test of something known as the cognitum concept, based on the Biblical fact that Adam originally named all the critters. This is stated as “God purposely created organisms in a pattern specifically recognizable to man and created man capable of recognizing that pattern.” Alas, some critters were trickier than others; 3/4 of the students classified the pangolin (a mammal) as a non-mammal, probably a reptile. Bummer…

All of the above was found in the proceedings of the most recent BSG conference, available on the web at:

http://www.bryancore.org/bsg/opbsg/005.pdf

Check it out if you want an educational excursion into another world. And thanks to Doug for the entry ticket; I’m always happy to learn a new word!

I read throught the AIG post you linked to. The “information” given by the author is just flat wrong. First of all, on the train analogy. The author completely neglects the fact that DNA sequencing allows us to go back millions of years and quantify how and why species have changed. Take wing development in fruitflies, for example. We have almost a complete picture of how homeobox genes have evolved to control the development and localization of wings in these insects. Off the top of my head I can think of too many other examples to list. We have no need to speculate about how microevolution will eventually lead to macroevolution in future species when we can use DNA sequencing to see how it happened in the past. As DNA sequencing continues to become cheaper and faster we will gain an even clearer picture. When I first started in this business (about ten years ago) it took about five days and was fairly expensive to sequence a plasmid insert of 500 basepairs. Now I take it to the core facility at my university and they run it, along with 385 other samples on a plate and I get the result in hours for about $4. We will be learning so much in the next 10 years that it boggles the imagination.

As for “loss of genetic information” this is again completely untrue. So untrue, in fact, that I don’t even know where to start. I suggest going to your local library and getting “Molecular Biology of the Cell”: by Alberts et. al., and reading a few of the chapters about DNA, recombination, etc.. Its an undergrad level book and takes you through the whole shebang step by step. its a fantasticly illustrated and written textbook — I used the 2nd edition when I was in undergrad and I now have the 4th edition which I still use nearly daily.

The statistics I have seen bandied about in this discussion seem to have one thing in common – they all reflect the situation in the US. Worldwide the picture is very different, and I think it may be worthwhile asking why.

At least in first world countries the US seems to be alone in this headlong rush back to the dark ages, and that includes some countries with similar history to the US. In the non-US first world, the numbers of people who believe this sort of stuff is plummeting precipitously, evolution is uncontroversial and where I live, an elected official making a big noise about their religion tends to be an electoral kiss of death.

Why is it that the US is diverging so spectacularly from the rest of the world, despite mass communication making US culture commonplace across the world?

I think you should all think about this issue, because it affects the audience you need to address.

Thinking about this for myself, I came up with one possible answer [you may think of others]. One aspect of US culture that has not significantly taken hold elsewhere is televangelism. Televangelist are either spreading the poison, or creating fertile ground for it. Where do DI and the other outfits pushing creationism get their money? Follow the money and see who benefits from it.

When targeting your message, I agree with some earlier posters that hard-core IDers are impervious to logic, evidence, and rational argument. However that does not mean that arguing with them is necessarily futile, even though they will perpetually be strangers to reality. Your audience is the people these parasites are feeding off. By the use of logic, evidence, and reason you can *convince* the audience that these people are wrong, and often [at best] stupid, and [probably] dishonest as well. You cannot *tell* the audience this, as the audience will be alienated [as many people have been saying], but there hopefully will be some with minds open enough to benefit from the reasoned argument. Don’t sweat the fact that you can’t convince the “true believers”, they’re not your target.

Doug,

I insist that you fully understand my point, you just don’t want to admit it. In fact you said as much: “once you realize the genes are related…” without evolution how exactly are you going to do that. Therein lies the point. All the philosophical arguments over is it God, is it evolution, etc., etc., are fine, but some of us actually have to do this science thing for a living and we need testable, reliable theories that generate reasonable testable hypothesis.

Anyway, as a Texan, thanks for addressing me with Howdy for a few days. Don’t get that much here in Canada, its been nice to at least read

Watch “Century of the Self” (4 part series) on archive.org for a thorough explanation

As DStopak said, you can’t have your cake and eat it too. Our current understanding of phylogenetic relationships (figuring out close relatives of organisms) is ABSOLUTELY DEPENDENT on evolutionary theory. Period. End of discussion.

