... they want Americans to pay a tax into a UN administered fund...?

Are they still sore about the loss of OFP?

This doesn't look good:

"U.S. HUMBLED"

"The U.S. has been humbled by the overwhelming message by developing countries that they are ready to be engaged with the problem, and it's been humiliated by the world community. I've never seen such a flip-flop in an environmental treaty context ever," said Bill Hare of Greenpeace.

The UN and its "developing countries" have been wanting to get into our 'wallets' for a long time, and need a Treaty to do it.

If that article is true, then 'W' has caved, i.e. didn't have - "The Courage to Do Nothing"

UPDATE: That's what I get for reading a MSM news article.

NewsBusters expose MSM, and give the real story: "Again, this was a HUGE win for the Bush administration that will likely be downplayed by the press."

The roadmap is essentially the beginning of a beginning. The negotiations to come have a specific end date - 2009

So it appears that Iranian NWP and the IPCC will come to a head at about the same time... in less than two years.

The next president is going to have some lovely, lovely times.

This is possibly one of the best roundups of the increasingly clear calls for the introduction of rationality and integrity to the climate hysteria yet presented.
Thanks.

Dafydd,

Have you checked the latest solar image? It shows just a few spots, no flares, no CME; IOW, ol' Sol is mighty quiet. Add to this the fact the both the AMO and the PDO will flip phase within the next few years; why, we'll be seeing "global cooling" and those late '70's "The Ice Age is Coming!!!!!" headlines will be back. CAGW, bah humbug :).

Cdquarles:

Were you just eating alphabet soup? <g> What are all those acronyms? I think IOW is "in other words," but the rest are a mystery to me...

Dafydd

Thanks for the article and links. It seems everyone whose opinion I trust is an AGW sceptic and everyone whose opinion I distrust is an AGW believer.

I suspect that over the course of the next few years we will come to realize Gorebull Warning did a lot to assuage the pain caused by algores defeat in 2000 but not any good for mankind.

Got to go outside now into the coldest winter in decades to shovel snow.

Dafydd,

The AMO is the Atlantic Multi-Decadal Oscillation. The PDO is the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. A CME in this context is a coronal mass ejection. CAGW in this context is catastrophic anthropogenic global warming. The AMO flipped to the warm phase in the '90's. The PDO flipped to the warm phase in the '70's. The PDO is showing signs that it will flip to its cool phase in this decade. A cool phase PDO with a cool phase AMO and a quiescent sun means cold winters and a general Northern Hemisphere cooling.

Dafydd, It's nice to see other well written scientific posts. Over at my blog which I've sort of been (ahem) neglecting lately, I have a furious poster who says I refuse to debate him on "why the antarctic, so far away from urbanization, is getting hotter". I wrote some (rather good) posts recently explaining my approach to the situation and why I have a hard time debating it with non-scientifically minded folks...if you want to head over and read some.

k2aggie07:

...if you want to head over and read some.

I'd love to. A link would be nice <g>.

Dafydd

You're right, it probably would. Logosphilia.

Not to nit pic, but if i do the math right, they changed the sea level rise from 7cm to 7m a change of 100x not 10x. a 10x change would only be 70cm right? or am i off in left field?

Dafydd,

You've probably already seen this but I thought I'd pass the YouTube; now please, turn your head to the side and cough: Cnn Coverage of the Bali Performance.

This Dailymail Floods of tears... piece makes good accompanying material.

I do have to admit, I would never have thought I'd be as pessimistic about the course of this nation as I've become - it really is quite sad.

On the BBC's Global Debate this sunday, 16/12, Mary (Zionism is Racism) Robinson, accompanied by the usual suspects, Tutu, Carter et al. had this to say: "Africa needs $60billion over the next while in order to drag itself out of poverty; THIS IS ABOUT THE LEVEL OF SPENDING OF 1 (ONE) WEEK IN IRAQ." Nobody corrected her!

Talk about a redistribution of wealth and resources!

Eg:

Worry not: The so-called "cave" by the Bush administration is actually a brilliant piece of deflection... they agreed only to talk; the IPCC mob demanded that the U.S. agree to a series of hard numbers -- but we refused.

So we only agreed to spend the next couple of years talking, and that more or less mollified the globaloney crowd. But we utterly thwarted them on specific targets, goals, timetables, and so forth.

Newsbusters has a good writeup of what really happened. Don't believe the CNN hype! (Hat tip to commenter Seaberry, above.)

Dafydd

"But in science, the word "consensus" has a very different meaning."

Great post, but in science, consensus has no meaning at all. The dictionary says consensus is a "general agreement among the members of a given group or community, each of which exercises some discretion in decision making and follow-up action." This does not occur in science.

When 4 out of 5 dentists agree the Crest whitens and brightens your teeth, that is not science, that is marketing. Crest either works or it doesn't.

Dafydd-- Thank you for the excellent post. I intend to judge my support for the next presidential candidate on one position, and that's his stand on "climate change." If he allows himself to be cowed by the socialist media and mouth the same nonsense, then I'll know he will not stand up to them in other areas as well. It's a simple way of testing a candidate.

But if 100% consensus is what defines true science, then Darwinism has never been "science," as the scientific community does not embrace it 100% either. It will also suffer the same fate as climate change nonsense, as Darwinism is not really science, but an agnostic's explanation of origins.

This faith believes in a graduated, magically self-improving genetic remapping of all species' DNA. But this claim has never been proven... it is accepted as fact, purely because of our current evidence vacuum. This vacuum will eventually be filled, and Darwinian science will be seen for what it really is: an agnostic's religion. Religion is blasted because it postures itself in an evidence vacuum, but Dariwnism is no better.

