Evolution Redeemed

GREAT MYTHS OF EVOLUTION #3
by David Menton

THE APPENDIX OF MAN IS A VESTIGIAL AND USELESS ORGAN LEFT OVER FROM BACK WHEN PRIMATIVE MAN ATE MAINLY RAW VEGETATION

Vestigial organs are believed to be nonfunctional in their present condition but are considered to have had a function in an evolutionary ancestor. It has been claimed by some evolutionists that the human appendix is a vestigial cecum from our evolutionary ancestors. The cecum is a blind ending pouch near the end of the large intestine (colon) which provides additional space for colonic function and may in some animals, such as cows, contain special bacteria which aid in the digestion of plant material. In fact, almost every mammal has a cecum and many of these ALSO have an appendix! Man, for example, has both a cecum AND an appendix - neither is vestigial or useless. The appendix is a lymphoid organ (part of the bodies immune system) which makes antibodies against infections in the bowel.

The function of the appendix given by Menton is true. However, just because it has a function today doesn't mean that it didn't, at one time, have a different function which it has lost. Evolution has to work with what it has, and using the appendix as a lymphatic organ may be efficient, but the original function of the appendix, which has been lost, was digestive.

Thinking it was a useless evolutionary "left over", many surgeons used to remove the appendix whenever they were in the abdominal cavity. This is no longer done unless the appendix is terminally infected. As recently as 1971, the Encyclopedia Britanica claimed that there were more than 100 vestigial organs in man, including the appendix and coccyx! In years past, some people lost their lives having "vestigial organs" such as the parathyroid removed by overzealous surgeons.

The argument of this paragraph escapes me. How do overzealous surgeons constitute evidence against evolution?

Today there are few if any organs of the body that are thought to be without function. None the less, 7 out of 15 high school biology textbooks recently surveyed sighted vestigial organs, including the appendix, as evidence for evolution!

These organs are vestigial in the sense that they have lost their original function. The fact that they still have any function in the body actually constitutes evidence FOR evolution. In a strictly creationist world, organs without function would not exist; but in a world in which evolution causes change, natural selection would preserve organs that have lost their original function if they begin to serve some other function.

GREAT MYTHS OF EVOLUTION #4
by David Menton

IN THE FAMOUS EXAMPLE OF THE PEPPERED MOTH, WE CAN ACTUALLY SEE EVOLUTION IN ACTION

The Peppered moth (Biston betularia) is typically a whitish moth covered with black spots. This coloration provides an effective camouflage for the moths as they rest on certain Birch trees. Like humans, however, these moths can be found in a range of pigmentation from very black to very white and all shades in between.

This is untrue. There are only two alleles at a single locus for peppered moth coloration, the dominant melanic (dark) allele and the recessive peppered (light) allele. There is no gradual range of pigmentation in this species.

In a much touted study in England it was found that when the white trees, on which the moths rested, became dark from industrial pollution, birds ate more of the lighter moths (apparently missing the darker ones). It came as no surprise that the population of darker moths increased while the lighter ones decreased. It was further observed (but rarely mentioned) that when cities cleaned up their air, the trees got lighter and the lighter moths again predominated. This is clearly natural selection in action but is this evolution? Not really, unless we call the natural variation within species that occurs in all plants and animals "evolution".

This isn't just variation within a species. This is a change in the variation within a species over time. Evolution can be defined as "the change in a lineage of populations between generations." Darwin defined it as "descent with modification." Menton assumes that the term "evolution" refers only to speciation. No evolutionary biologist claims that a new species of peppered moth came into being when the melanic form became more common, but the fact that this species evolved right before our eyes is indisputable.

The problem with equating this type of variation with evolution is that it is STRICTLY LIMITED.

I assume that Menton is referring to the fact that in this case, only a single gene locus is affected, and that there are only two alleles. Thus there are only two forms of the peppered moth. Darwinism in the long run requires not two obviously different forms, but rather needs slight changes which can accumulate gradually. For this reason, at the beginning of this century, Mendelism (the theory which explains heredity, which is in its most basic form, simple dominance, in the peppered moth) and Darwinism were considered to be opposed. But during the first half of this century the two theories were combined into what is called the Synthetic Theory of Evolution (synthetic, because it combines Mendelism and Darwinism). The work of R.A. Fisher, J.B.S. Haldane, and Sewall Wright in the Synthetic Theory is well-understood and accepted among contemporary evolutionary biologists, so claiming that "this type of variation" has little to do with evolution demonstrates a lack of understanding.

