On why ID is already mainstream

 Intelligent Design in Action: Mars Archaeology

David coppedge

Occasionally in conversations with atheists I ask if a space alien landing on Mars and finding one of our rovers would be justified in inferring intelligent design. Reactions vary from dodging the question to changing the subject. But think about it: any space aliens capable of building an interstellar craft would have to be knowledgeable of the laws of physics and the laws of logic. Such beings would possess superlative engineering expertise including, most likely, electronic communications and programming. They would be intimately familiar with the differences between natural causes and intelligent causes. 

To reinforce the point, reverse the roles and think of what human astronauts would conclude if in some future day they land on an alien planet and find metal machinery operating for a function, such as moving about on wheels, scraping away dirt on a rock, and moving a camera into position on the rock for a closer look. No one would ascribe such an artifact to natural causes. No one would report back to the base that the device emerged out of the soil and rocks on the planet. The whole SETI enterprise relies on the ability to distinguish intelligent causes from the forces of nature.

Uncluttered by Biology

I like this question because it is not only easy to visualize, but it arrives at the design inference without any knowledge of the designer. It also puts the context on a world (Mars) uncluttered by Earth’s complex biology. It focuses on the distinguishing marks of an intelligent cause against the background of natural forces like wind, erosion, temperature, static electricity, or meteorites. On Earth, atheists will argue that natural selection allowed humans to evolve sociality and technology to improve their chances of survival. Those distractions are removed when considering machinery on a distant planet. It would be a stretch for any intelligent observer — human or otherwise — to conclude that the designers of Curiosity or Perseverance were trying to survive by natural selection by making such devices.

That human artifacts are profoundly “other” than natural phenomena was emphasized in a comment by Justin A. Holcomb and four colleagues in Nature Astronomy last month. Their title, “The emerging archaeological record of Mars,” points out the novelty of this research field. Since 1971, dozens of artifacts containing complex specified information have been distinguishing themselves from natural phenomena on Mars.

Humans first reached Mars in 1971, initiating the record of human activity on the Red Planet. As planetary scientists plan for future planetary protection procedures for Mars, they should also consider the developing archaeological record on one of our nearest planets

In 2012, I addressed archaeology as an instance of Intelligent Design in Action. Prior to the space age, archaeology was restricted to our home planet, except in science fiction (e.g., the mysterious monolith in Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey). Mars archaeology is recent enough for us to know the designers well — many of whom are still living — and to be in possession of documents detailing the designs and purposes of the artifacts. In the distant future this may not be the case.

Mars is not the only “new” archaeological site. Evidence of human-designed machinery can also be found on the Moon, Venus, and Titan. Numerous additional craft are orbiting some planets, and some are escaping the solar system. Mars archaeology is thus a subdomain of space archaeology.

Artifacts and Features

Holcomb’s article distinguishes “artefacts” from “features” as marks of human impact. The latter, though indirect, indicate the tell-tale activity of human minds

From an archaeological perspective, this process is recorded by cultural resources (artefacts) deposited across our Solar System as material objects in orbit, interstellar space and on the surfaces of celestial bodies, including satellites, human-controlled probes, landers, rovers and helicopters. This also includes the non-portableartefacts or ichnological (trace fossil) record of human and rover movement in the form of sampling locations, footprints and trackways, or what archaeologists refer to as features.

Indeed, “features” can provide Earthbound archaeologists with suggestions about the purposes of the human designers, as explained in the 2012 article. Future archaeologists without access to NASA documentation could infer some facts about the intentions built into a Mars rover without even seeing the hardware, just by the evidence of sampling locations and trackways. Even crash sites could provide clues. I’ve wondered if remote sensing at Saturn might someday be able to detect the melted remains of the Cassini spacecraft by finding unexpected elements in the atmosphere. That’s unlikely, given the vast size of Saturn. But if not, it would illustrate that it is far easier to destroy complex specified information than to create it. This is a concern of the authors of this article.

Holcomb and colleagues focus on the need to preserve artifacts documenting important “firsts” in space, such as the Apollo 11 landing site at Tranquility Base. If future missions were careless, some of the sites could be permanently damaged or lost. Space weathering and random impacts will also degrade or obliterate them.

These examples are extraordinary firsts for humankind. As we move forward during the next era of human exploration, we hope that planetary scientists, archaeologists and geologists can work together to ensure sustainable and ethical human colonization, that protects cultural resources in tandem with future space exploration. One way to achieve this goal is to initiate discussions now about the cultural material left behind during humanity’s initial phases of migration into our Solar System. Those discussions could begin by considering and acknowledging the emerging archaeological record on Mars.

Evidence of Human Exceptionalism

Why is the preservation of “cultural material” important to us? Because it is an indicator of human exceptionalism. Some animals are alleged to have evolved sociality and culture for the good of the group. These include whale songs, ape grooming, tool use by crows, honeybee dances, mammal play, and the like. All these, however, can be directly tied to physical needs for food, reproduction, and survival. Elon Musk believes humanity must expand to other locations to survive as a species, but that view was not foremost on the minds of engineers who designed Mars rovers. Humans do not need to write symphonies, create paintings and sculptures, or engineer spacecraft to explore distant planets. Our curiosity drives us to learn. We want to know what another planet is like. No other primate or animal appears to have the desire or power to embark on such fantastic adventures of exploration. And only humans ponder their own origin and destiny.

As of 2022, researchers have estimated that around 22,000 pounds (9,979 kg) of human-discarded objects are on the Martian surface….

Some scientists have referred to this cultural material as ‘space trash’ or ‘galactic litter’, implying that it may have limited scientific value and could cause environmental problems and put future missions at risk. They have raised concerns about the potential effects of chemical and material pollution that these objects may have on celestial bodies and ecosystems. We agree that these concerns warrant further investigation, but we argue that the objects need to be evaluated as important cultural heritage in need of protection because they record the legacy of space exploration by our species

The same sense of value drives archaeologists to carefully sift through artifacts in remote places on Earth. We want to know, understand, and protect the record of explorations and accomplishments by our species. Our hands, big brains, and gift of language set us apart from all other life on our home planet. Many of us would add to that list of exceptional traits an immaterial soul that cares about truth and values. Archaeology, whether here or out in space, is a product of human uniqueness that exemplifies intelligent design: the ability to design methods to detect design and to distinguish intelligent causes from natural causes. Mind matters; that’s why Mars archaeology is something new under the sun in one sense, but as old as Adam in another

Yet more on the decreasing simplicity of the beginning.

 

On getting design detection down to a science.

 

ID is a science driver?

 

Yet more on the real world's anti Darwinian bias

 

Continuing to just say no to engineerless engineering.

 

On the magic kingdom and Darwin

There is still no free lunch re: information.