I regret that the taxpayers of today pay teachers to pour this nonsense down our children's throats. It's the same crowd brainwashing students about climate change. You'll find the same teachers are strident about all kinds of socialist solutions, and it starts with Darwin indoctrination in the public schools.

Leftnomore:

But if 100% consensus is what defines true science, then Darwinism has never been "science," as the scientific community does not embrace it 100% either.

I'm sorry, LNM, but this is complete nonsense. You have allowed slick-talking creationists to fool you.

First, nobody supports Darwinism, because there is no scientific theory called "Darwinism." That's a pejorative term lobbed by people who know nothing about science. For heaven's sake, Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species 148 years ago... do you honestly believe science just stands still for a century and a half?

Do you denounce astonomy as Galileoism?

There is a science of evolutionary biology, which -- like all scientific theories -- changes and evolves as biologists and others make new observations and measurements and substitute new hypotheses for old.

Pace the creationists, this is not evidence that EB is wrong -- "Every time someone finds an error, they just change the theory!" -- such self-correction is, fact, the great strength of science and one of its defining characteristics... unlike, say, creationism.

Second, no commonly cited biologist I have ever read rejects the central tenets of evolutionary biology. None. Those who do are marginal kooks working for creationist organizations, whose primary purpose is to promote Biblical creationism... now tarted up by the catchy alias "Intelligent Design."

It's the same old creationism as before with the same old problems: not falsifiable, not based upon previous work, doesn't explain all observations, relies upon primary causes (the hand of the Intelligent Designer) that are outside the physical universe, and is not consistent with other sciences (astronomy, astrophysics, nuclear physics, biochemistry, and so forth).

Creationism (or ID) is not science by any stretch of the imagination. It's no different in its basics from what William Jennings Bryan argued at the Scopes "monkey trial."

By contrast, evolutionary biology is science, is conducted according to the scientific method, is falsifiable, is based upon previous science, explains all known observations, posits only causes within nature and still observable today, and is fully consistent with all other scientific disciplines.

I don't mind ID being taught in school -- in a comparative religions class; but only one of these two should be taught in a science or biology class... and it ain't ID.

Dafydd

Eh Dafydd, evolution died when the cell was discovered as far as I'm concerned. Evolution was fine until we began to understand the complexity on the cellular level...but how do you make minute modifications to a mitochondria without breaking it? And how do you improve upon a bacteria one mutation at a time to form cellular structures without destroying the cell?

Not to mention the fact that DNA is a code, not a pattern, and random mutations in code always result in destroyed information and will never, ever add information to the code. Ever. Period. Taken from here:

It may be very helpful here to point out the difference between a pattern and a code. Patterns (snowflakes, crystals, hurricanes, tornados, rivers, coastlines) occur in nature all the time.

A code is "A system of signals used to represent letters or numbers in transmitting messages." Examples of code include English, Chinese, computer languages, music, mating calls and radio signals. Codes always involve a system of symbols that represent ideas or plans.

All codes contain patterns, but not all patterns contain codes. Naturally occurring patterns do not contain code.
...
1. All languages, codes, protocols and encoding / decoding mechanisms that we know the origin of come from a mind - there are no known exceptions
2. DNA is a language, a code, a protocol, and an encoding / decoding mechanism
3. Therefore DNA came from a mind.

I think modern scientists cling to evolution on a microscale out of stubbornness more than anything else.

K2aggie07:

1. All languages, codes, protocols and encoding / decoding mechanisms that we know the origin of come from a mind - there are no known exceptions

2. DNA is a language, a code, a protocol, and an encoding / decoding mechanism

3. Therefore DNA came from a mind.

That's not a valid syllogism. You're basically saying, "I can't figure out how DNA encoding came about, which proves that God created it." This is just another "God in the gaps" argument.

If a farmer has only seen chicken eggs, he can say that all eggs that he knows the origin of come from chickens. But that doesn't prove that duck eggs, quail eggs, and ostrich eggs don't exist.

Evolution was fine until we began to understand the complexity on the cellular level...but how do you make minute modifications to a mitochondria without breaking it?

There are entire books published about how the cellular mitochondria evolved and came to work together... e.g., Origin of Mitochondria and Hydrogenosomes, and anthology edited by William F. Martin and Miklós Müller -- which you can buy for a scant $189 from Amazon, if you're really interested.

Suffice to say that it's nowhere near the mystery today that it was sixteen years ago, when ID first cited it as an "irreducible complexity" (a Michael Behe term).

And that is the danger in all "God in the gaps" arguments, what William Paley calls the "argument from personal incredulity": I can't believe it, so it must be false.

ID likes to ignore all the areas where the evolutionary track is well established and settled and focus intead on specific, precise areas where we don't know exactly how A, B, or C evolved... yet. ID supporters pounce, saying, "Ah ha, if you can't explain it, then it must be the intelligent designer in action!"

Thus is God confined to ever smaller spaces where ID proponents mistake the unknown for the unknowable.

But science marches on; and as evolutionary biologists shrink those gaps -- which is, after all, precisely what science does -- the God hidden within them necessarily shrinks as well; until finally, He is banished from an entire area of evolution, because everything is either explained, or at the least, it's clear that there are several different ways it could be explained (we just don't know which is the one that actually happened).

If you want a more accessible book, written by an evangelical Christian who happens also to be a geneticist -- in fact, he was the head of the Human Genome Project -- you really ought to pick up The Language of God, by Francis S. Collins... now available in paperback for only $10, just 5.3% of the cost of the mitochondria book!

