Posted by:
steve benson
(
)
Date: December 23, 2010 03:50PM
Jerry A. Coyne (former professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Chicago, where he specialized in evolutionary genetics and the origin of new species) has written a book, sweeping in scope and unassailable in evidence--one that lays out the overarching, undeniable reality of evolutionary biology in explaining the origin and development of life, entitled, "Why Evolution is True."
Richard Dawkins, author of "The God Delusion," in praising Coyne's work, observed:
"I once wrote that anybody who didn't believe in evolution must be stupid, insane or ignorant, and I was then careful to add that ignorance is no crime. I should now update my statement. Anybody who doesn't believe in evolution is stupid, insane or hasn't read Jerry Coyne. I defy any reasonable person to read this marvelous book and still take seriously the inanity that is intelligent design 'theory' or its country cousin, young earth creationism."
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Since from time to time this forum is subjected to scientifically-uninformed and mythologically-hobbled "arguments" for the fundamental fairy-tale notion of "intelligent design" (a term which is nothing but a disingenuous cloak for the superstitiously-religious idea of a supernatural Creator), it's appropriate here to allow Coyne to lay out evolution's obvious and demonstrable truths, while disarming, dissecting and disposing of the pseudo-science of "ID."
He writes:
"A few years ago, a group of businessmen in a ritzy suburb of Chicago asked me to speak on the topic of evolution vs. intelligent design.
"To their credit, they were intellectually curious enough to want to learn more about the supposed 'controversy.' I laid out the evidence for evolution and then explained why intelligent design was a religious rather than a scientific explanation of life. After the talk, a member of the audience approached me and said, 'I found your evidence for evolution very convincing--but I still don't believe it.'
"This statement encapsulates a deep and widespread ambiguity that many feel about evolutionary biology. The evidence is convincing, but they're not convinced.
"How can that be? Other areas of science aren't plagued by such problems. We don't doubt the existence of electrons or black holes, despite the fact that these phenonmena are much further removed from everyday experience than is evolution. After all, you can see fossils in any natural history museum and we read constantly about how bacteria and viruses are evolving resistance to drugs.
"So what's the problem with evolution?
"What's NOT a problems is the lack of evidence. . . . [E] volution is far more than a scientific theory: it is a scientific fact. . . .
"[The] evidence comes from many areas--the fossil record, biogeography, embryology, vestigial structures, suboptimal design, and so on--all of the evidence showing, without a scintilla of doubt, that organisms have evolved. And it's not just small 'microevolutionary' changes, either: we've seen new species form, both in real time and in the fossil record, and we've found transitional forms between major groups, such as whales and land animals. We've observed natural selection in action, and have every reason to think that it can produce complex organisms and features.
"We've also seen that evolutionary biology makes testable predictions, though not of course in the sense of predicting how a particular species will evolve, for that depends on a myriad of uncertain factors such as which mutations crop up and how environments may change.
"But we CAN predict where fossils will be found (take Darwin's prediction that human ancestors would be found in Africa), we can predict WHEN common ancestors would appear (for example, the discovery of the 'fishapod' 'Tiktaalik' in 370-million-year-old rocks . . . , and we can predict what those ancestors should look like before we find them (one is the remarkable 'missing link' between ants and wasps . . . . Scientists predicted that they would find fossils of marsupials in Antarctica--and they did. And we can predict that if we find an animal species in which males are brightly colored and females are not, that species will have a polygynous mating system.
"[Moreover,] [i]mperfection is the mark of evolution, not of conscious design. We should then be able to find imperfect adaptations, in which evolution has not been able to achieve the same degree of optimality as would a creator. . . . [In fact,] species aren't all that well designed: many of them show imperfections that are signs not of celestial engineering but of evolution."
"Every day, hundreds of observations and experiments pour into the hopper of the scientific literature . . . . [M]any of them [have much to do with evolution]. And every fact that has something to do with evolution confirms its truth. Every fossil that we find, every DNA molecule that we sequence, every organ system that we dissect supports the idea that species evolved from common ancestors.
"Despite the innumerable POSSIBLE observations that could prove evolution untrue, we don't have a single one. We don't find mammals in Precambrian rocks, humans in the same layers as dinosaurs, or any other fossils out of evolutionary order. DNA sequencing supports the evolutionary relationships of species originally deduced from the fossil record. And, as natural selection predicts, we find no species with adaptations that benefit only a different species. We do find dead genes and vestigial organs, incomprehensible under the idea of special creation.
"Despite a million chances to be wrong, evolution always comes up right. That is as close as we can get to a scientific truth.
"Now, when we say that 'evolution is true,' what we mean is that the major tenets of Darwinism have been verified. Organisms evolved, they did so gradually, lineages split into different species from common ancestors, and natural selection is the major engine of adaptation. No serious biologist doubts these propositions.