There are, for example, over 150 varieties (breeds) of dogs recognized by the AKC and more are added each year, but they are ALL DOGS (Canis familiaris). You can select for dogs with long ears or short ears, big dogs or small dogs, but you can,t select successfully for dogs with wings. The reason is simple, there are no genes for wings (and their associated struc- tures) in the gene pool of the species Canis familiaris.

Evolutionary theory agrees wholeheartely with this! No evolutionist claims that any form can change into any other form. Natural selection must work with what it has, and no evolutionist would claim that dogs are able to grow wings.

Thus dogs remain dogs and Peppered moths remain Peppered moths and, as far as we know, they always have and always will (excepting extinction).

The fossil record shows that at least 99.9% of all species which ever existed are extinct forms. This fact leads to four possible conclusions: (1) At one time, 1000 times as many species existed, and if the rate of extinction continues, there will eventually be no species. This conclusion is inconsistent with the fossil record, which shows that species are spread out over geological time. (2) New species are created through time in mass separate creations. This is also inconsistent with the fossil record, which shows mass extinctions but not mass arisings of species. (3) New species are created through time in single separate creations. This conclusion is inconsistent with the documentation in the fossil record that all species are based on earlier species. For example, if the first bird was created separately from other life forms, why does the earliest known bird (Archaeopterix) have distinctly reptilian characteristics? (4) New species arise from older species which change. This is the only conclusion consistent with the fossil record.

One of the great triumphs of modern genetics has been to explain how it is possible to have so much variation with in a species with out losing the distinctiveness of the species itself.

The "distinctiveness of the species itself" is a somewhat artificial construction of science. In reality, organisms don't neatly fit themselves into the pigeonholes we create for them. For example, there are several examples of "circular species," in which a species' range wraps around a geographical area, with the species varying slightly as it goes, until when it meets itself the two forms are so different that they are considered different species. In this case, biologists must decide arbitrarily where to draw the line, because the species doesn't fit our neat little system.

This is now known to be do to multiple alleles in the gene pool of the species. For many genes of a species there exists several alternative versions (alleles) though any individual can have no more than two "versions" of a particular gene at one time. Thus a person may have eye color genes for blue eyes or brown eyes, but they are still eyes and both remain Homo sapiens. If we were all genetically alike we would be clones! An entire species of identical twins would not be very interesting but more importantly, such a population might not survive long in a variable environment.

This is true.

In conclusion, natural selection among existing alleles is known to promote the stability and continued survival of a species, but it is not known to be responsible for why we have come to have people, cows, dogs, moths, giraffes etc. etc. etc.

It hasn't been observed directly because of the time scale involved. However, large-scale evolution can be extrapolated from the observation of small-scale evolution in the same way that the large-scale formation of the Grand Canyon can be extrapolated from the observation of small-scale erosion of stream beds. In the classic case of speciation, a population (for this example I'll use our famous peppered moths) is divided into two separate populations. Each follows its own evolutionary track; perhaps in one group, pollution causes the dark form to become dominant, and finally the light form is eliminated. Perhaps in the second group, a mutation causes a moth with a new color, green, to be born, and it survives because it can hide on leaves. Perhaps this population eventually consists only of green and light moths because the dark form dies out. Both groups have different selection pressures and different starting materials, so each evolves differently. Perhaps one group develops an eyespot. Perhaps the other develops bigger wings. This continues for some time, and eventually the two groups reunite. If moths from the first group see moths from the second group as so alien (and vice versa) that they refuse to mate with each other, then speciation has occurred. Is this model so hard to believe?

GREAT MYTHS OF EVOLUTION #5
by David Menton

MAN AND ALL OTHER LIVING ORGANISMS HAVE EVOLVED FROM A PRIMITIVE LIFE FORM BY MEANS OF A VAST NUMBER OF LUCKY MUTATIONS

Evolutionists concede that mutations are the only source of NEW genetic information for natural selection to work on.

This is true.

Mutations are changes in the genes or chromosomes caused by radiation, chemicals or unknown agent.

Often they are caused by simple miscopying of the genetic material.