Furthermore you state “A creationist would not look at a worm and a snake and consider them of the same “kind” any more than an evolutionist would determine them to be in the Family or Genus based on their lack of legs.” That is obviously incorrect. Linneaus did exactly that. Linneaus was undoubtedly a creationist. In a preface to one of the later editions of Systema Naturae he wrote:
that the Earth’s creation is the glory of God, as seen from the works of Nature by Man alone. The study of nature would reveal the Divine Order of God’s creation, and it is the naturalist’s task to construct a “natural classification” that would reveal this Order in the universe. William Dembski couldn’t (hasn’t yet, anyway) said it any better.

The field of taxonomy evolved rapidly when evolutionary theory gave it a solid framework. Without it, IDers would be stuck back with Linneaus. Anybody doing “creation science” and using modern phylogenetic taxonomy is being intellectually dishonest. You gotta dance with who brung you, and his name is Carolus Linnaeus.

Hi Dave
You said:
“I have to disagree. If you deny common descent (as IDers do), and presume that everything was created/designed intact, “close relatives” are not all that obvious. Discernment of phylogenetic relationships, or the identification of “close relatives”, depends on modern evolutionary theory.”

First of all, IDer’s beliefs cover a broad range of ideers. Some are almost full-fledged evolutionists with full belief in common descent. Others are YEC’s, at whom I believe your statements are directed.

Second, I said that it is a misconception that creationists believe everything is created in tact. From the creationist perspective God created “Kinds” of organisms. A Kind doesn’t directly correlate to any of the modern taxa classifications. At times it may include all of a Family or Genera or be as specific as a Species. The field of creationist research named Baraminology deals with this subject. You can be sure those involved in the research are using phylogenetic analysis in their studies.

Linneaus and Darwin both based their conclusions on their observations just as scientists do today. The difference is that the ability to observe has changed a lot. In the 1800′s the focus was, of course, on outside similarities. The cell was described quite technically as a “blob of protoplasm.” All of science has come a long way since then. A creationist would not look at a worm and a snake and consider them of the same “kind” any more than an evolutionist would determine them to be in the Family or Genus based on their lack of legs.

Evolutionists tend to define the difference between macro and micro as a small and large evolutionary change. Who determines what might be considered small and large? Very subjective and not very meaningful. By these definitions it is very easy to understand why microevolution plus millions of years would equate to macroevolution.

From a Creationist perspective, the terms are used to differentiate between the actual kind of change. Macro-evolution refers to the information gaining changes necessary to enable new biological functions and entities. Micro-evolution is simply the reshuffling and elimination of genetic information. If you think of “micro” as subtraction and “macro” as addition it is very simple to understand the argument that even billions of years of micro will not “add” up to macro. They are two distinctly different directions of “evolution.”

If anyone is actually interested in understanding the difference (from the creationist perspective), you might read the following article on AIG’s website:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v24/i2/evolution_train.asp

Your comments although thoughtful continually miss the point of how basic research in biology works. First, you rightfully do not discard all the advances made through the current framework of evolutionary biology, but then try to incorporate all those advances into a hypothetical world of Creationist/ID driven biology and ask what would be different. You can’t have your cake and eat it too.

The question you seem to be asking is what would the world of biology look like and would medical advances be equivalent if the ID/Creationist ideology replaced evolution. We have an answer in history from the Stalinist era in the Soviet Union. In this case Darwinian evolution was replaced with Lamarkian evolution. Lysenko with Stalin’s help forced research in this direction because it fit better with Marxist ideology than the tyranny of genetic inheritance. Lamark had a plausible idea, unfortunately for Soviet science it did not reflect the natural world.

The result of this historical experiment could not be clearer. The quality of Soviet biology and medicine suffered tremendously and fell far behind the West. This is in sharp contrast to engineering, physics, chemistry, etc. where the Soviets continually made advances and did a much better job of keeping up. Perhaps there is more to the Salem hypothesis than you imagine.

Evolution provides a framework for the scientific mind, where reason and intuition work together to broaden our understanding of how organisms function. Replace that framework with one that is deficient and fails to mirror the natural world and the result will surely end, like Lysenko, in the trash heap of history.

If you concede “a fruitfly to a different species of fruitfly” during your own microscopically short lifetime, then given the proper circumstances over 100,000 years, is it any stretch at all to believe “a species of fruitfly to a different species of flying insect”? and so on over the next 9,900,000 years? My creationists friends tell me evolution is mathematically less probable than creation. I don’t see that at all.

I have to disagree. If you deny common descent (as IDers do), and presume that everything was created/designed intact, “close relatives” are not all that obvious. Discernment of phylogenetic relationships, or the identification of “close relatives”, depends on modern evolutionary theory.