 The Displacement Fallacy: Evolution’s Shell Game

William A Dembski

Author’s note: Conservation of information is a big result of the intelligent design literature, even if to date it hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves. It quantifies the amount of information needed to increase the probability of finding a needle in a haystack so that the needle can actually be found. The upshot of conservation of information is that the information needed to find a needle in a haystack in turn requires finding another needle in a haystack, implying there is no free lunch in search. I just wrote up a full account of conservation of information for the journal BIO-Complexity in a paper titled “The Law of Conservation of Information: Natural Processes Only Redistribute Existing Information.” What follows is a section from that paper on the displacement fallacy. This section is accessible and helps clarify the intuitions underlying conservation of information. 

The discovery of conservation of information didn’t start with proving a mathematical theorem. Rather, its discovery came from repeatedly noticing how efforts to account for the success of searches whose odds of success were seemingly hopeless always smuggled in information that wasn’t properly accounted for. One hole was filled, but only by digging another, and so a new hole now in turn needed to be explained. This failure of explanation became especially evident in the evolutionary literature. Darwinian approaches to biological evolution and evolutionary computing sought to explain the origin of information through some process that directly used or else mimicked natural selection. Yet rather than admit a fundamental gap in explanation, this literature simply invoked selection as a backstop to explain the origin of information, the backstop itself being exempt from further explanation.

The move to explain the origin of information by invoking some separate unexplained source of information, typically via a selection process, was so common in the evolutionary literature that it deserved its own name: displacement.1 Displacement became the tool of choice among evolutionary critics of intelligent design as they tried to invalidate the logic of the design inference, which inferred design for events both specified and improbable. Critics claimed that once natural selection came into play, it acted as a probability amplifier that removed any seeming improbability that might otherwise have made for a valid design inference. Accordingly, critics argued that seeming products of design could be explained away through evolutionary processes requiring no design.

Improbable Products

But this attempt to invalidate the design inference was too easy. Products can be designed, but also processes that build products can be designed (compare a Tesla automobile with a Tesla factory that builds Tesla automobiles — both are designed). The design inference makes sense of improbable products. Conservation of infor­mation, through the search for a search, makes sense of improbable processes that output probable products. Making sense of displacement was a crucial step in developing a precise mathematical treatment of conservation of information.

Whereas conservation of information was a mathematically confirmed theoretical finding, displacement was an inductively confirmed empirical finding. Over and over information supposedly created from scratch was surreptitiously introduced under the pretense that the information was already adequately explained when in fact it was merely presupposed. In effect, displacement became a special case of the fallacy of begging the question, obscuring rather than illuminating evolutionary processes.

One of the more brazen examples of displacement that I personally encountered occurred in a 2001 interview with Darwinist Eugenie Scott on Peter Robinson’s program Uncommon Knowledge. Scott and I were discussing evolution and intelligent design when Robinson raised the trope about a monkey, given enough time, producing the works of Shakespeare by randomly typing at a typewriter. Scott responded by saying that contrary to this example, where the monkey’s typing merely produces random variation, natural selection is like a technician who stands behind the monkey and whites out every mistake the monkey makes in typing Shakespeare.3 But where exactly do you find a technician who knows enough about the works of Shakespeare to white out mistakes in the typing of Shakespeare? What are the qualifications of this technician? How does the technician know what to erase? Scott never said. That’s displacement: The monkey’s success at typing Shakespeare is explained, but at the cost of leaving the technician who corrects the monkey’s typing unexplained.

About That Weasel

In his book The Blind Watchmaker, Richard Dawkins claims to show how natural selection can create information by appealing to his well-known METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL computer simulation.4 Pure random sampling of the 28 letters and spaces in this target phrase would have a probability of only 1 in 27^28, or roughly 1 in 10^40, of achieving it. In evolving METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL, Dawkins’s simulation was able to overcome this improbability by carefully choosing a fitness landscape to assign higher fitness to character sequences that have more corresponding letters in common with the target phrase.

Essentially, in place of pure randomness, Dawkins substituted a hill-climbing algorithm with exactly one peak and with a clear way to improve fitness at any place away from the peak (smooth and increasing gradients all the way!).5 But where did this fitness landscape come from? Such a fitness landscape exists for any possible target phrase whatsoever, and not just for METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL. Dawkins explains the evolution of METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL in terms of a fitness landscape that with high probability allows for the evolution to this target phrase. Yet he leaves the fitness landscape itself unexplained.6 In so doing, he commits a displacement fallacy.7

Displacement is also evident in the work of Dawkins as he shifts from computer simulations to biological evolution. Indeed, his entire book Climbing Mount Improbable can be viewed as an exercise in displacement as applied to biology.8 In that book, Dawkins compares the emergence of biological complexity to climbing a mountain. He calls it Mount Improbable because if you had to get all the way to the top in one fell swoop (that is, achieve a massive increase in biological complexity all at once), it would be highly improbable. But does Mount Improbable have to be scaled in one leap? Darwinism purports to show how Mount Improbable can be scaled in small incremental steps. Thus, according to Dawkins, Mount Improbable always has a gradual serpentine path leading to the top that can be traversed in baby-steps.

But where is the verification for this claim? It could be that Mount Improbable is sheer on all sides and getting to the top via baby-steps is effectively impossible. Consequently, it is not enough to presuppose that a fitness-increasing sequence of baby steps always connects biological systems. Such a connection must be demonstrated, and to date it has not, as Michael Behe’s work on irreducible complexity shows.9 But even if such a connection could be demonstrated, what would this say about the conditions for the formation of Mount Improbable in the first place?

Mountains, after all, do not magically materialize — they have to be formed by some process of mountain formation. Of all the different ways Mount Improbable might have emerged, how many are sheer so that no gradual path to the summit exists? And how many do allow a gradual path to the summit? A Mount Improbable with gradual paths to the top may itself be improbable. Dawkins simply assumes that Mount Improbable must be such as to facilitate Darwinian evolution. But in so doing, he commits a displacement fallacy, presupposing what must be explained and justified, and thus illicitly turning a problem into its own solution.10

Examples of Displacement

In the evolutionary computing literature, examples of displacement more sophisticated than Dawkins’ WEASEL can readily be found. But the same question-begging displacement fallacy underlies all these examples. The most widely publicized instance of displacement in the evolutionary computing literature appeared in Nature back in 2003. Richard Lenski, Charles Ofria, Robert Pennock, and Christoph Adami had developed a computer simulation called Avida.11 They claimed that this simulation was able to create complex Boolean operators without any special input or knowledge. One of the co-authors, Pennock, then went further to claim that Avida decisively refuted Michael Behe’s work on irreducible complexity.12 And given that irreducible complexity is a linchpin of intelligent design, Pennock in effect claimed that Avida had also refuted intelligent design.