The problem with the ID supporters is that they really don't understand how science works... not even Behe, who is a Professor of Biology. (He is not a frequently cited researcher, as, e.g., Collins is.) Therefore, they tend to make bogus arguments that are easily swatted down; and they respond by positing vast conspiracies of "Darwin worshippers" plotting to keep ID out of the classrooms. "They all laughed at Galileo..."

What this all boils down to is that both the very, very religious and the very, very secular each wants evolution and God to be mutually exclusive -- each side for its own reasons. But in fact, they are perfectly compatible with each other.

If one posits a Theistic God (transcendent, eternal, omnipotent, and omniscient), then He certainly could be the creator of the entire universe, natural laws and all; and being omniscient, He would have known that eventually, humans would evolve... strictly according to the very physical laws that He set up in the first place.

Thus, both evolutionary biology and a God-created universe can go together like boys and mud.

Dafydd

Run a search on - DNA evolution, and there are pages after pages on it.

Most Intelligent Design advocates usually fall into one of the three main religions listed under the Abrahamic Religion grouping (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam...and mostly under Christianity).

Science requires lots of research, and so should theology/religion. The Abrahamic Religions all claim to have a connection to Abraham in their "sacred history". Abraham is/was considered to be a "Hebrew", but the term "Hebrew" doesn't show up in written history until roughly 538-900 BC, i.e. some millennium/s after the actual beginning of writing.

I suggest that the Intelligent Design advocates forget science, for the moment, and run a search on the term - Habiru, a word that is recorded in the ancient texts and records of the "Sumerian, Egyptian, Akkadian, Hittite, Mitanni, and Ugaritic" civilizations. Then, run a search on just Sumer, and follow the links provided there, e.g. links to Enlil, Ea, Enki, Anu, Epic of Gilgamesh, etc.

Even Theology and/or Religions evolve...

I agree wholeheartedly with the last sentence of your post. I don't believe that there is any problem whatsoever with having an omnipotent God and an evolutionary process -- I don't view that as the immovable object vs the unstoppable force at all.

However, even if you take the logical steps of that fellows argument (e.g., code exists-> created by a mind) away, DNA is still a code. That is well established in science. And in communication theory, random mutations always decrease the amount of information available. You can never add a note to Abracadabra by Steve Miller Band via static. All you get is a burp as your antenna wiggles, or whatever. Random mutations are static.

Dr. Gerald Schroeder (a physicist) wrote a book called The Science of God, which gave mutations a good head start: he allowed that all random mutations would be positive mutations, and that all positive mutations would survive to reproduce. Using the current rate of mutations, and even several iterations of the calculations at higher rates, you come up with a fantastically longer timeline than we've currently experienced to arrive at the diversity of species we see around us.

I agree with your position that throwing the God card is a cop out for scientists. Even if you believe in God you can't use it as a reason to refute science (even if you're Einstein -- "Quantum mechanics is certainly imposing. But an inner voice tells me that it is not yet the real thing. The theory says a lot, but does not really bring us any closer to the secret of the Old One. I, at any rate, am convinced that He does not throw dice."). My biggest problem with many secular scientists, though, is that they're not rational like you. They view evolution as a means to kill this pesky God critter, to show irrefutably that Man is nothing more than a clever animal, once and for all. And this fits into their Nihilistic worldview of moral equivalence, first-thought-best-thought feel goodery. And that's when Christians get mad.

As always, a pleasure Dafydd. :)

Dafydd wrote:

What this all boils down to is that both the very, very religious and the very, very secular each wants evolution and God to be mutually exclusive -- each side for its own reasons. But in fact, they are perfectly compatible with each other.

..Thus, both evolutionary biology and a God-created universe can go together like boys and mud.

I agree, and well said. The evolutionists need to be able to explain the human brain, when compared to the evolution of other brains, i.e. there is no other brain on earth that compares to the human brain, which IMO is not logical (strictly evolution-wise) since there should be at least a few other closely similar (in intelligence capability) brains…and don’t give me the monkey or dolphin stuff until one of them can land on the moon (without help from humans) or create a computer from scratch. And, the creationists need to stop trying to ‘Own’ God…

The History Channel had a good program on awhile back – Beyond the Big Bang. The Big Bang happened, and apparently everything in the Universe is connected back to an “Original Source” of it. Now, many scientists (and various Sciences) are very interested in all aspects of that “Original Source”, i.e. how did it come about, etc. and have closed ‘no doors’ on what their search may find.

The universe began with a massive expansion, billions and billions of years ago, and it continues to expand with every passing second. The idea that the universe, and man's very existence, began with a "Big Bang" is no longer a topic of debate among most scientists--it is essentially taken as fact.

K2aggie07:

And in communication theory, random mutations always decrease the amount of information available. You can never add a note to Abracadabra by Steve Miller Band via static. All you get is a burp as your antenna wiggles, or whatever. Random mutations are static.

Again, this is a complete non-sequitur... and it's also inaccurate.

First, when you say "random mutations always decrease the amount of information available," I'm pretty sure you're looking at too small a data-set: You're looking at what happens over the short-term that computer scientists used to look at before computing power increased exponentially, just a few million trials.

I think you also forget that there is a filtering mechanism; it's not just "random mutations," there is a testing constraint called natural selection. Let's say you have a billion variations or mutations that actually affect viability positively or negatively; even if all but two or three of them kill the organism, those two or three actually (by definition) enhance it -- hence are more likely to be passed along to offspring, thus retained and built upon.

