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Ardea Skybreak - The Science of Evolution and The Myth of Creationism
Ardea Skybreak - The Science of Evolution and The Myth of Creationism
OF EVOLUTION
AND
THE MYTH
OF CREATIONISM
KNOWING WHATS REAL
AND WHY IT MATTERS
ARDEA SKYBREAK
Insight Press
Chicago
first edition
ISBN: 0-9760236-5-2
Contents
INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
CHAPTER 1
AN OVERVIEW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
So What Is Evolution Anyway? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
What All Evolving Systems Have in Common . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Millions and Billions of Years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
What the Fossils Tell Us . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
So What Did Darwin Figure Out? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
What Darwin Learned About Selection from Farmers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Has Darwins Theory of Natural Selection Really Been Tested
and Proven to be True? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
SUPPLEMENTAL INSERTS FOR CHAPTER 1:
The Earliest Emergence of Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Not Everyone Wants You to Learn about Evolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Creation Myths . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Dating Techniques . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Change was in the Air . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Genetic Drift and Founder Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
The Continued Existence of Life on this Planet is Not a Given . . . . . . 32
CHAPTER 2
THE EVIDENCE OF EVOLUTION IN ACTION IS ALL AROUND US . . . . 39
Evolution in Action Today . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Rapid Evolutionary Change Observed in a Population of Moths . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Where Would We Be Without Fruit Flies? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
One Species Splitting Into Two on Opposite Sides of the Grand Canyon . . . . . . 46
A Few Words on Creationists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
SUPPLEMENTAL INSERTS FOR CHAPTER 2:
The Moth Flap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
Evolution in Action The Distribution of Sickle Cell Genes
in Human Populations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
An Interesting Example of Evolution in Action in the Treatment
of HIV Infections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
CHAPTER 3
REVIEWING A FEW KEY POINTS ABOUT ADAPTATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
CHAPTER 4
HOW EVOLUTION PRODUCES WHOLE NEW SPECIES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
How Do We Know Something Really Happened If We Werent
There To See It? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
Speciation and the Diversification of Life Are Rooted in the Same Basic
Phenomena, Including Natural Selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
Living Things Cant Help But Evolve . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
How Do Entirely New Species Come Into Being? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
SUPPLEMENTAL INSERTS FOR CHAPTER 4:
Were We Bound To Evolve?The Role of Random and
Non-Random Factors in Evolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
Evolution of Pesticide Resistance in a Population of Insects . . . . . . . . . 72
CHAPTER 5
MORE ON REPRODUCTIVE ISOLATION, SPECIATION AND THE
EMERGENCE OF EVOLUTIONARY NOVELTIES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
Mechanisms of Reproductive Isolation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
Especially Small Reproductively Isolated Populations Can Exhibit More
Evolutionary Novelties and Rapid Evolutionary Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
Some Reasons Speciation Might Not Occur . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
What Evolutionary Biologists Argue About and
What This Does and Doesnt Mean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
A Few Words about the So-called Gaps in the Fossil Record . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
Not All Evolutionary Lines Evolve at the Same Rate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
There Are No Guarantees in Evolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
The Effects of Mass Extinctions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
Speciation Before Our Eyes? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
CHAPTER 6
EVOLUTION IS A PROVEN FACT THE EVIDENCE IS CONCRETE
AND COMES FROM MANY DIFFERENT DIRECTIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
The Past Leaves its Marks on the Present . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
Direct Evidence of Evolution from Both the Fossil Record
and the Molecular Record . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
Indirect Evidence of Evolution
Embryo development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
Vestigial (remnant or left over) features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
Homologous features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
Convergence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
Sub-optimal design: natures quirks and imperfections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
Geographic distribution of species around the world . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
The fact that the features of living organisms fit into a system
of nested hierarchical classification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
SUPPLEMENTAL INSERT FOR CHAPTER 6:
A Conscious Intelligent Designer Wouldnt Design Life
The Way It Is . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
CHAPTER 7
THE EVOLUTION OF HUMAN BEINGS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
WHERE DID WE COME FROM? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
Human Beings Evolved Out of Pre-existing Non-human Species . . . . . . . . . 120
Some Basic Facts of Human Evolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
And Then There Are the Fossils Lots and Lots of Fossils! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
ii
iv
Support for this anti-evolution crusade has come from none other than
the President of the United States, George W. Bush, who told a group of
Texas newspaper reporters in August 2005 that Intelligent Design, a variant
of Biblically-based Creationism, should be taught alongside evolution as a
competing theory. (Both sides ought to be properly taught...so people can
understand what the debate is about.) On this Skybreak has commented:
From a scientific perspective this position is as ridiculous as insisting that
students be taught not only that the earth is round but also the competing
theory that the earth is flat!
In the United States today, there are concerted efforts in more than 20
states to prevent the teaching of evolution as scientific fact. Furthermore,
the forces behind these efforts have set their sights on redefining science
itself, to allow for supernatural explanations of natural phenomena and the
workings of nature. As Skybreak warns, these attempts to change the very
definition of what science is, to radically recast the whole way all of science
is done, the whole way science is conceived of and carried outwould
destroy science as science.
As this book makes clear, what is fundamentally being battled out here
is whether or not people are going to be allowed and encouraged to learn
the truth about the way reality actually isand why it is the way it isor
whether they are going to be prevented from doing so through the imposition of a particular religious dogma. Through its comprehensive overview
of the science of evolution and its explanation and defense of the scientific
method, this book brings to life the importance of knowing whats real,
and why it matters.
Introduction
The following open letter from Ardea Skybreak to readers of the
Revolutionary Worker newspaper (now Revolution) was originally published
in May 2002 to announce and introduce the forthcoming series from which
this book is derived. Insight Press is reprinting it here because it serves as a
fitting introduction to the book.
And yet, despite all the scientific consensus, the creationists and their
anti-scientific rants will simply not go away. The question is why? And in
countries like the United States some of the nuttier proponents of creationism even sit in the halls of power, influence legislation, and are welcomed
advisers of presidents. Again, why is that? These are questions we all need
to engage.
I would argue that we all need to know at least the basic scientific facts
about evolution and understand also how the religious fundamentalists
who want to keep the people ignorant and confused about evolution are
driven by a reactionary social and political agenda. And we need to learn to
recognize what is fundamentally wrong and unscientific in the arguments
of creationists, no matter what form they surface inand this includes the
arguments of the new crop of Intelligent Design Creationists who acknowledge the fact that some evolutionary change has taken place, but continue
to insist that much of the diversity and complexity of life could not have
come into being without the involvement of some kind of Intelligent
Designer at some point in the process.
It seems to me that the best and most visionary of revolutionaries are
always thinking and wrangling about many different kinds of big social,
cultural, philosophical and political questions, even right in the midst of the
most intense struggles. Its never a good idea for the focus of our thinking
and actions to become so narrow that we fail to grapple with a variety of big
questionsincluding in science and the artsespecially if were interested
in figuring out how to fundamentally change the world.
I am hoping to spark some lively debate and discussion of these important questions among (and between) a wide variety of readers of this
newspaper. We live in a society where professional scientists and non-professionals, those with formal education and those who have been offered
little or no such education, are usually kept apart and rarely get to interact
and learn from each other. We dont have to accept these divisions. With
its unusually diverse readership, this newspaper is in a position to play an
important role in overcoming such divisions.
Grappling with the scientific evidence for evolution and the backwardness of religious fundamentalist creationism is very relevant:
If you are a prisoner in a penitentiary somewhere who is fighting not
to be crushed by those conditions and to wrench out of all that madness
some real understanding of the way things are (and the way they could be),
and is determined to see through all the lies that have been told in order to
jail the peoples minds.
If you are somewhere on the outside, bone-tired from just trying to
get by, worrying about whether your kids are going to get brutalized or
killed by the police, and sick and tired of being told that things are the way
they are because its gods will and theres nothing you can do about it.
Introduction
In future issues of the paper this series on evolution will try to address
such things as: What is evolution, and how do we know for sure it really happened (and is continuing to take place)? What is false about the creationist
arguments against evolution, and why are their methods completely bogus?
Why is this battle going on today? How can all the wonderful diversity and
complexity of life on this planet have come to be without the hand of an
Intelligent Designer?
It will be difficult to do justice to such a multi-faceted and far-reaching
subject in just a relatively few installments in the pages of this newspaper.
But I hope to do enough here to at least convey some basic facts for which
there is overwhelming scientific evidence, do a little exposure on what the
creationists are trying to pull, and get the ball rolling for some broader mass
wrangling on these and related questions.
If people would like to send in comments, or if you have specific questions youd like answered, I would welcome this and I will try to integrate this
into the series. Id also like to invite others with some scientific background
(both professional working scientists as well as students and non-professionals) to assist in whatever ways they can to improve on this project and to
find ways to get the facts of evolution (and of what the creationist crusade
against evolution is all about) out to an even broader audience than has so
far been possibleincluding to those who might not be in a position to
learn any of this through the schools or on the schoolboard and courtroom
battlegrounds where most of the evolution vs. creationism battle has so far
taken place.
This series will try to speak both to people who have no background in
science and to people who already know the basics but want to get into
some of the more advanced scientific questions. But please dont hesitate
to get into this series even if youve never been into science or never had
a chance to learn anything about evolution. No prior experience necessary!
Science really isnt so mysterious (though some people want to make it
seem that way so they can lord it over other people), and in any case well
work on breaking it down as we go (and those who know more should help
out those who may know less so we can all move forward).
And, as a matter of fact, those of you who have no scientific training and
perhaps little formal education in general could play a particularly important role in this: by struggling to become knowledgeable about evolution
and what the religious fundamentalists are up to when they seek to deny
the people this well-established scientific knowledge, you could do a great
deal to help spread a scientific outlook among the people. Many of you have
been exposed to a lot of religion and have deep roots and close family and
other personal ties within communities where a literal belief in religious
scriptures continues to be deeply entrenched and greatly encouraged by the
people who run societywhereas, among the masses of people, a scientific
Introduction
Footnotes and boxes are integral to the text, and readers are encouraged
to read them when this is indicated in the text of the book. Minor
editing has been done for publication of the series in book format. A
glossary of some key terms and concepts has been added.
Chapter 1
An Overview
Our planet, like all things, has a history. It is a history of changeall
sorts of dramatic changes, taking place over billions of years. Changes have
never stopped happening, and are still going on.
So let me just start off by briefly going over a few things that all modern
scientists and most people who have had the opportunity to learn basic
scientific facts know to be trueas definitely and undeniably true as the
fact that the earth is not flat or that it goes around the sun.
Our planet was birthed in some cosmic explosions about 4.5 billion
years ago, hurtling through space as a fiery ball of hot rocks and gases, and
settling into orbit around one of the many stars in the cosmosthe one
we call our sun. For the first billion years or so the planet went through
many physical changesstarting to cool down for one thingbut there
was no life.
Fast forward about a billion years. By then a lot of things have changed
in the physical composition of the planet: surface temperatures have cooled
considerably, and some land masses and water bodies have begun to take
shape. But temperatures are still fairly extreme, and the waters and atmosphere are full of acids and poisonous gases.
In fact, if you could somehow go back in time about 3.5 billion years,
you would have a hard time even recognizing our planet! You would find no
animals walking the land, no insects or birds in the skies, no fish in the seas.
You would find no grasses, no trees, no flowering plants. You would find
no familiar landmarks: none of the familiar continents, mountain ranges,
plains, or oceans of today. And you would find no fresh water to drink,
absolutely nothing you could eat, and you wouldnt even breathe the air
which didnt yet have any oxygen.
But if youd known where to look 3.5 billion years ago (and could have
somehow protected yourself from the extreme temperatures and poisonous atmosphere!) you might have found the very first forms of life on this
planet. You would have had to look closely, because life wouldnt have
looked like much back thenimagine something like microscopic clumps
of organic molecules coming together and forming very stripped-down versions of living cells, simpler in structure even than modern-day seaweeds or
bacteria. A kind of chemical soup, alive only in the sense that these new
little tidbits of matter could do two things that non-living things cannot
do on their own: actively draw in energy from the outside environment
(allowing them a means to grow and develop, as well as a basic means to
cause transformations of that outside environment) and replicate, or make
new copies of themselves. (See The Earliest Emergence of Life below.)
If you dig down into the earth today, you can find fossilized (hardened
and preserved) remnants of ancient creatures, many of which no longer
exist today. The oldest fossils which have been found are the remnants of
ancient bacteria which lived about 3.5 billion years ago.
We dont really know whether primitive life may have emerged and
then perhaps petered out (and later re-emerged) a number of different
times in the very early history of the earth. But, at any rate, there is plenty
An Overview
of evidence that all the life-forms which are around on earth todayall
the bacteria, all the species of plants, all the species of animals, including
humansare descended from a single common ancestor. One of the most
important indicators of this common descent is that all living things on
this planet make use of the same basic underlying genetic code and share many
particular mechanisms of protein synthesis. The particular DNA/RNAbased method of replication and inheritance, which is a characteristic of all
living things on this planet, is not necessarily the only way that life could
reproduce itself: we may well some day discover life-forms in other corners
of the universe which use a completely different system and different chemical building blocks for their own replication and transmission of inheritable
characteristics. But whats important to understand here is that all living
organisms on this planet use basically the very same system and underlying
An Overview 11
change, but about how whole systems change, over time and over generations.
In one sense, even non-living systems can evolve as long as they meet
certain criteria. Non-living systems which can be seen to evolve over time
include human cultural systems, such as languages, traditions, musical styles,
philosophies, car designs, computer programs, and so on. Of courseand
this an important distinctionin non-living cultural systems the mechanism
of evolutionary change (of replication, transmission, and modification of
information over a series of successive generations) is very different
because it is not based (as it is in living things) on DNA molecules and the
mechanisms of random genetic variation and inheritance (and if you dont
know about any of this yet dont worryit should all become clearer a
bit later on). But such non-living systems do nevertheless evolve in ways
that can be very analogous to the processes of biological evolution. In fact,
studying basic principles of Darwinian biological evolution has actually
helped people better understand such things as the evolution of human
languages, engineering designs, and even the more basic and fundamental
philosophical principles underlying human creativity and innovation more
generally. In turn, stopping a moment to review what all systems that are
capable of evolving have in common can sometimes help people better
understand the more particular ways in which living (biological) systems
have evolved, and continue to evolve to this day.
An Overview 13
they also tend to incorporate some distinct local features having to do with
the particular region and time in which a given tribe or people lived. But
everywhere throughout human history people would tell each other these
stories and pass them on from generation to generation to try explain how
the world and the people (by which they usually meant themselves)
came to be. (See Creation Myths on page 14.)
How can we really tell whether the stories contained in various religious scriptures are true or not? And, on the other hand, how can we tell if
evolution is true or not?
The best way to determine the basic truth or falsehood of an idea is to
go out in the world and test it. This is how human beings learnwe experiment, we manipulate and transform the outside world, and in the course
of doing this we uncover a lot of information about the way things actually
work, and about the underlying processes and dynamics of things.
But the creation myths contained in various religious scriptures the
world over are stories that people are asked not to test for truth or falsehood
but to accept and believe in simply as a matter of unquestioned faith. Even
the leaders of various religions admit that ideas such as in the beginning
God created the world and everything in it cannot, by definition, be subjected to scientific testing or any means of concrete human verification.
But there is plenty of concrete evidence to suggest that these supernatural forces have actually never existed anywhere except as ideas in the
minds of people, in the stories that people tell, in the songs people sing, in the
books that people write, etc. So, while science can only test and investigate
actual material reality, it is important to realize that the content and history
of all the different religions of the worldtheir own origins and how they
have changed over time, as well as the ways in which they have attempted
to explain the natural world and human societyis all part of that material
reality that can be scientifically explored and investigated.
Take the Bible, for instance. The Bible is after all a book. It was written
thousands of years ago, by a series of different human authors. The fact
that human beings wrote the Bible explains a lot why the Bible contains
things which are simply factually not true. For instance, according to the
Bible the Earth is only a little more than 6,000 years old, but in reality
(as shown by modern scientific dating techniques) it is actually closer to
4.5 billion years old!