But in fact, as Winston Ewert and George Montañez showed by tracking the information flow through Avida, the amount of information outputted through newly formed complex Boolean operators never exceeded the amount of information inputted. In fact, Avida was jury-rigged to produce the very complexity it was claiming to produce for free: Avida rewarded ever-increasing complexity simply for complexity’s sake and not for independent functional reasons. Other examples like Thomas Schneider’s ev, Thomas Ray’s Tierra, and David Thomas’s Steiner tree search algorithm all followed the same pattern.13 Ewert and Montañez were able to show precisely where the information supposedly created from scratch in these algorithms had in fact been embedded from the outset.14 Displacement, as their research showed, is pervasive in this literature.

The empirical work of showing displacement for these computer simulations set the stage for the theoretical work on conservation of information. These simulations, and their consistent failure to explain the origin of information, prompted an investigation into the precise numerical relation between information inputted and information outputted. Showing displacement started out as a case-by-case effort to uncover where precisely information had been smuggled into a computer simulation. Once the mathematics of conservation of information was developed, however, the need to find exactly where the information was smuggled in was no longer so important, theory stepping in where observation fell short.

The Pigeonhole Principle

Theory guaranteed that the information was smuggled in even if the evolutionary simulations became so byzantine that it was hard to follow their precise information flow. By analogy, if you have a hundred and one letters that must go into a hundred mailboxes, the pigeonhole principle of mathematics guarantees that one of the mailboxes must have more than one letter.15 Checking this empirically could be arduous if not practically impossible because of all the many possible ways that these letters could fill the mailboxes. Theory in this case comes to the rescue, guaranteeing what observation alone cannot.

Displacement is a shell game. In a shell game, an operator places a small object, like a pea, under one of three cups and then rapidly shuffles the cups to confuse observers about the object’s location. Participants are invited to guess which cup hides the pea, but the game often relies on sleight of hand and misdirection to increase the likelihood that participants guess incorrectly. So long as the game is played fairly, the pea is under one cup and remains under one cup. It cannot magically materialize or dematerialize. The game can become more sophisticated by increasing the number of cups and by the operator moving the cups with greater speed and agility. But by carefully tracking the operator, it is always possible to determine where the pea started out and where it ended up. The pea here is information. Displacement says that it was always there. Conservation of information provides the underlying mathematics to demonstrate that it was indeed always there.

Notes

My first serious treatment of displacement occurred in Chapter 4 of William A. Dembski, No Free Lunch: Why Specified Complexity Cannot Be Purchased without Intelligence (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002).

For an account of natural selection as a probability amplifier as well as a refutation of trying to use it to overturn the logic of the design inference, see William A. Dembski and Winston Ewert, The Design Inference: Eliminating Chance Through Small Probabilities, 2nd ed. (Seattle: Discovery Institute Press, 2023), Chapter 7.

“Darwinism under the Microscope,” PBS television interview of William Dembski and Eugenie Scott by Peter Robinson for Uncommon Knowledge, filmed December 7, 2001, on the Stanford campus, with video available online at https://www.hoover.org/research/darwin-under-microscope-questioning‌-darwinism (last accessed December 9, 2024).

Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design (New York: Norton, 1986), 45–50.

For hill climbing, see Sheldon H. Jacobson and Enver Yücesan, “Analyzing the Performance of Generalized Hill Climbing Algorithms,” Journal of Heuristics 10, no. 4 (2004): 387–405.

As Stuart Kauffman puts it, “Life uses mutation, recombination, and selection. These search procedures seem to be working quite well. Your typical bat or butterfly has managed to get itself evolved and seems a rather impressive entity… Mutation, recombi­nation, and selection only work well on certain kinds of fitness landscapes, yet most organisms are sexual, and hence use recombination, and all organisms use mutation as a search mechanism… Where did these well-wrought fitness landscapes come from, such that evolution manages to produce the fancy stuff around us?” Kauffman answers his own question: “No one knows.” Stuart A. Kauffman, Investigations (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 18–19.

For a counter-simulation of the Dawkins WEASEL simulation, see “Weasel Ware — Evolutionary Simulation,” by Winston Ewert and George Montañez at https://www.evoinfo.org/weasel.html. This counter-simulation shows how sensitive Dawkins’ simulation is to initial inputs and how easily it is set adrift when the fitness landscape is not as neat and tidy as Dawkins’s simulation demands.

Richard Dawkins, Climbing Mount Improbable (New York: Norton, 1996).

See Michael J. Behe, A Mousetrap for Darwin (Seattle: Discovery Institute Press, 2020).

The three previous paragraphs are drawn in part from a lecture I gave at Oxford University’s Ian Ramsey Centre on October 30, 2003 titled “Gauging Intelligent Design’s Success.” Though on faculty at Oxford, Richard Dawkins was not in attendance. The lecture is available at https://billdembski.com/documents/2003.11.Gauging_IDs_Success.pdf (last accessed December 13, 2024).

Richard E. Lenski, Charles Ofria, Robert T. Pennock, and Christoph Adami, “The Evolutionary Origin of Complex Features,” Nature 423 (May 8, 2003): 139–144.

Pennock, citing the 2003 Nature article, claims that “colleagues and I have experimentally demonstrated the evolution of an IC system.” IC here is “irreducibly complex.” Quoted from Robert T. Pennock, “DNA by Design? Stephen Meyer and the Return of the God Hypothesis,” in W.A. Dembski and M. Ruse, eds., Debating Design: From Darwin to DNA, 130–148 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 141.

For ev, see Thomas D. Schneider, “Evolution of Biological Information,” Nucleic Acids Research 28, no. 14 (2000): 2794–2799. For the best place to understand Tierra, see Thomas Ray’s website https://tomray.me/tierra. For a search algorithm purported to solve the Steiner Tree problem without the need for full prior information, see Dave Thomas, “War of the Weasels: An Evolutionary Algorithm Beats Intelligent Design,” Skeptical Inquirer 34, no. 3 (2010): 42–46 and then a follow-up by Thomas titled “Target? TARGET? We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Target!” https://pandasthumb.org/archives/2006/07/target-target-w-1.html (last accessed December 10, 2024).

See the counter-simulations by Ewert and Montañez at EvoInfo.org: contra Avida, see their “Minivida – Dissection of Avida Digital Evolution” at https://www.evoinfo.org/minivida; contra ev, see their “Ev Ware – Evolutionary Simulation” at https://www.evoinfo.org/ev (last accessed December 13, 2024). See also Robert J. Marks II, William A. Dembski, and Winston Ewert, Introduction to Evolutionary Informatics (Singapore: World Scientific Publishing, 2017), where we critique all these evolutionary simulations that purport to create novel information that exceeds their prior informational input. Dave Thomas is critiqued in this book on pages 119–120 and 241–242.

