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The Talk.Origins Archive: Exploring the Creation/Evolution Controversy

Feedback for September 2002

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From: Chris Stassen
Author of: Isochron Dating
Response: It would be an error to equate "urban legend" with "untruth." The meaning of "urban legend" is closer to: "a catchy, widely repeated, and not necessarily true story." See also the definition on www.urbanlegends.com:

[An urban legend] does not have to be false, although most are. [Urban Legends] often have a basis in fact, but it's their life after-the-fact [that makes them interesting]

That same web site's page on the Flat Earth Sociery urban legends does not debunk the existence of a society that promotes a flat Earth; it is a reprint of the very same flyer that we have on our site. (A flat-Earth society isn't the only urban legend that's a true story. That same web site documents the truth in some other urban legends, such as " hot water freezes faster than cold" and " running your fireplace can make your house colder.")

The International Flat Earth Research Society is a real live organization with several thousand members. Or at least, it was so until very recently; it may have died with Charles K. Johnson, who presided over IFERS until he passed away in March of 2001. See The Flat-out Truth, an interview with Charles K. Johnson by the late Robert Schadewald (an acquaintance of mine). That same interview is linked from our Flat-Earth FAQ.
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Response: The book you mention is not one I've seen often discussed on talk.origins, although references to it appear on several creationist web sites. If the book concerns abiogenesis, however, it is woefully outdated, having been published in 1984. See our Abiogenesis FAQs for more details.
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Of course it has. Biologically relevant reactions are catalyzed by molecules called enzymes that have the property of steric specificity. It would be harder to evolve an enzyme that can bind both a substrate and its mirror image (not to mention that in this case, it would have little utility in doing so).

An example: my car has a dent in the driver's side door. We're going to take it to a body shop, where they are going to replace the damaged panel with a left door panel. Should I complain that they have not resolved this little engineering problem satisfactorily, because they haven't developed a generic car door panel that fits either the left or right side? Should I be surprised that the left and right sides of my car are not identical?
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There a number of Australian contributors to the archive, so they should have caught this. That they didn't suggests only one thing: imperial aspirations. Watch your back, New Zealand.

We Americans, of course, don't have a clue about geography, and wouldn't have batted an eye if the page had said Auckland was somewhere in Greater Mongolia.
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Author of: Evolution and Philosophy
Response: Since everything of value in New Zealand is by default an Australian contribution to world culture, it follows that the University of Auckland must be located somewhere in Queensland.

Why, yes, I am Australian - why do you ask?
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From: Tim Ikeda
Response: Hmmm... The claim that mutations never add any new genetic information seems to be repeated more often these days. Perhaps this is because another set of creationist pamphlets have been churning off the presses. Unfortunately, we can count on people misreading these pamphlets and getting even the simplest arguments wrong.

Anyway, about the "no new genetic information" claim: Malarky. On the simplest level, any mutation which changes an original sequence alters the "information" is some way. Is this mutated sequence "old"? No, it's *new*: If it didn't exist in the parent organism but now shows up in the progeny, how else would one describe the relative age of the sequence change?

But what about the actual claim, that mutations *add* no new information? That's questionable as well. Mutations aren't always single changes in the bases of DNA. Duplications, transpositions and fusions are mutations that can also occur which increase the total length of DNA in the cell. Even a perfect duplication of a single gene will increase genetic information by some degree (And yes, even perfect duplications of a single gene can find an adaptive role). Some people such as Lee Spenter try to claim that a duplication is merely a change in copy number and not a change in information content, per se. Yet by any metric of information, any duplication requires more "bits" of data to specify. This change may be exactly one bit of additional data, but it is an increase. Any further mutations to either of the copies produces sequence divergences which require even more data bits to specify.
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Response: This is a volunteer website. We do what we can, but we cannot do everything. Consequently we answer only those that the volunteers "on duty" that month can answer (none of us can answer every query in every speciality). Moreover, about (in my guesstimate) 80% of feedback is asking questions that are already dealt with in earlier feedback, or is prominently dealt with in the oddly named FAQs on the website, or is a misunderstanding (like the never-ending stream of attacks because we supposedly support geocentrism, which, as was noted last month, is a kind of intelligence test).