Creation Myths
One thing that all religions have in
common is that they all tell stories. The
Christian Bible, the Jewish Tanach, the
Muslim Koran, the Buddhist Vedas, and
so on, are all books of stories. Stories that
people are supposed to pass on through the
generations. Stories that are supposed to
teach us how to live, and how not to live,
our lives. Stories which were told and retold
to serve certain social and political agendas,
to set down rules of acceptable conduct.
One of the most common types of religious stories all around the world is called
a creation myth: it is the story people tell
of how the world, and all the people and
animals and plants, supposedly came to
be. Every human culture has tried to put
together such an explanation, and in the
absence of scientific methods and knowledge every human culture has invoked some
supernatural forces to try to explain how we
all got here and where we came from. Here
are just a few interesting samples (drawn in
large part from Encarta Encyclopedia):
Ancient Babylonian Creation Myth
According to this Near Eastern myth
(the Enuma Elish), which dates back to
around the 12th Century BCE, in the beginning there was only a watery void and there
was a male god of fresh water (Apsu) and a
female god of salt water (Tiamat). In time
a younger god of lightning and thunder
(Marduk) killed Tiamat and split her body
in two to form the heavens and earth.
Hopi Creation Myth
First there was Tawa the sun god and
Spider Woman the earth goddess. Spider
Woman made all the people and other
creatures out of clay deep inside the earth
and then guided them to the surface where
Tawa the sun god breathed life into them
and dried the land.
Iroquois Creation Myth
The world was formed on the back of
a giant turtle. First Woman fell from the
sky and lived with the help of the animals.
She had one good grandson and one bad
grandson from which stemmed the conflict
of good and evil among humans.
14
15
the age of the known universe or the age of the earth as a whole; we can
tell when individual mountain ranges were formed, when whole continents
drifted apart or collided, or when the earths whole climate underwent
dramatic changes. We can date individual rock layers, all sorts of fossilized
plants and animals embedded in rocks, and even tiny bits of organic material. Today we can even use the techniques of modern molecular biology to
track changes in DNA and RNA molecules over time and to determine how
far back certain significant genetic mutations and major splits in evolutionary lines occurred! We can date how far back whole new lines of plants
or animals first appeared, or when long vanished species went extinct!
It is important to realize that it is only in the past century or so that scientists have been able to figure out accurate and direct dating techniques (and
some of the newest molecular dating techniques are only a few decades
old!). So obviously, the authors of the Bible and other ancient scriptures
written a few thousand years ago would have had no way of accurately
dating the age of the earth or of figuring out the sequential unfolding of
plant and animal life on this planet. But today scientists can get at least
good ball-park figures for the age of just about anything, and sometimes
the results can be surprisingly precise and are often corroborated (that is,
cross-checked and verified) by using a variety of different dating techniques
in combination. (See Dating Techniques, right.)
There is at this point a general scientific consensus on such things as
that: the earth itself is about 4.5 billion years old (thats 4500 million!); the
first and simplest forms of life (including the first bacteria) emerged on
this planet about 3.5 billion years ago; a huge diversification of all sorts of
marine animals happened about 540 million years ago (in a period referred
to as the Cambrian explosion); the first jawed fish, amphibians and insects,
as well as ferns and other land plants, all first appeared within the next 100
million years or so, i.e., in the period between about 540 and 440 million
years ago. The land plants, insects and amphibians then diversified a lot,
and the first reptiles appeared around 350 million years ago. Then around
250 million years ago the reptiles in turn diversified a lot (including giving
rise to the first dinosaurs) and the very first mammals appeared. Around
200 million years ago the vegetation of the global landscape was still dominated by palms, ferns, pine-tree like conifers and ginkgoes, but now the first
flowering plants appeared, and this was also when the first birds appeared.
We also know that the last dinosaurs went extinct about 65 million years
ago but that all sorts of mammals, birds, flowering plants and pollinating
insects continued to diversify and spread around the globe. The most recent
major wave of extinctions before modern times (the fifth since the beginning of life on earth) occurred when many of the largest mammals and
birds went extinct at the end of the Pleistocene Ice Age about 10-12,000
years agoa time of dramatic climate changes with temperatures rising
Dating Techniques
There are many reliable dating techniques, such as various radiometric dating
techniques based on measures of radioactive decay, which were not yet available to
scientists in Darwins time. Radioactivity
was only discovered at the end of the 19th
century, and it was in the 1950s that scientists figured out that various radioactive
substances, which occur naturally in various
materials, will actually decay at constant
and predictable rates, turning into nonradioactive stable forms (isotopes) of the
same elements.
By concretely measuring the relative
amounts of radioactive isotopes vs. stable
forms of the same elements present in a
sample, scientists can figure out just how
long the radioactive decay process has been
going on, and in this way determine how
old the object is. And since different kinds
of radioactive isotopes (of carbon, potassium, rubidium, and so on) decay into their
particular non-radioactive forms at different rates, scientists can often double-check
the age of a sample by using more than one
dating technique. This kind of method has
been used to very precisely figure out the age
of different kinds of rock layers (and even
moon rocks!): the rate of decay of certain
isotopes found in rocks is so constant
and predictable that scientists sometimes
refer to them as clocks in the rocks.
Measures of the decay of such things as
potassium isotopes to argon, rubidium-87
to strontium-87, thorium-232 to lead-208,
uranium-238 to lead-206 are all commonly
used and mutually corroborating techniques
for dating many different kinds of rocks.
When plants and animals are alive, they
take in carbon from the environment. Their
bodies contain this carbon in two forms,
carbon-12 and carbon-14, always in fixed
proportion one relative to the other. When
a plant or animal dies, it stops taking in
carbon from the environment. And while
the carbon-12 left in its body stays the
same, the carbon-14 begins a gradual process of radioactive decay, through which the
carbon-14 turns into nitrogen. This decay of
carbon-14 happens at a known, constant,
and predictable rate. So by measuring the
carbon-14 level still left in the remains of
a dead plant or animal, comparing it to
the amount of carbon-12 present in these
remains, and factoring in the known steady
rate of decay of the carbon-14, it is possible
to calculate quite accurately how long ago
a plant or animal died, going back up to
about 50,000 years ago.
Different methods of radiometric dating
measuring the decay of other kinds of isotopes can be used to date materials older
than 50,000 years. And even though such
radiometric dating techniques cannot be
used to directly date fossils which are found
in sedimentary rocks, these fossils can also
generally be consistently and reliably dated
indirectly, simply by directly measuring the
age of igneous (volcanic) rock layers found
right above and below those fossils.
In recent decades, advances in molecular
biology have added yet another important
kind of dating technique to the scientific repertoirethat of molecular clocks, which
involve measuring the amount of neutral
mutations which have accumulated over
time in different lineages of related species.
These are types of mutations which are considered to occur at relatively constant rates,
so that calculating the amount of certain
kinds of molecular differentiation between
related species can provide a pretty good
estimate of the amount of time which has
passed since their lines diverged (split) from
a common ancestor. Additional methods,
such as DNA hybridization techniques,
can also assess the degree of similarity or
difference in the DNA of different species,
and this has been very helpful in providing
more specific calculations of how closely different species are related, and how far back
in time they must have shared a common
ancestor. J
17
and glaciers retreating and also a time when human activity and impact on
various environments likely increased.
We also know that the hominid line diverged (split) from its ape ancestors only a few million years ago (4 to 10 million by most estimates, and
probably closer to 4 than 10) and ended up producing a series of different
human-like bipedal (upright-walking) species. All but one of these hominid
lines eventually became extinct. The only species of hominid still around
today (our own species homo sapiens, to which all human beings belong)
dates back only about 100,000 (one hundred thousand) years. While that
might seem like a lot of years relative to an average persons lifespan, when
you think about what the mere 100,000 years that we modern humans
have been around looks like relative to the whole 3.5 billion year history of
diversifying life on this planet (complete with those repeated waves of
species diversification and at least five periods of mass extinctions of a huge
proportion of all the living creatures on the planet) the timespan occupied
so far by our own species really seems like little more than a drop in the
bucket!
The fact that our own species has so far occupied such a tiny sliver of
history is brought home even more forcefully when we reflect on the fact
that human beings didnt even develop agriculture (which ended up serving as a foundation for large and complex civilizations) until only about
10,000 years ago!
The science of evolution and the development of scientific dating
techniques has allowed us to confirm once and for all that the story of
the origins of life told in the Genesis chapter of the Bible is not in fact
accurate. The Bible says that god created the earth and the ancestors of all
the plants and animals and people in just six days, but we now know that it
has really taken about 3.5 billion years for life to get to where it is today from
its simplest origins. The Bible also says that all the different types of plants
and animals (and our own ancestors) appeared on Earth just a few thousand
years ago and all at one time, but we now know that many different kinds
of plants and animals appeared (and also disappeared) at many different
junctures in the much longer history of life on this planet. The Bible says
that all the different types of living plants and animals remained completely
unchanged since the time of creation, but (as we shall see through the course
of this book) we now know beyond all reasonable doubt that, time and time
again, brand new species of plants and animals emerged which had never before
existed and always as modifications of the species which existed before them.
There is lots of evidence for all of this, as we will see.
An Overview 19
whose bodies got quickly covered up by soils and sediments which later
hardened into solid rock, thus sealing them in and preserving them. For
centuries now, scientists and others have been digging up millions of fossils
of all sorts, out of all sorts of rocks, from all over the world. These fossils
have provided concrete evidence of what many ancient plants and animals
looked like, and often also something about the environments in which
they lived. For instance, if you happen to be walking somewhere in a forest,
along a road-cut, or on a mountaintop that is hundreds of miles from any
ocean, and you start noticing that the ground under your feet is full of little
rock-like fossils which are easily recognizable as clams and other seashells,
you wont need a degree in geology or paleontology to realize that its a
pretty good bet that right where you are standing was oncelong agothe
bottom of an ancient sea! If you are lucky, you might even find a trilobite or
twothe fossilized remnant of a small marine invertebrate which looked
a bit like an aquatic cockroach. Something like 10,000 different species of
trilobites lived in the Paleozoic period between roughly 300 million and
400 million years ago, but theyve now all gone extinct, so we learn about
them by studying their fossils. In fact, collecting and studying fossil plants
and animals provided people some of the first clues that both environments
and living creatures had not always been as they are today, so that life must
in fact have evolved over time.
Long before people came up with sophisticated modern dating techniques such as radiocarbon dating, quite a few people had started to figure
out that all the different types of plants and animals must not have appeared
on earth all at one time. Even by the early 19th century, it was pretty clear
that some types of ancient plants and animals had completely vanished
from the earth, that some had first appeared very long ago, and some much
more recently, and that some types seemed to have existed in the past for
long stretches of time while other types seemed to have vanished more
quickly.
Much of this kind of basic understanding that life had probably evolved
through different stages over time came about in the 18th and 19th centuries when early geologists and naturalists started trying to scientifically
study the ways soils and rock layers had accumulated over time, and the
physical forces which they realized must have caused landscapes to change
dramaticallybut over almost inconceivably long periods of timeas when
mountain chains had been pushed up or eroded back down, or when valleys had been carved out by slowly advancing or retreating sheets of ice.
Realizing that the physical surface of the earth itself had changed tremendously
over timeand beginning to realize just how long it would necessarily have
taken for many of these changes to take placecaused some of the 18thand 19th-century geologists and naturalists to begin to suspect that there
was simply no way the earth could be as young as was said in the Bible.
An Overview 21
somehow probably changed (evolved) over time. Once again, this dawning
realization made many of them very uncomfortable, because it ran counter
to the story of creation as told in the Bible which theyd grown up with.
Even as they kept collecting more and more evidence which more and more
strongly suggested evolution had somehow occurred, many of them still
tried hard to figure out reasonable alternative explanations which would
allow them to continue to accept the Biblical notion that all living creatures
appeared at the same time and had remained essentially unchanged since
the time of divine creation.
But the evidence for evolution kept mounting, and no amount of rationalization could make it go away.2 (See Change Was In the Air on page 22.)
When it became clear from the fossil record that different types of
creatures had lived at different times in the earths history, some naturalists
and others tried to reconcile this disturbing realization with their Christian
beliefs: they suggested that perhaps all living creatures had been created by
God, but that there had been not just one but repeated acts of divine creation. Others didnt think that was very plausible. The traditional view of
the world, as a very static place full of things that never change, really had
started to break down. If the physical face of the planet had itself changed
over time (the physical forces involved in such things as mountain formation and the erosion of valleys were beginning to be understood), could it
be that the different types of living plants and animals had also somehow
been transformed over time?
These were the kinds of questions that some of the more advanced
naturalists were excitedly discussing among themselves in the early years
of the 19th century. And the more fossils were collected and examined, the
more such questions were posed. Naturalists were beginning to see that
there were similarities, as well as differences, among the different types of
fossils. What could account for this? Could it be that the different fossil creatures were somehow related to each other? Could it be that at least some
of the types of creatures whose fossils could be dug out of the lowest and
oldest rock layers had actually not simply disappeared without a trace but
had, somehow, evolved into some of those creatures whose similar-butdifferent fossils could be found in the upper (more recent) rock layers?
The great naturalist Charles Darwin caused a genuine revolution in
human thought and understanding when he wrote a book published in
1859 called The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection.3 This book
presented a great deal of concrete evidence that living creatures had evolved
over time. And Darwin went one giant step even beyond that, developing a comprehensive theory and proposing a concrete mechanism through
which he thought evolutionary change could take place. Darwin called this
basic mechanism of evolutionary change in living creatures natural selection; and, in the more than 150 years since he published his breakthrough
theory, natural selection has actually been proven (again and again) to be
one of the most crucial and fundamental mechanisms through which life
does, in fact, evolve.
The publication of Darwins The Origin of Species by Means of Natural
Selection represents one of the most important milestones in the entire
history of human thought. Once again, what was particularly significant
about this event was that Darwin not only provided lots of evidence that
life had evolved (over extremely long periods of time) but also proposed a
mechanism (which could and would be repeatedly tested and verified by many
other scientists over the succeeding decades) for how evolution could take place.
He showed how evolution by natural selection could unfold based only on
the already existing (and very variable) characteristics that could always be
found among individual living creatures, and in this way he demonstrated
An Overview 23
how evolution could have taken place without any external guiding hand
or divine design.
This was truly revolutionary, and certainly very unsettling to anyone
clinging to strictly Biblical views of divine Creation. And yet within only a
few years the majority of scientists pretty much agreed that life had evolved.
But whether life had evolved via the mechanism of natural selection or
by some other means continued to be hotly debated for years. This was
especially the case because in Darwins time the principles involved in the
inheritance of individual characteristics were not yet understood, and so
it wasnt really clear yet exactly how living creatures passed on some of
their variable characteristics from one generation to the next. As we will
discuss further, later on in this book, it was not until almost the middle
of the 20th century that Darwins theory of evolution by natural selection
was definitively proven to be correct, when advances in the understanding of the principles of inheritance and the discovery of genes and DNA
(leading to the development of the whole new science of genetics) made
possible a better understanding of how some of the variable characteristics
of individuals are not only passed on, but also reshuffled in new ways,
from one generation to the next. This new understanding made it possible
to really concretely test how evolutionary changes take place in populations
of plants and animals (both in laboratories and in the wild), and the thousands and thousands of experiments and observations made throughout
the 20th century ended up thoroughly verifying and confirming the basics of
Darwins theory of natural selection once and for all.
tons of detailed information about the land formations and the many
exotic plants and animals he encountered wherever he went. He was only
22 and still himself a believer in Biblical Creation when he started out on
this trip. In fact, the captain of the ship actually expected (and hoped) that
Darwin would bring back evidence that would disprove some of the newfangled ideas about evolution that many other European naturalists were
starting to think about. Instead, Darwin ended up bringing back evidence
of evolution!
As Darwin explored, he was fascinated by the diversity of species he
encountered and by how well adapted (or closely fitted or attuned) many
species seemed to be in relation to the particularities of the environments
they occupied. For instance, he found cactus plants whose water-preserving
needle-like leaves seemed especially well adapted to dry desert conditions; and in the Galpagos Islands he found birds whose beaks seemed to
be especially well adapted to the foods that they atethe species which fed
on hard seeds had short and stout seed-cracking bills (beaks), those that ate
small seeds or insects had much thinner pointier bills, and some that sucked
nectar from flowers had thin and curved, almost straw-like, bills.