Martin Aigner, Discrete Mathematics, trans. D. Kramer (Providence, RI: American Mathematical Society, 2007), 30.

An infinite multiverse makes the mystical/magical inevitable?

 

The rejection of ID= The deification of physics?

 To Reject Intelligent Design, Here’s What You Have to Believe

Granville Sewell

While intelligent design (ID) is a term which is becoming more familiar in our culture it is safe to say most people still misunderstand it. Since critics often misrepresent ID, and paint ID advocates as a fanatical fringe group, it is important to understand what intelligent design is, and what it is not.

Some Form of ID

Until Charles Darwin, almost everyone everywhere believed in some form of intelligent design (the majority still do): not just Christians, Jews, and Muslims, but almost every tribesman in every remote corner of the world drew the obvious conclusion from observing animals and plants that there must have been a mind behind the creation of living things.

Darwin thought he could explain all of this apparent design through natural selection of random variations. In spite of the fact that there is no evidence that natural selection can explain anything other than very minor adaptations, his theory has gained widespread popularity in the scientific world, simply because no one can come up with a more plausible theory to explain the development of life, other than intelligent design, which is dismissed by most scientists as “unscientific.”

But, in recent years, as scientific research has continually revealed the astonishing dimensions of the complexity of life, especially at the microscopic level, support for Darwin’s theory has continued to weaken, and since the publication in 1996 of Darwin’s Black Box by Lehigh University biochemist Michael Behe, a growing minority of scientists have concluded, with Behe, that there is no possible explanation for the complexity of life without intelligent design. If scientists can spend time and money developing tools and algorithms to detect dubious signs of extraterrestrial intelligence in weak signals from outer space, why are they required to ignore the evidence in living cells where design practically leaps out at you?

What Intelligent Design Scientists Believe

But what exactly, do these “ID scientists” believe? There is no general agreement among advocates of intelligent design as to exactly where, when, or how design was manifested in the history of life. Most accept the standard timeline for the beginning of the universe, of life, and of the major animal groups.

Some accept common descent, although most recognize that this “descent” was not really gradual. (In fact, most of the animal phyla appear quite suddenly in the fossil record about 530 million years ago in the “Cambrian explosion,” as documented in Stephen Meyer’s 2013 book Darwin’s Doubt.) Probably all reject natural selection as an adequate explanation for the development of life, but so do many other scientists who are not ID proponents. So what exactly do you have to believe to be an ID proponent?

What You Have to Believe

Perhaps the best way to answer this question is to state clearly what you have to believe to not believe in intelligent design. Peter Urone, in his 2001 physics text College Physics, writes, “One of the most remarkable simplifications in physics is that only four distinct forces account for all known phenomena.” The prevailing view in science today is that physics explains all of chemistry, chemistry explains all of biology, and biology completely explains the human mind; thus, physics alone explains the human mind and all it does.

This is what you have to believe to not believe in intelligent design, that the origin and evolution of life, and the evolution of human consciousness and intelligence, are due entirely to a few unintelligent forces of physics. The new Video A Mathematician’s View of Evolution dramatizes this through reductio ad absurdum, pointing out that if you don’t believe there was intelligence involved in the origin or evolution of life, or in the origin of human intelligence, you essentially believe that a few unintelligent forces of physics alone could have rearranged the fundamental particles of physics on Earth into computers and science texts and jet airplanes.

Contrary to popular belief, to be an ID proponent you do not have to believe that all species were created simultaneously a few thousand years ago, or that humans are unrelated to earlier primates, or that natural selection cannot cause bacteria to develop a resistance to antibiotics. If you believe that a few fundamental, unintelligent forces of physics alone could have rearranged the basic particles of physics into Apple iPhones, you are probably not an ID proponent, even if you believe in God.

Welcome Aboard!

But if you believe there must have been more than unintelligent forces at work somewhere, somehow, in the origin of life and the development of intelligent humans: congratulations, you are one of us after all!

Furthermore, the evidence uncovered in the last half century has forced many scientists who insist that unintelligent laws of nature explain everything to accept that design is required to explain the spectacular fine-tuning for life of the laws and constants of physics themselves.

These scientists are sometimes considered to be intelligent design supporters as well. One of the three discoveries discussed in Stephen Meyer’s 2021 book Return of the God Hypothesis: Three Scientific Discoveries that Reveal the Mind Behind the Universe is this well-documented fine-tuning. Notice the long list of distinguished scientists who have formally endorsed the book, including physics Nobel Prize-winner Brian Josephson who writes, “This book makes it clear that far from being an unscientific claim, intelligent design is valid science.”

Yet more on why the multiverse fails at explaining away the finetuning argument for design.

 

Darwinists invite us to come see Darwinism for our selves.

 “Evolution in Real Time” (Yeah, Right)

Daniel Witt

The difficulty about denying evolution is that it’s happening all around us. I mean, just look — every few weeks or so another breathless press release or news article announces that scientists have observed “evolution in real time.” 

Although these reports do not often mention that there is a debate over evolution, they serve an important rhetorical purpose in that debate. After all, the biggest challenge to Darwin’s theory is that it might not work in theory — the math does not seem to add up. One way to deal with the theoretical problems is to simply sidestep them altogether: “Maybe it doesn’t seem that evolution should work — but look, it’s happening right before your eyes!”

And it’s true — countless experiments do show evolution in real time. The trouble is, “evolution” itself isn’t really the thing in question in the evolution debate. Everyone who knows anything about biology (and most who don’t) believes in evolution in some sense of the word. After all, Darwin was not the first to notice that variations exist within populations, or that children can be different from their parents, or that some of these variations confer survival benefits while others are detrimental. The big question is whether these factors alone can drive the construction of novel complex systems of interrelated parts, such as characterize biological life. 

With that in mind, let’s take a look at a few of the most recent “evolution in real time” proclamations, and see whether any of them actually bears relevance to the evolution debate.

1. Evolving to Be Normal (in the Mountains) 

A recent case of “evolution in action” comes from a Study of human (for now!) women in Tibet. A news article dramatically proclaims: “Humans Are Evolving Right Before Our Eyes on the Tibetan Plateau.”

So, what are the new features of these evolving humans? (Are they on their way to becoming an alien species?)

Well, according to the study, Tibetan women are able to deal with high altitudes better than women of other ethnic backgrounds, on average, because they have … unusually normal hemoglobin levels. Excessive hemoglobin makes the blood more viscous, impeding circulation, and no women in the study had excessively high hemoglobin. In other words, there was loss of variety in the population, as traits that caused problems were eliminated by the harsh environment. The study also found that Tibetan women with traits favoring circulation (a wide left ventricle in the heart, etc.) were able to have more live births than Tibetan women with poorer circulation.

