From: Peter Ruest (pruest@pop.mysunrise.ch)
Date: Fri Aug 16 2002 - 00:54:33 EDT
Hi all,
having been away for a few weeks, I may have missed some of the
discussion under this heading, so please bear with me if I happen to
repeat some points others may have made already!
Having read the article "15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense" by John
Rennie in Scientific American 287/1 (July 2002), 62-69 (Rennie is Sci
Amer's editor in chief), I first hesitated to retain the term "rant" in
the subject heading, as I have to agree with much of what he has to say.
Yet, on more detailed examination, I saw that his treatment of the topic
is nevertheless quite superficial and not at all up to the objectivity
one should be allowed to expect of a scientist and, particularly, of the
chief editor of a leading scientific journal.
Although the wide spectrum of theists' opinions about creation and
evolution has been known for decades, Rennie, in the usual atheist
manner, keeps throwing all of them together into the same bin. He
rightly insists that science is restricted to methodological naturalism,
but he surreptitiously extends this to ontological naturalism, ruling
out of court any suggestion that science may perhaps never be able to
explain "all there ever was or is or will be". His contempt for YEC
views is understandable, but his haughty manner ("nonsense") of
conflating all criticisms of evolution with YEC is downright repulsive,
particularly if his knowledge of the subject is as superficial as his
article makes it appear.
Rennie also seems to be caught in the god-of-the-gaps myth: "if
something is scientifically explainable, it cannot be done by God". He
falsely claims that belief in a Creator shuts down scientific inquiry.
More specifically, I'd like to refer to his 15 points (I have
abbreviated some of the lead phrases Rennie cites and rejects).
1) "Evolution is only a theory, not a fact or law." Rennie is right in
rejecting this distinction, as it reveals a lack of comprehension. But,
simply referring to the fossil record, he claims evolution to be a
"fact" and "true". At least since the proposal of the punctuated
equilibria, the difficulties of interpreting the fossil record - let
alone proving "the fact of evolution" - should be obvious. On the basis
of his atheist presuppositions, of course, evolution is the only game in
town. On the other hand, I, as a theist, agree that evolution has indeed
happened, although I question its autonomy.
2) "Natural selection is based on circular reasoning: the fittest are
those who survive, and those who survive are deemed the fittest."
Rennie's response involves the beaks of Darwin's finches, i.e.
microevolution which is disputed by no one, and, moreover, which has
been shown to be completely reversible (in the case of the finches'
beaks), not generating any novelty at all. He claims that the fact that
large beaks are better adapted for crushing seeds, no matter what the
outcome of selection, proves that adaptive fitness can be defined
without reference to selection. A rather meager argument. Virtually
always, there are no predictions, but only post-hoc "explanations",
"just-so stories".
3) "Evolution is unscientific because not testable, not observable, not
repeatable." Rennie is right to dismiss this argument because of the
long ages involved and the uncertainty in the epistemological status of
Popper's falsifyability. He mentions a few fulfilled predictions, but
again, he fails to distinguish between microevolution, which is
completely irrelevant here, and the origin of genuine genetic novelty.
He claims that evolution could be falsified by the spontaneous
generation of a complex life form from inanimate matter, or by
superintelligent aliens claiming to have created life. This is
ridiculous. And he mixes up the very distinct problems of the origin of
life and of the emergence of genetic novelty through darwinian
evolution.
4) "Increasingly, scientists doubt the truth of evolution." Rennie's
rejection of this claim as untrue is correct. But his claim that the few
"antievolution" papers submitted to leading science journals only deal
with unsolved (technical) problems disputed by no one is not justified.
Manuscripts pointing to philosophical presuppositions of evolutionary
conclusions are generally rejected - theistic presuppositions are
detected in the refereeing process, but not atheistic ones.
5) "Disagreements among evolutionists show how little solid science
supports evolution." Again, Rennie is right in rejecting this.
6) "If humans descend from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?" Rennie
is right in rejecting this silly argument.