As you did not give an ID, I cannot check what your prior feedsback have been.
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Response: Marvellous. Is this original?
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Response: Yes. The point is that the fossil record is sparse and unreliable and what paleontologists call "ghost lineages" (unrecorded groups over some period) are common.

Incidentally, the coelocanths that have been found are not the species that existed in the fossil record.
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From: Tim Ikeda
Response: The answer is "perhaps". However, there are many religious thinkers and organizations that do accomodate the two (e.g. religion and evolution). With respect to Christianity and science, I'd recommend investigating the ASA (American Scientific Affiliation). On this group's main web page, they write:

"Science in Christian Perspective - The American Scientific Affiliation (ASA) is a fellowship of men and women in science and disciplines that relate to science who share a common fidelity to the Word of God and a commitment to integrity in the practice of science."

The American Scientific Affiliation
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Response: In fact, there are a number of galaxies that are moving towards our own, most notably the Andromeda Galaxy (M31), which Slipher discovered to be blue-shifted in 1912. Most of these galaxies are in our own local group of galaxies.

Wavelengths of light are shifted by the Doppler effect, which depends on the relative motion between emitter and observer, not on the distance between them. The Doppler effect can be and has been tested on Earth. Just think of a train whistle; it changes sound based on how fast the train is moving towards or away from you, not on how far away the train is.

Mass does have some effect on light in the sense you mention, but differences in redshift are seen even between two objects of the same mass. Those differences in redshift correspond to the differences in velocities those objects have relative to us.

See this discussion on Physlink.com.
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Response: You're in luck. Our Fossil Hominids: Frequently Asked Questions page contains a discussion of the March of Progress graphic.
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You may have heard these things, but why should you believe them?

The claim that changing three nucleotides is fatal is blatant nonsense. I know of many mutations (such as large deletions) that change many more than 3 nucleotides, and lo, the animal survives. All I can imagine is that someone has a vague understanding that the genetic code is defined by nucleotide triplets, and somehow leapt to the conclusion that three is a magic number.

I have no idea where the claim of a recalculation of mitochondrial eve reset the date to 6000 years ago came from. Who did this recalculation? How was it done? I suspect that some creationist just made it up. It may shock you to learn this, but many creationists lie, and many more work to perpetuate the lies out of sheer, appalling ignorance.
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Response: You appear to substantially misunderstand evolution by natural selection. Trees obviously do not want animals to eat fruit and propagate their seeds. They don't decide consciously how to spread their seeds.

Evolution by natural selection proceeds on the basis of differential reproductive success. In other words, some organisms are more likely to survive and bear offspring that survive than others are. The natural consequence is that the genes of the successful organisms thrive and multiply, and therefore more organisms will have those genes.

Because trees do not walk around, they must reproduce by broadcasting their seeds. Trees that broadcast their seeds farther away are often more likely to bear offspring because the little trees are not competing for the same air and light.

Seeds can be blown by the wind, and obviously lighter seeds blow farther than heavier seeds. Thus some trees succeed reproductively (and thereby have offspring who will do the same) by producing lighter and lighter seeds, some even with little wings to help them drift farther. Of course, there is a trade-off; light seeds are unable to carry much in the way of nutrients to support the seeds once they land. But if the tree produces lots of seeds, chances are a few will survive and have offspring.

Note that there will be variation, even within a species. Just by random chance, some organisms in that species will produce lighter or more aerodynamic seeds than others. That slight difference multiplies over generations.

Another path to reproductive success is to produce fewer seeds, but to invest more resources in each one. A seed encased in a protective coating with a nutrient supply is more likely to survive than one without those advantages. Of course, it is harder to propagate such seeds by the wind, but if the tree is lucky enough that its seeds blow far in a windstorm or roll downhill, then the seeds may survive and reproduce themselves, continuing on the genome.

Imagine, then, a tree with a nutrient-filled seed package that just happens to be somewhat tasty to a particular species of animal. The animals eat the seed package (the fruit) and either digest or defecate the seeds. If the seed is not digested, it is deposited somewhere far away from the tree with a built-in source of fertilizer.

Over time, trees that produce tastier fruit are more likely to have their fruit eaten and their seeds propagate. That leads to success for the genome producing the tasty fruit and more copies of the tasty-fruit-producing trees.

Keep in mind that all of these actions take energy and other resources away from the organism's own survival. Each organism has an optimal balancing point where the resources expended on reproduction balances out with resources spent on survival in terms of maximizing that organism's likelihood of reproductive success.

