Evolution versus Creationism

[peter grimes]

I strongly urge anyone who is skeptical of evolution to read some actual source material. An easy way to get into the literature is the collected essays of Stephen Jay Gould. The essays are all on the shortish sides - anywhere from 8 to 20 pages, so they make awesome bathroom reading

He doesn't limit himself to dispelling myths about evolution at all. In fact, I'd say the bulk of the essays regard the process of science, and the history of discovery. He is very good at going back a couple hundred years, getting inside the head of a researcher, and showing us why the guy thought the way he did. It frequently will happen that the researcher winds up 'swept into the dustbin of history', because he was wrong about something, say, the age of the earth. But in detailing the mindset of the people working in that intellectual environment, we can see that even people who turned out later to be wrong, were nonetheless very intelligent and Rational people.

It is my opinion that if only the ID crowd were to use a little more rational thought, and educated themselves about the sweep of evolutionary thought [READ FIRST SOURCES!!] then they'll see the truth of the matter. After all, I don't think they'd doubt that clouds are made up of water vapor, even though I doubt any of them have taken a direct sample, or even seen a molecule of water before!

Allow me to quote a passage from his essay "An Unsung Single-celled Hero" from the collection Ever Since Darwin (1977):

Spoiler pp 123-125 :

Steven M. Stanley of Johns Hopkins University has recently argued that a popular ecological theory - the "cropping principle" - may provide such a biological control [that would permit the flourishing of diversity known as the Cambrian Explosion]. The great geologist Charles Lyell argued that a scientific hypothesis is elegant and exciting insofar as it contradicts common sense. The cropping principle is just such a counterintuitive notion. In considering the causes of organic diversity, we might expect that the introduction of a 'cropper' (either a herbivore or a carnivore) would reduce the number of species present in a given area: after all, if an animal is cropping food from a previously virgin area, it ought to reduce diversity and remove completely some of the rarer species.

In fact, a study of how organisms are distributed yields the opposite expectation. In communities of primary producers (organisms that manufacture their own nutrients by photosyntheses and do not feed upon other creatures), one or a very few species will be superior in competition and will monopolize space. Such communities may have an enormous biomass, but they are usually impoverished in numbers of species. Now, a cropper in such a system tends to prey on the abundant species, thus limiting their ability to dominate and freeing space for other species. A well-evolved cropper decimates - but does not destroy - its favorite prey species (lest it eat itself to eventual starvation). A well-cropped ecosystem us maximally diverse, with many species and few individuals of a any single species. Stated another way, the introduction of a new level in the ecological pyramid tends to broaden the level below it.

The cropping principle is supported by many field studies: predatory fish introduced in an artificial pond cause an increase in the diversity of zooplankton; removal of grazing sea urchins from a diverse algal community leads to the domination of that community by a single species.

Consider the Precambrian algal community that persisted for two and a half billion years. It consisted exclusively of simple, primary producers. It was uncropped and, for that reason, biologically monotonous. It evolved with exceeding slowness and never attained great diversity because its physical space was so strongly monopolized by a few abundant forms. The key to the Cambrian explosion, Stanley argues, is the evolution of cropping herbivores - single-celled protists that ate other cells. Croppers made space for a greater diversity of producers, and this increased diversity permitted the evolution of more specialized croppers. The ecological pyramid burst out in both directions, adding many species at lower levels of production and adding new levels of carnivory at the top.

How can one prove such a notion? The original cropping protist, perhaps the unsung hero of the history of life, probably was not fossilized. There is, however, some suggestive indirect evidence. The most abundant producer communities of the Precambrian are preserved as stromatolites (blue-green algal mats that trap and bind sediment). Today, stromatolites thrive only in hostile environments largely devoid of metazoan croppers (hypersaline lagoons, for example). Peter Garrett found that these mats persist in more normal marine environments only when croppers are artificially removed. Their Precambrian abundance probably reflects the absence of croppers.

Stanley did not develop his theory from empirical studies of Precambrian communities. It is a deductive argument based on an established principle of ecology that does not contradict any fact of the Precambrian world and seems particularly consistent with a few observations. In a frank concluding paragraph, Stanly presents four reasons for accepting his theory: (1) "It seems to account for what facts we have about Precambrian life"; (2) "It is simple, rather than complex or contrived"; (3) "It is purely biological, avoiding ad hoc invocation of external controls"; (4) "It is largely the product of direct deduction from an established ecological principle."

Such justifications to do not correspond to the simplistic notions about scientific progress that are taught in most high schools and advanced by most media. Stanley does not invoke proof by new information obtained from rigorous experiment. His second criterion is a methodological presumption, the third a philosophical preference, the fourth an application of prior theory. Only Stanley's first reason makes any reference to Precambrian facts, and it merely makes the weak point that his theory "accounts" for what is known (many other theories do the same).

But creative thought in science is exactly this - not a mechanical collection of facts and induction of theories, but a complex process involving intuition, bias, and insight from other fields. Science, at its best, interposes human judgment and ingenuity upon all its proceedings. It is, after all, (although we sometimes forget it), practiced by human beings.