And if you are thinking that even Linneaus, prior to Darwin, was able to discern close relatives, think about the fact that in Linnean taxonomy snakes and many of the worms (annelids, helminths, and even tunicates) were all classified together in the class Vermes. In fact, almost all of the classes of organisms recognized by Linneaus have been drastically rearranged based on evolutionary theory. Taxonomy based on superficial similarities is just not very accurate. An IDer would actually have no good ideer about close relatives of any organism; if they were all created at once they are all equally related, aren’t they?

Thanks for reading and thinking about it.

2 comments on your most recent post:
1) Why doesn’t evolution make it more complicated you ask? A simple reason. Genes that are very important for survival have a very strong selection pressure, in other words, they don’t change much. If you can strongly identify a single member of a gene family in a fly and a human that has high homology, chances are its really important for something!! We’re now uncovering these genes for pain research purposes. Many have already been found for learning and memory. Read the amazing story of Eric Kandel’s work on CREB genes from worms to humans for another example.

2) In regards to your last sentence: Of course it comes from actual research on both species. The theory that ties them together is evolution. There is no other testable theoretical framework to work with. I am aware of no viable alternative that is testable. If a theory is not testable it is useless to the process. I use the theory of evolution daily to generate new ideas. All kinds of crazy things come into my head, and I could follow all those ideas up by testing them experimentally. Thing is I’d be wasting my time 9 times out of 10 (or likely much worse, I’m a real scatterbrain!!). It is by holding those ideas up to the framework that evolution gives us that I am able to widdle out the good ideas from the sounded good, sorry i wasted $100,00 taxpayer dollars ideas.

I hope you do read the Cell paper. Whether you buy into evolution or not, its one of the most amazing papers I’ve ever read.

But, I’m not sure I’d agree that an evolutionary worldview is necessary to connect the dots. I would think that worldview would be more of an obstacle to finding the goods. From the evolution worldview you have to consider the human and worm nth cousins billions of times removed as the common ancestor goes back maybe 500 – 600 million years, at least.

From a true evolutionary perspective, doesn’t it become less and less likely that you’ll find similar genes or functions in organisms separated by such vast evolutionary time? In addition, going back to the pre-Cambrian to find a common ancestor leaves open any creature in the garden, swamp, or zoo as a possible place to search. Truly seeking solutions based on a supposed evolutionary connection (going back over 500 my’s) rather than presently observable similarities really would be a crap shoot.

It is because they share similar function to humans, that the research performed on the worm or fly is found useful. I suspect that the similarities were discovered by actual research on both, rather than a theorized evolutionary connection.

Great info! Thanks for sharing it. Dave, are you also working in this field, or just follow it closely?

“This situation provides a n excellent contrast between ID and science. An IDiot would have no hypothesis, except to say that since the designer had put this drug in the bark of that tree, perhaps it could be found in some other place…”

How is this different from the evolutionist? The evolutionist suggests that since the plant evolved through common descent, perhaps evolution has left the substance in another plant.

The different worldviews designate the same logical course of action – look at close relatives first. It doesn’t matter what worldview you’re coming from.

IDiot – remarkably I’ve never seen this one, clever enough that Ill let the durogatory nature slide but I prefer IDer (which I also think is clever phonetically).

Here’s a simple example (one of thousands). Taxol, the chemotherapy drug used for advanced ovarian and brest cancer, was originally isolated from the bark of a rare tree, the Pacific Yew. Once the structure was determined, it was found to be so fiendishly complicated (designed?) that organic chemists were unable to synthesize it, so the sole source would have to be from the bark of that tree. Since it took 6 trees to produce enough taxol for one patient, and since the process of removing the bark kills the tree, it was estimated that the supply of this drug would be exhausted within 10 years.

This situation provides a n excellent contrast between ID and science. An IDiot would have no hypothesis, except to say that since the designer had put this drug in the bark of that tree, perhaps it could be found in some other place (tree bark, fungus, clam, albatross, or wherever), A long and probably futile fishing expedition would be the only “experiment” to test this hypothesis.

If one is aware of the facts about common descent, however, the hypothesis would be that a search for similar products or precursors (to be used in a semi-synthesis) should focus on the relatives of the Pacific Yew. Sure enough, chemists soon had a large supply of the precursor for the drug, and it was found in the leaves (not the bark) of the common European Yew. Since trimming the leaves does not kill the tree, and since this tree is commonly planted across the globe, taxol supplies were assured.

So if you know anyone suffering from advanced ovarian or breast cancer who has been saved by this drug, tell them the score.