Mutations cause cancer but few if any have been proven to be "good" for an organism. Dr. H.J. Muller, who won the Nobel prize for his work on mutations said: "It is entirely in line with the accidental nature of mutations that extensive tests have agreed in showing the vast majority of them detrimental to the organism in its job of surviving and reproducing --- GOOD ONES ARE SO RARE WE CAN CONSIDER THEM ALL BAD" (Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 11:331).

That's like saying "Precious stones are so rare we can consider all stones non-precious." When you do that, you deny the existence of the diamonds. We only see the good mutations, because natural selection preserves them; the countless bad ones rarely last more than a generation, or at best several generations.

It should be remembered that only mutations occurring in the germ cells (sperm and eggs) can have any chance of being passed on to the next generation.

This is true too.

The probability of getting five mutations ("good" or bad) in the same nucleus has been estimated to be 1 in 10 to the 22 power! If there was a population of 100 million organisms with a reproductive cycle of 1 day, such an event (5 mutations in one nucleus) would be expected to occur ONCE in 274 BILLION YEARS!

The probability of getting five mutations in the same nucleus is the probability of getting one mutation in a nucleus, to the fifth power! Natural selection hardly needs five mutations at the same time to work with -- one at a time is sufficient, and a lot more likely.

Recent scientific evidence has shown that the survival of ALL living organisms depends on an incredibly complex DNA REPAIR mechanism that actually cuts damaged (mutated) sections of DNA out of chromosomes and replaces them with a perfect patch! There is a human disease called xeroderma pigmentosa in which the DNA repair mechanism is inactive. These people generally die from mutations caused in part by occasional exposure to the sun.

The DNA repair mechanism is very effective, but isn't perfect; mutations have been show to occur despite it.

It requires an immense amount of faith to believe that our body is the result of "lucky" mutations!

This is a result not of a large number of mutations at once, which would be highly unlikely, but of a number of mutations stretched out over time. The vast number of "bad" ones, those which contribute to the vulnerability of the organism, are eliminated quickly by natural selection, while the "good" ones, those which contribute to the survival of the organism, are preserved. I'll explain cumulative selection in more depth later; keep reading.

GREAT MYTHS OF EVOLUTION #6 => ((THE FACT OF EVOLUTION IS SUPPORTED BY A RATHER WELL FORMED SEQUENCE OF INTERMEDIATE STAGES IN THE FOSSIL RECORD))

This comment by the famous Harvard evolutionist Steven J. Gould when he testified before judge Overton in the Arkansas Creation- evolution trial suggests that the countless intermediate stages in the evolution of one organism into another, really are visible in the fossil record - as indeed they should be IF evolution has occured. This same Dr. Gould, however, in one of his regular columns in Natural History magazine (May 1977) said:"The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology (study of fossils) -- In any local area, a species does not arise gradually by the steady transformation of its ancestors, it appears all at once and fully formed."

To say that Gould, an evolutionary theorist, is suddenly denying evolution in favor of strict creationism is to grossly misinterpret his words. Gould's testimony refers to real fossils that demonstrate transitions. There are many such examples in the fossil record, particularly on large scale (rather than on a species scale). His quote in Natural History most likely refers to the theory of punctuated equilibrium which he proposed along with Niles Elredge. He is pointing out the fact that on small (species-level) scales, changes arise so quickly in a lineage that the "transitional" forms are rarely even preserved -- an observation that eventually led to the concept of punctuated equilibrium, or evolution in jerky "fits and starts."

The paleontologist Dr. David B. Kitts agrees: "Evolution requires intermediate forms between species and paleontology does not provide them"(Evolution 28:476).

There is also a misunderstanding of what an "intermediate form" is. When a new species is discovered, it is thought of as being a discrete species in itself, not as being intermediate between other species, even though the latter may be the case. This explains in part the rarity of what we recognize as "intermediate forms".

Dr. David Raup, a paleontologist at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, recently pointed out that Darwin himself was: "embarrassed by the fossil record because it didn't look the way he predicted it would -- different species usually appear and disappear from the record without showing the transitions that Darwin postulated -- we are now about 120 years after Darwin and the knowledge of the fossil record has been greatly expanded. We now have a quarter of a million fossil species but the situation hasn't changed much -- We have fewer examples of evolutionary transiton than we had in Darwins time. By this I mean that some some of the classic cases of Darwinian changge in the fossil record such as the evolution of the horse in North America, have had to be discarded or modified as a result of more detailed information"(Field Museum Natural History Bulletin 50:22-29). The evolutionist Dr. Steven M. Stanley put it bluntly: "The known fossil record fails to document a single example of phyletic evolution accomplishing a major morphologic transition - "(Macroevolution: Pattern and Process 1979 p.39). No wonder G.K. Chesterton quipped that folks "seem to know everything about the missing link except that it IS MISSING."