 

[GoodGame]

Nice quote PG.

I saw this Gould book at the store. Was almost tempted to buy it, but the thickness of the text made it seem other than light reading.

http://www.amazon.com/Structure-Evolutionary-Theory-Stephen-Gould/dp/0674006135/ref=sip_rech_dp_5

 

[Perfection]

I believe you missed the point as quoted; "what is a single-celled organism doing with all this communications gear? "We don't have a clue!" " This is not just something evolution didn't predict it was something the evolutionist wouldn't have ever predicted. They haven't figure out how to put this one into their evolution story yet. Even single cell life is not really all that simple.

The problem here is not in evolutionary theory, but what we knew about kinases.

In fact evolution will help us figure what's going on here!

 

[GoodGame]

I believe you missed the point as quoted; "what is a single-celled organism doing with all this communications gear? "We don't have a clue!" " This is not just something theologists didn't predict it was something the theologists wouldn't have ever predicted, because it wasn't printed in the bible. They haven't figure out how to put this one into their creation story yet. Even single cell life is not really all that simple, despite what my 8th grade Biology teacher said.

Corrected so the Creationists can giggle and go away now.

 

[Flying Pig]

Cynical, but you have a point

 

[El_Machinae]

I think that was an unfair characterisation. It's not accurate to say that they think they have the whole truth. At best, they claim that they have some very strong hints about the way things really are, upon which they can build knowledge.

And a personal relationship with The Dude who knows everything, too.

 

[peter grimes]

I find it curious that most of the world's religions seem to have no problem with Evolution...

 

[GoodGame]

I find it curious that most of the world's religions seem to have no problem with Evolution...

I think these discussions just flip between religion isn't science--but it's all ok and they philosophically overlap, creationism is okay with evolution theologically, creationism isn't science, and other contentment. And then the pot gets re-stirred---either some IDer draws a bunch of attention bringing up some 'complexity' issue, or a YEC wants to accuse that evidence/conclusions are faulty; I find it ironic that the 'complexity' issues can be easily explained as 'ignorance' issues as well.

I'll just go with PG's statement here, and another paraphrase from a YEC Paleontologist (with a Ph'D) who actually contributes to advancing paleontological science and say 'scientists play the field very seriously as footballers, and then some (stressing the word some) creationists want to interrupt the field as basketballers, resulting in an ugly mess.

 

[Simple Simon]

 

[peter grimes]

What a neat way to show deep time: each pixel containing the full span of 2.35 million years! Carl Sagan would be smiling, were he still with us

Let's think back to what was happening on earth 2.35 million years ago...

Just one tiny little pixel.

 

[Flying Pig]

That's pretty good.

 

[Murky]

Nice graph Simon, but it needs more columns. There's a lot of people that fall in between the two extremes. I'd guess that 95% of the people on this plant wouldn't subscribe to either one.

 

[Flying Pig]

Agreed. Few people seriously doubt what scientists say - we have the opposite problem to you. Too few of you believe scientists, while too many of us listen to anything in a white coat

 

[Bomberman2]

Here is a list of things that evolution does not and was not meant to explain:

Origion of the Universe[ that's for astromers to do.]
Government[Progressives and liberals think that because life evolves that government evolves...
NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!
God
*Origion of life and...
Why Christian
Fundamentalists are
so annoying​

I do think that EVOLUTION IS indeed FACT. I am an Atheist and proud of it.

 

[Eukaryote]

I believe in evolution as a how, that doesn't nessesarily make it a why.

 

[BasketCase]

Smidlee, do you think that we can describe the birth and formation of volcanos, using completely naturalistic mechanisms? Now, we don't know everything about geology, not even close. Does that mean you think there's a non-naturalistic mechanism involved?

Actually, there was a time when the science available at the time couldn't explain volcanoes at all.

That doesn't change the fact that volcanoes have always been entirely natural, which leads to a simple observation about evolution: just because we can't explain Evolution (as some in here claim) doesn't mean the Universe must have been Created--it simply means we haven't found the correct explanation yet. It's happened many times before: humans can't explain something, so they take the wild leap to "it must be a God causing those mountains to spew fire". This method has come out wrong so many times we really should think twice (or three times) before using it.

 

[Perfection]

There is a difference though.

Creationists say that the bible is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. That the only thing there is to do is interprete the bible correctly. Biologists have never claimed that we understand 100% how life evolved.

One claims to have the perfect answer, while the other claims to know how to get to the perfect answer - with sufficient work to fill in the blanks.

I don't think science claims to get "the perfect answer", only better ones then we had before.

 

[Perfection]

Science doesn't operate on the timescales of infinite amounts of time. Science isn't about getting perfect truths an infinite amount of time,. That's not how it operates. Science about getting good truths in reasonable amounts of time.

 

[Flying Pig]

In science, something is true if assuming it's true gets you somewhere. In religion, if it gets you anywhere, it's not true

I rest my case.

 

[Flying Pig]

True unless m or p are 0, so we need to keep going if we want to get anywhere.