Again, it is not that the trees are doing any of this consciously. It is that trees which propagate their offspring farther away are more likely to have successful offspring and those genes will continue on in the next generation, and the next. This is all blind trial-and-error on a massively parallel scale.

I'd suggest you read a good evolutionary biology textbook such as Douglas J. Futuyma's Evolutionary Biology to get a better handle on the basics of evolution. You might also read Richard Dawkins's The Selfish Gene to give you some practice thinking about gene survival and propagation.
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Response: We are more than familiar with both "Dr." Hovind and his $250,000 offer.

A page on the offer is available at Kent Hovind's $250,000 Offer. We also have an index page which provides links to a number of pages both here and on other sites discussing Hovind.
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Response: It seems we get this question at least once a month. Kent Hovind is not a scientist by any definition of the term. He is a snake oil salesman and an embarrassment even to his fellow creationists. His quarter million dollar offer is a fraud. I've offered "Dr" Hovind a million dollars to prove ANY empirical claim with the same criteria he uses, with no response. There is no way any claim could meet the criteria he uses, which is of course why he uses them. His offer is nothing more than a rhetorical tool.
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Response: Glad we could help. To anyone else interested, more information about the answer (4.55 billion years +/- 1%) can be found in the Age of the Earth FAQ.
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That's nice. However, this is not an atheist site. There are Christians who work behind the scenes here (although I am not one of them), and are not at all uncomfortable with having a sensible, rational acceptance of evolutionary biology while having faith in strange stuff I personally cannot understand at all. Belief in deities can be entirely orthogonal to comprehending science, so spamming your banners here is about as relevant as spamming a Volvo dealership.
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Response: Thank you for your feedback. I write only to point out that the result in this case--a renunciation of Christianity--is a result that leads many Christians, including a number of contributors to this site, to oppose creationism. In their view, lying for Jesus only weakens faith, not strenghens it. Disgust with the misinformation spouted by creationists can lead people to leave the faith entirely.

Those of you who read this Web site and believe that all its contributors are atheist hippie tools-of-Satan had better think again.
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Author of: Problems with a Global Flood, 2nd edition
Response: There have been occasional projects attempting to demonstrate the feasibility of Noah's Ark, such as The Noahs Ark Project, but I have never seen any tangible progress from them. Why this is so I don't know, but here are my top ten speculations for the reason:
  1. Shortage of gopherwood.
  2. No volunteers to muck the pens and stables.
  3. Complaints from PETA.
  4. Even at 1% inflation, materials and labor that cost a few shekels in Noah's day now cost billions of billions of dollars.
  5. There is no longer a vapor canopy, and the boatbuilders would be too uncomfortable without one to shade them.
  6. Innoculation requirements make it impossible to carry all the parasites.
  7. In the last 4500 years, too many new "kinds" have evolved for the ark to hold them all.
  8. We can't recreate the whole flood, including the complete restructuring of the earth's entire surface, so why bother trying to demonstrate just a small part of the story?
  9. Unlike Noah, the people in charge of Ark rebuilding projects tend to stay sober.
  10. The project requires numerous miracles, and the project leaders had a falling out with God.
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From: Chris Stassen
Author of: Isochron Dating
Response: You guessed correctly: the short answer to your question is that the passage of ten half-lives doesn't mean that everything is gone. The way that radioactive decay works is: after ten half-lives, there will be one part in 210 of the original quantity of the parent isotope remaining. Since 210 is 1,024, approximately one one-thousandth of the original quantity will remain.

As a rule of thumb, ten half-lives is usually roughly the limit for producing useful isotopic ages, which is where you may have seen that figure on this site. For an isotopic age, it is not sufficient to merely detect the presence of an isotope; it is necessary to accurately measure the quantity present. Further, as with any rule of thumb, that is just a ballpark figure. The exact limit depends on the original abundance, and the accuracy of the technique which one uses to detect any remaining amount. If an isotope is rare to begin with, it might take relatively few half-lives for it to reach the limit of usability for isotopic dating. If a very sensitive means of assessing the remaining quantity is used, it might be possible to detect one one-millionth of the original quantity or less (extending the range to twenty half-lives or beyond).