Basically, the study shows that harsh environments can weed out the unfit — which isn’t exactly a controversial idea. The study does indeed prove “evolution,” in the broad sense of the word. But it does not prove anything that is currently being debated. 

2. Staying the Same — In the Blink of an Eye! 

According to a news report from October 2024, the recently published results of a 30-year-long study demonstrate “evolution happening in real time” in snail populations. The researchers introduced crab snails to an environment inhabited by wave snails, and watched as the poorly adapted crab snails evolved over generations to look more like the well-adapted wave snails. The article informs us: 

Normally, scientists have believed that it takes countless centuries for evolution to produce major changes in any species. However, a new study has witnessed this amazing process unfold in a figurate blink of an eye.

The rhetoric here should be obvious: If evolution can happen in just 30 years, why should we doubt that it can happen over millions of years? 

And what kind of amazing new features is evolution able to conjure up in the “blink of an eye”? 

Well, features that were already there:

What makes this study particularly fascinating is that the snails didn’t evolve these new traits from scratch. Instead, they tapped into genetic diversity that was already present in their population, albeit at low levels.

and possibly traits that slipped in through some hanky-panky with the locals

…This existing genetic variation, combined with possible gene flow from neighboring wave snail populations, allowed for rapid adaptation to the new environment.

3. The Importance of Already Existing

A similar example of “evolution in real time” comes from 2020 press release from the University of Vienna, announcing that Parachlamydia bacteria can adapt to their host to become more infectious.

So how do they adapt? Well, according to the Study, the population adapted largely by means of some genes that were already there getting passed on more than some other genes that were also already there: “standing genetic variation in the initial ancestral population — the founder Chlamydia and amoeba populations from which both regimes were initiated — appeared to be particularly important for the observed evolutionary changes.” 

I would submit that that is to be expected. 

4. “Evolving” into a Baby 

Of course, I am not denying that novel mutations happens. Sometimes, by random error, a truly novel genetic sequence appears, and sometimes the change is adaptive. However, complex systems don’t get built this way. 

So, a 2016 Article in Science boasted: 

Many people think evolution requires thousands or millions of years, but biologists know it can happen fast. Now, thanks to the genomic revolution, researchers can actually track the population-level genetic shifts that mark evolution in action — and they’re doing this in humans.

But you can probably guess the type of changes that are measured. Lactose tolerance, blue eyes, blond hair, etc. These are minor variations within complex systems, not the construction of complex systems. 

An especially ironic example is lactose tolerance. Babies consume lots of lactose in breastmilk, but human bodies are programmed to turn off that function after we stop nursing — or, that was the case until some humans started the practice of eternally nursing their bovine neighbors. Then (the classic story goes) “lactase persistence” was selected for, and the lactose processing facilities were never shut down. Michael Behe has compared this adaptation to “a small screw falling out of your car that renders the emergency brake inoperable.” The appearance of lactose tolerance doesn’t show evolution in action making any complex, new thing — it shows us becoming perpetual babies when we learned that some big, dumb animals would let us nurse them. 

Whenever you hear about evolution in action, you can be sure that it wasn’t caught in action building a novel structure — at best, it was seen causing a neutral tweak to an existing structure, and at worst it was caught jettisoning sophisticated equipment for short term benefits. 

5. Proving “Evolution” to the Yokels

A 2019 Article in The Atlantic tells the story of evolutionary biologist Rowan Barrett’s adventures capturing “evolution in real time” (as the title of the article puts it) in rural Nebraska. It’s a nice fish-out-of-water story:

Roughly a third of Nebraskans believe that living things were created as they are now. Another third think that evolution occurs, but through God’s design. Given those beliefs, I asked Barrett whether he ever encountered resistance when talking to his new friends about his work. “In the early trips, when first meeting people, I would talk generally about genetics and natural selection. I wouldn’t use the E word,” he said. “It’s one of those trigger words where, in certain parts of the U.S., people just stop listening to you.”

But he added that all of them comprehended the essence of evolution, even if they explicitly rejected it. “A lot of them are farmers, who have a very good understanding of inheritance, and genetics,” he said. “A lot of them hunt, so they’ve got the survival-of-the-fittest thing down. They understand variation, and they know that a slow deer is easier to shoot than a fast deer. Inheritance, variation, fitness … all the pieces are there.”

“I’d never push too hard. I never explicitly said, ‘Do you believe in it or not? Have I now convinced you?’” he told me. “I just had some long conversations over beers at BBQs and high-school football games. And I found that in subsequent trips, I could use the E word and not get the flinch.”

Yes, all the pieces are there…but what do they add up to? Barrett’s study is about changes in things like mouse fur color, which should be no cause for alarm even for the most science-hating creationist in Nebraska. A mutation that changes the color of a mouse’s fur is one thing, but building a mouse by compiling such mutations is another.

Yes, all the pieces are there…but what do they add up to? Barrett’s study is about changes in things like mouse fur color, which should be no cause for alarm even for the most science-hating creationist in Nebraska. A mutation that changes the color of a mouse’s fur is one thing, but building a mouse by compiling such mutations is another.

6. The Same, but Bigger 

Granted, some evolutionary changes are more dramatic — but only superficially so. 

For example, an April 2024 article reports that Dr. Tyrone Lavery at University of Melbourne has observed “evolutionary phenomenon happening rapidly” — lineages of large bats evolving from smaller bats multiple times across the Solomon Islands. 

However, as Lavery himself notes, “Although they are very different sizes, the bats’ DNA is very similar.” 

Some traits are dramatic, but don’t indicate an increase in complexity or a fundamentally new structure. And again (once again) fundamentally new complex structures are the main thing in question.  

7. How to Put Things in a Pile — Without God

Another report, from the University of Konstanz in 2021, claims that researchers found the genetic imprint of “the surprisingly rapid transition from unicellular to multicellular life.” The rapidity is less surprising, however, after the authors clarify that what was observed was actually evidence of the “first step” towards multicellularity. That first step? Growing in a clump. It turns out there is a mutation in single-celled algae that causes them to clump together. 

This is like putting a thousand identical screws in a pile, and saying you’ve accomplished the first step to making a car. That may be true, but the later steps — melting the bolts downs and forging them into more specialized pieces and then assembling them properly — are probably going to be more difficult. 

8. Even Darwin Underestimated the Power of Evolution! 

A Guardian article from this past July is titled “Biologist Rosemary Grant: ‘Evolution happens much quicker than Darwin thought’.” 

Of course, the implication is that, contrary to the claim that Darwin overestimated the power of evolution, he actually underestimated it. But what evidence is Dr. Grant referring to? Well, the average beak and body size of a finch changed as the result of drought, quicker than Darwin estimated. Again, this is proof that evolution is real — but not that it has creative powers.