"But this doesn't mean that Darwinism is scientifically exhausted, with nothing left to understand. Far from it. Evolutionary biology is teeming with questions and controversies. How exactly does sexual selection work? Do females select males with good genes? How much of a role does genetic drift (as opposed to natural or sexual selection) play in the evolution of DNA sequences or the features of organisms? Which fossil hominins are on the direct line to 'Homo sapiens'? What caused the Cambrian 'explosion' of life, in which many new types of animals appeared within only a few million years?
"Critics of evolution seize upon these controversies, arguing that they show that something is wrong with the theory of evolution itself. But this is specious. There is no dissent among serious biologists about the major claims of evolutionary theory--only about the details of how evolution occurred, and about the relative roles of various evolutionary mechanisms.
"Far from discrediting evolution, the 'controversies' are in fact the sign of a vibrant, thriving field. What moves science forward is ignorance, debate, and the testing of alternative theories with observations and experiments. A science without controversy is a science without progress. . . .
"[M]any people require more than just evidence before they'll accept evolution. To these folks, evolution raises such profound questions of purpose, morality, and meaning that they just can't accept it not matter how much evidence they see. It's not that we evolved from apes that bothers them so much; it's the emotional CONSEQUENCES of facing that fact. . . .
"Nancy Pearcey, a conservative American philosopher and advocate of intelligent design, expressed this common fear:
"'Why does the public care so passionately about a theory of biology? Because people sense intuitively that there's much more at stake than a scientific theory. They know that when naturalistic evolution is taught in the science classroom, then a naturalistic view of ethics will be taught down the hallway in the history classroom, the sociology classroom, the family life classroom, and in all areas of the curriculum.'
"Pearcey argues (and many American creationists agree) that all the perceived evils of evolution come from two worldviews that are part of science: naturalism and materialism. Naturalism is the view that the only way to understand our universe is through the scientific method. Materialism is the idea that the only reality is the physical matter of the universe, and that everything else, including thoughts, will, and emotions, comes from physical laws acting on that matter.
"The message of evolution, and all of science, is one of naturalistic materialism. Darwinism tells us that, like all species, human beings arose from the working of blind, purposeless forces over eons of time. As far as we can determine, the same forces that gave rise to ferns, mushrooms, lizards, and squirrels also produced us.
"Now, science cannot completely exclude the possibility of supernatural explanation. It is possible--though very unlikely--that our whole world is controlled by elves. But supernatural explanations like these are simply never needed; we manage to understand the natural world just fine using reason and materialism.
"Furthermore, supernatural explanations always mean the end of inquiry; that's the way God wants it, end of story. Science, on the other hand, is never satisfied; our studies of the universe will continue until humans go extinct."
"[Now,] [i]f anything is true about nature, it is that plants and animals seem intricately and almost perfectly designed for living their lives. Squids and flatfish change color and pattern to blend in with their surroundings, becoming invisible to predator and prey. Bats have radar to home in on insects at night. Hummingbirds, which can hover in place and change position in an instant, are for more agile than any human helicopter, and have long tongues to sip nectar lying deep within flowers. And the flowers they visit also appear designed--to sue hummingbirds as sex aids. For while the hummingbird is busy sipping nectar, the flower attaches pollen to its bill, enabling it to fertilize the next flower that the bird visits. Nature resembles a well-oiled machine, with every species an intricate cog or gear.
"What does all this seem to imply? A master mechanic, of course. This conclusion was most famously expressed by the eighteenth-century English philosopher William Paley. If we came across a watch lying on the ground, he said, we would certainly recognize it as the work of a watchmaker. Likewise, the existence of well-adapted organisms and their intricate features surely implied a conscious, celestial designer--God. . . .
"The argument that Paley put forward so eloquently was both commonsensical and ancient. When he and he fellow 'natural theologians' described plants and animals, they believed that they were cataloguing the grandeur and ingenuity of God manifested in his well-designed creatures.
"Darwin himself raised the question of design--before disposing of it--in 1859:
"'How have all those exquisite adaptations of one part of the organization to another part, and to the conditions of life, and of one distinct organic being, been perfected? We see these beautiful co-adaptations most plainly in the woodpecker and mistletoe; and only a little less plainly in the humblest parasite which clings to the hairs of a quadruped or feathers of a bird; in the structure of the beetle which dives th[r]ough the water; in the plumed seed which is wafted by the gentlest breeze; in short, we see beautiful adaptations everywhere and in every part of the organic world.'
"Darwin had his own answer to the conundrum of design. A keen naturalist who originally studied to be a minister at Cambridge University (where, ironically, he occupied Paley's former rooms), Darwin well knew the seductive power of arguments like Paley's. The more one learns about plants and animals, the more one marvels at how well their designs fit their ways of life. What could be more natural than inferring that this fit reflects CONSCIOUS design?