Another reason for the apparent lack of transitional forms is the fact that nature is not considerate enough to fossilize every single living thing, and that of those creatures which are preserved, many have not been, and possibly never will be, discovered. The fossil record is extremely sketchy, and can only provide us with an imperfect picture of the history of life. Putting that aside, I would like to point out that there are a number of known transitional forms. For example, the evolution of mammals from therapsids, their reptilian ancestors, is well-documented by the fossil record. The species Archaeopterix is another example, possessing characteristics that are distinctly avian as well as characteristics that are distinctly reptilian.

GREAT MYTHS OF EVOLUTION #7
by David N Menton

PROFESSIONAL EVOLUTIONISTS ARE OPEN TO ACTIVE HELP FROM GOD REALIZING THAT THE EVOLUTIONARY PROCESS WOULD NOT HAVE WORKED WITHOUT DIVINE INTERVENTION

Creationism was ruled to be "unscientific" by Judge Overton in the recent Arkansas Creation-Evolution trial precisely because it "involves Divine intervention."

This is correct. Creationism cannot be proved scientifically; therefore it is unscientific.

Evolutionists are not about to open evolutionism to the same criticism, though some evolutionists tolerate "theistic evolution" as a sop for those who they see as too weak to entirely abandon their belief in the supernatural. But what do leading evolutionists really think about the role of God in evolution? Dr. Carl Sagan, perhaps the single most important voice of evolutionism,

Carl Sagan was an astronomer, not an evolutionary biologist.

confidently claimed in his book COSMOS (p. 177) "the world was not made by the gods, but instead was the work of material forces interacting in nature." Sagan's former teacher, the famous evolutionary astronomer Harlow Shapely, once said "Some piously record, 'In the beginning God', but I say, 'In the beginning hydrogen'." The famous Harvard evolu- tionist Dr. Steven J. Gould insists in his book EVER SINCE DARWIN, that "Matter is the ground of all existence; mind, spirit, and God as well, are just words that express the wondrous results of neuronal (brain cell) complexity." The distinguished evolutionist Dr. George Gaylord Simpson in his book THE MEANING OF EVOLUTION (951 P.135) claimed that "There is neither need nor excuse for postulation of nonmaterial intervention in the origin of life, the rise of man or any other part of the material cosmos." In like manner, Sir Julian Huxley explained that "in the evolutionary pattern of thought there is no longer either need or room for the supernatural. The earth was not created; it evolved. So did all the animals and plants that inhabit it, in- cluding our human selves mind, and soul as well" (EVOLUTION AFTER DARWIN, 1960, p.252). And finally, what did Charles Darwin himself believe about the role of God in evolution? Darwin expert Neal Gillespie, in his book CHARLES DARWIN AND THE PROBLEM OF CREATION (1974, p. 141), said that "Darwin clearly rejected Christianity and virtually all conventional arguments in defense of the existence of God and human immortality." In his own autobiography, Darwin admitted that his evolutionary beliefs gradually made the Bible unbelievable to him and said "Thus disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate, but was at last complete. The rate was so slow that I felt no distress, and have never since doubted even for a single second that my conclusion was correct. I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true."

If I understand him correctly, Menton is arguing that Christians may not believe in evolution because many evolutionary theorists do not believe in God. But theology and science are unrelated, and a scientist's theological beliefs do not affect the truths of science. While many evolutionists are atheistic, there is room for belief in both God and evolution, because evolutionary theory does not require the nonexistence of God in order to be true.

GREAT MYTHS OF EVOLUTION #8
by David N. Menton

GIVEN ENOUGH TIME ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE - EVEN EVOLUTION

This myth is the ultimate argument of those who attempt to "explain" the origin of the Cosmos and all life by CHANCE and the natural properties of matter and energy. Evolutionists hope that by invoking immense amounts of time, highly improbable events can somehow be made probable. But with this type of argument it is possible to "explain" ANYTHING.

This does not negate evolutionary theory. So far, Menton has no argument.