I have read about a number of computer programs that more closely mimicked the actual conditions of variation + natural selection, and many have found results that clearly echoed evolution... random changes plus a filtering mechanism that created more order, not less.

But I'll give you a counterexample to your statement above that has nothing to do with computer programs. Pour a bunch of Rubik's Cubes into a box. Many, perhaps most, will be at a cocked angle, not lying flat.

Now agitate the box, not too violently... and after a while, many more Cubes will be lying flat and in fact stacking with each other. Behold, order arising out of chaotic processes!

Of course, the reason this happens is that there is a filtering mechanism: When one Cube randomly moves to stack flat against another, that is a more stable configuration; the Cubes are less likely to move away from that configuration than towards it. So over time, more and more Cubes randomly move into this more stable configuration and "stick." Eventually, almost all of them will be stacked fairly neatly and tightly (into a smaller volume).

Ergo, this is an example where random "mutations" lead to more information, not less.

Finally, there is another point that I have never seen addressed by any ID supporter... perhaps because it completely shoots down arguments like this, and they have no answer yet; or perhaps because they just don't know about it.

Genetic researchers have fairly recently discovered that an enormous portion of the DNA code is actually redundant: genes are duplicated many times, but only one copy is active.

Therefore, a particular inactive copy of a gene can mutate in ways that would kill the organism... but it doesn't die, because that doesn't happen to be the copy of the gene the organism is using.

This gives much more scope for DNA "experimentation": If a particular mutation would ordinarily be fatal, the organism doesn't die, because a "clean" copy of the gene is being used instead. But if the mutation happens to be beneficial in a different way, it can start helping the organism. This hugely increases the likelihood of beneficial mutations being passed along while suppressing the death rate of harmful mutations.

Gene duplication is found all the way down to bacteria, I believe; it was a very, very early evolutionary strategy. It's one of the hottest fields of study in genetics now.

This is the point: There is no argument against evolutionary biology (EB) that EBs themselves have not considered, and considered much more deeply than have ID supporters. No ID supporter has ever come up with an argument so creative that it has surprised EBs; they've already seen them all -- and made the appropriate changes to EB to overcome them -- long before ID even appeared on the scene in 1991.

ID supporters are in the position of middle-school students taking algebra -- who try to come up with reasons why fundamental algebra is actually inconsistent and doesn't work.

It's simply not going to happen. Any legitimate critique of EB will come from EB itself... and does, frequently; but the response will not be to abandon evolution; it will be to refine EB theory so that it no longer has the current flaw. That's how science works.

Dafydd

Dafydd,

I must object to the rubix-cube-in-box analogy. The problem with the rubix cube alignment is that there is no information contained in the system other than the alignment itself. Rubix cubes at angles contain the same amount of information as rubix cubes aligned. The action you're describing isn't an unknown or unobserved phenomena. Most metals align themselves in crystal structures (like body-centered or face-centered cubic, hexagonal close-packed, tetragonal close-packed, and recently famous, the bucky-ball and bucky-tube semicrystalline configuration of carbon nanotubes) and this has solely to do with energy states. But that is a pattern, not a code.

A more apt analogy would be a message spelled out using the colors on the faces of the aligned cubes in the box, and then shaking it violently. Would the message make sense if even one cube were moved, translated, rotated, or flipped? Perhaps. But in a system that is tightly interdependent, such as the genetic code that governs the growth of our cells, it is likely that you "break it". Open a jpeg sometime in a text editor and change one symbol any way you like and you'll see what I mean.

Additionally, I'm ok with the idea of evolution -- micro- or macro-. I think it's clever, and I think it is a good hypothesis. My objection has absolutely nothing to do with my faith. However, I don't see it working out, for several reasons.

1. There is no fossil record for it. This is the most damning, I believe. Darwin understood this and fully expected the fossil record to be found to back up his claim. We're still waiting. There are very few "middle" creatures. Most that were originally touted as proof have been fakes. The traits Darwin was looking at were large scale; teeth, eyes, feathers, etc. We now know, as he never imagined, that these are driven by factors much more remote. The development of these gross features was the basis for his original hypothesis. It has now been stretched beyond its original shape to cover sub-cellular and even sub-nuclear architecture. It doesn't work all that well.

2. The time doesn't work out. Evolution has happened way too fast, and has appeared to happen in spurts. The so-called "precambrian explosion" is an example of that. The system relies on a plethora of options to work, and that means time. We're talking about chance here. It really hasn't been long enough, even according to biologists own models.

3. No "multiple solutions" - or not enough of them. There's no reason to assume that one particular solution would be more fit than another, and yet almost every creature is bilaterally symmetrical but different front to rear. Eyes are eyes the world over, from mammalian animals to octopuses. Even creatures who live with no light have photoreceptors that work similarly. Not only that, but neural networks all work the same way. If we're talking about "order from chaos," a concept which requires a huge leap of faith in the number of possibilities driving the equation, why is the animal selection on earth so vastly dull? Is this really the only possible solution?

Where are all the cool sci-fi type animals? There's no reason to assume that evolution would be self-limiting. The diversity is sorely lacking.

I believe in intelligent design, if you want to call it that, because I see things as an engineer. If you take the large-scale anatomical details of a body, stuff is well designed. The systems work very, very well. But then you see this beautiful order on a microscopic level as well.

If this is random chance, then my hats off to it...its a better design than I could come up with.