In fact, Darwin found a series of finches (small birds) which looked
pretty much the same in size and color, and so on, but which varied greatly
from island to island in just such things as the size and shape of their beaks,
and which seemed to have somehow adapted to the presence of different
kinds of food sources on the different islands. And he also noticed that all
these different finch species seemed to share some common features not
only with each other but also with one single species of finch which lived
on the mainland, hundreds of miles away. This led Darwin to speculate
that some mainland individuals long ago might have managed to fly to the
islands, and then separate populations of their descendants on the different
islands might have accumulated different kinds of changes, over the generations, so that eventually each island ended up with a species of finch which
still had a lot in common with the type on the mainland and the types on
the other islands, but which also had striking differences as well. Darwins
speculationthat the different finch species on the different islands were
all modified descendants from a single common ancestor species living
on the mainland which had at some point radiated (expanded) from the
mainland and then over time diversified into many different types on
islands having different environmentswas later proven to be correct.
In the course of his travels Darwin also found lots of odd species which
had features they werent using, like birds with webbed feet that never went
in the water, or penguins with wings that didnt fly. He suspected that these
apparently useless characteristics might simply have been passed down
to descendants from some very different ancestors (Darwin would later be
proven to be correct about this too). These kinds of clues are some of what
An Overview 25
convinced him that living species must have changed over timethat they
had indeed evolved.
By the time Darwin came home, he was convinced that evolution had
occurred. But it would take him 22 more years to fully develop a plausible
mechanism for how evolution could have occurred (by natural selection)
and to have the guts to publish his findings, knowing full well it would cause
an uproar in religious circles and in society more broadly.
Darwin had lots of raw evidence of evolution he had collected during
his travels and observations. But to figure out the mechanism of evolution he
would have to bring this evidence together with two important concepts:
the concept of individual variation within populations, and the concept of
selection of inheritable characteristics.
a whole new variety of rose or a juicier tomato. Or just look at all the many
varieties of dogs which people have managed to produce through selective breeding over many generationsan astonishing variety, considering
that all dog varieties, from tiny Chihuahuas to German shepherds or Great
Danes, are all descended from a single common wolf-like ancestor!
So Darwin knew about artificial selection by farmers and other animal
and plant breeders. But could something like that happen on its own, in
natural wild populations?
The big breakthrough about natural selection happening on its own,
in the wild, came about when Darwin realized two things:
First of all, animals and plants in the wild seem to produce many more
offspring than can possibly survive. This suggested to Darwin that something
generally must be limiting what would otherwise be the endless expansion of organisms in the natural world. He suspected organisms must be
engaged in some kind of struggle for survival through which only the
most fit managed to survive and reproduce. (What Darwin was getting at
is what modern biologists refer to as differential reproductive fitness. This
is simply a measure of how some organisms, in a given local environment,
end up producing more offspring which are themselves able to survive and
reproduce. Such fitness does not involve notions of any other kind of
superiority.)
Second, Darwin made the very important observation that in any
population of animals or plants, while all the individuals have some features
in common (which is what allows us to recognize them as belonging to
the same species in the first place), no two individuals are ever exactly alike.
Darwin realized that this natural variability between individuals in a population could provide a kind of raw material for the entire population to
change over successive generations through a process of blind and unconscious natural selection of some of those features over others, without
people or gods having to be involved in any way.
To understand how natural selection works you have to remember that
individual organisms (individual plants or animals) dont live in a vacuum.
They live in the context of (and in interaction with) an outside environment
(which consists of both the physical features of the outside world, like
temperature and humidity, and the biotic environment made up of all
the other living plants and animals that occupy that same environment).
This outside environmentboth physical and bioticis always changing.
Its essential to remember that.
So, lets walk through an example of natural selection in action. Lets
say theres a population of plants or animals of a certain species (lets call
it species X). No two individuals in that population will be exactly alike.
Now imagine theres a lot of variability between individuals for a feature
which can be passed on to the next generation (that is, for something that
An Overview 27
the offspring can inherit from their parents). So far so good. OK, now imagine that this feature is something that, in that particular environment at
that particular time, gives that individual a reproductive edge of some sort
(relative to those individuals which dont have that feature). This feature
might be something that allows individuals to simply live longer (so the
reproductive edge comes simply from having more time to produce more
descendants); or maybe its a feature which allows individuals who inherit
it to be better able to withstand a drought or other dramatic change in
the environment; or maybe its a feature that allows individuals having this
feature to be better than some of the others in their population at finding
more food, or mates, or nesting sites, or to be better at avoiding predatorsall
of which can be helpful in making it possible for an individual to end up
producing more descendants (an animal cant very well produce lots of
descendants if it gets eaten before it even gets a chance to reproduce!).
In real life, scientists have documented many such examples of features
giving individuals a reproductive edge compared to individuals in the
same populations that dont have such features. Whatever the feature might
be (and it could be just about anything as long as its something that can be
passed on and inherited by offspring), if this feature confers on an individual
some kind of overall reproductive advantage (meaning nothing more than
that individuals who have that feature will produce more descendants than
individuals in the same population who dont have that feature) then those
descendants will in turn tend to produce more offspring that have that feature, and over a series of generations that feature will tend to spread, and
generally will come to predominate in the population as a whole. In this
way we can say that the population has evolved.4
Lets take another example. Lets say you have a population of insects
of one type and these insects get preyed upon (get eaten) by a species of
bird. And lets say most of the individual insects in that population are
drab-colored and tasty but, purely by chance, a few of the insects in that
population happen to have bright and noticeable black and yellow colors
along with a stinger full of venom which makes them toxic to the birds. The
birds will quickly learn to avoid the brightly colored poisonous insects and
to feed mainly on the drab venomless ones. Now, if that happens, the bright
venomous ones will obviously have a better chance on average of surviving and
producing offspring than the ones which didnt have these features. As a result, the
next generation will be made up of a greater proportion of (you guessed it)
brightly colored venomous insects.
Repeat the process generation after generation (at each generation the
brightly colored venomous insects get to leave a greater number of descendants than the drab non-venomous ones). After a number of generations,
the whole population will look different! Now the whole population will be
entirely (or almost entirely) made up of brightly colored venomous insects,
for no reason other than that is the kind of individual that got to leave
more descendants at each successive generation. Through what is called
the differential reproduction of these variable individuals the whole
population has changedit has evolved!
Heres another example many people may be familiar with: the evolution of antibiotic resistance in bacteria. Take a population of bacteria that
causes some disease. Expose them to antibiotics which kill bacteria. Many
of them will die. Lets say most of the bacteria are killed by the antibiotic,
but a few, purely by chance, happen to have some feature which allows
them to survive the antibiotic and they go on to reproduce and pass on this
antibiotic-resistant feature to their descendants. So maybe you give the
patient more of the same antibiotic, but now those antibiotic-resistant bacteria survive the attack and go on to produce more generations of resistant
bacteria. Now you have a big problem: after a number of generations (and
bacteria produce new generations very quickly in a host body!) the only
bacteria left will be the resistant kind, and they will reproduce unchecked.
Unless you can come up with a different antibiotic, which these bacteria are
not yet resistant to, a patient could end up with a life-threatening galloping
infection as the bacteria that nothing can seem to kill start to overrun the
patients body.
So a big problem these days is that the excessive and careless use of
some antibiotics has led to the emergence of a number of strains of bacteria (including new strains of tuberculosis) which so far are resistant to all
known antibiotics. This is a classic case of evolution in action, and there is no
way for advances to be made in the science of treating contagious diseases unless we
apply to medicine our understanding of evolutionary principles.
What I have just described in basic terms is the mechanism of evolutionary change that Darwin discovered and named natural selection. There is
absolutely zero doubt among modern scientists that this kind of evolutionary change (sometimes called micro-evolution to distinguish it from larger
scale macro-evolutionary changes, which we will also discuss more, later in
this book) occurs within all living populations and speciesnot instantly,
but over many generationsand that this kind of evolutionary change is
extremely commonplace. It has been observed in real life time and time
again, in populations of all sorts of different kinds of plants and animals,
both in the wild and in the laboratory.
An Overview 29
not pass on to their descendants features which they have acquired during the
course of their lifespan (for instance, if you work out at the gym and acquire
big muscles, you will not pass these on to your children; or if a giraffe
stretches its neck to reach leaves in high tree branches day after day, it still
will not give birth to baby giraffes with longer necks). But for Darwins
theory of evolution by natural selection to work, something had to be passed
on to successive generationsthere had to be some mechanism whereby
descendants could inherit some of that favorable variation found in their
parents. What could that be?
It took less than 100 years after Darwins time for scientists to figure out
the answer by working out the basic principles and mechanisms of inheritance and by discovering the basic structure of genes and DNA. This missing
piece of the puzzle provided definitive proof of Darwins basic mechanism
of evolutionary change through natural selection (this was accomplished
through, among other things, countless experiments involving fast-reproducing animals, such as fruit flies, in whose populations evolutionary
changes and underlying genetic changes over multiple generations could
readily be observed).
In later chapters, we will review some more examples of the concrete
evidence which has provided definitive proof of how evolutionary change
by natural selection happens over time within species, and also how evolutionary change can take place through both cumulative effects of natural
selection and some additional associated processes to give rise to whole
new types (species) of plants or animalsa process referred to as speciation.
Darwin himself was very interested in factors leading to the emergence of
whole new species, and his work provided a very good initial foundation
for understanding how new species can in fact emerge as modifications of
previously existing species. In the century and a half since Darwin, scientists
have been able to both confirm and reaffirm the basic principles of evolution
by natural selection and to further extend and develop evolutionary theory
in many important directions on the basis of this Darwinian foundation.
There have been many advances made since Darwins time which allow
us to better understand how life can diversify and whole new species emerge
when, for instance, separate populations of a given animal or plant species
undergo evolutionary change to differing degrees and/or at different rates
in different localities. There are a number of reasons why such differences
might exist between different populations of a given plant or animal species:
certain features conferring a reproductive advantage (and thus selected
for) in one environment might confer a reproductive disadvantage in
a related population which happens to occupy a different environment;
the type and amount of genetic variation present in one given population
might also be different than in another related population simply because
An Overview 31
survival of whole large groupings of plants and animals at different junctures in earths history.
For instance, there is quite a bit of interest these days in understanding
better what factors may have led to periods of especially intense diversification of evolutionary lineages in relatively short timespans (by geological
standards), such as the famous Cambrian explosion of a little more than
500 million years ago. And there is great interest in better understanding
the kinds of factors which can lead to major overhauls of life on the planet
through mass extinctions: the five major waves of mass extinctions in
the history of life on this planet (up to this point) occurred at the end of
the Ordovician period (roughly 450 million years ago); at the end of the
Devonian (around 350 million years ago); at the end of the Permian (around
250 million years ago); at the end of the Triassic (around 200 million years
ago); and at the end of the Cretaceous (around 65 million years ago). The
fossil record reveals that each of these five different periods in the history
of life on earth were marked by rates of extinction which were way beyond
normal background rates of species extinction: it has been estimated for
instance that more than 75% of all the species then in existence disappeared
through the course of the Ordovician and Devonian mass extinctions; that
perhaps as many as 95% of all species then living became extinct through
the course of the Permian mass extinction. The well-known period of
mass extinctions which occured in the late Cretaceous around 65 million
years ago was not altogether quite as devastating to life on this planet as
the earlier Permian mass extinction, but it still resulted in the final extinction of a tremendous proportion of all living plants and of a vast array of
especially large marine and terrestrial vertebrates (including the last of the
dinosaurs).
The history of the earth has also been marked by a number of smaller
waves of mass extinctions, including the Pleistocene mass extinction which
occured around 10,000 years ago, (towards the end of the last great Ice
Age), during which many species of large mammals and birds became
extinct on all the continents. This most recent wave of mass extinctions
was probably caused by a combination of factors, including some global
climate changes plus some additional effects caused by increasingly efficient
hunting by human beings.
In fact most waves of mass extinctions are likely to have been caused
by a combination of factors. There is no one single formula leading to mass
extinction: global climate and other environmental changes spread out
over fairly long periods of time (though still occuring relatively rapidly on
a geological time-scale) can stress whole big assemblages of previously
successful plant and animal species, greatly intensifying the normal rates of
species extinction; in addition, some truly sudden events (such as the impact
of a huge asteroid or meteorite smashing into the earth and likely blocking
sunlight for weeks on end at the end of the Cretaceous) can also precipitate,
or at least greatly intensify, periods of global mass extinctions; and since
the last period of mass extinctions some 10,000 years ago, human beings
themselves have directly contributed in some new ways to the extinction
of many species, at first through widespread hunting, and more recently
through our rapidly accelerating abilities to transform many aspects of the
physical and biotic environment on a global scale, which has led not only
to the loss of many individual species but also to the destruction of entire
natural habitats at an ever increasing pace. Today some scientists (such as
renowned paleontologist and conservationist Richard Leakey) argue that
we may already be seeing the beginning of the 6th wave of mass extinctions
one directly attributable to the extremely rapid and domino-like effects
of the environmental destruction and depredation caused by human beings
just in the last couple of centuries or so. (See The Continued Existence of Life
on this Planet is Not a Given, below.)
An Overview 33
An Overview 35
Creationists just keep coming up with more lies and distortions. The famous
paleontologist and evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould used to say that it can
be very difficult to beat the Creationists in a debate, precisely because of
their unscientific and slippery methods, although in another setting, such
as a courtroom, where they can be pinned down more and forced to put
forward their own explanation of things, they can be demolished. After all,
Creationists have no scientific standards of truth to stick to, so theres nothing to keep them from saying just about anything their twisted imaginations
can come up with in the hopes of wearing down the scientists (who are
often frustrated at having to waste time answering these mad idiots) as well
as the general public, among whom the double burden of religious tradition and lack of real scientific education often makes it difficult for people
to sort out truth from fiction.
To really see through the smoke and mirrors put up by the Creationists,
it is necessary to get some grounding in the basic scientific method, as well
as basic facts about evolution. This may be a struggle, but it is definitely
worth it. It will take some effort (because learning about the science of
evolution is a little like learning about the science of everything!) but hopefully this book will be able to help with this process. Through grappling
with what we will be getting into and walking through in the course of
this book, it should be possible, even if you started out unfamiliar with evolution, to acquire a basic understanding of the scientific facts and then to
build on thatincreasingly developing the ability to see through the smoke
and mirrors used by any anti-evolution proponents of blind faith. And then
maybe youll have some fun and challenge them!
An Overview 37
Chapter 1 Endnotes
1. As we will see later on, entire systems can further diversify over time when
one ancestor population branches out and gives rise to a number of separate
populations, and then certain factors impact the patterns of random variation in
these different populations. The sorting out of the relative proportions of variant
individuals from generation to generation may take place very differently in separate
lines and, in time, descendant populations can end up being radically different from
each other, as well as from the ancestral population. In such a way, genuine evolutionary novelties can arise out of the purely random variation which just happened to
be present in preceding generations.
2. The Creationists of today have the same problem: some of them try to argue
that the reason different fossils can be found in different layers is because, at the
time of the supposed 40 Day Flood, spoken of in the Bible, the simpler less intelligent creatures sank to the bottom right away, while the more complex and advanced
ones were able to better save themselves at least for a while, and would have kept
swimming and died a bit later on, so thats how they got buried in the upper layers of
mud. And of course the flying birds would have perched in the treetops and so would
have been among the last to die when the Flood waters rose, according to some of
these Creationists; so, they argue, that must be why bird fossils appear only in the
upper-most geologic layers! Yeah, right.
Traditional Creationists make up many such laughable explanations as they
try to cling to their outdated beliefs, but today very few people, even among devout
Christians, can bring themselves to take such fanciful ideas seriously. Among other
things, geologists studying landscapes and the formation of rock layers and continents have long understood that there has never been a single global Flood as described
in the Bible. And even before Darwin, geologists understood that the layers of the
earth had been deposited one on top of another over hundreds of millions of years and
that the fossilized plants and animals trapped within these different layers had died in
these very different geological eras, spread out over these millions of years, and could
obviously not have died all at once or even over a short (40 day!) period of time.
3. Darwins contemporary Alfred Russell Wallace came up with the same basic
breakthrough idea at about the same time.