Score: ID = 0; evolutionary theory = 1

I’ll give it a go… One of my primary feilds of research is transient receptor potential channel (TRP) pharmacology. TRP channels are ion channels and are important in the physiology of a number of different processes, including pain sensation. TRP channels are present in worms all the way up to humans and the members of the channel family have remarkable similarities across species. There are also important differences, especially in their pharmacology. Interestingly, many of these differences appear to be related to the evolution of enzymes that metabolize dietary and membrane fats, or lipids. Unfortunately, to perform the requisite genetic alterations in mammals to explore these differences is nearly impossible; however, such genetic manipulations can be easily undertaken in worms and flies and these data can be extrapolated to humans by looking at how these enzymes have evolved from species to species. As we look at the pharmacology of human TRP channels some of the pharmacology has begun to be elucidated by comparing the lipid dependence of these channels in worms and flies and looking at how the lipid metabolizing enzymes differ between those species and humans. Without evolution there is no logic behind these kinds of experiments, experiments that are now proving useful in developing small molecules for the treatment of pain.

On a more general level, I will again use the example of flies and worms to show how genetic screens are used in pain research. It is much easier to identify genes that are associated with behavior in sensory research in animals with simple nervous systems such as worms and flies. Numerous studies have identified genes that are important for aversive stimuli behavior in these species. When researchers that utilize mice have performed similar screens they come out with many more genes and far less confidence that their identified genes are truly involved in the behavior (in this case pain) of the mouse. Comparing screens between worms and mice or flies and mice is useful in identifying genes with higher confidence because genes that are crucial for adversive behavior should be conserved from species to species. This logic has now started to identify new targets for analgesic development and some of these targets already have full blown programs in nearly all major pharma companies. Again, evolution is the logic behind this type of research.

If you are interestes in reading more about this type of research I strongly suggest you read: Jordt and Julius “Molecular basis for species-specific sensitivity to “hot” chili peppers” Cell 2002 108(2) 421-30. This is a seminal paper in the feild with a fascinating story to tell.

At least in the popular mind (which determines by whom and how we’re governed).

What’s at stake in this debate is staggeringly huge, as huge as the very culture in which science has thrived for the last few hundred years. Whether or not evolution can “win the hearts & minds” of the common folk is the litmus test by which science itself (and, it’s parent, the Enlightenment) will be judged worthy or unworthy of survival. This is war, and scientists should devote 99.9% of their resources toward winning this war.

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Howdy Theodore Price
After reading my reply to Carl’s post (because hopefully it better clarifies my point), might you take the time to write up a couple examples of how a macroevolution framework proved indespensible in your research. Not looking for a fight just sincerely interested.

Thanks!

The point I was trying to illustrate was that supposed macroevolutionary relationships do little to further “real” science, science that is pertinent to our current reality.

The examples offered in the flyer you linked can be summarized as follows:
1. phylogenetic analysis of bacteria identifies new bacteria
2. phylogenetic analysis of fungi identifies fungi
3. wild agriculture compared to domesticated agriculture of the same kind (i.e. corn) based on phylogenetic analysis
4. For purposes of antivenin, snakes are linked to other snakes based on phylogenetic analysis
5. phylogenetic analysis of alga indentifies new alga
6. phylogenetic analysis of viruses identifies new virus
7. instances of aids virus traced to originating carrier (the dentist in this example) through phylogenetic analysis
8. phylogenetic analysis of virus identifies new virus and its relationship to various mice is mapped. Then phylogenetic analysis of the mice of north america and the virus are used to predict subsequent viruses.

All of the above are examples of microevolution. They would come as no shock to a creationist. A creationist framework could have been used just as effectively to perform the analysis (or create the computer algorythms that performed the analysis). On this level there is virutally no functional difference between the creationist and evolutionist methodology.

The single example in the flier that describes macroevolution discusses the “genetic tool kit” and the Hox gene. It basically informs us that these genes, in one form or another, have been identified in a diverse pool of organisms.

The pertinent paragraph in this section is as follows:

“Developmental biologists could not fully understand these genetic and developmental changes without the information afforded by the Tree of Life, which provides a comparative framework for deciphering the genomic milieu underlying developmental processes. As knowledge of relationships improves, new insights into how genes and their functional interactions have changed over time will be possible. This, in turn, will lead to greater knowledge about normal and abnormal development, which will contribute to improvements in human health.”

It makes the broad claim that this will contribute to improvements in human health, however it doesn’t describe any past success or any specific predictions of future success. When it comes down to it I would predict that any improvements to human health gained from studying and understanding the “genetic tool kit” will be easily understood without supposing a superficial evolutionary relationship to the sponge.