I recently worked on a preliminary design for the next lunar lander. The report my team turned in was several hundred pages and contained many, many, many drawings of small structures, designs, calculations, load limitations, and materials selection discussions. And literally any flaw in any one of those systems will be catastrophic to the mission, should it occur. If Nature was dealt a hand that was nothing but struts, beams, trusses, weldments, engines, fuel tanks, seats, stringers, rings, etc etc etc, and all she could do was rearrange them, over and over, with no application of intelligence, could she build a lunar lander?

That's skipping a step even. Because each individual piece, each stringer and ring, each truss, was meticulously and carefully chosen for size, shape, weight, material, etc.

And yet the human body (or any organic structure) is orders of magnitude more complicated. I find it hard to fathom. But who am I to limit science?

Oh, and one more thing. I reread your post right at the end. I wholly disagree with your endorsement of "how science works" and that EB will be self-refined from within.

Science is full of examples of theories being chucked. Paradigm shifts are rare, but they occur. And they can be odd in how they happen. Capella (and later Copernicus) broke the central earth model. Newton "discovered" physics, a physics that is wrong, and yet it is taught today because it is useful. Schrödinger started fixing Newton's physics in one area; Einstein struggled with it in another.

Spontaneous generation fought Pasteur. Thomson's plum-pudding model was widely accepted, then Bohr added to it (with experimental data, I might add) before quantum mechanics kicked it all to bits.

There is absolutely zero reason at all to assume that EB theory will be self-refined to perfection. What is infinitely more likely is that it is flat out wrong and a new theory will rise to take it's place.

Macroevolution is too linear, too simple, too intuitive. After all, who would have guessed quantum mechanics?

K2aggie07:

This is really irritating: I wrote a long response to your comment above... than at the last second, instead of typing Ctrl-V to paste some last quote from your comment, I typed Ctrl-Q instead -- quitting Netscape and demolishing my entire comment!

I shall try to reconstruct it as best I can...

I must object to the rubix-cube-in-box analogy. The problem with the rubix cube alignment is that there is no information contained in the system other than the alignment itself.

Contrariwise, in mathematics, order is information; both are the inverse of entropy/chaos. In practical terms, an ordering does, in fact, give you information about the underlying objects.

For example, it's very hard to know how many asterisks are in this collection without laboriously counting them:

*  **  *** *      ***  **  *

****     *   **   * ***   *

                  ***      *

However, let us order it:

***   ***   ***

***   ***   ***

***   ***   ***    **

And now we can see at a glance, without having to count, that there are 29 asterisks. The ordering gave rise to information.

The same is true for the box of Rubik's Cubes. But there is even more information; for example, the tightness of the packing after random agitation tells you that the cubes are of uniform size and shape... something that was not apparent when they were higgledy-piggledy in the box.

Order is information.

1. There is no fossil record for it. This is the most damning, I believe. Darwin understood this and fully expected the fossil record to be found to back up his claim. We're still waiting. There are very few "middle" creatures. Most that were originally touted as proof have been fakes.

Fakes? You mean Archaeopteryx? Oh, please... not that Fred Hoyle-Lee Spetner nonsense again.

Hoyle and Spetner were simply wrong. Neither was a paleontologist; neither had any experience with fossils, or with geology, or sediment, or rocks. There is a reason that no paleontologist before or since has championed their case. And what about the myiad of transitional forms in so many different evolutionary lines discovered since Archaeopteryx?

By "middle creatures," I assume you mean transitional forms. The claim that there are no (or insufficient) transitional forms between various genera (and even between species) can only be made by someone who doesn't really understand the current state of the science.

In order to demonstrate that evolution has occurred and is responsible for the plethora of species on the planet, it clearly is not required to show every, single transitional form between every major evolutionary leap of every species.

Rather, it is for ID to explain why there are so many transitional-form fossils in the record. For some creatures (typically unknown to IDers), there is such an extensive fossil record that anyone denying the basic observation of evolution has a lot of 'splaining to do.

Consider the trilobites, for example. They flourished for a couple of hundred million years, finally dying out completely in the Great Extinction Event of 250 mya (million years ago). For various reasons of environment and organism structure, trilobites were very conducive to leaving fossils.

And boy, did they. Scientists have found such a complete fossil record of the trilobites that they have identified more than 15,000 distinct species! This record necessarily includes many, many intermediate forms. How does ID explain that away?

Trilobytes were arthropods (like insects, spiders, lobsters, crabs, and shrimp). But even restricting ourselves to vertibrates, there are a heck of a lot more intermediate-form fossils than creationists have ever admitted (probably because they don't know about them).

Here is a great FAQ I found on vertibrate transitional forms. Let me quote from the conclusion:

When The Origin Of Species was first published, the fossil record was poorly known. At that time, the complaint about the lack of transitional fossils bridging the major vertebrate taxa was perfectly reasonable. Opponents of Darwin's theory of common descent (the theory that evolution has occurred; not to be confused with the separate theory that evolution occurs specifically by natural selection) were justifiably skeptical of such ideas as birds being related to reptiles. The discovery of Archeopteryx only two years after the publication of The Origin of Species was seen a stunning triumph for Darwin's theory of common descent. Archeopteryx has been called the single most important natural history specimen ever found, "comparable to the Rosetta Stone" (Alan Feduccia, in "The Age Of Birds"). O.C. Marsh's groundbreaking study of the evolution of horses was another dramatic example of transitional fossils, this time demonstrating a whole sequence of transitions within a single family. Within a few decades after the Origin, these and other fossils, along with many other sources of evidence (such as developmental biology and biogeography) had convinced the majority of educated people that evolution had occurred, and that organisms are related to each other by common descent.

