On Mon, 15 Jan 1996 06:22:52 -0500 you wrote:
BH>Brian Harper took a look at the talk.origins archive over the
>weekend and came up with the bullfrog narrative I had in mind. With
>Brian's permission I am reposting it to the reflector. Thanks to
>Brian for getting this.
[..]
BH>Gish's Proteins
[..]
BH>[1] Awbrey, Frank T., and Thwaites, William M. Winter 1982. "A
>Closer Look at Some Biochemical Data That 'Support' Creation,"
>Creation/Evolution, issue VII, p. 15.
Thanks to Bill, Brian, John and any others who posted messages for or
against Gish's "dishonesty".
I agree that Gish's failure to reply does not help his case, but IMHO
it is not proof of lying. He has answered these charges in his book
"Creation Scientists Answer Their Critics":
===========================================================
"On March 4-6, 1977, I attended a symposium on human origins at the
University of California, Davis. The symposium was jointly conducted
by the Foundation for Research into the Origins of Man, and the
University Extension, University of California, Davis. The faculty
included Richard Leakey (son of Louis and Mary Leakey) who has gained
much fame in the past decade and a half as a fossil hunter in Africa;
Donald Johanson, the discoverer of "Lucy"; Alan Walker, now of Johns
Hopkins University, who has worked with Richard Leakey; David Pilbeam,
then of Yale University; Garniss Curtis, of the University of
California, Berkeley; Owen Lovejoy, of Kent State University; and
Glynn Isaac, of the University of California, Berkeley.
Curtis is a radiochronologist who has dated a number of samples for
anthropologists. He presented a lecture at the symposium on the
technique of radiometric dating. He and other radiochronologists,
using radiometric dating, had obtained dates for certain events that
are quite divergent from the dates suggested for these events by those
who employ the "protein clock" hypothesis developed by A. C. Wilson,
Vincent Sarich, and others at the University of California, Berkeley.
Before development of the "protein clock" hypothesis, it had been
suggested, for example, that the divergence of man and the apes from
their common ancestor had occurred sometime between 20 and 30 million
years ago. Wilson and Sarich, however, on the basis of their "protein
clock," have suggested that this divergence had occurred no more than
four or five million years ago.
This divergence of opinion, between the radiochronologists and the
"protein clock" people, naturally had created tension between those
holding strong views on each side. Curtis therefore wished to put
down the "protein clock" hypothesis and the dates that might be
obtained using this technique. He mentioned that, according to
comparisons based on the structures of certain serum albumins, humans
were nearly as similar to bullfrogs as they were to apes. Using the
"protein clock" idea, then, one could assume that man had split off
from the amphibians about the same time he had split off from the
apes-clearly a ludicrous suggestion, according to evolutionists.
Dr. Gary Parker, then a member of the Institute for Creation Research
staff, had suggested another unacceptable conclusion based on
comparison of the structures of proteins. I had heard him describe
this situation in a lecture.
Subsequently, he published the account. After describing the
problems evolutionists have with the hemoglobins, Parker says:
`The same seems to be true for a fascinating protein called
lysozyme.... By comparing lysozyme and lactalbumin, Dickerson was
hoping to "pin down with great precision," where human beings branched
off the mammal line. The results are surprising. In this test, it
turned out that humans are more closely related to the chicken than to
any living mammal tested! Every evolutionist knows that can't be
true, but how can he get around the objective evidence? In his
concluding diagram, Dickerson slips in a wiggly line for rapid
evolution, and that brings the whole thing back in line again with his
evolutionary assumptions. But notice that his protein data, the facts
that he observed, did not help him at all with his evolutionary
idea.29
On the basis of what I had heard from Garniss Curtis and Gary Parker,
on two occasions I stated that, following the reasoning of
evolutionists based on the similarity of certain protein molecules,
one would assume that man is as closely related to bullfrogs and
chickens as he is to apes. One occasion as during a debate with John
W. Patterson on a radio station in Ames, Iowa, and the other was
during the videotaping of a program for Public Broadcasting
Television. Evolutionists have vigorously contested that statement
and have challenged me to provide documentation.
Robert Schadewald, a free-lance writer and a virulent anti-
creationist, wrote to Garniss Curtis to check out my story after I had
informed him concerning the source of my information on serum
albumins. Curtis, in his reply, reported that he had indeed told the
story the way I had revealed it. Now Curtis claimed, however, that he
had told this story with tongue in cheek, more or less as a joke.30 It
was perfectly clear to me at the time Curtis gave his talk that there
was a joke involved, all right, but it was equally clear that Curtis
intended for the joke to be on the "protein clock" people, and not in
the nature of the data he presented. Thus, if the data were faulty on
which I had based my remarks about the serum albumins of man, apes,
and bullfrogs, the responsibility for the faulty data (if indeed it is
faulty) is due to false information provided in a public address by an
evolutionist."
29. H. M. Morris and Gary Parker, What is Creation Science? Master
Book Pub., San Diego, 1982, pp. 24, 25.
30. Personal Communication to D. T. Gish from Robert Schadewald.
(Gish D.T., "Creation Scientists Answer Their Critics", Institute for
Creation Research: El Cajon Ca, 1993, pp96-99)
===========================================================
IMHO much of the problem is due to the ICR's "fortress mentality",
not to deliberate lying. I do not defend this attitude, but I try to
understand it. The problem with non-theistic evolutionists is that
they rarely make any serious attempt to understand where the ICR is
coming from.
I don't want to get into a protracted defence of the ICR, because that
might be perceived as though I am a YEC. I gave up YEC nearly thirty
years ago, in my first 6 months of becoming a Christian. The decisive
point for me was (as Terry Gray has noted), that the Bible itself does
not teach YEC.
God bless.
Stephen
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