Dave Matson's chart probably came from Brent Dalrymple's work, as there is a similar chart in Dalrymple's The Age of the Earth (Table 8.3 on p. 377). Dr. Dalrymple says, about 244Pu:

[...] why does it exist in nature? The answer is that it very nearly doesn't! Hoffman et al. (1971), at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory and the Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory, were able to separate chemically and identify by mass spectrometry a small amount of 244Pu from a rare-earth mineral found in a California molybdenum mine. The amount of 244Pu was only about 8 x 10-15 g, and this was concentrated from 85 kg of ore. [...] Thus, the existence of 244Pu in such an exceedingly small amount is consistent with an age for the Earth of 4.5 Ga.
[Brent Dalrymple, The Age of the Earth, p. 386]

Those researchers went to great lengths to detect a very tiny remaining quantity, that would not have been detected by normal means. As a result, they were able to find 0.000000000000008 grams of 244Pu in 85,000 grams of ore -- roughly one part in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000. That would represent the remainder from one kilogram of 244Pu, decayed over the age of the Solar System, and therefore it is not inconsistent with the mainstream age of the Earth.

This was an important discovery, because it means that the 244Pu must have been formed fairly close to the time of the Solar System's formation. Had it been formed much before that point, it should have decayed away to undetectability, by now.
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We're not making money off anyone. This website is entirely a volunteer effort.

I doubt that we even have a volunteer living near the Atlanta area. I, for instance, am in San Diego, CA, and the commute to Atlanta to attend school board hearings is not in my graduate student budget.

I'm hopeful that the Cobb County school board will listen to the experts and keep teaching science in science classrooms, and keep non-science (like "scientific creationism" and "intelligent design") out.

Wesley
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Author of: Evolution and Philosophy
Response: First, this site is not, unfortunately, an encyclopedic collation of any topic concerned with evolution. Apart from the fact that's what scientists are for, they don't pay us enough (that is, they pay us nothing) to go out and find everything out.

Second, if you want to find out what an evolutionary account of emotions is, I recommend

Griffiths, Paul E. What Emotions Really Are: The Problem of Psychological Categories. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1997

and references therein. Unfortunately also, we cannot spoonfeed you if you really don't want to do any work yourself. Similar points apply to your other questions. Technological advance is not a problem for evolutionary theory once big brains have evolved, although there is much work yet to be done on how that occurred. Brains are the result of a sequence of evolution that can be tarced back to the initial evolution of multicellular animals.

If you want to discuss religious ideas, then contact those who claim to be able to - this site is unconcerned with religious ideas except in so far as they are opposed to science. There are many people who accept the fact and theory of evolution who are Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and of other religions.
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Response: There are numerous connections between the biblical story of Noah's flood and other flood stories from that region, some of which predate the Noachian flood story. See the Flood Stories from Around the World FAQ.
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Response: Thank you for the update, and we'll try to track down Chris Stassen, the article's author, to update the information. Until then, here are some links to other (offsite) articles about the discovery:
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Response: I'll suggest an answer for your first question. Natural selection enforces engineering trade-offs that depend on the niche that an animal finds itself in. Elephants may have no natural enemies, but their trade-off involves bearing rather large offspring after long gestational periods, one at a time, and a late weaning that decreases the number of offspring that an elephant can produce. Other species, e.g. mice have a different "strategy": they have shorter gestation and weaning so that they can produce many more offspring, although a lower percentage of those offspring successfully reproduce. Bigger size would not necessarily be an advantage for mice (need more food, easier for predators to spot, more energy to dig bigger burrows, longer to reach maturity). Different niches operate with different selective forces.

I've wondered the same thing about external testicles. If you ever find an answer, let me know.
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Author of: Evolution and Philosophy
Response: It is not true that if evolution is true there is no point to living. A good many people who are of the view that evolution is true have their own views on the point to life. Many of these are theists. Fact, is, you cannot get a "point" from evolution or any other science - evolution just is, just like electricity, gravity and chemistry. To draw a moral from anything, you need to step outside science and add some value judgements. For example, noted atheist Richard Dawkins holds the view that evolution is not the basis for a moral life, and that we must work against evolution if we are to be civilised. Theists like Kenneth Miller agree, only their goals are set by their faith. In neither case is it necessary to blindly say, "This is how life evolves so therefore life is worthless".
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