Since then, many more transitional fossils have been found, as sketched out in this FAQ. Typically, the only people who still demand to see transitional fossils are either unaware of the currently known fossil record (often due to the shoddy and very dated arguments presented in current creationist articles) or are unwilling to believe it for some reason.

The problem is that ID/creationist tracts are almost never written by scientists who actually understand paleontology or evolutionary biology, for a simple reason:

(I'm not citing this as a syllogism that "proves" evolution; I'm just explaining why those who write books trying to "debunk" evolution are typically on a par with people who try to patent "perpetual-motion machines.")

The development of these gross features was the basis for his original hypothesis. It has now been stretched beyond its original shape to cover sub-cellular and even sub-nuclear architecture.

Why yes; it turns out that the theory was so successful, it was adapted to explain many areas that Darwin could not possibly know about (such as microbiology and game theory)... and it was extraordinarilly successful there, too.

That's not a slam against evolution; it's a demonstration of the centrality of the basic theory to virtually everything biological and many things inorganic.

2. The time doesn't work out. Evolution has happened way too fast, and has appeared to happen in spurts.

How would you know how fast is "too fast?" What is the proper speed for evolution to occur? And why must it proceed at a uniform pace, rather than proceeding by spurts separated by long intervals in which little changes?

I had a lengthy e-mail exchange with an extremely well-known blogger who rejects evolution (if I said his/her name, you would certainly recognize it). (Henceforth, all variations on he/she will be replaced by the ungendered personal pronoun "yeye," which the late Damon Knight claimed to have ripped off from Swahili.)

The discussion culminated with yeye's frustrated outburst that was pretty much as follows: "Darwin said evolution happened in a smooth, continuous way... but now scientists claim the exact opposite, that it happened in spurts. Every time someone proves that evolution is false, they just change the theory!"

Yeye clearly believed that yeye had made a telling and perhaps unanswerable point. But for me, it was one of those moments where I'm tempted to say, in my crankiest, most auto-mechanic-like voice, "well, there's yer problem right there."

Yeye's fields are all philosophical in character: politics, religion, philosophy, arts and letters, the law, and so forth. "Constancy" is a cardinal virtue there; for example, consider the judicial philosophy known as Originalism: We (me included) want the Constitution to be interpreted according to the original meaning of the words that were actually enacted, when they were enacted.

But science is not a "constancy" discipline so much as a "modeling" discipline. It's not only allowed to "change the theory" whenever some part of it is found not to work in some case... it's required.

So to get scientists to toss out the evolutionary timeline, you would have to have a "better" timeline for evolution than the current one (whatever that is). And by better, I mean one that better explains all relevant observations already made... and one that makes predictions that are at odds with the current theory -- yet are nevertheless proven correct when they are tested.

Needless to say, no proponent of ID has ever even attempted to do any of this, at least not that I have ever seen.

3. No "multiple solutions" - or not enough of them. There's no reason to assume that one particular solution would be more fit than another, and yet almost every creature is bilaterally symmetrical but different front to rear. Eyes are eyes the world over, from mammalian animals to octopuses. Even creatures who live with no light have photoreceptors that work similarly. Not only that, but neural networks all work the same way. If we're talking about "order from chaos," a concept which requires a huge leap of faith in the number of possibilities driving the equation, why is the animal selection on earth so vastly dull? Is this really the only possible solution?

Unwittingly, I believe, you have stumbled upon one of the greatest pieces of evidence in favor of the theory of evolution by variation and mutation plus the filter of natural selection, a.k.a., survival of the fittest.

Why do fauna so variant as mold, the California redwood, tapeworms, stomach bacteria, camels, whales, crocodiles, and your sainted grandmother share so many common structures?

Could it be because they all have a common ancestor? Could it be because each new form builds upon the structures of its parent forms, rather than reinventing the organelle each time?

Absent evolution, can ID give a coherent explanation why all cetaceans (whales, porpoises, dolphins) have shoulder blades? Fish certainly don't, as anyone who has cleaned a trout knows. So why should marine mammals that never climb out of the water and walk around?

Evolution has an answer: Because whales and dolphins used to have four legs... back when they were land animals. When they moved permanently to the ocean, they never lost the scapulae they already had; they just made different use of them.

It was this very observation, the remarkable similarities between seemingly disparate creatures, that led several early taxonomists (even before Darwin) to conclude that evolution had occurred, that creatures changed over time and could change drastically.

(To me, Darwin's greatest contribution was not to demonstrate the reality of evolution better than anyone before him; it was to formulate the theoretical mechanism by which such evolution occurred: variation plus natural selection.)

Rather than going to disproving or debunking evolutionary theory, your observation is one of the most potent pieces of evidence confirming it.

Such similarities are not very efficient, nor is the lack of diversification very safe for the world of fauna (hence the periodic "extinction events" throughout the history of life on Earth). But they are a natural consequence of genetic inheritance.

So we're stuck with the rods and cones of our retinas being placed underneath blood vessels which obscure vision; with absurd and useless patches of body hair that do nothing but trap bacteria that cause offensive odors; and with the vermiform appendix.

Where are all the cool sci-fi type animals?

This one you should be able to answer yourself... the animals you see always look familiar because they're the animals you always see.

Even so, couldn't one say that a blue whale, a camel, a trilobite, a tyranosaurus rex, a bat, a great white shark, a ten-foot tall giant sloth, and a duck-billed platypus are all pretty cool and sci-fi?

