Outgrowing Asimov

Comments on a comment

Many thanks to 'kx' for his thoughtful comment on my article. He is one of my friends for whom I have a lot of respect. I should like to take time to comment upon his remarks. If anyone is mistaken, he is most definitely not of the creationist ken. He was just pointing out some shortcomings in my post.

"Human evolution has always been known to be a theory in crisis within the scientific community itself, largely due to lacking evidence." -kx

Unfortunately, whatever the anti-evolutionists would like you to believe, this is simply not true. There are 2 types of evidence for evolution--direct and indirect. The direct evidence is mostly for microevolution--changes in species over time. Experiments with fruit flies and other animals in the laboratory have proven microevolution. Even creationists themselves admit that microevolution is a fact.

Macroevolution (large scale changes above the taxonomic level of species), however, has evidence that is to be gathered mostly from inference from fossils and DNA. Because we cannot see it actually happening, it is termed indirect evidence. We examine the features of current species, their ancient ancestors, then theorize that if evolution were to hold true, we should find fossils with in-between features. So far the fossil record has been favourable to, if not damningly favourable to, evolution.

"You do say that whatever evidence we lack we will find- as much as a proponent for evolution, I am disturbed about that" -kx

It is faith I suppose, but again we have to be careful not to confuse the 2 different types of faith. This is much less the faith in the sense of "I believe I will go to heaven after I die", but more "I have seen the sun rise for the last 10,000 times, therefore I believe it will rise tomorrow". One thing that makes science different from religion is that it has to be consistent. Evolution has so much indirect and direct evidence that most of the scientific community accepts it as fact. When I said that we will find the evidence we lack today, tomorrow, it was much less a statement of blind faith than a belief that the Universe is consistent. Because evolution is a fact, whatever we dig up has to be consistent with that.

"I think the debate occurs because of a lack of agreement on the types of evidence that we would find or should find and there are worrying reports of selective acceptance of various findings and also the selective dismissal of those that do not fit the current theory" -kx

Precisely. But it is the creationists who keep shifting the goal posts. They ask for the missing link between birds and dinosaurs. We find the fossil of a reptile with feathers. They say, "Ah ha, but what about whales and land mammals?". We find an intermediate whale with clearly antropied limbs. They say, "Ah ha, you said mammals evolved from the sea, where's the evidence?". We find the aforementioned tetrapod. Every missing link that we find the creationists answer with a request for 2 more and so on ad nauseum.

I am hard pressed for any case of "selective dismissal" of evidence though, unless you are referring to the creationists.

"I too am confident that someday science will provide the answers, but perhaps not exactly the evidence we'd all expect or like to see." -kx

That is the beauty of it, no? We might not like nor expect what we find, but we have to deal with it. Richard Dawkins recounted an event during his undergraduate years when the pet theory of one of his professors was blown away by a visiting speaker. The professor got up, walked to the front of the room, shook the speaker's hand and said, "My dear sir, I congragulate you for having proven me wrong the last 15 years!"

"I'm always amazed at the ppl who ask for Intelligent Design to be taught in the classrooms. I wonder how religion can take ID being taught as an alternative theory to their children- that being the very nature of theories being that it is not necessarily true. I think ID should be left to the religious institutions, not schools." -kx

I agree. I have no problem with creation science (ugh!) being taught as theology. Trying to pass it of as a counterpart to evolution is plain silly, not to mention dangerous. Creationists claim they only want "equal time". BULLSHIT. They are not interested in equal time; they want all the time. They want to use intelligent design as a wedge to reintroduce God in the classroom. Ask them to let evolution be taught in churches in the interest of equal time, then watch their reaction.

posted by Au Yong, Haw Yee @ 12:58 PM 2 comments

The human eye is not irreducibly complex!

First go here.

If you looked at the comments section at all, you will notice that the to-ing and fro-ing quickly descended into chaos so endemic to many evolutionist vs. creationist debates. Sigh.

I myself was particularly intrigued by the video. On hindsight, the concept seems so stunningly simple that I wish I had thought of it. I applaud Dr. Nilsson for his brilliance.

For those of you who are puzzled by the big fuss, I will provide some background. For creationists, and now their thinly-veiled "intelligunt desine" (thanks to Jiahao for pointing this out to me) reincarnates, one of their key arguments against the plausibility of evolution has always been the existence of some irreducibly complex structures in nature. The human eye is an oft-cited example. A popular analogy among evolution-bashers is to liken evolution to putting a bunch of gears and screws and springs into a bottle, then shaking it until you get a functional pocket watch. They claim that there is absolutely no way that a random process would be able to produce a structure whose parts are finely tuned to tick-tock perfectly together. I agree whole-heartedly with that sentiment--if the process involved were indeed random. Evolution is, unfortunately, not random.

What is popularly known as "Evolution Theory" is, in fact, a combination of two things. First is the fact of evolution. It happened; it is happening; and it will continue to happen no matter how many Bibles you throw at it. The mountain of evidence for evolution is staggering in terms of the fossil record. The "missing links" that we do not have today we will find tomorrow. The recent discovery of the tetrapod being a case in point. I was having a lively discussion with a close friend (who was, unfortunately, a staunch advocate of Genesis) right before the discovery of the tetrapod missing link. I had asserted that whatever evidence we lack will eventually be found, and was pleasantly surprised (I might even have been ecstatic) few days later when my prophecy was fulfilled (I know that Stephen Jay Gould, one of my most admired writers, would have given two arms and a leg to see the fossil himself. Alas, he was surrendered to the earth in 2002).

The second part of what is known as "Evolution Theory" is, wait for it, the theory of evolution. The part of evolution in doubt is the exact mechanisms by which it proceeds. This is what the scientific community debates about. We know natural selection is a fact, but we have not worked out all the kinks and the details. The theory presented in the video is yet another nail in the creationist coffin. Though, like the undead so popular in B-grade horror movies, I very much doubt they will oblige to stay buried. Natural selection is what makes evolution "unrandom". Environmental pressures work to push genetic drift or mutation (which is random) in very specific directions. To produce all the wonders of our rapidly-going-down-the-drain Earth, all you need now is time. Of which there has been plenty, unless you are one of those who believe that the Universe is only 6000 years old. The Earth is commonly accepted by the scientific community to be about 4.5 billion years old. This, my friend, is a very very very very long time.

The point I am trying to make, after much words, is that a person who places any value on Truth at all will have to factor the fact of evolution into their belief system. In the words of Cardinal Paul Poupard, religion risks turning into "fundamentalism" if it ignores scientific findings.

posted by Au Yong, Haw Yee @ 10:50 PM 1 comments