Saturday, 28 January 2017
Would you buy a remodeled nineteenth century theory from this man.
Francis Collins and the Overselling of Evolution
Casey Luskin
In two recent posts I discussed the continuing misrepresentations of intelligent design by Francis Collins, whose confirmation as head of the National Institutes of Health in the Obama administration was announced on August 7.
Today I would like to shift the focus to Dr. Collins' misrepresentation of evolutionary biology--or more precisely, to his misrepresentation of the scientific usefulness of evolution to biology. Collins has every right to endorse neo-Darwinian evolution if he wishes, but his view of evolution's value to scientific research is pretty much over-the-top. In a recent interview, he claimed:
Trying to do biology without evolution would be like trying to do physics without mathematics.
There is no doubt that modern neo-Darwinian theory has had an important influence on biology, but Collins' grandiose claim says more about the political nature of Darwin-advocacy than it does about evolution itself.
A number of leading scientists feel very differently from Collins. As National Academy of Sciences member Philip Skell has written, the hyping of neo-Darwinism's importance to science goes well beyond reality:
I recently asked more than 70 eminent researchers if they would have done their work differently if they had thought Darwin's theory was wrong. The responses were all the same: No. ... Darwinian evolution -- whatever its other virtues -- does not provide a fruitful heuristic in experimental biology. ... the claim that it is the cornerstone of modern experimental biology will be met with quiet skepticism from a growing number of scientists in fields where theories actually do serve as cornerstones for tangible breakthroughs.
(Philip Skell, "Why Do We Invoke Darwin? Evolutionary theory contributes little to experimental biology," The Scientist (August 29, 2005).)
In another essay, Dr. Skell added that he had
queried biologists working in areas where one might have thought the Darwinian paradigm could guide research, such as the emergence of resistance to antibiotics and pesticides. Here, as elsewhere, I learned that the theory had provided no discernible guidance in choosing the experimental designs but was brought in, after the breakthrough discoveries, as an interesting narrative gloss.
(Philip Skell, Politics and the Life Sciences, Vol. 27(2):47-49 (October 9, 2008).
Evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne likewise admitted in Nature that "if truth be told, evolution hasn't yielded many practical or commercial benefits. Yes, bacteria evolve drug resistance, and yes, we must take countermeasures, but beyond that there is not much to say."
When testifying before the Texas State Board of Education this past March, Dr. Ray Bohlin said the following when asked about the utility of evolution for biological research. He answered:
I'd be willing to say that virtually 90, 95% of all molecular and cell biology, which is where my Ph.D. is in, does not require evolution whatsoever.
Similarly, Don Ewert, who holds a Ph.D. in microbiology and has been a biology researcher for over 30 years (including 20 years at the Wistar Institute), was asked to "address the notion that very little in biology is testable except for in the light of evolution." Ewert answered:
If you look at scientific textbooks and ask the question, if the theory of evolution were not in that textbook, what material would not make sense? And I would say that very little, if any, would not make sense. In fact, I think that anybody who learned the material apart from Darwin in those textbooks could go on to be successful scientists, veterinarians, and medical doctors. ... I would say that there is very little that you cannot fully understand apart from the theory of evolution.
Clearly evolution is important to some research, but Collins' claim that "[t]rying to do biology without evolution would be like trying to do physics without mathematics" says more about Collins' hardline devotion to neo-Darwinism than it says about modern evolutionary biology itself. Fortunately, there remain highly credible scientists who do not feel the need to uphold Darwinism as the alpha and omega of biology.
Casey Luskin
In two recent posts I discussed the continuing misrepresentations of intelligent design by Francis Collins, whose confirmation as head of the National Institutes of Health in the Obama administration was announced on August 7.
Today I would like to shift the focus to Dr. Collins' misrepresentation of evolutionary biology--or more precisely, to his misrepresentation of the scientific usefulness of evolution to biology. Collins has every right to endorse neo-Darwinian evolution if he wishes, but his view of evolution's value to scientific research is pretty much over-the-top. In a recent interview, he claimed:
Trying to do biology without evolution would be like trying to do physics without mathematics.
There is no doubt that modern neo-Darwinian theory has had an important influence on biology, but Collins' grandiose claim says more about the political nature of Darwin-advocacy than it does about evolution itself.
A number of leading scientists feel very differently from Collins. As National Academy of Sciences member Philip Skell has written, the hyping of neo-Darwinism's importance to science goes well beyond reality:
I recently asked more than 70 eminent researchers if they would have done their work differently if they had thought Darwin's theory was wrong. The responses were all the same: No. ... Darwinian evolution -- whatever its other virtues -- does not provide a fruitful heuristic in experimental biology. ... the claim that it is the cornerstone of modern experimental biology will be met with quiet skepticism from a growing number of scientists in fields where theories actually do serve as cornerstones for tangible breakthroughs.