I really think that if you're interested in this topic, you're just going to have to hold your nose and read some Stephen Jay Gould and some Richard Dawkins. Yes, I know they're atheists who think all religious people are fools; they're the extremes on the secular side... just as Lyman and Milton Stewart -- financiers of the publication of the Fundamentals, which gave us "Fundamentalilsm" -- were extremes on the religious side.

But at the moment, you appear to be arguing from a vacuum. You're refighting battles that the creationists lost in the 1960s and 70s, rather than engaging on new and untested fields.

Dafydd

"I have decided to marry the woman who accepts me and my tail. Or else, I'll remain a bachelor like Hanuman." – Chandre Oram

Great debate guys…yes, great debate!

I’m not trying to interrupt it, so ignore this post if it seems so. I don’t have enough knowledge to dispute either side of the debate; though I have always had questions on how the human brain ‘became’ more advanced than other species, and why humans have a Coccyx (tailbone). The tailbone seems to indicate that we once had a ‘tail’ (“Human embryos have a tail that measures about one-sixth of the size of the embryo itself.” – “The developmental tail is thus a human vestigial structure.”), which would support the evolutionists side; however, the human brain’s advancement leaves me wondering…

Seaberry:

[H]owever, the human brain’s advancement leaves me wondering...

Me too. In fact, that's one of the reasons I tend more towards believing in God than disbelieving.

But not because I think such a brain couldn't evolve naturally; I believe it can, were there a need for it (that is, something to make incremental advances towards consciousness evolutionarily advantageous). Though I cannot think of such reasons now, I haven't enough hubris to suppose that nobody will ever be able to do so.

But consciousness is such a remarkable thing to me, so utterly unlike anything else on the planet, that it does make me feel (subjectively) as if there must be a purpose to it.

I don't see this as a proof, though, but merely an indicator; and not as an indicator that ID must be true or evolutionary theory false, but merely that the universe was to my mind created for a purpose at the instant of the Big Bang.

If so, then consciousness would have evolved naturally... because God would have created the physical laws of the universe such that natural evolution would eventually lead to consciousness.

Dafydd

Dafydd,

I can see both sides to the shared features debate. On one hand it "makes perfect sense" that these features are inheritable; on the other hand, it makes very little sense for certain creatures to have evolved very advanced or highly specialized features that they never "needed". If evolution is a transition from simple to complex, then the simple things are what "should" be shared...not highly complex structures such as photoreceptors. Additionally, the shared features argument bleeds over into the "not enough multiple solutions" idea. If we're really talking about a linear, branching solution - that is, an exponentially growing system - then final products after literally billions of branches should not look the same. Even if there is a selection mechanism, semi-infinite steps should yield semi-infinite solutions to a problem with unlimited answers. I don't believe there is only one way to survive on this planet.

Furthermore, there is no reason to believe that certain advances down this branching path should be mutually exclusive. And yet they are; animals are uniquely distinct from plants. Phyla are quite distinct, and with the exception of a few examples (e.g., the platypus) general types stay with their own. Amphibians exist (creatures that perform respiration in more than one way), but creatures that can metabolize both sunlight and meat do not. And before you point to the venus fly trap, they don't really "eat" bugs...they use them mostly for Nitrogen. I'm talking about an animal that has "the best of both words".

I mean heck, all plant or animal cells are the same. If we're talking about enough steps to go from bacteria to tiger, surely at some point a positive mutation would have arisen to further distinguish cells between plants and animals other than the basic structures which ALL plants and ALL animals have in common with their own types.

The rigor of the selection process seems more pronounced than mere "fitness".

----

My pet theory on consciousness is that it was what was "breathed" into Adam by God. Man existed, but wasn't yet Man...merely another animal. There is a "sudden" appearance of writing, art, and culture when before there was none. I believe that it was at this time that God made a man into a Man.

It's a convenient theory because when liberals, hippies, and nihilists want to reduce Man and his creation in God's image to just another animal (so what you want to do is OK, man) you can fall back on the fact that no, we're in fact quite different.

---

Also, C. S. Lewis has a few views on Miracles that your last comment reminds me of Dafydd. There are those who believe that miracles are "beneath" God because they somehow deny his perfection. A perfect God, they say, wouldn't need to "break His own rules" in order to accomplish his means. In such a world the universe is merely a contraption or device He designed, set in motion, and let run to the completion of a cycle. I prefer to think that He organized (or designed) the system but injected bits of Himself, of Otherness that coexists outside of Nature/the universe, at specific times in specific places. Not breaking the rules, but rather modifying them on another level entirely. Just as Shakespeare might break the meter of a poem without violating the "rightness" or a good jazz musicians throws accidentals and non-diatonic notes into a solo, so God works His miracles in a system that would normally not behave so.

It has been a most enlightening discussion and I will need to go update my knowledge about the fossil record and evolutionary biology. Thanks, Dafydd.

K2aggie07:

If evolution is a transition from simple to complex, then the simple things are what "should" be shared...not highly complex structures such as photoreceptors.

Early photoreceptors are not particularly advanced at all. Even plants have them.

If we're really talking about a linear, branching solution - that is, an exponentially growing system - then final products after literally billions of branches should not look the same.

We're not; there is a very strict threshold condition... most variations confer no more advantage than their predecessors, so don't tend to propagate.

Have you read the Blind Watchmaker, by Richard Dawkins? Even if you don't want to believe his argument, you should at least thoroughly understand it. It is, after all, the very argument that you're saying is false.

The subtitle -- Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design -- goes too far, I believe (having read the book); I think all that Dawkins shows is that no "designer" is necessary, not that there wasn't one. For example, if all the design work were done pre-Big Bang, none of it would show up in this universe.

