Evolution meets reality

The Theory of Evolution doesn’t exist as a counter to the bible or belief in gods.  It is founded upon geology, paleontology, archeology, biology, chemistry, etc.  It exists to provide common-sense, factual explanations of the evidence, as a result of using the principles upon which it stands, based on scientific discoveries made throughout the 17th to 21st Centuries.

In particular, discoveries in geology forced scientist to recognize that Earth is far older than stated by common interpretations of the bible.  These discoveries are summed up in a series of geological principles. Andrew MacRae of TalkOrigins states, “Most of these principles were formally proposed by Nicolaus Steno (Niels Steensen, Danish), in 1669, although some have an even older heritage that extends as far back as the authors of the Bible.  An early summary of them is found in Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology, published in 1830-32, and does not differ greatly from a modern formulation.”

The principles are as follows:

1. Principle of Superposition - in a vertical sequence of sedimentary or volcanic rocks, a higher rock unit is younger than a lower one. "Down" is older, "up" is younger.  This is more commonly called "Law of Superposition" nowadays.
2. Principle of Original Horizontality - rock layers were originally deposited close to horizontal.
3. Principle of Lateral Continuity - A rock unit continues laterally unless there is a structure or change to prevent its extension.
4. Principle of Cross-cutting Relationships - a structure that cuts another is younger than the structure that is cut.
5. Law of Included Fragments - a structure that is included in another is older than the including structure.
6. The principle of "uniformitarianism" - processes operating in the past were constrained by the same "laws of physics" as operate today.  This particular principle is not longer viewed as a necessary factor of modern science, but was important for those who lived in a time when most people considered ancient myths as fact.

In science, a principle (or law) is a description of a phenomenon in a particular situation without considering the cause based on evidence.  Laws are commonly retested just as everything is in science.  If a scientist comes across evidence that seems to contradict a known principle or law, that scientist understands that the principle needs retesting to determine how their new data fits into the overall collection of observations.  For example, the principle of original horizontality basically says that sedimentary layers of rock in the ground must be laid horizontality.  However, many rock formations are made up of sedimentary layers that are nearly vertical.  Is the original horizontality wrong?  No.  The layers where originally laid horizontally. Shifts in the Earth’s crust caused the layers to be moved into a nearly vertical position long after they were laid.  This particular observation was a factor in allowing scientists to eventually discover Plate Tectonics.

What does this have to do with the Theory of Evolution?  Even before radioactive dating, these geological principles forced scientists to realize that the Earth must be at least millions of years old.  Further, fossils of life forms are present in various layers of rock.  The fossil record shows a progressive change in life forms on Earth over time.  There is no period in which every species (particularly plants and animal) exist at the same time.  This led curious minds to ask, what is the process for bringing about new species over time?  Creationism said that all creatures were created in the beginning, but the fossil record shows that species come into existence and died out over different and vast periods of time.

Enter Darwin’s exploration.  He studied modern examples of plants and animals, and understood the fossil record.  His research and publication led to the discoveries of evolution and natural selection.  Why does life change over time?  It evolves.  What is the main driving force of evolution?  It is natural selection.

Darwin didn’t actually create the Theory of Evolution.  A theory cannot be made by one person.  A theory is the working explanation for repeatable observations and predictions in nature that are supported by scientific evidence and verified multiple times by various groups of researchers via peer review processes.  To briefly paraphrase Karl Popper, scientific theories must have testability (ability to test the theory), falsifiability (test if the theory is false), or refutability (test if the theory is refutable).

Evidence collected and verified by this process throughout the 20th Century did nothing but continue to reinforce the Theory of Evolution.  The fossil record became more complete and understanding of genetics improved.  Richard Lenski states, “Using DNA sequences, biologists quantify the genetic similarities and differences among species, in order to determine which species are more closely related to one another and which are more distantly related.  In doing so, biologists use essentially the same evidence and logic used to determine paternity in lawsuits.  The pattern of genetic relatedness between all species indicates a branching tree that implies divergence from a common ancestor.”

In the 21st Century, new discoveries in biology are not only further proving evolution; they are actually using knowledge of evolution to make new discoveries, particularly in areas of battling diseases, as mentioned in the article “Antibiotics in Action” at Pharmaceutical Achievers.  In other words, the Theory of Evolution is practical science benefiting humankind directly.  This puts the Theory of Evolution in the same league as Universal Law of Gravitation, Music Theory, theories within Mathematics, and General Relativity.