"Yet Darwin looked beyond the obvious, suggesting--and supporting with copious evidence--two ideas that forever dispelled the idea of deliberate design. . . . Darwin was the first to use data from nature to convince people that evolution was true, and his idea of natural selection was truly novel. It testifies to his genius that the concept of natural theology, accepted by most educated Westerners before 1859, was vanquished within only a few years by a single five-hundred -page book. 'On the Origin of Species' turned the mysterious of life's diversity from mythology into genuine science.
"'Darwinism' . . . [is a] simple and profoundly beautiful theory, the theory of evolution by natural selection [that] has been so often misunderstood, and even on occasion maliciously misstated . . . .
"In essence, the modern theory of evolution is easy to grasp. It can be summarized in a single (albeit slightly long) sentence:
"Life on earth evolved gradually beginning with one primitive species--perhaps a self-replicating molecule--that lived more than 3.5 billion years ago; it then branched out over time, throwing off many new and diverse species; and the mechanism for most (but not all) of evolutionary change is natural selection.
"[This modern theory of evolution] . . . really consists of six components: evolution, gradualism, speciation, common ancestry, natural selection and non-selective mechanisms of evolutionary change. . . .
"Evolutionary theory . . . makes predictions that are bold and clear. Darwin spent more than twenty years amassing evidence for his theory before publishing 'The Origin.' That was more than a hundred and fifty years ago. So much knowledge has accumulated since then! So many more fossils found, so many more species collected and their distributions mapped around the world; so much more work in uncovering the evolutionary relationships of different species. And whole new branches of science, undreamt of by Darwin, have arisen, including molecular biology and systematics, the study of how organisms are related."
"The modern theory of evolution is still called 'Darwinism,' despite having gone well beyond what Darwin first proposed (he knew nothing, for example, about DNA or mutations). . . . Yet Darwin was so correct, and accomplished so much in 'The Origin,' that for many people evolutionary biology has become synonymous with his name."
"[A]ll the evidence--both old and new--leads ineluctably to the conclusion that evolution is true."
"[Intelligent design proponent] Pearcey's notion that these lessons will inevitably spill over into the study of ethics, history, and 'family life' is unnecessarily alarmist. How can you derive meaning, purpose, or ethics from evolution? You can't. Evolution is simply about the process and patterns of life's diversification, not a grand philosophical scheme about the meaning of life. It can't tell us what to do, or how we should behave. And this is the big problem for many believers, who want to find in the story of our origins a reason for our existence, and a sense of how to behave.
"Most of us DO need meaning, purpose, and moral guidance in our lives. How do we find them if we accept that evolution is the real story of our origin? That question is outside the domain of science. But evolution can still shed some light on whether our morality is constrained by our genetics. If our bodies are products of evolution, what about our behavior? Do we carry the psychological baggage of our millions of years on the African savanna? If so, how can we over come it? . . .
"[Certain] misconceptions . . . frighten people away from evolution and from the amazing derivation of life's staggering diversity from a single naked replicating molecule. The biggest of the misconceptions is that accepting evolution will somehow sunder our society, wreck our morality, impel us to behave like beasts, and spawn a new generation of Hitler and Stalins.
"That just won't happen, as we know from the many European countries whose residents wholly embrace evolution yet manage to remain civilized. Evolution is neither moral nor immoral. It just is, and we make of it what we will. . . .
"[T]wo things we CAN make of it are that it's simple and it's marvelous. And far from constricting our actions, the study of evolution can liberate our minds. Human beings may be only one small twig on the vast branching tree of evolution, but we're a very special animal. As natural selection forged our brains, it opened up for us whole new worlds. We have learned how to improve our lives immeasurably over those of our ancestors, who were plagued with disease, discomfort, and a constant search for food. We can fly above the tallest mountains, dive deep below the sea, and even travel to other planets. We make symphonies, poems, and books to full our aesthetic Passions and emotional needs. No other species has accomplished anything remotely similar.
"But there is something even more wondrous. We are the one creature to whom natural selection has bequeathed a brain complex enough to comprehend the laws that govern the universe. And we should be proud that we are the only species that has figured out how we came to be."
(Jerry Coyne, "Why Evolution Is True;" Chapter 1, "What is Evolution?," Chapter 3, "Remnants: Vestiges, Embryos and Bad Design," and Chapter 9, "Evolution Redux" [New York: Penguin Group, a division of Viking, 2009] pp. 1-3, 18-19, 56, 221-25, 233, 235, original emphasis)
Edited 13 time(s). Last edit at 12/23/2010 06:51PM by steve benson.