I also strongly urge you to read the Language of God, by Francis Collins. You may have an easier time with this one, because Collins is a practicing, born-again Christian, while Dawkins is a militant atheist.

Amphibians exist (creatures that perform respiration in more than one way), but creatures that can metabolize both sunlight and meat do not.

Actually, animals (including humans) don't really metabolize meat: Stomach bacteria do. Much of animal processes are either symbiotic relationships or else, like mitochondria, started that way.

You haven't addressed the central question; you're still stuck in the mode that, if you can point out some area of evolutionary theory that is not yet well evidenced, that means evolution didn't happen, and therefore creationism did.

It doesn't work that way, and that's not a logical argument. You need to follow a series of defined steps to overthrow any scientific theory, let alone one as well established and well evidenced as evolution:

1. You must collect a series of measurements --
2. Show that they are not explained by current theory (which you haven't even essayed) --
3. Then come up with a new scientific hypothesis which obeys all the laws of scientific hypotheses --
4. Show that it explains the facts better --
5. Then propose tests that could, if they went a certain way, invalidate your hypothesis --
6. Then perform those tests and accurately report the results... even if they go against you.

To continue...

There are those who believe that miracles are "beneath" God because they somehow deny his perfection. A perfect God, they say, wouldn't need to "break His own rules" in order to accomplish his means. In such a world the universe is merely a contraption or device He designed, set in motion, and let run to the completion of a cycle.

I'm sure there are such people, but I'm not one of them. However, I believe that no such miracle was necessary to create the stars, the planets, life, or humanity.

I have, however, written extensively on my own peculiar (very peculiar) reading of Tanakh (what Christians call "the Old Testament"), comparing the way God treats the Chosen People to the way wise parents raise a child from birth to independence.

• Humans are expelled from the Garden of Eden (corresponds to birth);
• A period of direct contact between God and many people (corresponds to raising an infant; in Freudian terms, the "oral" phase);
• A period of "laying down the law," setting up a system of rewards and punishment so that the Israelites internalize the moral code (corresponds to the "anal" phase, agains using Freud's terminology);
• A period of prophets who reveal the word of God and perform (rather, channel) miracles to get people's attention (corresponds to early schooling);
• A period of religious teachers who don't perform miracles, or whose "miracles" are on the order of "able to convert a thousand people to Christianity"... what I call non-miracle miracles (corresponds to advanced schooling);
• Finally, a point at which humans are told, "You've been raised with a good moral education; but now you're on your own to apply it." (Corresponds to the child moving out and assuming the role of adulthood.)

This seems quite plausible, given a Theistic God; He would be raising the whole human race the way a parent raises a child.

It has been a most enlightening discussion and I will need to go update my knowledge about the fossil record and evolutionary biology. Thanks, Dafydd.

Yep; just as I went through a phase of reading five or six creationist books (this was right at the beginning of the ID movement, and a couple of he books were specifically Intelligent Design), it would be good for you to read more pro-evolution books written by actual science popularizers. Especially from people like Collins, who are not anti-religious at all.

Dafydd

Dafydd,

‘Evolving’ consciousness…interesting. “…physical laws of the universe such that natural evolution would eventually lead to consciousness.”…again, very interesting. I need to look into that direction further, since it may address some of my questions. (Note: I am basically ‘self-educated’, so many terms I use may not be used or defined correctly.)

Knowing God (or whatever term one describes such as, e.g. Higher Power, Supreme Being, Divine Being, etc.) is the easy part, since we humans are not only connected to God physically (as in the connection of everything in the entire Universe to each ‘other’, and to the “Original Source” of the Big Bang), but are also connected Spiritually. Trying to figure out or to understand or to explain this Spiritual connection dates back to at least the Paleolithic period, and is the hard part. Some modern religions mention this connection, e.g. Hinduism (sects of it anyway) says something like – ‘We are all God’s waiting to be born.’ Christianity mentions – in John 10:34, “Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods?”…John 1:9 says, “That was the true light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.”…Luke 17:21 says, “Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.”

That Spiritual connection should be enough, but we humans seem to have the tendency to make or turn the ‘Simple’ into difficulty, confusion, chaos, etc. Saying goes – “Keep it simple, stupid!” (wink). I don’t see God as requiring proof, belief or faith, worship, knowing, reward or punishment, etc. Is there a “purpose”…I don’t know, but why would there be? Evolution of consciousness? Certainly possible, and even reasonable. However, I see no reason or possibility for Spiritual evolution, since one either realizes the connection or rejects it or ignores it.

Religions have been a ‘stumbling-block’ or a distraction for our natural Spirituality instincts, since the days of Paleolithic shamanism, but at times they can offer interesting clues, e.g. Hinduism mentions ‘gods’ having sex with human females…Judaism’s Torah and the Christian OT, mention in Genesis 6:2 and 4, that “the sons of God” married the “daughters of men”, that they had offspring known as – “giants”, “mighty men”, “Nephilim”, and “men of renown”. Perhaps, at some point of evolution, God decided to give humans got a ‘Boost’…so to speak.

Albert Einstein:

"I want to know God's thoughts; the rest are details."

"..science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind...a legitimate conflict between science and religion cannot exist."

Interesting debate. I would offer some of Stephen Wolfram's thoughts from his book "A New Kind of Science" You can read it here.

In my view he has shown that incredible complexity can be developed through simple rules. i.e. evolution.

His work is an interesting look at it.

Thanks for hissing in, . Now you can slither in with a comment, o wise. (sign out)