(Philip Skell, "Why Do We Invoke Darwin? Evolutionary theory contributes little to experimental biology," The Scientist (August 29, 2005).)
In another essay, Dr. Skell added that he had
queried biologists working in areas where one might have thought the Darwinian paradigm could guide research, such as the emergence of resistance to antibiotics and pesticides. Here, as elsewhere, I learned that the theory had provided no discernible guidance in choosing the experimental designs but was brought in, after the breakthrough discoveries, as an interesting narrative gloss.
(Philip Skell, Politics and the Life Sciences, Vol. 27(2):47-49 (October 9, 2008).
Evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne likewise admitted in Nature that "if truth be told, evolution hasn't yielded many practical or commercial benefits. Yes, bacteria evolve drug resistance, and yes, we must take countermeasures, but beyond that there is not much to say."
When testifying before the Texas State Board of Education this past March, Dr. Ray Bohlin said the following when asked about the utility of evolution for biological research. He answered:
I'd be willing to say that virtually 90, 95% of all molecular and cell biology, which is where my Ph.D. is in, does not require evolution whatsoever.
Similarly, Don Ewert, who holds a Ph.D. in microbiology and has been a biology researcher for over 30 years (including 20 years at the Wistar Institute), was asked to "address the notion that very little in biology is testable except for in the light of evolution." Ewert answered:
If you look at scientific textbooks and ask the question, if the theory of evolution were not in that textbook, what material would not make sense? And I would say that very little, if any, would not make sense. In fact, I think that anybody who learned the material apart from Darwin in those textbooks could go on to be successful scientists, veterinarians, and medical doctors. ... I would say that there is very little that you cannot fully understand apart from the theory of evolution.
Clearly evolution is important to some research, but Collins' claim that "[t]rying to do biology without evolution would be like trying to do physics without mathematics" says more about Collins' hardline devotion to neo-Darwinism than it says about modern evolutionary biology itself. Fortunately, there remain highly credible scientists who do not feel the need to uphold Darwinism as the alpha and omega of biology.
The designer counters Haldane's fossil rabbit gambit.
Sea Anemone Is a Proverbial "Precambrian Rabbit"
Cornelius Hunter
When asked what evidence would disprove evolution, the famous 20th-century evolutionist J.B.S. Haldane is famously said to have responded, "a fossil rabbit in the Precambrian." In other words, a fossil rabbit would have to be found in strata dating to long before rabbits, or mammals for that matter, are normally found.
And by "long," we mean somewhere between roughly one-half a billion years to several billion years. It was an exercise in what philosophers refer to as theory protectionism -- erecting insurmountable protective barriers around a theory. The fossil record was sufficiently understood in Haldane's day to know that such as finding was highly unlikely. And it was also known that much less astounding, and more feasible, fossil findings would (or at least should) pose serious problems for evolutionary theory.
In fact there are many such contradictions in the rocks, but if a rabbit in the Precambrian is the evidential standard, then evolution is comfortably safe. Haldane's Precambrian rabbit response was also an exercise in naïve falsificationism -- the thinking that a single finding is going to take down a theory so deeply imbedded in our thinking, and so confidently held to be true. In fact, evolutionary theory has survived myriad contradictory evidences of at least as much severity as a Precambrian rabbit without so much as skipping a beat.
Consider, for example, the genome of the starlet sea anemone, Nematostella vectensis. Here is how summarized it :
The genome of the sea anemone, one of the oldest living animal species on Earth, shares a surprising degree of similarity with the genome of vertebrates, researchers report in this week's Science. The study also found that these similarities were absent from fruit fly and nematode genomes, contradicting the widely held belief that organisms become more complex through evolution. The findings suggest that the ancestral animal genome was quite complex, and fly and worm genomes lost some of that intricacy as they evolved.
In other words, it was the genomic equivalent of Haldane's Precambrian rabbit -- a Precambrian genome had, err, all the complexity of species to come hundreds of millions of years later. In other cases it has more complexity than species such as worms and flies, which, according to evolution, must have lost enormous amounts of genetic complexity.
The lead author of the sea anemone study explained, "We have this basic toolkit now for the whole animal kingdom." Of course the idea of foresight is contradictory to evolutionary theory. As one evolutionist admitted, it is surprising to find such a "high level of genomic complexity in a supposedly primitive animal such as the sea anemone." It implies that the ancestral animal "was already extremely highly complex, at least in terms of its genomic organization and regulatory and signal transduction circuits, if not necessarily morphologically."
Or as another evolutionist put it:
It is commonly believed that complex organisms arose from simple ones. Yet analyses of genomes and of their transcribed genes in various organisms reveal that, as far as protein-coding genes are concerned, the repertoire of a sea anemone -- a rather simple, evolutionarily basal animal -- is almost as complex as that of a human.
None of this makes any sense in the light of evolutionary theory. Of course it is "commonly believed" by evolutionists "that complex organisms arose from simple ones." That would be rather fundamental to the theory. Yet we repeatedly find early complexity. This is another example of how resistant evolution is to testing and falsification.