4. This does not mean, however, that the evolutionary change that has taken
place will necessarily become permanently generalized within the population or continue in a single direction. For instance, evolutionary change could accumulate in a
certain seeming direction for a period of time but then a change in environmental
conditions could lead to trends being reversed if the feature in question no longer
brought individuals any reproductive advantage or even became disadvantageous. If
so, over generations, the feature could actually get selected out (eliminated from
the population altogether). Variable features in a population which may have somewhat less dramatic positive or negative effects on the relative reproductive fitness of
individuals may simply persist in the overall variable mix of the population without
being either completely eliminated or completely generalized to all individuals, but
with their relative proportions or frequencies changing from generation to generation and in relation to changes in the external environment.
5. Questions are also being investigated having to do with the contributions
to evolutionary change made by so-called neutral mutations; and attempts are
being made to evaluate how much large-scale evolutionary change is the result of
Chapter 2
The Evidence of
Evolution in Action
Is All Around Us
In Chapter 1, we reflected on how significant it is that life-forms on this
planet have not stood still but have actually evolved (changed) over millions
and billions of years. We recalled how, for most of human history, people
really had no way of understanding scientifically how all the plants and
animals, including people, had come to be, so people all over the world
had made up all sorts of imaginative stories about mysterious super-natural
forces they imagined might be responsible for all this (these stories are the
many origin and creation myths, which became part of the different
religions of the world). It was not until comparatively recently (less than
150 years ago) that the great naturalist Charles Darwin figured out how
life had evolved through purely natural means, over hundreds of millions
of years. The discovery of evolution by means of natural selectionwhich
thousands of scientists since Darwins time have been able to test and verify
over and over againwas one of the greatest scientific discoveries of all
time. Like the Copernican discovery that the earth is not in fact the center
of the universe and that the earth orbits around the sun, rather than the
other way around, the discovery of evolution completely revolutionized
the way people think about the history of our planet and all its life-forms,
including people. From that point on, the science of evolution provided a
foundation upon which all modern science continues to build.
In Chapter 1 we also reviewed a few basics about how evolutionary
change takes place, focusing particularly on explaining that fundamental
mechanism of evolutionary change which is known as Darwinian natural
selection (and we also briefly discussed some additional mechanisms which
contribute to evolutionary change, including genetic drift and founder
effects). In later chapters we will further explore the evidence concerning
the really large-scale (macro-evolutionary) changes which have taken place
over the course of the past 3.5 billion years of lifes history on this planet
(such as how we really know that mammals were descended from reptilian ancestors, or that whales were descended from a four-legged terrestrial
39
mammal, or that our own distant ancestors were also the ancestors of the
modern-day chimpanzees and gorillas, our closest living relatives). We will
see that evidence for many of the kinds of major evolutionary changes
which took place in the past hundreds of millions of years can be found in
such things as the patterns of similarities and differences between species (in
both the fossil record and in living species) and in the many particularities of
plants and animals which only make sense if they are in fact consequences
of evolution.
In short, there is lots of concrete evidence about the large-scale evolutionary changes which marked lifes history for the past 3.5 billion years.
But evolution is not just something that happened in the past: it is a process
that is happening all the time, in all living things. So this chapter is going to
start off by bringing out a few examples of the kind of evolutionary change
that we can easily observe taking place all around us. These are the kinds of
evolutionary changes that are taking place within populations and species of
plants or animals and that are sometimes referred to as micro-evolution,
to distinguish them from what is sometimes called macro-evolution, the
larger-scale patterns of evolution above the species level, involving such
things as the emergence and successive branchings of whole larger taxa
and lineages (groups of groups), spread out over millions and hundreds of
millions of years.1
Until the middle of the 19th century, almost all B. betularia moths were
very light grey in color. Up until that time, the bark of the local trees was
also light in color, so when the moths rested on the tree trunks during the
daytime, they tended to blend into the background. Because of this, local
birds looking for insects to eat probably tended to miss a lot of these lightcolored moths. But then an odd thing happened: with the increase in the
development of industry, starting in the late 19th century, the air became
increasingly polluted with black dirt and soot from the local factories; and,
as a consequence of this, the bark of the local trees became much darker.
This in itself was not so surprising. But what was really interesting was that
the local moth populations also became much darker! Pretty soon people
noticed that the light-colored moths had been almost entirely replaced by
moths with black wings. What people were witnessing here was evolution
in actiona classic example of the kind of commonplace evolutionary
changes that happen through natural selection, in this case leading to a striking adaptation of the moth populations to their changing environment.
This is what happened:
The original population of moths was made up of varied individuals.
Most of them were light-colored, but within the total population there were
a few dark-colored variants. Prior to industrialization, the light-colored
moths greatly outnumbered the darker moths; dark-colored moths would
really show up against the light bark of the trees and, on average, they would
get picked off by birds more often than the better camouflaged light-colored
moths. So, in that particular environment, the light-colored individuals
had what biologists call a differential reproductive advantage relative to the
dark-colored moths. This simply means that, since the light-colored moths
tended not to get eaten as often as the dark-colored moths, they were, on
average, better able to survive and therefore were more likely to produce
descendants. Since the genetic variability for wing-color happens to be an
inheritable characteristic, the surviving moths passed on this characteristic
to their descendants, who passed it on to their descendants, and so on. For
as long as the tree bark remained light-colored, light-colored moths had
a selective advantage and the moth populations were almost exclusively
made up of light-colored variants. There were still occasional dark variants
around, but they were very rare.
This situation began to change dramatically when the environment
changed and the trees became black with soot: now those very rare individuals who just happened to have dark wings (because the genetic information
for black wings had not been completely lost from the total genetic pool
of the whole population) were the ones that had a significant reproductive
advantagethey were now the ones birds most often missed, and so they
were the ones that, on average, were most often able to survive and produce
descendants. In this way, over a number of generations, the numbers of
dark moths increased and became a bigger and bigger proportion of the total
population. It got to the point where pretty much the only moths you would
have been likely to see on a given day were the ones with dark wings.
The moth population had evolved!
It is also interesting to note that in more recent years this overall evolutionary trend has apparently reversed itself in some localities: as the quality
of the air has improved, and the amount of industrial soot in the air has
been reduced, the tree trunks have once again become lighter in color. In
step with this environmental change, the populations of moths have once
again evolved, but this time back in the direction of being mainly made up
of the light-colored types. This change was possible because the genetic
information for light-colored wings was still present in the total genetic
pool of the population: even in the days when the population was made up
almost entirely of dark moths, there were always a few light-colored moths
around. They were rare, but the fact that a few such individuals were still
around at each generation was enough to provide the genetic basis for the
proportion of light-colored individuals in the total population to begin to
increase once again when the environment changed and the dark-colored
moths once again became more visible to the bird predators. With every
passing generation, the dark moths on average produced fewer descendants,
and the light moths on average once again produced more descendants.
This classic example of natural selection is all it took for the moth population to evolve once again. (See The Moth Flap on page 44.)
44
zero doubt that peppered moth populations evolved (from being made up mainly
of light moths to being made up mainly of
dark moths) over just a few decades and in
direct correlation to changes in the level of
industrial pollution. There is also no doubt
that this evolutionary trend reversed itself
when the levels of industrial pollution began
to decrease. This whole trend was shown
through careful surveys of moth populations in England between the 1950s and
the 1990s. And, more recently, the biologist
Bruce Grant has documented a striking case
of parallel evolution of industrial melanism
in peppered moths in the United States,
comparing the relative proportions of light
and dark variants in moth populations near
Detroit, also between the 1950s and the
1990s. Just as in England, the proportion
of dark variants increased with increases in
pollution and then began to significantly
decrease once again as air quality improved.
There is also clear evidence that predation
by birds has significant impacts on moth
populationsbirds are known to consume
large proportions of adult moths in any
population.
While Kettlewells experiments in the
1950s may not have been absolutely perfectly designed (few experiments ever are) the
basic picture which emerged from his work
seems to be holding up: (a) the systematic
surveys of the proportions of the different
variants in moth populations over several
decades conclusively show that moth populations definitely did evolve over time, first in one
and then in the other direction, i.e., first getting
darker, then once again getting lighter.
Again, there is absolutely no doubt about
this. (b) Kettlewells classical mark/release/
recapture experiments demonstrated that
when live light-colored and dark-colored
moths were released together in polluted
areas (where the trees were darker), twice as
many dark variants were recaptured in succeeding days than light variants, indicating
that, for whatever reason or combination
of reasons, significantly more dark variants were managing to survive in polluted
environments; and his experiments also
showed that the exact opposite was the
case with releases of both types of moths
45
very bad consequences for both human health and the health and relative
stability of entire ecosystems. Genetic engineering is a subject for a whole
other discussion best left for another day. But I raise it here in passing to
once again make the point that, if evolution were not true (as the Creationists
would like us to believe), if evolution were not a real phenomenon, then
fields like genetic engineering (and both the good and bad that they are
doing and can potentially do) would not even exist!
The Creationists say they dont believe in evolution, but they certainly do live in a world where people constantly use the rules of evolution to
transform their world, for better or for worse.
established and demonstrated of any in science. And not only is there absolutely clear
evidence of evolution in peppered moths,
but there are literally thousands of other
studies which have documented natural
selection in action in other populations of
animals and plants in the wild.
There is, of course, always more to
learn about any scientific subject, including peppered moth evolution. But when
legitimate scientists debate some questions
among themselves as part of the ongoing
deepening of our understanding of evolution, that doesnt mean evolution itself is in
question. For instance, when evolutionary
biologists debate whether or not large-scale
evolutionary changes always take place
gradually or may sometimes be relatively
more accelerated; or the relative importance of natural selection vs. genetic drift
if they werent working with the same total gene pool to begin with. As a
result, the two populations have been diverging into two different species,
and they are becoming increasingly different in appearance.5
For instance, the Aberts squirrels, which live only on the South Rim of
the Grand Canyon, all have a grey body, a reddish back, and a dark tail. The
Kaibab squirrels, which live only on the North Rim, all the way across on
the other side of the Canyon, are grey with a white tail.
As long as they are unable to regularly interbreed and mix up their
total genetic variation into one larger genetic pool, the two reproductively
isolated populations will continue to accumulate different changes. They have
already become different in appearance, and it is quite possible that as they
continue to evolve separately in their different localities they will eventually
Evolution In ActionThe
Distribution of Sickle Cell
Genes in Human Populations
Another well-known example of evolution which can be directly observed in the
world around us right now is the evolution
of sickle-cell hemoglobin. Hemoglobin is
a blood protein which helps blood carry
oxygen to the lungs. There are two different variants (slightly different varieties)
of the hemoglobin gene in humans. Lets
call them the A allele and the S allele (an
allele is just an alternate form of a gene). A
human being inherits one hemoglobin allele
from each parent, so each individual will
have either the AA, AS, or SS combination
of hemoglobin alleles. People born with
the SS combination (who have 2 copies of
the S or sickle cell allele) are in trouble,
because this combination causes sickle cell
disease, a serious form of anemia which
causes painful episodes and which can be
fatal. This is a public health issue that needs
special attention because populations of
Africans and people of African descent
(including African-Americans) have a higher
proportion of sickle cell alleles than other
populations, and so it is important to pay
extra attention to screening for sickle cell
and providing treatment in populations of
African ancestry in particular.
What could possibly explain this evolutionary quirk which makes people of African
descent more susceptible to sickle cell disease and causes them such extra grief and
hardship? Is it that Black people are inherently more unhealthy than Europeans? Of
course not. Is it that Black people have been
singled out by God for special punishment?
Not at all. Evolution supplies a clear-cut
and simple answer: people who are heterozygotes for sickle cell (which simply means
that they are born with the AS combination, having just one of the sickle cell alleles)
actually have an advantage (a health benefit)
in those parts of the world where another
serious diseasemalariais commonplace
(as it is in large parts of Africa). It turns out
that having just one copy of the sickle cell
gene actually protects you against malaria! It is
for this reason that the allele for sickle cell
would have been preserved in the course of
the evolutionary history of human beings,
rather than eliminated by natural selection.
In parts of the world where there is a lot of
malaria, individuals born with one copy of the
sickle cell allele would have had a better chance
of surviving long enough to bear children than
people who didnt have any sickle cell alleles
at all and who might die from malaria. The
survivors with the one sickle cell gene would
have passed it on to their children, who
would have passed it on to their children...
and each individual who inherited just one
sickle cell allele would have had a selective
advantage in surviving malaria. Sadly, a
certain number of people in each generation
would have been unlucky enough to inherit
The Kaibab and Aberts squirrels divergence into two separate species
over a number of successive generations is yet another example of evolution taking place in the world around usa change that people can actually
go out and directly observe taking place over a reasonable timespan. We may
not have been able to be there when the first terrestrial vertebrates (ancestors of todays frogs and salamanders) evolved from those odd fishes which
had evolved a primitive air-breathing lung some 400 million years ago;
or when the first birds evolved from the feathered relatives of the dinosaurs some 200 million years ago; but that doesnt mean we cant witness
the frequent emergence of genuine evolutionary novelties on a smaller
scaleand even the first steps in the occasional emergence of whole new
speciestaking place all around us.
The really major evolutionary transitions in the history of life were
generally built up step-wise, and were in any case spread out over millions
or hundreds of millions of years. But the basic underlying principles and
mechanisms involved would have included much of the same kinds of
processes and changes we see taking place on a smaller scale in the world
around us every day.
Just dont expect to ever see an individual plant or animal instantly
transform itself before your eyes, or one species instantly turn into another
species, as if by some kind of magic trickthat never happens, and thats
not what evolution is about.
We know, for instance, that the ancestor of modern whales was actually a four-legged ungulate (a type of hoofed mammal) that lived on land,
not in the ocean. We know this both from the fossil record and from the
evidence of the degree of genetic relatedness of whales to certain lines of
terrestrial mammals even today. But we also know that this whole process
took place through a whole series of transitional species, each one representing an evolutionary modification of its immediately preceding ancestor.
The Creationists like to claim that there are no intermediate fossils in the
fossil record and that this shows that evolution by descent with modification is just something that evolutionists made up. Well, actually, there are
quite a few good intermediate fossils (and well come back to that whole
question a bit later). A case in point is the series of fossils of related species
which link that four-legged ungulate ancestor to its later whale descendants
through a dozen or so transitional species. These fossils reveal what in this
case is a pretty clear-cut sequence of step-wise modifications, from a body
shape more suited to life on land to one suited for life in the seaall taking
place over a period of 25 million years or so.8 (See Evolution in Actionthe
Distribution of Sickle Cell Genes in Human Populations on page 48 and An
Interesting Example of Evolution in Action in the Treatment of HIV Infections,
right.)
An Interesting Example of
Evolution In Action in the
Treatment of HIV Infections
A series on evolution put together by PBS
within the last couple of years showed many
interesting examples of evidence of evolution
in action. One segment discussed the HIV
virus, which replicates itself so quickly in the
environment of a human body that it will
make billions of different copies of itself in
just one day! These copies are not all exactly
the same: the process of genetic replication
in viruses, as in all other organisms, is never
a perfect process. So-called copying errors
occur in the course of replication, and this
results in descendant strains (varieties of
viruses) which have slightly altered genetic
codes. As in all other species, this kind of
random mutation and reshuffling of the
underlying genetic material provides raw
material for evolutionary change.
As the PBS program pointed out, natural
selection feeds on accident and randomness and
it does so in largely unpredictable ways. At an
incredibly rapid rate and just by chance
(through those random copying errors
when the virus replicates its genetic code),
new strains of HIV evolve which are resistant
to one or more of the drugs used to try to
kill off HIV viruses. One of the biggest difficulties in treating HIV infections is this rapid
rate of evolution of drug-resistant strains.
Because a virus can produce so many new
descendant generations in just one day, we
can literally observe evolution by natural
selection taking place inside one single
patient sometimes in a matter of hours!
If a patient is being treated with AIDS
drugs, and a drug-resistant virus emerges in
his or her body, this type of virus will quickly
increase by simple natural selection and
there will be more and more at each new
viral generation. This makes it very difficult
to treat people with HIV infections.
But an important accidental discovery
was apparently made in 1997 by Veronica
Miller at Goethe University in Germany.