 9. A Whole New… “Species

A related claim made about the finches in the drought is that that they evolved into a new species. This is true, but it may convey the wrong idea. When we talk about the origin of “species” it sounds like we’re referring to the creation of entirely different kinds of creature, with novel body plans, organs, and so forth. However, the most common definition of species, the “biological species concept,” is technical and much broader. Under this definition, any two populations of organisms are considered separate species if they are reproductively isolated; i.e., can’t or won’t reproduce with each other. 

In the case of the finches, the drought caused their average beak size to increase from generation to generation, since birds that could crush harder seeds were more likely to survive the drought — and this changed their mating call, eventually making it unrecognizable to non-drought-influenced finches. Thus they won’t mate with each other, and therefore, based on the biological species concept, they are different species. 

According to this definition of species, Democrats and Republicans are pretty close to achieving speciation. But that’s hardly an impressive evolutionary feat.   

 10. “Evolution” by U-Haul 

Yet another article announces that a sociological study has found that public attention towards the lionfish (pictured at the top) “is aiding in monitoring its evolution nearly in real time.” 

To be exact, it is the range of the lionfish that is evolving — they are migrating to different waters. 

(And that probably takes the cake for least impressive example of “evolution in real time.”)

11.Wait, There’s More!

They just keep coming. 

Mere hours ago (as of this writing) Georgia Tech put out a research press release announcing “some of the clearest evidence to date of evolution in action.” 

The study does indeed show evolution in action. The researchers were observing a species of anole lizards in the wild over the course of several years, when, fortuitously (for the researchers, not the anoles), another species of anole invaded. That meant that the scientists were able to see whether the presence of new competition changed the native species. 

And sure enough, it did. The original anoles were driven from their preferred perch locations in the trees, and had to spend more time on the ground. The population size plummeted, and the anoles that had longer legs and were therefore better at running on the flat ground were more likely to survive. As the researchers predicted, after a few years the average leg length in the population was somewhat longer than the average leg length before the invasion. The short-limbed losers had been weeded out by natural selection.

I find this interesting, from an ecological perspective. But, once again, it does not add anything new to the debate about evolution. Nobody doubts that natural selection can change a population. What biologists like Michael Behe doubt is that such selective pressure has limitless potential, to the point of even constructing whole new organs and body plans. That’s where the mathematical difficulties seems to show up: if a new bodily feature requires foresight to construct (because the adaptive function only appears after multiple requisite feature are in place and working in unison), then “evolution by means of national selection and random variation” would be no better at constructing it than pure “random variation” would be. 

The anole study, while interesting, has nothing to offer regarding that problem. 

If anything, it fits the predictions of the opposing camp. The researchers write that after they observed initial change, they expected to see leg length continue to increase. Yet, so far, it hasn’t. It seems that the anole evolution has hit a bump in the road. 

Perhaps, as the researchers are currently predicting, leg length will resume its increase after a few more years. Be that that as it may, I am making the prediction that however long the anoles’ legs become, they will never turn into something more sophisticated than legs. 

I am confident in this prediction, because, in spite of all the times evolution has been caught “in action,” no experiment or observation has ever falsified Behe’s key prediction: because natural selection lacks foresight and is not a true designer, it invariably runs out of power before it can construct anything new.  

In Conclusion

So, what is the verdict? 

As we established, for an observation to constitute a meaningful contribution to the evolution debate, it needs to show evolution’s constructive power, because that is the aspect of evolution that is under debate. Yet, consistently, the observations don’t show that. Instead, they fall into three categories: observations of (1) traits that were already present in the population, (2) traits that were already present in the genome, but were unexpressed, and (3) genuine novelties which, however, did not increase the design sophistication of the organism. 

Notes

For example, molecular biologist Michael Behe has (in)famously pointed out that although Darwin’s mechanism of random variation and natural selection can explain a lot, it has trouble explaining exactly what most needs explaining: the kind of intricately complex structures that characterize life. These structures need many components carefully in place before they can confer any survival advantage at all, so the mechanism of natural selection could not have done any good until the very end of the construction process. More recently, Behe has argued that natural selection should be expected to decrease complexity over time, on average, rather than increase it, because (a) loss and damage of sophisticated systems can sometimes confer a survival advantage, and (b) loss and destruction is always vastly more probably than construction.

More on why the multiverse is no counter to the design inference.

 

The multiverse : just amother failed god?

 

More OoL science vs. Design denial.

 The Cell Division Challenge to Eukaryogenesis — And to Evolution

Jonathan McLatchie

In a previous Article, I discussed the irreducible complexity of the eukaryotic cell division machinery. What makes the origins of the eukaryotic cell cycle particularly resistant to evolutionary explanations is that a wide gulf exists between the mechanism of cell division by eukaryotes and that employed by prokaryotic cells — both in terms of the protein components involved, as well as the underlying logic. There is essentially nothing in common between the two systems. As I noted in my paper,

The invagination of the bacterial cell inner membrane is mediated by FtsZ and the other proteins that together comprise the divisome. In eukaryotic cells, by contrast, a contractile ring forms from actin filaments and myosin motor proteins, which pinches the cell’s membrane to form two daughter cells. The mechanisms of segregating DNA in prokaryotes are also significantly different from the manner of segregating genetic material in eukaryotes. During eukaryotic mitosis…the cell’s replicated DNA condenses into distinct chromosomes. These chromosomes are then equally divided and segregated into two daughter cells through a process guided by the spindle apparatus, ensuring each cell receives a complete and identical set of genetic information. The underlying apparatus of these processes, therefore, are quite distinct between prokaryotes and eukaryotes.

Table 1 in the paper (pages 9-10) highlights important differences in the mode of cell division between these two systems.

Bacterial Cell Division Is Irreducibly Complex

For a survey of the mechanisms involved in bacterial cell division, I refer readers to two articles I previously published at Evolution News — Here and Here. Various features of the prokaryotic cell division machinery, much like eukaryotic cell division, exhibit irreducible complexity. For example, in gram-negative organisms, a minimum of ten proteins (FtsA, B, I, K, L, N, Q, W, Z and ZipA) are indispensable for successful division, and therefore have been suggested as potential targets of antibiotic drugs.1,2,3 For economy of space, I refer readers to my previous articles on this for a more detailed discussion of the irreducible complexity of the prokaryotic cell division machinery.