So, why is this important?  The key difference between notions based on Creationism such as Intelligent Design and actual theories such as Evolution is in their value to science.  Intelligent Design is the end of knowledge. It cannot be tested. It leads to no further discoveries.  It does not improve our understanding of the world around us.  On the other hand, Theory of Evolution is the beginning of knowledge. It is a model of science being used in practical ways. It also leads to more discoveries with endless possibilities.  The value of Theory of Evolution is that is expands our knowledge.  Just as geology opened the door to discovering Evolution, Theory of Evolution is opening the doors to many other sciences involving biology, biotechnology, infectious diseases, genetics, environmentalism, farming, etc.  It leads to a better understanding of the world around us as a logical result of the many observations we make of that world.

References:
Andrew MacRae
Karl Popper
Richard Lenski
Antibiotics in Action

Unusual attention on an old post

Sometime last year, I posted a light-hearted commentary on the idea of viewing human history in human-centric terms titled Something about Evolution Just Occured to Me. What's odd is that this posting has just recently provoked a healthy array of comment responses.

Sometimes too cleaver

Some websites can be a bit too cleaver. I was going to post a link to an article that appeared in the Feb 1-8, 2006 Seattle Weekly which detailed the fall from grace experienced by the Discovery Institute in their efforts to combat reality with the highly fictional "Intelligent Design" notion. Well, Seattle Weekly does have their back issues on their website, but in the form of an Active X controlled pseudo-PDF format. Not so easy to link to, though it does store the exact pages as they appeared in the periodical when printed. I still recommend reading the article entitled Discovery's Creation. Goto Seattle Weekly and click on the Print Edition link under the Home tab. The browse for the Feb 1-8 issue under the back issue folder in the left menu, then goto page 19. It's not as hard as it sounds, but still is way too many steps when all would be needed is a direct link.
Anyways, the article does a good job of laying waste those nut-jobs at the Discovery Institute in light of recent Federal Court decisions reaffirming the lunacy of "Intelligent Design". It's a good read, and worth the time it takes to click through all those steps.

Breathe of relief

On the AP today: "'We find that the secular purposes claimed by the Board amount to a pretext for the Board's real purpose, which was to promote religion in the public school classroom,' [U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III] wrote in his 139-page opinion."
This was part of the judge's finding in the case where the then Dover Area School Board attempted to cram that ridiculous notion of Intelligent Design into our U.S. classrooms as an alternative to the Theory of Evolution. The judge also had other harsh words for the school board and their actions.
I doubt there will be an appeal to the ruling since the Dover area community kicked all 8 of those guilty school board members out of office earlier this year.
I expect that religious leaders will now push for a repackaged Intelligent Design concept under some different name, and that we will be having this issue come up again within 15 years. What these I.D. proponents don't realize is that the more they try to become scientifically accepted, the more they will eventually have to adopt evolution and natural selection into their own belief systems. This is pretty much the end of the legal road for anyone that wants to dearly hold on to the traditional biblical creation myths and force those myths on everyone else. From this point on, the movement behind I.D. will eventually turn into a scienitific group that will one day turn it's back on it's own origins.
The only other legal battle pursuable by the religious faithful is to pretend that the 1st Amendment of the Constitution doesn't really forbid government tampering in a society's religious beliefs. If they can convince a judge of this nonsense somewhere along the line, they may still be able to openly get religion back into our school system. But then all hell will really break lose because every religious group in existence will claim their right to be present in our schools. I'm guessing that any judge, regardless of their beliefs will want that to be the result of their ruling. Given that, even this battle will be lost once and for all by the religious nuts one day.

Something about evolution just occurred to me...

In popular science, human evolution is often described in terms of when our ancestors headed off into our own branch of the great ape family tree. Something just occurred to me. What if, in our development, all the other great apes diverged from our branch? That is, in the course of our evolution, we left behind the ancestors of the Chimps, Gorillas, etc.

This is certainly a human-centric view of evolution. However, it must be admitted that things happened to our ancestors which didn't happen to the ancestors of any other of the great apes.

• We have much better buoyancy, allowing us to swim. 
• We walk upright. 
• We have more complex brains. 
• We have less prominent body hair. 
• We have a protruding nose. 
• We have much less muscle mass, etc.

Our environment changed, forcing these adaptations. Those groups of our ancestral species which were in far off locations didn't experience the need to adapt. Gorilla line broke off, moving into a panda/sloth-like direction, having never adapted to meat eating. Chimp line broke off much later, having never needed to walk upright. Neanderthal and the other extinct humans species broke off even later.