One of her HIV infected patients suffered
from uncontrolled viral replication, but he
wanted to stop the five drugs he was taking
because of bad side-effects and because
they werent working anymore. Everyone
51
So please, think about it. Think about it the next time someone you
know is tempted to say things like maybe things would be better if kids
were exposed to more religion in the schools. Or maybe it wouldnt do
any harm to give Biblical creation stories equal time with the theory of
evolution in science classroomsthe kids should be able to decide, right?
Wrong! Should the flat-earth theory be given equal time? Should science
teachers be forced to teach it as a valid scientific theory? Should children be
free to decide whether the earth is flat or round?
Think about it.
K
Authors Note: At this point in the book, readers may find it helpful to get a
sense of some of the things which will be covered in the remaining chapters. This
will include discussions of such things as adaptation and co-evolution between species; more on what we know about the process of speciation (how whole new species
of plants or animals come into being) and where we can look to find trace evidence
of the macro-evolutionary changes which took place over millions of years; how the
different categories of evidence from evolution combine to provide strong proof of
evolution, but are completely inconsistent with the idea of a super-natural Creator;
what we know about human evolution and our relationship to the apes; more on
some of the absurd arguments and unscientific methods of the Creationists; how
Intelligent Design theories are still just Creationism and just an updated rehash of
old unscientific ideas long proven to be wrong.
Chapter 2 Endnotes
1. It is important to realize that there is lots of concrete evidence for both microevolutionary changes and macro-evolutionary changes. In addition, there is not
some kind of absolute division between the kind of evolution which takes place at
or below the species level and the kind of evolution which takes place at the level of
whole larger lineages of species. Many of the same evolutionary processes are involved
in effecting change at both the micro and macro levels, including natural selection
operating on populations of variable individuals. Macro-evolutionary and microevolutionary changes are features of different levels and different time scales. We are
able to indirectly reconstruct many aspects of the macro-evolutionary changes of
the distant past by studying the trace evidence of those changes which are preserved
in such things as fossils, or the patterns of distribution and degrees of similarities
and differences between living species; we are often able to gather much more direct
evidence of micro-evolutionary changes as they are taking place, since they are going
on all the time in populations of present-day plants and animals, within more limited
timespans which often make possible direct human observation.
2. Moths are similar in many ways to their close relatives the butterflies, but
unlike butterflies, they are active mainly at night.
3. It is important to realize that particular genes, contained inside individuals, are
not in and of themselves direct targets of selectionit is whole individuals that do or
do not successfully reproduce, contributing offspring with varied features to the next
generation. And it is these whole individuals (each with a complex mix of features
which cannot be simply reduced to the individuals underlying genetic make-up)
who are targets of the sorting out process of selection. In a given environment,
those individuals who end up contributing more descendants to the next generation
will obviously end up having contributed more genes overall to the next generations
than those individuals who did not produce as many descendants. But the underlying
genes themselves do not directly cause evolutionary shifts in populations; these
shifts occur when the proportion in a population of whole individuals with certain
characteristics changes (through selection and related factors), and these shifts are
then reflected in changes in certain gene frequencies (some will increase, some will
decrease) in the total population. This, in turn, will affect the total amount of genetic
variability available as raw material for ongoing evolutionary changes.
Keep in mind also that it is not often, in any species, that a single gene (such as
the allele that codes for red eyes in fruit flies) can be so neatly tied to a single characteristic. Geneticists have known for some time now that most of the characteristics
of individuals that are inheritable (the only ones relevant for evolution) are affected
by a number of different interacting genes, acting in concert in some complex and not
yet well understood ways; in addition, most genes have influences and effects on more
than one characteristic at the level of the whole individual organism. Furthermore,
many of the characteristics of whole organisms are shaped by complex interactions
of these whole organisms with their outside environments and therefore cannot be
reduced to the effects of underlying genes. (It is worth remembering that genes are
just sections of DNA that make different kinds of proteins in the body.) Nevertheless,
it is the case that the underlying genetic variability that exists within any population
of plants or animals (and which codes for those features which can be passed on to
descendants) serves as the raw material through which much overall evolutionary
change is realized.
Chapter 3
But then, if mimicking poisonous animals can provide such a reproductive advantage, why havent all the insect species evolved the black and
yellow warning colorations of bees and wasps, for instance? This is an
important question to reflect on. The answer is basically that evolution can
only work with whatever raw material (genetic variability) happens to be at
handthere is no guarantee that any given population will have inherited
from the preceding generation the kind of genetic information required for
certain particular features to emerge, no matter how advantageous those
features might turn out to be in the abstract. For instance, it might objectively be advantageous for human beings to be able to fly by flapping their
arms, but humans just dont have the basis in their underlying genetic kit
for that particular capability to emerge. So there is no way natural selection
could lead to the evolution of flight in humans, even if it could somehow
be shown that it would benefit human survival and reproduction. The
biologist Doug Futuyma (who has written excellent college textbooks on
evolution, as well as a very good book for broader consumptionScience on
Trial: the Case for Evolution) has an even better example: he makes the point
that it would no doubt be very advantageous for animals to be capable of
photosynthesis (the method by which plants derive energy from the sun to
produce carbohydrates) if only because it would always provide an extra
source of reliable nourishment when regular food is scarce. So, if there
were any possible way that an ability to photosynthesize could emerge in
any animal population, it would likely be heavily selected for by natural
selection, and would spread rapidly across the generations. But no matter
how advantageous this might be, it will never happen! Again, this is because
no animals have ever inherited from any of their animal ancestors any of
the genetic information required to make the machinery of photosynthesis,
which evolved only in plants.
So, in an animal line, no amount of genetic reshuffling and recombination of genetic material inherited from an immediately preceding generation
could bring forth a feature for which the basic building blocks dont even
existagain, no matter how advantageous it might be! This is yet another
illustration of the important point that evolution can only work with what
is already availablethe genetic variability inherited from previous generationsand that evolutionary pathways (including the emergence of true
evolutionary novelties) are therefore significantly constrained (both channeled and limited) by past history.
Still, even with such built-in limitations, evolution has led to an amazing diversity of form and function throughout the plant and animal world.
Consider all the different shapes and colors of flowers. Why isnt there just
one single shape for all flowers? Why isnt there just one single color? Why
so much diversity? The answer has to do, at least in part, with the historical
process of co-evolution between different species. Take the case of plants
and pollinators, for instance. Some plants dont make any real noticeable
flowers and reproduce just by releasing pollen (plant sperm cells) into the
wind, where it then drifts along and sometimes happens to land on female
plant ovaries to end up producing a new seed. But in many species of plants,
evolution has developed a mechanism that ensures that successful pollination is less left up to chance: the plant produces showy flowers, which may
also have a distinct scent, and which contain not only plant reproductive
organs but also an additional pot of honey (plant nectar). The showy flower
petals and the sweet nectar are of no direct use to the plants themselves,
but they attract animal pollinatorsmembers of animal species who come
to recognize the flower and to remember that it is in effect a flag advertising a source of foodthe nectar. Pollinator species include many species
of flying insects (such as honeybees), some species of birds (such as hummingbirds), and even a few species of bats and monkeys. In all cases the
story is basically the same: the pollinators come to the flower to suck up
the sweet nectar, and in doing so they accidentally pick up pollen (plant
sperm cells) on their bodies at the same time. Then, acting as much more
consistent and reliable pollinators than the wind, they move on to another
flower of the same plant species to get some more nectar; thats when the
pollen from the first flower gets rubbed off their bodies and enters into the
second flowers ovaries, where it will serve to produce new seeds. The plant
species has basically evolved a way to use the animal species to ensure its
own more successful reproduction, while the animal species has co-evolved
a way to ensure itself a reliable source of food. Both species benefit from
this symbiotic (mutually beneficial) relationship, though of course neither
the pollinator nor the pollinated is in any way conscious of this process.
What we are seeing is simply the result of a process of natural selection, taking place over many generations and considerable periods of time.
These particular processes obviously did not take place in all evolutionary
lineages (there are still many plant species that are pollinated simply by the
wind, and there are many animal species which do not serve as plant pollinators); and, in any case, evolution was not bound to unfold in those
particular directions. But among at least some of the ancestors of modernday pollinators, individuals who went to flowers to get nectar must have
reproduced more than those that didnt; so, as long as the ability to detect
and exploit such a fine food resource was inheritable, it would have spread
to more and more descendants. And among some of the ancestors of
todays plants, individuals which happened to produce flowers with a pot of
nectar and a showy form of advertisement (bright colors, sweet smells, etc.)
which increased the odds of successful pollination must have had a distinct
reproductive advantage over those that didnt have these features. Through
simple natural selection, those features would have spread to more and
more descendants as well.
Chapter 3 Endnotes
1. As mentioned earlier, there are processes other than natural selection which
can contribute to the evolution of populations of organisms, including accidental
genetic drift, founder effects and neutral mutations. All these can contribute to a
population evolving merely by causing shifts in the relative frequencies of certain
genes from one generation to the next. These sorts of shifts in gene frequency are
not the result of natural selection. Natural selection is, however, responsible for that
fine-tuning process we call adaptation. At the same time, it is important to keep in
mind that you cant just look at a feature of an organism and assume it represents an
adaptation. Many features of organisms are not adaptive, and some of them may just
be the result of developmental constraints (limits) or simple by-products attached to
the development of another feature which may itself be adaptive and the result of
natural selection.
2. It is important to remember once again that adaptations are not the only kind
of evolutionary change. For instance, a population might evolve significant differences relative to the ancestral population from which it is descended when a small
number of individuals find themselves cut off from the larger population when they
migrate into some isolated geographic pocket such as an island, a hidden valley, the
other side of a ridge or some other barrier. Such a small sub-population in its more
isolated pocket just doesnt have as much genetic variation in its total gene pool as the
larger population it came from. This can make for a loss of some of the raw material
evolution can work with (relative genetic impoverishment), but it can also create
conditions for the emergence of evolutionary novelties which may be more likely
to emerge accidentally in smaller populations. Phenomena such as genetic drift and
founder effects are important supplements to standard Darwinian natural selection in
contributing to evolutionary change.
Chapter 4
Furthermore, in the historical sciences (including the science of evolution) scientific methods are used to make predictions which can then be
tested: predictions both about what we should be able to find, and also predictions about what we should not be able to find, if a particular theory about
the past is true. And scientists do actually go out and test these predictions
in the real world. As just one example, we can predict that if the theory of
evolution is true, we should be able to find step-wise progressions of certain
anatomical modifications in series of fossils arranged by age (and we do
find this); and we can also predict that if the theory of evolution is true
we should not be able to find something like a human fossil embedded in a
rock layer containing dinosaurs, since everything we understand about how
evolution works tells us that humans evolved long after the dinosaurs had
become extinct (and in fact fossils of dinosaurs and of human ancestors are
never found in the same rock layers). So, unlike religious beliefs, scientific predictions (including predictions made about the processes involved
in evolution) are actually testable and verifiable. This, probably more than
anything else, is why there is such a strong consensus among scientists the
world over concerning the basic facts and principles of evolution.
Like any good scientific theory, the theory of evolution is falsifiablewhich simply means that it is possible to conceive of any number
of different ways it could be proven to be false (and therefore rejected and
discarded) if certain kinds of evidence (evidence fundamentally incompatible with the theory) were ever found. Any scientist will tell you that it
is easy to make a list of things which, if they were ever foundwhether in
the fossil record, in the DNA of organisms, in the anatomy and patterns
of development of living plants and animals, or even in the patterns of
distribution of species on earthwould leave scientists no choice but to
reject the theory of evolution as false. But in the more than 140 years since
Darwin first proposed the basic theory of evolution, there have been innumerable scientific studies and experiments which have supported the theory
of evolution, but there has never been a single shred of concrete evidence,
in any field, which, from a scientific standpoint, raises any doubts about or
calls into question the basic facts and fundamental principles of evolution.
Not one. No wonder so many scientists consider that evolution is one of
the very best supported theories in all of science!
understanding how and why new daughter species can emerge out of
a parent species (speciation) also allows us to better understand what
drove life-forms to further subdivide (frequently and repeatedly!) into
so many different plant and animal species. The science of evolution can
answer, for instance, such intriguing questions as why, since bacteria have
proven so successful at maintaining themselves on this planet, life didnt
simply stick with bacteria.
and principles accept as proven fact the kind of evolution by natural selection
that can be commonly seen to be taking place among populations of any
living plant or animal species. In fact, the evidence is so strong that even the
Catholic Church hierarchy, at least under the previous Pope ( John Paul II),
seemed willing to come around and finally accept at least some of the truth
about evolution (though the new Pope, Benedict XVI, is currently taking
swift steps to reverse any such trend). Nevertheless, the evidence for evolution is so strong that even some of the so-called scientific Creationists
aligned with Christian fundamentalism (who are definitely religious, but not
Evolution of Pesticide
Resistance in a Population
of Insects
Consider a population of insects (such
as some kind of crop pest) which is being
largely wiped out by the introduction into
their environment of some kind of poisonous insecticide. If at least some of the
individual insects happen to be genetically
resistant to the effects of that insecticide
and remain healthy, they will likely live
long enough to reproduce and be able to
contribute more descendants to the next
generations than individuals who are not
resistant to the pesticide. In turn, those
among their descendants who inherit the
particular genetic variation which makes
the insects resistant to the poison will also,
on average, contribute more descendants to
future generations than any remaining nonpesticide-resistant insects. So what happens
is that, some generations later, the entire
local insect population will be largely (or
maybe even completely) made up of pesticide-resistant individuals. At that point,
we would say that this local population of
insects has evolved pesticide resistance. This
is something most farmers are very aware
of, because it causes big problems for pest
control in agriculture. This kind of change is
a very common form of evolution by natural
selection, and is very frequently observed in
all sorts of species, both in nature and in
laboratory populations. All the ingredients
are there for evolution by natural selection
to take place automatically, without the
need for any conscious force or guiding
new Family or Order, and which begin with particular speciation events, or
with rapid bursts of such events.3
Speciation events (the birth of new species) sometimes takes place against
a backdrop of species extinctions (the death of old species), since these are
also part of the ongoing process of evolutionary change, including on the
larger (macro-evolutionary) scales. In short, understanding both how new
species come to be and how and why species may go extinct is crucial to
understanding the history of the evolution of life on earth as it has actually
unfolded over billions of years, and as it continues to unfold even today.
It is also important to realize that there is not some big artificial wall separating
micro-evolutionary change from macro-evolutionary change. Macro-evolutionary change has some additional features and characteristics which pertain
to larger-scale trends (our knowledge of which keeps expanding) but it
encompasses (and is rooted in) all the well-known mechanisms of micro-evolutionary change, including natural selection.
All this should become clearer as we go along. But first, lets get rid
of some basic confusion: The emergence of a new species does not mean
that a cat can turn into a dog, or that a fish can turn into a parrot; it does
not mean that you can hold a lizard in your hands and see it turn into a
bird; and, even though humans and the modern great apes (chimpanzees
and gorillas) really are close cousins by evolutionary standards (and we even
share more than 95% of our DNA!), that doesnt mean that one day long
ago some kind of chimpanzee gave birth to a human baby. That is not how
evolution works!
This is why I put so much stress on making sure we all keep in mind
that, while individuals reproduce, it is whole populations that evolve, and
also that they can only do so, step-wise, over many, many generations.
Major evolutionary change is never instantaneous.
different mating calls and so dont even recognize each other as potential
mates. Reproductive compatibility (or the capacity for successful interbreeding) is what ends up grouping populations of organisms together into
one single species, and it is also what ultimately separates one species from
another.
In the real world, populations of living organisms belonging to the
same species often vary slightly, relative to each other, across a range of
geographic distribution. For instance, some species of birds are made up
of different populations with slightly different color patterns in the Eastern
and Western United States; and populations in the Midwest, where the
Eastern and Western varieties overlap and hybridize (cross-breed with
each other), are often intermediate in appearance. Despite these superficial
differences, the different populations of such a bird species are still part of
one single species, because they have not lost the ability to interbreed and
produce viable and fertile offspring. In such cases, the different populations
are simply considered different geographic races or subspecies (as
opposed to different species).
This, of course, is also why biologists understand that all human beings
all around the world are all part of a single species. We may have minor
superficial differences in things like skin color or hair types, but we have
no consistent and fundamental differenceswe all share a common gene
pool, and we are all perfectly capable of successfully interbreeding with
each other. Racist theories of racial superiority or inferiority, which confuse
some people into thinking that different human races are somehow different kinds, have absolutely no basis in scientific fact! We are truly one
single intermingling species, spread throughout the globe.