LECA Possessed Modern-Like Cell Cycle Complexity

Phylostratigraphic analysis has revealed that most of the components found in the modern eukaryotic cell cycle were already present in the last eukaryotic common ancestor (LECA). For example, one study revealed that a minimum of 24 of 37 known subunits, co-activators and direct / indirect substrates of the APC/C were present in LECA.4 A similar analysis was carried out on the components of the mitotic checkpoint and their associated functional domains and motifs. They concluded that “most checkpoint components are ancient and were likely present in the last eukaryotic common ancestor.”5 Another study likewise confirmed that the dynactin complex (the activator of cytoplasmic dynein, which is crucial for mitosis) is also a very ancient complex and likely all of its subunits were found in LECA.6 A yet further study, examining ninety different eukaryotic lineages, inferred the evolutionary histories of the proteins involved in the kinetochore network using a method known as Dollo parsimony (which assumes no more than one invention of a protein and infers subsequent losses of that protein based on maximum parsimony).7 They determined that 49 out of 70 proteins were found in LECA.

Given that LECA appears to have possessed most of the cell cycle components, it raises the question of where those components arose from — particularly since there exists such a radical disparity between the mechanisms of cell division in eukaryotes and prokaryotes. As stated previously, there is virtually nothing in common — either in terms of the protein components or underlying logic.

The Eukaryotic Cell Cycle Components Lack Prokaryotic Homologues

In my recent Paper , I sought to determine, using BLAST and other bioinformatics techniques, the extent to which one can identify remote homologues of the eukaryotic cell cycle components among prokaryotes8,9 — in particular, among the Asgard archaea, an archaeal superphylum believed to represent the closest living relatives to eukaryotes.10The result was that, for the vast majority of eukaryotic cell cycle components, no homologues could be identified among prokaryotes, including among the Asgard archaea. The figure below (figure 2 from my paper) shows my findings for those components associated with the anaphase promoting complex / cyclosome (APC/C) and its direct/indirect targets, the mitotic checkpoint, and the kinetochore network (all of which have been inferred, through phylostratigraphic analysis, to have been present in LECA).

As shown in the figure, a vast majority of the eukaryotic cell cycle proteins lack homologues. In those cases where homology could be identified, in most instances only part of the protein exhibited homology (e.g. the kinase domain of Aurora kinase is obviously homologous to other kinases).

The Challenge to Evolution

As I note in my paper, 

These results support the hypothesis that the components involved in eukaryotic cell division are substantially de novo eukaryotic innovations that arose sometime after the split with the archaeal lineages. There seems to be no prima facie evidence that the highly distinct cell replication machinery of these two systems are related through descent with modification. The fact that the majority of the components have also been inferred from phylostratigraphic analysis to have been present in LECA (estimated to have lived 1.1 to 2.3 billion years ago) suggests that all eukaryotic proteins associated with cell division came to exist sometime after the eukaryotic split with the archaea but before LECA.11

Moreover

In the window of time available for the origin of eukaryotic cell division control, multiple proteins not only need to evolve into their specifically crafted structures for the purpose of mediating the cell cycle, but they would need to replace the bacterial cell division proteins as well as be assembled into a highly coordinated system — all while maintaining the integrity of the cell division and DNA segregation process.12

Such a transition seems to be particularly implausible given the irreducible complexity of both prokaryotic and eukaryotic systems. Not only would each of the prokaryotic cell division components need to be replaced, but most of the proteins with which they are replaced would need to arise de novo. Even those few proteins that do have homologues in prokaryotes would need to be repurposed, since they serve quite different tasks between the two systems. For example, in prokaryotes, FtsZ (a homologue of Tubulin) assembles to form the contractile ring that facilitates the bifurcation of the parent cell into two daughter cells, whereas its eukaryotic homologue Tubulin (the subunit of microtubules) plays an important role in chromosome segregation during mitosis.

A Cause with Foresight

If undirected processes are incapable of producing the complex machinery associated with mitotic division, is there any other cause that can? As I explain in my paper,

The transition from prokaryotes to eukaryotes is inextricably associated with the creation of new information in the form of genes necessary to code for the expression of the numerous associated proteins (most of which are absent in prokaryotes). Furthermore, the functions of those proteins must be tightly regulated and controlled through various checkpoint mechanisms. To make matters worse for the standard processes of evolutionary biology, the transition must occur through many small and steady incremental steps, each yielding some functional advantage while also retaining the integrity of the cell division apparatus. Yet, as we have seen, many of the necessary processes are irreducibly complex, meaning that many mutually co-dependent changes are needed before a fitness advantage could be realized.

We know from experience that intelligent agents are capable of rapidly introducing new information into a system in order to radically change its fundamental components into a new set of integrated parts that perform some function. Thus, in every other realm of experience, we would routinely attribute such engineered systems to intelligent agency — a cause that possesses foresight and which can plan for the future, visualize complex endpoints and consciously bring together everything needed to actualize a complex endpoint.

The radical disparity that exists between the eukaryotic and prokaryotic cell division machinery is extremely surprising given the standard evolutionary view of gradual, incremental evolution. On the other hand, it is far less surprising given a hypothesis of design. This data thus tends to confirm a teleological framework over an evolutionary one.

Notes

den Blaauwen T, Andreu JM, Monasterio O. (2014) Bacterial cell division proteins as antibiotic targets. Bioorg Chem. 55: 27-38.

Lock RL and Harry EJ. (2008) Cell-division inhibitors: new insights for future antibiotics. Nat Rev Drug Discov.7(4): 324-38.

den Blaauwen T, Andreu JM, Monasterio O. (2014) Bacterial cell division proteins as antibiotic targets. Bioorg Chem. 55:27-38.

Eme L., Trilles A., Moreira D. and Brochier-Armanet C. (2011). The phylogenomic analysis of the anaphase promoting complex and its targets points to complex and modern-like control of the cell cycle in the last common ancestor of eukaryotes. BMC Evolutionary Biology 11: 265. doi:10.1186/1471-2148-11-265

Vleugel M, Hoogendoom E, Snel B, Kops GJPL (2012). Evolution and Function of the Mitotic Checkpoint. Developmental Cell 23: 239-250. doi:10.1016/j.devcel.2012.06.013

Hammesfahr B, Kollmar M (2012). Evolution of the eukaryotic dynactin complex, the activator of cytoplasmic dynein. BMC Evolutionary Biology 12: 95. doi:10.1186/1471-2148-12-95

van Hoof JJE, Tromer E, van Wijk LM, Snel B, Kops GJPL (2017) Evolutionary dynamics of the kinetochore network in eukaryotes as revealed by comparative genomics. EMBO Reports 18(8): 1265-1472. doi:10.15252/embr.201744102

McLatchie J (2024) Phylogenetic Challenges to the Evolutionary Origin of the Eukaryotic Cell Cycle. BIO-Complexity 2024 (4):1–19 doi:10.5048/BIO-C.2024.4.