7) "Evolution cannot explain the origin of life." This time, Rennie is
awfully weak, talking about aliens and organics found in space, and
makes the blatantly erroneous claim that "biochemists have learned about
how primitive nucleic acids ... could have formed and organized
themselves into self-replicating, self-sustaining units, laying the
foundation for cellular biochemistry." He is contradicted by the
specialists in the field.
8) "Mathematically, it is inconceivable that anything as complex as a
protein could spring up by chance." Rennie's answer is useless. He first
claims that "chance plays a part in evolution ... in the random
mutations [correct] that can give rise to new traits [empty claim]".
Then he claims that "natural selection can push evolution in one
direction [correct] and produce sophisticated structures [empty claim]
in surprisingly short times". To top it off, he recommends the
(surprisingly common) computer simulations which fix any letter in a
random letter string which happens to agree with a given target phrase,
a ridiculously unrealistic algorithm which ignores practically all
biological reality.
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." Rennie correctly points out that the Second Law applies to
closed systems only, and that energy input can allow a decrease in
entropy. But he ignores the fundamental difference between order (which
can form spontaneously in physical and computational systems) and
biological complexity (which has never been shown to be able to form
spontaneously - either in simulations or in reality).
10) "Mutations cannot produce new features." Rennie's unsuccessful
attempt to reject this claim mentions bacterial resistance to
antibiotics (which is due either to ribosomal damage or import - and
sometimes slight modification - of preexisting enzymes), homeobox
mutations (which produce defective developmental patterns), and splicing
together of (already) functional modules. Obviously, he doesn't know of
any real novelty demonstrably produced by mutations.
11) "Natural selection may explain microevolution, but not the origin of
new species or higher orders of life." The case of new species is quite
uninteresting, as microevolution easily produces new species (e.g. any
defect preventing interbreeding). Rennie insists on speciation and
mentions the hypothesis of endosymbiotic organelle origin. The latter is
probably correct, but this represents somewhat meager evidence for
macroevolution.
12) "Nobody has ever seen a new species evolve." That's easy for Rennie
to refute, but that doesn't help with macroevolution.
13) "No transitional fossils." In this absolute formulation, this is
false. Yet, as a whole, the fossil record looks like a bamboo thicket,
not like a tree. The theory of punctuated equilibria explains why it
should be so - and at the same time makes it very improbable for most
transition fossils needed to ever be found. Rennie doesn't mention this
fundamental problem, but instead rehashes a few transitionals
(Archaeopteryx, Eohippus, Ambulocetus and Rodhocetus). He then jumps to
the genetic evidence for relationship and the molecular clock. His graph
with the perfectly straight lines for some molecular clocks (without any
data) really doesn't do justice to what we know today about the ubiquity
of variable evolutionary rates.
14) "Living things have fantastically intricate features at all levels,
that could not function if they were less complex." Rennie claims that
Darwin refuted this argument of Paley's, but that today's
intelligent-design advocates still use it, although researchers "have
even tracked the evolutionary history of eyes through comparative
genetics." Rennie's argument is very broad-brush, and its use for the
problem of specified or irreducible complexity seems questionable.
Whether such complexity can be proved is not at issue here, because its
occurrence has not been refuted, either.
15) "Even at the microscopic level, there is a quality of complexity
that could not have come about through evolution." Curiously, Rennie
distinguishes between Behe's irreducible complexity and Dembski's
specified complexity. He tries (unconvincingly) to invalidate Behe's
concept by referring to Yersinia pestis toxin injection pili as
precursors of bacterial flagella and digestive enzymes as precursors of
blood clotting enzymes. And against Dembski's explanatory filter, he
invokes the complex patterns produced by cellular automata! It looks
like he hasn't even understood their concepts.
To sum it up: Rennie disappoints! His article is hardly of any help in
the creation/evolution controversy. On the contrary, he keeps thickening
the mist.
Peter
-- Dr. Peter Ruest, CH-3148 Lanzenhaeusern, Switzerland <pruest@dplanet.ch> - Biochemistry - Creation and evolution "..the work which God created to evolve it" (Genesis 2:3)
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