Organisms can only be said to belong to different species if they are sufficiently reproductively isolated from each other and would therefore no longer be
capable of successfully interbreeding even if they shared the same locality.4
Understanding some of the many ways in which one population of
organisms can become reproductively isolated from its parent population is
key to understanding how a brand-new species can come into being. This
is because speciation often occurs when a population which has become
reproductively isolated from its parent population ends up accumulating
enough genetic differences (through the sorting-out processes of natural
selection and related phenomena) that it loses its ability to interbreed with
the original parent population.
Once reproductive isolation has been maintained for a long enough
period of time (numbers of generations) and full speciation has occurred,
the populations of the two now different species will both continue to evolve
in the usual ways, including by natural selection and in interaction with their
particular environments. But now they will do so separately (on the basis
of separate and somewhat different gene pools), and for this reason they
will accumulate ever greater differences over time, pulling them further
and further apart. At every generation, both in the original parent species
and in the new daughter species, the usual random processes of mutation
and genetic recombinations will reshuffle the (now somewhat different)
genetic deck of cards, and this will bring forward some individuals with
new features which may or may not prove reproductively advantageous
in a particular environment, but which in any case wont be exactly the
same in the two species since they are no longer mixing their gene pools at
each generation. This, combined with the fact that even slight differences
in the environments they occupy can also exert somewhat different selective pressures on populations of the old and the new species (for example,
favoring the development of short and stout bird beaks where tough hard
seeds are available, or of thinner, tube-like beaks in environments where
nectar-filled flowers offer a good alternative food source) will tend to make
the populations of the old and new species grow further and further apart
(becoming more and more different in such things as anatomy, development, or behaviors) the more time goes on.
In addition, a parent species may end up budding off some daughter
species more than once in the course of its history (though perhaps at
different times and in relation to different sub-environments), and many of
these daughter species are also likely to, in turn, bud off additional (and
even more different!) daughter species of their own. All of this contributes
to pulling entire ancestor and descendant lineages (lines) further and further
apart over time. Thats why life is so diversified!
A species which has relatively recently budded off from its parent species is likely to be recognizable as a closely related species for some time.
But if the speciation process keeps getting repeated over and over again, and
over many millions of years, the shared ancestry of different organisms may
well become less immediately obvious. For instance, you would not automatically think that modern-day whales are descended from a four-legged
mammal ancestor that walked on land, but in fact we now know whales
are descended from just such a creature! We can see this because people
have uncovered a whole series of fossils of intermediate species (as well as
some additional molecular DNA evidence) which reveal the seemingly odd
family connection between an original land-based ancestor and the modern
whales. There is actually a region of the dry Sahara desert of Northern
Africa (which used to be covered by an ocean millions of years ago) which
today is known as the Valley of the Whales because its sands contain an
incredible number of well-preserved fossilized skeletons of a whale species
which swam in the area 40 million years ago. This whale species has some
features which are similar to those of modern whales, but it also has vestigial
(remnant) toes, legs, and pelvis! These features link it (through a number of
other intermediate steps) to a land-based mammal which lived in the area
some 10 million years earlier. And it would take another 15 million years or
so (and many more instances of daughter species budding off from parent
species) for those remaining leg and toe bones to end up fully converted
into the kind of modern flippers we see on whales today. When you look
at a number of fossils in the series, you can see the step-wise nature of the
modifications which were favored by natural selection at different junctures.
But its not as if the whales oldest land ancestor suddenly lost four legs
and reappeared the very next day with flippers instead! There were quite a
few intermediate steps, and these anatomical transformations (which were
probably also accompanied by significant changes in behaviors and habitat
utilization) happened over a great many whale generations!
At every evolutionary juncture in the history of life, the story would
likely have been the same: a population occupying a local environment
would have, for one reason or another, become reproductively isolated
from a larger parent population of the species. The reproductively isolated
sub-population would in time have produced and consolidated different
anatomical, developmental or behavioral features (relative to the parent
population) as natural selection and related phenomena operated on a
somewhat altered base of genetic variation in the two populations to produce different inheritable traits, and as the two populations encountered
somewhat different sets of selection pressures in relation to the particularities of the different environments with which they interacted.
As the ongoing genetic reshuffling and recombination continued to
occur in the new species, new features would periodically appear which
had never before existed in the ancestral population. Geneticists often like
to remind people that mutants are not monsters: mutations are simply
fairly commonplace copying errors which occur in the course of DNA
replication when organisms reproduce. They can have large or small effects
on the anatomical, developmental, or behavioral traits of individual organisms who inherit these mutations, or they can even produce no noticeable
effects at all (so-called neutral mutations which nevertheless contribute to
overall genetic variability in a population and which may contribute at some
later point to the development of some evolutionary modifications). Both
mutations and the more routine genetic recombinations which occur at every
generation in sexually reproducing organisms can produce traits which, in
a given local environment, put the individual at a reproductive disadvantage
relative to others in the population. In such a case, natural selection will
tend to fairly quickly eliminate this variation from the population. But if a
new trait emerges that provides individuals having this feature with a distinct reproductive advantage in a given environment (which is more likely
to occur when the environment is itself changing or the daughter species
has moved into a new environment), then natural selection can relatively
quickly spread this new feature through the generations, to greater and
greater numbers of descendants.
It is also important to understand that when reproductively isolated
populations bud off into new species and accumulate really new and
significant evolutionary innovations (evolutionary features which did
not exist in their ancestors) they can sometimes expand very rapidly and
spread into whole new habitats, where they can often make use of a whole
range of environmental resources that had never before been available to
the ancestor species. In such circumstances, new species may diversify even
further, and often relatively rapidly, subdividing into a number of additional
daughter species which may have evolved a number of particular specializations enabling them to become even more finely tuned (adapted) to
specific components of their new environments and to exploit somewhat
different types of food, nesting sites, or other such resources.
This kind of rapid expansion and adaptive radiation has been observed
to occur when so-called founder populations of just a handful of individual
organisms manage to colonize islands or other relatively open habitats
where there are as yet no closely related species, and which may be entirely
lacking the particular competitor and/or predator species that the ancestor
species had to contend with.
This is what happened in the case of a family of birds known as the
Hawaiian honeycreepers, for instance. A single ancestor species of these
birds migrated to these Islands in the past but then rather quickly diversified (through repeated speciations) into a great number of closely related
species which differ greatly in the shape and size of their beaks. These
differences represent different evolutionary modifications (and in this case
clear adaptations) in relation to an assortment of available food sources.
Studies have shown that even small anatomical modifications in beak size
and shape can greatly affect what kind of food birds are able to exploit.
Among the many closely related species of Hawaiian honeycreepers, there
are species with short thin beaks which eat mainly insects, species with thick
stout beaks which eat mainly fruits and hard seeds, and species with long
thin beaks which suck nectar out of flowers. And there are also a number
of species with features that are intermediate between these types. All these
different species are closely related, and are descended from that one single
honeycreeper ancestor species which made it to the Islands.
In the larger-scale history of life on earth this kind of rapid adaptive
radiation is also the kind of thing that happened when, for instance, a major
evolutionary innovation such as the emergence of feathers and lightweight
hollow bones suitable for flight opened up a whole new environment (the
previously unpopulated skies) to what quickly became a veritable explosion of bird species. Major innovations in one line of descent of organisms
can also have profound ripple effects on other lines. For example, biologists
generally agree that a tremendous increase in the variety of insect, bird and
mammal species in the Cretaceous period, some 140 million years ago, was
in many ways tied into the rapidly increasing diversification of flowering
plants, a relatively recent evolutionary innovation.
Imagine also the tremendous evolutionary openings which were
likely encountered by the first species of bony fishes to give rise to the
first primitive amphibians some 400 million years ago! These were the very
first four-legged creatures to crawl out of the waters and expand onto land.
They emerged as only relatively slight modifications of some bony fishes
which had evolved a couple of anatomical and developmental oddities such
as a lung-like air bladder and stumpy leg-like fins. Both of these features
would ultimately allow some of their descendants to at least occasionally
spend time out of the water. We know from the fossil record that these
evolutionary modifications did in fact occur among a group of bony fishes
known as the lobe-finned fish (whose living descendants include the very
primitive coelacanths and various species of lungfishes). At this point, we
can only speculate about exactly what reproductive advantages the evolution of air bladders and bony finger or leg-like fins conferred on individuals
having these features: perhaps the air bladders allowed some fish to survive
periods when pools of water occasionally dried out (as is the case in living
lung-fishes), and perhaps modification in the bones of their fins at first
just enabled some species of fish to better escape predators or chase after
other fish, and then later these emerging structures were co-opted for a
new use, to get around on dry land. In any case, fossil skeletons of the very
first land-dwelling four-legged animals (the most primitive salamander-like
amphibians, which looked a lot like fish with legs!) show extremely close
similarities to the skeletons of those water-dwelling lobe-finned fish. And
what is truly amazing is that the basic pattern of bones which make up the
limb structure of all the later four-legged land-dwellers can already be seen in
the underlying structure of the bony fins of those ancient fish ancestors!
No other animals had ever before crawled out onto land, so opportunities for fairly rapid diversification and specializations in relation to different
sub-features of local land environments must have abounded. In fact, the
fossil record reveals that amphibians would diversify greatly for about 100
million years and also bud off the first reptiles, who would in turn diversify
greatly and bud off the first mammals and birds. But each one of these
truly major departures in the history of life would have had its origins in
simple speciationsthe appearance of an increasingly divergent daughter
species which became reproductively isolated from its parent species, and
then began to separately accumulate evolutionary modifications.
Chapter 4 Endnotes
1. The sheer quantity and diversity of beetle species led the 19th-century
scientist and proponent of Darwinian evolution T.H. Huxley to humorously (and
sarcastically) quip that, if god had created all of nature, he must have had an
inordinate fondness for beetles!
2. One of the things which reveals that Creationists are fundamentally nonscientific is the way they tend to view different plant and animal species as completely
segregated and unchanging kinds in the first place. In reality, every biologist
understands that the boundaries separating living organisms are relative (and not
absolute), that their features tend to blend and blur into each other (instead of being
rigidly compartmentalized), and that no life-form is ever absolutely unchanging.
By contrast, the Greek philosopher Plato, who lived about 2,400 years ago, believed
that all things have a fundamental and immutable (unchanging) essence; this
view became widespread in his day and remained popular until human beings
began to develop the kind of modern scientific methods and outlooks which have
allowed us to discover that, in reality, all forms of matterfrom atoms, to life-forms,
to galaxiesare always undergoing change. In fact, modern science in all the different
fieldsand so much of how we use modern science to transform our material
worldis based on that very understanding! At the dawn of the 21st century, isnt it
about time to let goonce and for allof outdated, static and essentialist views
of things?
3. For those of you who are not very familiar with the biological system of
the group within group taxonomic classification of plants and animals according to their degrees of similarities and relatedness, the following example may be
helpful: an individual wolf belongs to a reproductive population of wolves in a given
region; all the different populations of wolves scattered throughout the range of
the wolves make up an entire wolf species. All the different but closely related wolf
species (such as the Red Wolf, the Mexican Wolf, etc.) get grouped into the wolf
genus; all the wolves are then also placed, on the basis of shared features, in the
Family of the Canidae (which includes dogs and foxes, but not, for instance, cats,
which belong to a different Family); the wolf Family is then grouped along with
some other Families (still on the basis of a set of shared similarities) into the Order
of Carnivores (meat-eaters) and the Class of the Mammals (animals which have
hair, give birth to live young, produce maternal milk, etc.). So, for instance, wolves
would be grouped with other Carnivorous Mammals, such as dogs, foxes, bears,
seals and weasels (and there is both fossil and molecular evidence that these animals
really do share a relatively close common ancestry). Beyond that, our wolf also
belongs to the Phylum Chordata (all animals having a backbone) and finally, and
most obviously, to the Kingdom of Animals (distinguishing them from organisms
belonging to the distinct Kingdoms of the plants, the fungi, the algae-like protists
or the bacteria-like prokaryotes, which all represented very different evolutionary
pathways in the history of life). In real life, the boundaries between species or
higher lineages are not always perfectly clear, and species sometimes have to be
reclassified into new groups as we learn more about them. But, by and large, the
system of biological classification assigns organisms to each category based on sets
of real similarities and differences which actually reflect patterns of inheritance
from common ancestors, and which distinguish them from evolutionary lines that
went off in significantly different directions.
Chapter 5
the same time (for instance, when two populations of trees, even in the same
habitat, tend to flower at slightly different times, or when two populations
of closely related animals no longer mate in quite the same season), or
because they have adapted to occupying somewhat different niches (subsets of
environmental variables) and to using somewhat different means of exploiting the
resources of the habitats they occupy even in the very same local area (as when
closely related species live and feed at ground level or in the canopy level
[tree-tops] of a rain forest). In the case of many mammal and bird species,
sufficient reproductive isolation for full speciation to take place often seems
to occur when different populations have accumulated significant behavioral
differences in genetically encoded mating rituals or other forms of communication:
in such cases, individuals from two populations no longer recognize each
other as potential mates even if they come across each other in the same
general habitat, and therefore they dont even attempt to mate.1
reason it is rare to get a chance to observe full speciation taking place from
start to finish in the framework of a human lifetime.
to expect that we would start finding their distinct fossils only after such a
process has had a chance to unfold for some time.
Given this, it is all the more amazing that the fossil record is actually as
good as it is!
much more rare and involve much higher overall rates of extinction, cutting
across a broad variety of plant and animal species and lineages. It has been
estimated for instance that more than 90% of then existing species became
extinct during the period of the Permian mass extinction. By the end of the
late Cretaceous period of mass extinction (around 65 million years ago),
all sorts of previously successful plant and animal lineages were essentially
gone, including the last of the many and diverse lineages of dinosaurs which
had been thriving for more than 100 million years. Such examples highlight
the fact that overall life on the planet becomes significantly altered after
periods of mass extinctions: whole assemblages of interacting plants and
animals are gone forever (causing profound ecological reconfigurations),
whereas, conversely, whole other groupings of plants and animalsthe
ones which happen to have been less affected by whatever mix of factors
caused a particular wave of mass extinctionsoften seem to undergo rapid
population explosions and dramatic bursts of species diversification in the
aftermath of these periods of mass extinctions.
Some of the large-scale environmental changes which are thought to
have contributed to global mass extinctions include such things as the rise
or fall of sea levels, increases or decreases in coastal or other terrestrial
habitats, global warming or cooling trends, changes in atmospheric gases,
increased volcanic activity, sudden impacts by asteroids or meteorites,
decreases in sunlight available for plant photosynthesis, etc. Combinations
of a number of such factors are likely to have been involved in most periods
of mass extinctions. For instance, the mass extinction of about 250 million
years ago (which nearly wiped out all life on the planet) is thought by some
to have been caused by an increase in volcanic eruptions, leading to significant global warming, which may in turn have altered oceanic currents
and sharply reduced the amount of oxygen getting down to the deeper
waters, thereby causing massive die-offs of marine life. Whatever the particular factors involved in any given period of mass extinctions, it is clear
that significant global changes in climate and other environmental factors
can significantly (and even rather abruptly) increase the normal rates of
species extinction by dramatically altering the physical and biotic features
of the natural habitats in which plant and animal species had earlier evolved
and in which many had been able to successfully maintain themselves for
extensive periods of time.
The effects of some of the large-scale climate and other environmental
changes which are thought to contribute to some mass extinctions would
have been spread out over fairly long periods of time, and in this way may
have exerted some relatively gradual effects on the overall survival or
extinction rates of various plant and animal lines (and it is important to keep
in mind that mass extinctions are never instantaneous in any case). On
the other hand it has by now become rather clear that some truly sudden
back together in the same place but found that the individuals of the two
populations could no longer interbreedthey had accumulated enough
underlying genetic differences (through Dobzhanskys manipulations
favoring just one or two apparently superficial features) that the flies in
the two different populations could no longer mate with each otherthey
had effectively become different species!