Zaremba-Niedzwiedzka K, Caceres EF, Saw JH, Bäckström D, Juzokaite L., et. al(2017) Asgard archaea illuminate the origin of eukaryotic cellular complexity. Nature 541(7637): 353-358. doi:10.1038/nature21031

Spang A, Saw JH, Jørgensen SL, Zaremba-Niedzwiedzka K, Martijn J, et. al(2015). Complex archaea that bridge the gap between prokaryotes and eukaryotes. Nature 521(7551): 173- 179. doi:10.1038/nature14447

McLatchie J (2024) Phylogenetic Challenges to the Evolutionary Origin of the Eukaryotic Cell Cycle. BIO-Complexity 2024 (4):1–19 doi:10.5048/BIO-C.2024.4.

Ibid.

Theism:the matrix of science?

 Sorry, Dr. Coyne: There Is No Religion-Science Conflict

Robert Schedinger

A new unpublished paper titled “Science and Religious Dogma” by Matías Cabello has caught the attention of Jerry Coyne, who blogged about it at Why Evolution Is True. Coyne has questions about the paper’s methodology, but he nevertheless likes the paper because it supports the religion and science conflict thesis with data. Cabello’s historical analysis seems to show that church dogma stifled science, but being freed from its influence opened up new ways of thinking, allowing science to flourish,

Coyne uses his commentary on Cabello’s paper to push his own dedication to the conflict thesis. In fact, he charges scholars like Ronald Numbers and Michael Ruse, who have adopted the no conflict hypothesis, with holding a “’woke’ point of view: it goes along with the virtue-flaunting idea that you can have your Jesus and Darwin too.” For Coyne, religion and science have always been and always will be in conflict. Further, he thinks they should be in conflict — religion and science are completely incompatible in Coyne’s worldview. Perhaps he could spend more time studying history. 

Epicycles and Equants

Not nearly enough attention has been paid to Copernicus’ justification for proposing his heliocentric model of the universe. Copernicus possessed no empirical data leading to the overthrow of the centuries-old Ptolemaic system. The latter still worked well for practical purposes. But to make it work, astronomers had to add ad hoc features like epicycles and equants. Over time, the model became messy and ham-handed. Copernicus reasoned that placing the sun at the center (in contrast to church doctrine) created a simpler and more elegant model. But why should the universe be simple and elegant? Because the God that Copernicus believed in as he affirmed in De Revolutionibus would never create the monstrosity that the Ptolemaic system had become.1 Copernicus was led by a religiously inspired esthetic sense to a correct understanding of the structure of the cosmos. No conflict between religion and science here.

Interestingly, this drive toward simplicity and elegance as a guide toward scientific truth has survived in modern physics in the search for a Grand Unified Theory or a Theory of Everything, even though this drive has been shorn of its original religious context. 

As another example, the 18th-century Scottish astronomer James Ferguson employed a religious argument to argue that stars are bodies like our sun that likely harbor their own planetary systems revolving around them. Ferguson wrote:

It is no wise probable that the Almighty, who always acts with infinite wisdom and does nothing in vain, should create so many glorious Suns, fit for so many important purposes, and place them at such distances from one another, without proper objects near enough to be benefitted by their influences. Whoever imagines they were created only to give a faint glimmering light to the inhabitants of this Globe, must have a very superficial knowledge of Astronomy, and a mean opinion of the Divine Wisdom.2

Ferguson certainly had no empirical evidence for the existence of exoplanets, but today we know that his religiously inspired insight led him to the correct understanding of the structure of the physical universe. Once again, no conflict between religion and science

Newton’s Religious Beliefs

In a passage of Cabello’s paper cited by Coyne, Cabello lets Issac Newton off the hook on the grounds that Newton had abandoned orthodox belief in the Trinity at a young age. His unorthodox religious beliefs may then have opened the way for his scientific accomplishments. But unorthodox religious beliefs are still religious beliefs, and they infused all aspects of Newton’s thinking. As he wrote to Richard Bentley:

I am forced to ascribe the design of the solar system to the counsel and contrivance of a voluntary Agent. The motions which the planets now have could not spring from any natural cause alone but were imprest by an intelligent Agent.3

Newton’s religious beliefs certainly did not hinder his scientific accomplishments. 

The House of Wisdom

Cabello’s paper deals only with the influence of European Christianity on science. But Coyne likes to talk about religion in general as being incompatible with science. Perhaps he should study the medieval Islamic Abbasid Empire where one of the great early flowerings of science and culture took place. Centered on the House of Wisdom in Baghdad, Muslim astronomers calculated the circumference of the earth to a value close to modern measurements. The great mathematician al-Khwarizmi (10th century) developed algebra (al-jibr in Arabic), and the Latinized form of his name gave us the familiar word “algorithm.” In optics, the law of refraction known as Snell’s Law was worked out centuries earlier by Ibn-Sahl. Many advancements in engineering were also made during this time, especially in hydraulics and irrigation systems enabling food production in arid climates. There was simply no conflict between Islamic religion and science in the medieval Islamic world. 

One gets the impression that Coyne is not really concerned with religion writ large and its relationship to science, but really with a particular type of religion — the conservative evangelical Christianity he identifies with those pesky advocates of creationism and intelligent design that he so despises. But even here, he is off base. Many conservative Christians are capable of producing good science as we see all the time in the ID community.

Jealous, Dr. Coyne?

I dare say that Michael Behe has had a far greater influence on the field of evolutionary biology than Jerry Coyne has. Behe has conceptually influenced the entire field by introducing the term irreducible complexity, an idea that even skeptics must now engage. Note the words of Jan Spitzer in the Journal of Molecular Evolution, discussing the origin of life: 

Since the subject of cellular emergence of life is unusually complicated (we avoid the term ‘complex’ because of its association with ‘biocomplexity’ or ‘irreducible complexity’), it is unlikely that any overall theory of life’s nature, emergence, and evolution can be fully formulated, quantified, and experimentally investigated.4

When biologists resist using a word like “complex” simply to avoid being associated with the ID movement, you know Behe has had a major influence on the field. I don’t know that Coyne can match this influence and today he has become mostly just a polemicist. 

Perhaps Coyne is just jealous of the scientific achievements of the ID community. I don’t really know. But at the very least, his fidelity to the conflict thesis withers under critical scrutiny. 

Notes

For more on this argument see, Bruce Wrightsman, “The Legitimation of Scientific Belief: Theory Justification by Copernicus” in Scientific Discovery: Case Studies edited by T. Nickles, (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1980), 51-66.

Quoted in Michael J. Crowe, “Astronomy and Religion (1780-1915): Four Case Studies Involving Ideas of Extraterrestrial Life,” Osiris 16 (2001): 212.

Quoted in Stephen Snobelen, “’God of gods, and Lord of lords:’ The Theology of Isaac Newton’s General Scholium to the Principia,” Osiris 16 (2001): 173.

Jan Spitzer, “Emergence of Life on Earth: A Physicochemical Jigsaw Puzzle,” Journal of Molecular Evolution 84 (2017): 2.