On Tue, 01 Jul 1997 22:56:15 -0500, Glenn Morton wrote:
GM>Thank you for addressing me directly. I believe this is the
>first time in about a year.
That's OK. I thought I would give it another try!
GM>2. flowers evolved to match what was available at the time,
>namely, insect mouth parts which were adapted to eating other
>thing.?
SJ>How exactly? Why should flowers need to "match what was
>available at the time, namely, insect mouth parts".
GM>Because flowers need to be pollinated. That is what the birds
>and the bees is all about.
This is what Behe calls a "Calvin and Hobbes" argument:
"It seems to be characteristic of the human mind that when it sees a
black box in action, it imagines that the contents of the box are
simple. A happy example is seen in the comic strip "Calvin and
Hobbes"...Calvin is always jumping in a box with his stuffed tiger,
Hobbes, and traveling back in time, or "transmogrifying" himself
into animal shapes, or using it as a "duplicator" and making clones
of himself A little boy like Calvin easily imagines that a box can
fly like an airplane (or something), because Calvin doesn't know how
airplanes work. In some ways, grown-up scientists are just as prone
to wishful thinking as little boys like Calvin." (Behe M.J.,
"Darwin's Black Box", 1996, p23)
What I want to see from evolutionists is well worked out a
step-by-step `blind watchmaker' fully naturalistic Neo-Darwinian
argument, something like:
1. Flowers arose.
2. Insects tried to pollinate them.
3. Flower genes mutated randomly.
4. In smakk, isolated flower populations some mutations generated
flower parts that slightly matched insect mouth parts.
5. Genetic drift fixed those mutations in that small, in-bred
isolated population.
6. Insects favoured those flowers which more closely matched their
mouth parts.
7. Those flowers which insects favoured gained a competitive
advantage and increased in numbers.
8. These flowers later rejoined the main population and extinguished
those flowers without the favourable mutations.
9. Repeat steps 2-8 until flower parts closely match insect mouth
parts as today.
I don't have a problem with this (God can create any way He likes),
but what actual evidence is there that it actually happened this
way? Do insects really notice slight changes in plant parts? Is
there any evidence in the fossil record of flower parts gradually
adapting more and more to match insect mouth parts? I doubt it.
The actual fossil evidence for the origin of plants is, to the
unprejudiced, in favour of special creation, as Cambridge University
botanist E. Corner admitted:
"Much evidence can be adduced in favor of the theory of
evolution-from biology, biogeography and paleontology, but I still
think that, to the unprejudiced, the fossil record of plants is in
favor of special creation. If, however, another explanation could
be found for this hierarchy of classification, it would be the knell
of the theory of evolution. Can you imagine how an orchid, a
duckweed, and a palm have come from the same ancestry, and have we
any evidence for this assumption? The evolutionist must be prepared
with an answer, but I think that most would break down before an
inquisition.' [Corner E., "Evolution," in McLeod A.M. & Cobley
L.S., eds, "Contemporary Biological Thought", 1961, p97 in Johnson
P.E., "Darwin on Trial", 1993, pp196-197)
Note also that the the above depends crucially on adaptive mutations
of the right sort, at the right time, in the right place, in the
right species. As zoologist Pierre-Paul Grasse, past President of
the French Academy of science, editor of a 28-volume encylopaedia of
zoology, and for thirty years chair of the Department of Evolution
at the Sorbonne, Darwinism requires "miracles":
"The opportune appearance of mutations permitting animals and plants
to meet their needs seems hard to believe. Yet the Darwinian theory
is even more demanding: a single plant, a single animal would
require thousands and thousands of lucky, appropriate events. Thus,
miracles would become the rule: events with an infinitesimal
probability could not fail to occur...There is no law against day-
dreaming, but science must not indulge in it." (Grasse P-P.,
"Evolution of Living Organisms", 1977, p87, in Morris H.M.,
"Evolution in Turmoil", Creation Life: San Diego, 1982, p50)
SJ>If the "flowers" needed to "match" the "insect mouth parts" they
>would have needed to have matched them right away. OTOH, if they
>didn't need to match them right away, then why did they develop to
>match them later?