Another experiment involved taking a wild, natural, population of fruit
flies collected in a tropical forest, and simply dividing it up into two equal
groups which were then kept and allowed to reproduce in separate tanks
for a period of five years, without interfering with them in any way: at the
end of that time (plenty of time for fruit flies in each group to separately
produce a great many generations!), the two populations were reunited
but here again it was found that they had lost their ability to interbreed.
The genetic differences which had been accumulating separately for five years
had rendered the two populations reproductively incompatible; observations
of their anatomical differences, changed behaviors, and differences in their
underlying DNA revealed how much they had divergedthey really had
become two separate species.
Why then arent we always finding brand new species of plants and
animals emerging in the natural world everywhere we look? There are a
number of reasons for this. One of the most obvious reasons is that most
species just dont produce series of new generations as fast as things like
fruit flies or bacteria, and it takes many generations for enough distinct
genetic variation to accumulate in a population to even have a chance of
turning it into a distinct species. People can observe many fruit fly generations over a few months or years, but think about how much time it would
take (relative to an average human lifespan) to observe changes taking place
over 20 or 30 generations in most mammal species, for instance! Most major
evolutionary changes take place over at least thousands of generations, so
people living today are much more likely to witness the total extinction of a
species (which we unfortunately witness all too frequently these days) than
the emergence of a brand new species which has never before existed.
Also, in the real world it is not so easy for conditions of absolute reproductive isolation to be maintained between populations of a species for a
long enough period of time for full speciation to take place. Populations in
nature which have been kept apart for a while by some physical barrier
(a dry channel, a sandbar, a logging swath cut through a forest, and so
forth) often recombine when the physical barrier breaks downa blocked
channel between two lakes may reopen, for instance, allowing previously
separated fish populations of the same species to once again interbreed.
This has the effect of interrupting the speciation process which had only just
begun. Keep in mind also that it is not enough for new features to emerge
in a relatively reproductively isolated populationevolutionary novelties
may well emerge in such a population, and may even confer some reproductive advantages on the individuals which have these novel features, but even
that is not a guarantee that the change will get preserved and consolidated
in the population as a wholelots of accidental processes can intervene
to prevent this consolidation of novelty, such as the sudden introduction
into an area of a new predator or competitor species; the impact of a factor
leading to dramatic climate changes; the effects on a local physical environment of such things as wildfires or floods, etc. Any such factors can easily
lead to particular individuals or even entire populations getting wiped out
long before any advantageous novelty has had a chance to spread to enough
descendants to make it likely that it will be preserved. Especially in the case
of a really small population, it can be a real crapshoot whether it hangs in
there long enough for any potentially unique evolutionary innovations to
get an evolutionary toe-hold.
Despite factors which can prevent the speciation process from getting
completed in any given instance, or cause a newly emerged species to peter
out, full speciation has nevertheless occurred innumerable times over the
past 3.5 billion years, and it is an ongoing process. It is what explains the truly
amazing diversity of past and present life-forms on this planeta diversity
which is all the more wonderful in that it has flowered and unfolded on
its own, without the involvement of any imaginary outside engineer or
super-natural designer.
Chapter 5 Endnotes
1. Sometimes the mechanism of reproductive isolation seems even more subtle
but just as effective: for instance, studies have shown that some populations of closely
related insects can become reproductively separated simply as a result of feeding on
different species of neighboring plants. And new plant species have been observed to
emerge when two related but distinct plant species, which occupy the same habitat
but which are normally reproductively isolated due to genetic factors (such as chromosomal incompatibilities), cross-fertilize and produce sterile hybrids. Normally,
such hybrids, like the sterile mules, would not be able to produce any descendants;
however, in plants it seems that it is not all that rare for the chromosomes of such
sterile hybrids to spontaneously double (a phenomenon known as polyploidy), which
essentially has the effect of restoring these hybrids ability to produce descendants
though they are now effectively members of a new species! It is thought that a great
many of the 260,000 or so species of living plants evolved as distinct modifications of
ancestor species through such instances of polyploidy.
2. It is important to realize that changes in the gene frequencies and overall
genetic diversity of populations can come about as a result of chance events, and not
just as a result of natural selection operating on that population. For instance, new
individuals may just happen to migrate into an area, introducing additional genetic
material into a population, or, conversely, the overall genetic diversity of a population
can be reduced by genetic drift, when specific genetic alleles (variants of genes) are lost
from a population simply due to the accidental deaths of individuals or the accidental
wipe-out of even a whole section of the population.
3. There is some experimental evidence to support this view, and it is thought
by many that the more limited amount of total genetic variation in the smaller
population at the very onset of speciation may actually contribute to a relaxing of
some genetically encoded developmental constraints (limiting factors) present in the
genetically more complex larger population, and that such a relaxing of developmental constraints may facilitate genetic reshufflings that can lead to the emergence
of brand new features.
97
Chapter 6
them features which clearly link them to each other, as well as to some
pre-existing species from which they evolved.
The theory of evolution predicts that if the different plant and animal
species did not, in fact, come out of nothing, then we should be able to
find within their bodies (as well as in their patterns of distribution across
the planet) lots of concrete clues as to what it is they did come out of.
And thats exactly what we do find.
Evolution is a Proven Fact The Evidence is Concrete and Comes from Many Different Directions 101
Evolution is a Proven Fact The Evidence is Concrete and Comes from Many Different Directions 103
The fact that there is such a tremendous consilience of evidence for evolution meaning that there are so many different types of evidence coming
from so many different directions but all pointing to basically the same
conclusionsis one of the main things Id like readers to remember from
this book. The great consilience of evidence from so many different sources
is one of the reasons the vast majority of scientists consider the theory of
evolution to be one of the most robust (rock solid) and most well-documented
theories in the entire history of science.
evolved from a group of reptiles which at an earlier time had evolved from
a group of fish. The embryos gill slits and tails are just evolutionary remnants (left-overs) from those earlier ancestors.
2) Vestigial (remnant or left over) features
Even after birth, we can see that the individuals of many species often
retain features that are not functional (of no use) or that in some cases
are even maladaptive (worse than useless). For instance, in some species
of plants which today have completely separate male and female flowers,
there are still some small (and non-functional) remnants of female parts
(pistils) on male flowers, and small (non-functional) remnants of male parts
(stamens) on female flowers! Something this bizarre certainly wouldnt
make any sense if a god had created living species in line with some kind
of conscious and intelligent master plan. But once again it does make sense
according to evolution: these non-functional remnants of male or female
parts are just carry-overs from past ancestors which produced both male
and female functional parts in one single type of flower (as many species
still do today).
Or how about the bodies of baleen whales? They still contain some
very small, undeveloped and apparently completely useless pelvic bones
(hip bones) which arent even attached to other parts of their skeletons.
These structures are irrelevant in streamlined bodies adapted to moving
through waterthey are just evolutionary left-overs from when the whales
ancestors lived on land and had legs connected to hip bones.
Or what about all the species of cave fishes and other cave-dwelling
organisms that have eyes, even though they spend their entire lives in dark
caves and cant see? Would a god design anything so nonsensical? The truth
is that these cave organisms are descended from species which used to have
functional eyes and which lived in more light-filled environments. Why
do some insects have vestigial non-functional wings even though they
dont fly? Simply because they are descended from ancestor species that had
wings and could fly!
And just look at people: we still have the remnants of a tail-bone; we
have a backbone and abdominal muscles much like those of the four-legged
mammals, but which leave us open to back pain and which barely hold
in our vital organs (because they werent designed to be carried around
vertically!); and we have an appendix (a small remnant of a prior ancestor
species intestinal sack) which not only is of no use to us but which can
sometimes kill us when it gets clogged up and infected! What kind of god
or other intelligent designer would design organisms with such useless,
imperfect, wasteful, and sometimes even harmful physical features?
The fact is that none of these vestigial structures (and there are many
others) make any sense unless they are just evolutionary carry-overs from
different pre-existing ancestors. It is very important to understand that the
Evolution is a Proven Fact The Evidence is Concrete and Comes from Many Different Directions 105
4) Convergence
Convergent features are features that look similar and often perform
similar functions, but which are made up of different underlying parts and
are not derived from the same ancestral feature. For example, the eyes of
vertebrates (animals having backbones) and the eyes of cephalopods (a
group of soft-bodied invertebrates, which includes squids and octopus)
perform similar functions (seeing), but they came about through a different
set of evolutionary modifications of some different underlying structures.
Similarly, the fins of fish and the fins of whales might look to us somewhat
alike, and they do perform some of the same functions (slicing through
water) but they also are the result of the evolutionary modification of
different anatomical structures which existed in their respective ancestors.
Pandas can grasp and manipulate bamboo shoots with what looks (and
functions) like a thumb, but these so-called thumbs are not true finger
bonesthey turn out to be a modification of a wrist bone of one of their
ancestor species. What all these kinds of examples show us is, first of all,
that there is more than one way to evolve a particular functional capacitybut
also that the particular way it evolves (out of exactly what pre-existing structure) depends on what material happened to be available for modification
in the population of immediately preceding ancestors.
Sometimes entire communities of plants or animals show evidence of
convergent evolution: The great variety of life-forms on earth is testament
to the fact that biological evolution is a very creative process and that natural
selection is a very powerful mechanism for shaping change in all living creatures. A good illustration of this is the evolutionary convergence of entire
communities of plants and animals which have evolved striking similarities
of form and function, even though they live in completely different parts
of the world and may not even be at all closely related. There are many
examples of this in both plant and animal lines. For instance, certain cactus
species living in North American deserts (such as the Organ Pipe cactus)
look so much like some of the species in the Euphorb family of plants in
southern Africa that you could hardly tell them apart. And yet these two
plant families are not at all closely related to each otherthey represent
two different splits from earlier lines of plant ancestors, and their current
striking similarities of form and function evolved later (and independently),
simply as a result of natural selection producing similar adaptations in relation to similar environments (in this case, dry deserts). A similar example
would be the four unrelated families of birds which independently evolved
beak adaptations which allow them to suck nectar out of flowers: the hummingbirds of North and South America; the honeycreepers of Hawaii; the
sunbirds of Africa; and the honey-eaters of Australia. They represent different evolutionary lines among the birds but, over a very long period of
Evolution is a Proven Fact The Evidence is Concrete and Comes from Many Different Directions 107
Evolution is a Proven Fact The Evidence is Concrete and Comes from Many Different Directions 109
from generation to generation and may even become increasingly exaggerated over time. This is in line with basic natural selection. But it would
be difficult to argue that this evolutionary trend has led to peacocks being
better adapted to their environment in any kind of more general or overall
sense: for instance, the big flashy tails of male peacocks dont help them
find food, or withstand temperature extremes, and they may even make it
more difficult for them to get off the ground to escape predators. In short,
there can often be trade-offs between the advantages and disadvantages
of different features as populations evolve. And while there are many evolutionary changes which do represent adaptations to local environments, not
all evolutionary trends and directions of change are adaptations.
The fact that many features of organisms are not perfectly designed
for their particular functions makes perfect sense if they are the product of
successive rounds of biological evolution and were never designed by any
outside conscious force in the first place. But it certainly wouldnt make
any sense for some all-knowing and all-powerful god to consciously design
life-forms to incorporate what, from a design standpoint, would have to
be considered flaws and imperfections. For instance, according to the Bible,
man was made in Gods image and therefore was inherently perfect. But, in
fact, this is not the case at all. Consider just a few examples:
Human beings are prone to back and hip pain and a number of other
related ailments because the alignment of our skeletons is not perfectly
designed for upright-walking. Which do you think is more likely: that
some all-knowing and all-powerful god did downright shoddy work, or that
our skeletons are imperfect simply because they were built (by wellknown and observable evolutionary mechanisms such as natural selection)
out of the skeletons of our ancestor species, going back to the ones that
walked on all fours?
Human beings also have a dangerous tendency to choke on food: this
has something to do with the fact that, in the back of our throats, the passage that air follows to get to the lungs actually crosses the path that food
follows to get to the stomach. This would be an example of a really stupid
(or perversely sadistic) design if a god had actually designed it that way! But
this is not the result of anyones conscious design. This choking problem
simply reflects our own past evolutionary history: the breathing channels
of all land vertebrates also evolved in the distant past as modifications of
pre-existing structures (in this case the air bladders of some bony fishes and
lungfishes) which evolved into primitive lungs. This evolutionary innovation allowed the first land vertebrates to breathe out of water and to
spread into many new habitats. But as much as it created all sorts of new
opportunities and advantages, allowing new species to spread and diversify
across the land, this evolutionary development came packaged with this
little problem of air and food passages crossing. And this problem seems
to have been even further aggravated in human beings when the evolution
of fully upright walking was accompanied by further changes in the relative
positioning of the head and throat.
And, again, human beings werent even optimally designed for upright
walking, one of our most distinctive features. As much of an advantage as
fully upright walking may have been for our species, it also created new
stresses on the bones and muscles of the body. This is because we did not
come out of nothing, and our upright bodies could only evolve on the
basis of what came before usthe preexisting bodies of our non-uprightwalking ancestors. So, like every other species on earth, human beings have
many body features which no doubt could have been much improved if any
outside intelligent designer had been involved in creating usunless that
designer had a truly sick and twisted mind! Again, which do you think is
more likelythat god designed people with throats that make it easy for
them to choke and with chronic tendencies to back pain, or that the chokeprone configuration of human throats and the stresses on the back and
knee joints, etc., are simply the not-so-perfect results of a series of bodyplan realignments which took place when some of our not-fully-upright
ape ancestors evolved into fully upright hominids (human ancestors)?
Concrete evidence of evolution can be found in all of natures many
odd quirks and imperfections. And it turns out that the specific ways in which
evolution is not perfect can actually provide a lot of information about the
actual sequence of previous evolutionary steps that went into any new evolutionary development. For instance, as mentioned earlier, if you line up the
fossils of a dozen or so hominid species by age from oldest to most recent
(spanning a few million years), you can see that the first of the uprightwalking species of hominids did not immediately have all the features that
we think of as fully human: what you see is that those first upright-walking
species still had, among other things, very ape-like small skulls and brains
and ape-like long arms and short legs, even though they were already very
different from their ape ancestors in being able to stand and walk upright;
and you also see that some of the later hominids, which were evolutionary derivations of those first hominids, eventually included species which
had body shapes and proportions and brain sizes much more like those of
modern humans. But all this didnt happen all at onceit happened over
millions of years.
The evidence is clear: the evolution of life involves imperfect stepwise modifications of whatever pre-existing (and historically limited and
constrained) living raw material happens to be at hand at a given timenot
the handiwork of an infinitely wise and powerful deity.
6) Geographic distribution of species around the world
The patterns of distribution of many groups of plants and animals
around the world make no sense unless they are descended from common
Evolution is a Proven Fact The Evidence is Concrete and Comes from Many Different Directions 111
A Conscious Intelligent
Designer Wouldnt Design
Life The Way It Is
As we have seen, one of the defining
features of living things is that they are typically full of what could only be described as
flaws and imperfections if evaluated
from a purely design standpoint. It frankly
just wouldnt make sense for any intelligent
designer to design anything this way! But
the way living things actually are (including
with all their seeming flaws and imperfections) can easily be explained by the
fact that, even though populations of living
organisms always change over time, they
can only do so on the basis of whatever raw
material for change (genetic variation)
happens to be available in the populations
of the most immediately preceding ancestor
generation. This simple fact puts a lot of
natural historical constraints and limitations
on just how (and how much) populations
of living things can evolve at any given time.
By contrast, things which are actually
designed by real designers (such as
people) can be made to change over time in
ways that are much less strictly constrained
and restricted. In fact, things that are
designed by conscious intelligent designers dont fit into the patterns of nested
hierarchy so typical of living things (see
main text). This has to do with the ways
real intelligent designers actually design
things. Consider, for instance, things like
cars, airplanes, or musical instruments:
new designs (or new generations of
designs) of such objects are often said to
evolve over time thanks to modifications
of pre-existing models undertaken by their
conscious human designers. New models
are derived from earlier generations of
cars, instruments, etc., and they typically
Evolution is a Proven Fact The Evidence is Concrete and Comes from Many Different Directions 113
be made to fit consistently into such a group within group pattern. You
can, for example, make a list of the names and features of all the known
chemical elements, or you can make a list of all the known minerals and
their features. But you wont be able to make all the basic chemical elements connect up with each other and fit into any kind of consistent and
comprehensive group within group nested hierarchy of chemicals simply
on the basis of their shared features. And you cant do it with all the different kinds of mineral elements either. Why not? Because all those chemical
elements didnt evolve out of pre-existing chemical elements, and all those
minerals didnt evolve out of pre-existing minerals. There is therefore no
way to draw consistent lines of family ties which could successfully encompass and connect either all the chemical elements or all the minerals into
nested hierarchies of successively bigger groups based solely and at every
step on shared sets of features.