Cornelius Hunter
When asked what evidence would disprove evolution, the famous 20th-century evolutionist J.B.S. Haldane is famously said to have responded, "a fossil rabbit in the Precambrian." In other words, a fossil rabbit would have to be found in strata dating to long before rabbits, or mammals for that matter, are normally found.
And by "long," we mean somewhere between roughly one-half a billion years to several billion years. It was an exercise in what philosophers refer to as theory protectionism -- erecting insurmountable protective barriers around a theory. The fossil record was sufficiently understood in Haldane's day to know that such as finding was highly unlikely. And it was also known that much less astounding, and more feasible, fossil findings would (or at least should) pose serious problems for evolutionary theory.
In fact there are many such contradictions in the rocks, but if a rabbit in the Precambrian is the evidential standard, then evolution is comfortably safe. Haldane's Precambrian rabbit response was also an exercise in naïve falsificationism -- the thinking that a single finding is going to take down a theory so deeply imbedded in our thinking, and so confidently held to be true. In fact, evolutionary theory has survived myriad contradictory evidences of at least as much severity as a Precambrian rabbit without so much as skipping a beat.
Consider, for example, the genome of the starlet sea anemone, Nematostella vectensis. Here is how summarized it :
The genome of the sea anemone, one of the oldest living animal species on Earth, shares a surprising degree of similarity with the genome of vertebrates, researchers report in this week's Science. The study also found that these similarities were absent from fruit fly and nematode genomes, contradicting the widely held belief that organisms become more complex through evolution. The findings suggest that the ancestral animal genome was quite complex, and fly and worm genomes lost some of that intricacy as they evolved.
In other words, it was the genomic equivalent of Haldane's Precambrian rabbit -- a Precambrian genome had, err, all the complexity of species to come hundreds of millions of years later. In other cases it has more complexity than species such as worms and flies, which, according to evolution, must have lost enormous amounts of genetic complexity.
The lead author of the sea anemone study explained, "We have this basic toolkit now for the whole animal kingdom." Of course the idea of foresight is contradictory to evolutionary theory. As one evolutionist admitted, it is surprising to find such a "high level of genomic complexity in a supposedly primitive animal such as the sea anemone." It implies that the ancestral animal "was already extremely highly complex, at least in terms of its genomic organization and regulatory and signal transduction circuits, if not necessarily morphologically."
Or as another evolutionist put it:
It is commonly believed that complex organisms arose from simple ones. Yet analyses of genomes and of their transcribed genes in various organisms reveal that, as far as protein-coding genes are concerned, the repertoire of a sea anemone -- a rather simple, evolutionarily basal animal -- is almost as complex as that of a human.
None of this makes any sense in the light of evolutionary theory. Of course it is "commonly believed" by evolutionists "that complex organisms arose from simple ones." That would be rather fundamental to the theory. Yet we repeatedly find early complexity. This is another example of how resistant evolution is to testing and falsification.
Paul Nelson on academic freedom and the I.D movement.
Event: In Billings, MT, Paul Nelson Will Speak on Intelligent Design and Scientific Freedom
Evolution News & Views
This weekend, Discovery Institute Senior Fellow Paul Nelson travels to Billings, Montana, to speak on "Intelligent Design, Evolution, and the Future of Free and Open Science." His venue is Big Sky Worldview Forum , to be held Friday and Saturday, January 27-28.
Dr. Nelson has subdivided his theme into four parts:
Design as the Only Reasonable Explanation for Biology
The Metamorphosis Paradox and the Unsolved Problem of Macroevolution
Minimal Complexity as the Key Clue to the Origin of Life
Design Triangulation as a Scientific Method
All talks will be held in the Missouri Room at the Red Lion Hotel and Convention Center, 1223 Mullowney Lane, Billings, MT. A schedule of speakers is here. Enter via the North Convention Center doors. For additional details, please contact the event coordinator, Dick Pence, at 406-672-9207, or via email at rapence45@gmail.com.
Evolution News & Views
This weekend, Discovery Institute Senior Fellow Paul Nelson travels to Billings, Montana, to speak on "Intelligent Design, Evolution, and the Future of Free and Open Science." His venue is Big Sky Worldview Forum , to be held Friday and Saturday, January 27-28.
Dr. Nelson has subdivided his theme into four parts:
Design as the Only Reasonable Explanation for Biology
The Metamorphosis Paradox and the Unsolved Problem of Macroevolution
Minimal Complexity as the Key Clue to the Origin of Life
Design Triangulation as a Scientific Method
All talks will be held in the Missouri Room at the Red Lion Hotel and Convention Center, 1223 Mullowney Lane, Billings, MT. A schedule of speakers is here. Enter via the North Convention Center doors. For additional details, please contact the event coordinator, Dick Pence, at 406-672-9207, or via email at rapence45@gmail.com.
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