GM>There were NO flowers on earth when insects evolved. Flowers
>evolved in a world full of insects, 100+ million years later.
>That is why they developed a match later.
This is just begging the question. You don't *know* that "insects
evolved". Nor do you *know* that "Flowers evolved". As Corner
pointed out the actual evidence for the origin of flowers "is in
favor of special creation." And the fossil record of insects
conforms to the basic `creationist' pattern of sudden appearance:
"There are no fossils known that show what the primitive ancestral
insects looked like, but there is no doubt that they are an
extremely ancient group of animals. For perhaps the past 250
million years they have been at least as numerous on the planet as
they are today." (Farb P., "The Insects", Time/Life Books:
Netherlands, 1964, p14)
and stasis:
"The most primitive insects known are found as fossils in rocks of
the Middle Devonian Period and lived about 350,000,000 years ago.
The bodies of those insects were divided then, as now, into a head
bearing one pair of antennae, a thorax with three pairs of legs, and
a segmented abdomen."(Wigglesworth V.B., "Insecta", Encyclopaedia
Britannica, 1984, 9:618)
"However, when genera and species within insect families are
considered, they, too, exhibit remarkable geologic persistence. For
example, the modern beetle genus Tetraphalerus closely resembles
153-million-year-old Jurassic fossils, and the modern crane fly
genus Helius and leaf-mining moth genus Stigmella have been
identified from 93-million-year-old and 89-million-year-old
deposits, respectively. Many insect specimens of Eocene to Miocene
age are easily placed within modern genera and even modern species.
In the younger part of the fossil insect record, Pliocene aphids
have been determined to be conspecific with modern species, and
Coope and Matthews were able to place almost all fossil beetle
specimens from Pliocene and Pleistocene lake deposits in Britain and
northern Canada, respectively, into modern species on the basis of
characters of the genitalia; assignment was possible despite
profound changes in the biogeographic distributions of descendant
populations." (Labandeira, C.C., & J.J. Sepkoski. "Insect
Diversity in the Fossil Record," Science, Vol. 261, 16 July 1993,
p312)
SJ>Nowhere did I say that "insects needed angiosperms to eat".
>Clearly they did not, if they were alive and well 100 million years
>*before* the angiosperms! My point was that "insects had...at
>least ten elaborate forms of mouthpieces, uniquely "adapted"...to
>their feeding upon flowers, one hundred million years before there
>were any flowers on Earth".
GM>Once again, those mouth parts were uniquely adapted to eating
>what they ate 100 million years prior to the advent of the flowers.
That insects ate plants "100 million years prior to the advent of
the flowers" does not necessarily they were "uniquely adapted to
eating" those plants. The Darwinist story used to be that so
co-adapted were insect mouthparts and flowers that it was assumed
they evolved togther:
"At the end of the Mesozoic Era the first flowering plants appeared.
Insect evolution has paralleled that of the flowering plants; they
have evolved together. As Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths),
Hymenoptera (ants, bees, and wasps), Diptera (true flies), and
Coleoptera (beetles) began to feed upon flowers, nectar, or pollen,
flowering plants came to rely more and more upon insects-rather than
upon the wind-for transferring their pollen. Flowers evolved
nectaries, scents, and conspicuous colours as attractants for those
insects that could effect cross- pollination. Insects likewise
evolved appropriate mouthpart modifications for extracting nectar
from flowers." (Wigglesworth V.B., "Insecta", Encyclopaedia
Britannica: Benton, Chicago, 15th edition, 1984, 9:619)
But in fact, "insects had evolved at least ten elaborate forms of
mouthpieces, uniquely "adapted" (one would say) to their feeding
upon flowers, one hundred million years before there were any
flowers on Earth." (Piattelli-Palmarini M., "Inevitable Illusions:
How Mistakes of Reason Rule Our Minds", 1994, p195)
God bless.
Steve
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