We've all heard it said, for example, that "given enough monkeys and enough typewriters, EVENTUALLY one of them is bound to type the sonnets of Shakespeare error free."

The actual statement says that given an infinite amount of time, an infinite number of monkeys each with a typewriter might eventually type a Shakespearean play.

But this outrageous myth violates the statistical foundation on which all modern science rests. Statistically controlled experiments are useless if we do not assume that highly improbable events simply do not occur. The probability of any event which has a known number of possible outcomes can be cal- culated quite easily. The probability of rolling a particular number on a die, for example, is one chance out of six (the total number of possible sides) or 1/6. The probability of getting TWO particular numbers on two successive rolls of the die is 1/6 x 1/6 or 1/36, which is to say you would expect to succeed once in 36 rolls. What then is the probability of randomly selecting the appropriate letters and spaces from a Scrabble set to spell "THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION"? There are 26 different letters and a space in the alphabet (total 27) and there is a total of 23 of these letters and spaces in our sentence. The probability of spelling this sentence without error by blindly drawing and replacing letters from our 27 character set is calculated by mult- iplying 1/27 x 1/27 x 1/27 .... 23 times. The answer reveals that we would expect to spell this simple sentence correctly by CHANCE approximately ONCE IN 8 HUNDRED MILLION, TRILLION, TRILLION draws!! If we drew and replaced letters at the rate of a billion a second we would expect to succeed once in 26 THOUSAND, TRILLION YEARS!!

The math sounds right.

Now the simplest living organism is so vastly more complex than our simple sentence, that we have no way of really calculating its probability. If, however, we consider just one one particular protein of average size (say 500 amino acids) from among the thousands of proteins in a living organism, we can easily calculate the probability of forming it by CHANCE. Proteins are made of a tightly linked chain of amino acids. There are only 20 different amino acids used in the proteins of ALL living organisms and they are arranged in a linear sequence much like the letters of a long paragraph. Assuming an inexhaustible supply of each of the 20 different amino acids, the probability calculation would be 1/20 x 1/20 x 1/20 ... 500 times. The number of possible combinations of the amino acids in this protein is 1 with over 600 zeros after it! Even if we were to begin with the proper mixture of 500 amino acids to make our particular protein, we could never get the correct sequence for them by CHANCE. Even if the entire universe were packed tight with computers the size of electrons, each trying a billion combinations of our 500 amino acids a second, we could sample only an infinitesimally small fraction of all of the possible combi- nations in 300 billion years! Even if every medium sized protein molecule that ever existed on earth were ALL DIFFERENT, our vast "fleet" of busy computers could not be expected to come up with the combination of amino acids in ANY ONE OF THEM in a mere 300 billion years!! What all this means is that if the whole of evolution were re- duced to the question of the probability of forming ANY ONE biologically useful protein of average size, we could safely conclude that evolution would be a VIRTUAL IMPOSSIBILITY by reason of the fact that there would be INSUFFICIENT TIME AND MATTER IN THE UNIVERSE!!! Now calculate how much faith it takes to believe in evolution.

The probability of a specific protein arising all at once is indeed astronomically small. But proteins, and living things, do not arise all at once. Menton used as an analogy the pulling of Scrabble tiles to form the phrase "THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION". Of course, the probability of this happening is very, very small, if all the letters are pulled one time. But evolution is not as purely random as Menton claims. Natural selection guides it. Say that we apply selection to Menton's Scrabble model. Imagine that we pull out twenty tiles, and discard the ones that don't fit. Now imagine we replace the discarded tiles with new ones, compare those to the target phrase, discard and replace the incorrect ones, etc., until the phrase is produced error-free. Using this process, the eventual production of the phrase "THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION" is effectively inevitable, because of cumulative selection. No evolutionist claims that complex structures arise at once; rather, they arise by a series of gradual steps, and only those which are successful survive. My example above (which is better explained by Richard Dawkins in Chapter Three of The Blind Watchmaker) is imperfect, because in evolution there is no set "target" such as a specific phrase, but it still illustrates that cumulative selection is a very powerful method of producing complexity.

The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins, (c)1987 by Richard Dawkins.
Eight Little Piggies by Stephen Jay Gould.
Dinosaur in a Haystack by Stephen Jay Gould.
Evolution by Mark Ridly, (c)1993 by Blackwell Science, Inc.