In a New Age sense, I might ask, what if we are the intended form? What if all the other species on this planet are just off-shoots of our ancestral line? I'm not sure about taking this line of reasoning seriously, but I'm putting it out there for others to think about with me.

We may not be able to apply this reasoning to all of Earth's history, but maybe it can be applied to the primate line. Even further, this doesn't justify viewing one species as inferior to us. Nor does it justify viewing different races of our own species as inferior. In this line of reasoning, I would hold that all humans represent the intended form. In fact, given our lack of genetic diversity, maybe we are missing a few races which we sorely need to keep our species genetically healthy into our long future. I would also say, this line of reasoning demands that all species on this planet are our cousins, brothers and sisters, whether Great Ape, monkey, lizard, fish, fungus, plant, or sponge.

Intelligent Design

“When are people going wake up and realize that [evolution] is trash science,” said Pat Robertson today, 3/7/05.

It’s funny that fundamentalist put so much effort into trashing the Theory of Evolution. In the past, the only alternative that has been offered is the first two chapters of Genesis. Of course, the first two chapters of Genesis have two completely separate and contradictory creation myths. Fundamentalist try to pretend it’s one story, but is a sticky point that is often used to catch them in their lies (that is, taking only parts of the bible completely literally and ignoring or explaining away sections that contradict their beliefs).

So, Intelligent Design is invited. Intelligent Design attempts to prove that a creator must be the explanation for life on Earth, and its diversity, without making direct reference to the bible or a god. Intelligent Design promoters have come up with all kinds of trick formulae, mental exercises, and baseless assumptions in the effort to build up a body of support for their ideas. However, the biggest point that makes Intelligent Design nearly useless is that its promoters don’t use the scientific method to falsify hypotheses. It is not enough to say that one has evidence for a hypothesis. One must also try to find evidence that contradicts their hypothesis. Absolutely no one that is out promoting Intelligent Design has done that.

In my opinion, the people promoting Intelligent Design don’t care whether or not they are speaking truth. They are spurred on by money, taking advantage of the ignorant masses seeking a remedy to the contradiction between the bible and reality. Basically, Intelligent Design promoters are snake-oil-salesmen, pushing a do-nothing product on unsuspecting people.

In science, it is usually healthy to have opposing views battling out the facts until the truth is discovered. The 20th Century’s great example of this battle was between Big Bang Theory and Steady State Theory. Of course, the Big Bang Theory evidential won the day, but not before Steady State Theory studies had an impact on our understanding of the Universe. Steady State supporters made several important discoveries. Ultimately these discoveries ended up providing further proof for the Big Bang Theory, but without opposing views driving research, it may have taken much longer to understand our visible Universe.

Here’s my challenge to Intelligent Design promoters. Stop selling snail-oil and start taking science seriously. Only then is it possible that their contributions will play and important role in our understanding of the origin of species. Until that unlikely day, there is no practical use for Intelligent Design. Using the scientific method to study nature as it is (and not just how we want it to be) provides endless insights and benefits to everyone. The Theory of Evolution is practical science that is playing a role in making new discoveries. Intelligent Design provides no insights or benefits into anything because it ends the search for further discovery.

**Update 9/23/2013: I stand justified of my opinion according to this recent article: Discovery Institute is a con-profit scam.**

Cobb County, Georgia umm, theory = fact

In Cobb County, GA, schools were ordered to add an advisory label to text books which detail evolution, awhile back. It reads, "This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered."
Every neutral observation of that label is true, save one: "Evolution is a theory, not a fact..." I'm not sure what ignorant idiot thought this was a smart statement, but whoever it was doesn't know the scientific definition of the word theory. This statement is a contradiction.

Theory - the general or abstract principles of a body of fact, a science, or an art (Merriam-Webster's Medical Dictionary)

Basically, when a scientist uses the word theory, that person is discussing fact or truth as proven repeatably and predictably by the scientific method (i.e., theory = fact). Technically, any high school graduate should know this. Certainly, the teachers and schools themselves do know this. Any member of any school district board is supposed to know this, especially if they making decisions regarding curriculum.

There's a reason why 70% of all Fundamentalist Christians that go to college leave their fundamentalism behind by the time they graduate! Education makes them smarter. lol My hypothesis is that the 30% that hold on to their beliefs may tend to be business grads. hehe Either way, there is no way to reconcile fundamentalism (of any religion) with reality.