All biological species, however, do fit into a pattern of nested hierarchy,
and even some non-living things fit that pattern when they too really are
directly related by consistent lines of descent. For instance, all the many
thousands of human languages can be classified into a group within group
nested hierarchy of ancestor and descendant languages, because each
one came into being as a result of a process of direct descent with modification from a series of pre-existing ancestor languages, from which they
can be shown to have inherited many features of vocabulary and syntax
(rules of grammar, etc.). French, Spanish, and Italian, for example, are all
closely related languages, and each represents a slightly different modification of a single older ancestor language (Latin). The simple fact that all
current human languages (unlike all minerals or chemical elements) can
fit into a pattern of nested hierarchy classification actually proves that the
different human languages did not develop separately but rather one out
of the other. Similarly, the fact that all biological species also fit into such a
pattern is just one more clear piece of evidence that life-forms really didnt
appear all at once as separate unrelated kinds (as the Bible says) and that
they have indeed evolved one out of the other, though a series of shared
ancestors. (See A Conscious Intelligent Designer Wouldnt Design Life The Way
It Is, left.)
I literally cannot think of any other scientific theory, in any field of science, that is as well supported by demonstrated fact and by so many different
lines of mutually reinforcing evidence as the theory of biological evolution.
How much more proof does anyone really need? Many scientists are getting pretty frustrated and angry that a bunch of fundamentalist Christian
Creationists, bent on promoting know-nothingism in the service of a
reactionary political agenda, and backed by powerful forces in society, are
actually managing to get in the way of people getting a genuine science
education and learning just how strong the evidence of evolution really
is. These people will do anything in their powerdistort the truth, spread
outright lies, and even threaten and intimidateto try to force people to
accept and submit to a literal interpretation of the Biblical story of Creation,
even though all the scientific evidence which has accumulated over the past
century and a half shows this doesnt hold water.
Paleontologists can show you all sorts of fossils, from all over the world,
which clearly demonstrate sequences of evolutionary modifications and
many of the successive splitting and branching events which characterize
the different plant and animal evolutionary lines. Comparative anatomists
and developmental biologists can also show you very concrete proof that
all plants and animals are made up of parts that have retained significant
features of species which preceded them in time, combined with new
parts that are obviously the result of a modification of a corresponding
part in an older species. Molecular biologists in just the last few decades
have compared the DNA and other molecules of all sorts of species and
have figured out the degree of relatedness of different species and at what
times in the past different splits happened in their family treesand while
many molecular biologists dont know much about fossils or comparative
anatomy (just as many paleontologists and anatomists dont know much
about molecular biology) it is a fact that scientists in these very different
fields (and in many other fields of science) have come up with the very
same basic conclusions about the basic evolutionary tree of life which connects all living and extinct species.
Every working biologist can rattle off tons of examples of the features
of organisms and communities of organisms (vestigial features, homologies, examples of convergent evolution, etc.) which can be explained quite
simply through evolution but which cannot be rationally explained in any
other way. And, as we previously discussed, evolutionary biologists, population geneticists, and community ecologists have actually verified many
of the predictions of the theory of evolution experimentally (both in the
lab and in natural populations), conducting many thousands of studies and
experiments which show evolution in action in all sorts of plant and animal
lines and which have helped to decipher many of the mechanisms involved
in evolutionary change.
None of these scientists, in any of those fields of science, have ever
turned up a single piece of concrete evidence which disproves (or in any
way fundamentally contradicts) the basic facts of evolution. So again, I ask
you: how much more proof does anyone really need?
Evolution is a Proven Fact The Evidence is Concrete and Comes from Many Different Directions 115
Chapter 6 Endnotes
1. As we discussed earlier, there are now various modern scientific techniques
which allow us to date different fossils (determine their relative age). So scientists
have been able to use these dating techniques to further verify and confirm the basic
phylogenies (the basic sequences of ancestor and descendant species and lineages
which make up the tree of life) that had already been established simply on the basis
of comparing the similarities and differences in the anatomy and development of
different species and larger groupings of plants and animals.
2. For instance, the basic structure of some genes, such as some of those
involved in the regulation of aspects of growth and development of body parts, have
apparently remained so constant over millions of years that they can be found, in
essentially equivalent form, in organisms as different (and as evolutionarily distant) as
bacteria and fruit flies! Similarly, the chemical structure of the hemoglobin protein in
the blood of human beings and chimpanzees is almost exactly the same, even though
the human line and the chimpanzee line split from a shared ancestor some 5 million
years ago and have been evolving separately ever since.
3. And, to take into account the fact that any one type of biochemical molecule
might not always have changed at such a constant rate, results can be further crosschecked by repeating these calculations, using more than one type of biochemical
molecule.
Chapter 7
Who are we? Where did we come from? What might the future be
like?
These are questions human beings have probably been asking themselves for as long as there have been human beings. Its one of the things
that makes us humanthis ability to think and wonder and converse with
each other not just about present-day events, but also about what happened
in the past, or about what might happen in the future. No other living
species on this planet can do that. It is this very ability which allows us
to learn from the accumulated knowledge and traditions of our ancestors
(some of which we may want to tap into and some of which we would no
doubt do better to discard, but all of which we can learn from in any case);
and it is this ability which allows generation after generation of human
beings to keep building onto the accumulating storehouse of knowledge
and experience, both by revising and modifying past understanding, and
by gaining additional new insights in light of our ongoing explorations and
transformations of the world around us.
But for all this inspiring ability, we humans also seem to have the ability
and the tendency to just make stuff up when we simply dont yet know
117
they need religion in the first place, but it also has to do with: (a) the simple
fact that, for most of the time human beings have existed, we did not yet
have the scientific methods and scientific outlooks (and hadnt yet made
the kind of scientific discoveries) which could give us real answers about
where people came from, based on fact, rather than on myth and superstition; and (b) a genuine scientific knowledge and understanding of things
has traditionally been denied to the majority of humanity as a direct result
of the social divisions and inequalities that exist throughout the worlda
situation which continues to this day.
Today science can clearly and definitively answer the basic question:
where did we come from? Ever since Charles Darwins groundbreaking
work on the evolution of life was published in 1859, scientists have increasingly been able to understand and scientifically demonstrate how all the
different forms of life on this planet (all the plants and animals, including
people) are related to each other by varying degrees, and the fact that all the
different species evolved (originated and changed), over hundreds of millions
of years, through a process known as descent with modification, out of a
series of common (shared) ancestors. And it is now very clear that this process
was shaped in large part by that prime mechanism of evolutionary change
known as natural selection.2
Evolution by natural selection operating on populations of varied
individuals was Darwins great idea, but the fact that evolution occurs
in this way is no longer just an interesting idea or unproved theory or
speculationit is a well-tested scientific fact: it can even be said that pretty
much the entire progress made in biology and related sciences between
the beginning and the end of the 20th century (and continuing today) has
constituted one long proof of Darwins basic theory of evolution. By
now it has been demonstrated, well beyond the shadow of a doubt, that
life has in fact continuously evolved over the past 3.5 billion years, that life is
continually evolving, and that much of both small-scale and large-scale evolutionary change takes place through the unconscious mechanism known
as natural selection. Modern science has not only proved that evolution
occurs but has demonstrated how it occurs, including through discoveries in
the science of genetics and molecular biology, which did not yet even exist
in Darwins time.
The evidence of past evolution is all around us, in every living species
and in every fossil of long dead species. And there are literally thousands
of scientific studies which have shown us that evolution is still going on
all around us. Populations of living plants and animals are always changing (evolving) over many successive generations (not instantly) thanks to
natural selection and related phenomena.
beings are no different than apes in a zoo. But that is not the case. The
truth is that evolutionists tell people that there is plenty of concrete proof
that: (1) humans are in fact descended from ape-like ancestors; (2) modern
apes, like chimpanzees, are very closely related to humans; (3) humans and
apes still share many physical and behavioral features; (4) human beings
also have some unique evolutionary features all their own, which obviously
result in humans being quite different in many ways from their closest living
ape relatives.
Creationists also like to claim that if schools and textbooks teach our
kids that they are descended from animals, then the kids will just act like
animals and sink into wanton immorality. This too is a ridiculous assertion, which profoundly disrespects youth, their families, and their ability to
handle the truth. And it also once again fails to recognize that the fact that
human beings evolved out of earlier non-human species doesnt mean that
we dont have some special and uniquely human features which distinguish
us from even our closest relatives among other species. The ways we act
(for better or for worse) areand can only bedistinctly human.
The science of evolution reveals that if you could walk back through
time, through the entire series of ancestor species which make up our
heritage, you would find not only the long series of pre-human ape-like
species which make up our most direct ancestors, but way back before
them you would eventually get back to the very first mammals (from
which all later mammals, including such different species as bears, whales,
dogs and people were all eventually derived, though at different points in
evolutionary history). Those first mammal ancestors of all later mammals
were rat-sized creatures that lived at the time of the dinosaurs. They themselves had evolved from a branch of mammal-like reptiles, and the first
representatives of the reptiles in turn had evolved from a branch of some
of the first amphibians (the group to which salamanders, frogs and toads
belong) which were the very first creatures to crawl out of the water and
walk on land. These in turn had evolved out of a particular branch of the
marine fishes (whose bony fins and air bladders had formed a basis for the
stumpy legs and primitive lungs of the first species to crawl out onto land
and breathe there). As for the fish, they had evolved quite a bit earlier from a
branch of marine invertebrates (animals without backbones), which had in
turn evolved from some even simpler and more primitive marine creatures,
going back all the way to some of the very first bacteria-like forms of life
which started the whole evolutionary show going, and which would have
looked like little more than a few strands of DNA surrounded by some
simple cell membrane.
So, if you really want to talk about human roots and ancestry and get the
full picture, dont just talk about our ape ancestorstake it all the way back!
Take it all the way back to those first bacteria-like creatures which emerged
out of the chemical soup of the worlds early waters some 3.5billion years
ago and recognize them as your ancestors too!
I dont know about you, but I dont find this history frightening or
disturbing in any way. Personally, I think its actually pretty wild and wonderful that we got to be what we are today thanks to such a diverse mix of
interrelated ancestor species. But recognizing the scientific evidence for all
this doesnt mean that were all going to start acting like bacteria, fish, or
apes! We can only be, and act like, what we actually area distinct and
rather unique species, Homo sapiens.
But, some might ask, if we are in many ways distinct and unique as a
species, then why bother trying to find out about the previous species we
evolved out of ? Are we just trying to put together some kind of evolutionary photo-album of long gone ancestors? What is the point? Well, some
people might want to study our origins and immediate ancestors just out
of general interest and curiosity (and there is certainly nothing wrong with
that!). But I would say that, beyond that, it is important to try to learn as
much as possible about the pre-existing species from which the human species was derived for two basic reasons:
1) To help free ourselves from illusions about the supernatural:
The more we learn about the concrete reality of human evolutionary
origins, the more people are likely to free themselves from all sorts of
superstitions and belief in the supernaturalbeliefs which I would argue
are not just out-of-date, but actively harmful to human beings. Many people
who believe we were created by some kind of supernatural spirit also tend
to rationalize all sorts of social ills and injustices, which they often explain
away by saying, its just gods will or god works in mysterious ways.
And many people passively wait for that same spirit to come to humanitys
rescue, instead of taking some initiative to do something about social ills
and injustices themselves. But if we understand the actual facts of modern
science, and that human beings, while special and unique in many ways, are
nevertheless simply the result of a very long and completely unconscious
process of biological evolution and natural selection that has been operating on all living things for billions of years, then I suspect this will help
many of us put things in proper perspective and that we will spend a lot less
time looking to the skies and some supernatural spirits for salvation and instead
look more to ourselvesto each otherto figure out what needs to be done.
2) To better understand who we are and our own needs and capabilities:
The more we understand our own evolutionary origins, the more I
think we will understand at one and the same time that our own species is
closely intertwined, interconnected and interdependent with many other
forms of life on this planet, and that the human species therefore cant (and
doesnt) go it alone. One important implication of this is that it can help
understand the many features apes and humans still have in common,
which are also likely to have been features possessed by the shared ancestor
of humans and apes which lived a few million years ago and from which
both the human line and the chimpanzee line separately diverged. Studying
living apes can also provide us with a better understanding of the ways in
which modern humans are different from apes in some unique ways, and
this can also help us reconstruct what were likely some of the most critical
steps taken in the evolutionary path to becoming fully human.
Many people observing apes in zoos, on TV, or in the wild cant help
but be struck by their obvious physical similarities to human beings, and
even by some of their many almost-human basic behaviors (the way they
play, handle objects, or discipline or comfort a youngster, for instance). To
a scientist specializing in anatomy (the form and function of different parts
of the body) the similarities are even more evident: most of our basic body
parts (our bones and organs) are strikingly similar to those of apes, and this
in itself is a big clue as to our shared ancestry. Some of our more apparent
differences include: differences in body proportions (humans have relatively
shorter arms and longer legs) and the fact that we have relatively hairless
skin, a more fully mobile thumb, and a skull that is aligned with our spine
in such a way that we can stand, walk and run fully upright (rather than by
leaning forward on our knuckles much of the time the way apes do). We
humans also have proportionally much bigger brains, and a much more
developed capacity for complex language. These are some of our most
obvious differences. But, on the other hand, our similarities include the fact
that our blood proteins and DNA molecules are almost identical to those
of chimps: most molecular biologists agree that there is only something in
the order of a 3% to 5% difference between the DNA of humans and the DNA of
chimpanzees!
It is known that the longer two lines evolve away from a shared ancestor the more differences will be found in their DNA. Analysis of DNA
similarities and differences shows us, for example, that living African apes
are more closely related to humans than to any monkeys, a group which
evolved earlier in primate evolution. Most significantly, the fact that there
is still roughly a 95 to 98% similarity between the DNA of humans and the
DNA of chimpanzees proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that our two
species are extremely closely related. In fact, molecular biologists have been
able to work back from this data to calculate that we still shared a common
ancestor with chimpanzees as recently as about 5 million years ago, which
on the overall evolutionary time scale is not very long ago. (See Chimp and
Human DNA: How Close Are We? right.)
old (which are not quite anatomically like modern humans but some of
which already show some of the critical physical features which distinguish
humans from apes and from earlier hominids); and quite a few fossils of
different hominid species that lived around 3 to 4 million years ago (which
were still very ape-like in many features, but nevertheless were able to walk
fully upright).
Hominid fossils that are older than 4 million years old are still very rare.
One recent find (from the African country of Chad) is the 7-million-yearold skull, nicknamed Toumai, of what may have been an upright-walking
hominid. Various experts in the field are currently reviewing the evidence
(including where on the skull the neck muscles attached, which can provide
evidence about bipedalism) and not everyone is completely convinced that
this creature walked fully upright. However, if this fossil ends up being confirmed as having been bipedal, this find would represent the closest weve
yet come to finding remains of hominids who lived at, or very close to, the
time of the first divergence of bipedal hominids from a line of African apes.
(See Was Toumai One of Our Ancestors? right.)
Some scientists think bipedalism itself may have evolved (and died out)
more than once among the ancestral ape lines. Whether or not that is the
case, it is now very clear that the story of human evolution is not some kind
of simple straight-line story of how a single long ago ape species gave rise
to a single bipedal hominid species which then went on to produce modern
humans. Its much more complicated than that: We now know for sure that,
in between those non-bipedal African ape ancestors and modern humans, there have
been successive waves of many different upright-walking hominid species. Some of
these bipedal species survived for hundreds of thousands or even a million
or more years before going extinct. Some were our direct-line ancestors,
and some were more like side-branches of our greater hominid family
(side-branches which eventually died out without leaving any modern-day
descendants). Overall, the pattern of hominid evolution looks much more
like a richly branching bush than like any kind of straight-line path or
ladder from ape to human. Studies of the similarities and differences of
various hominid species that lived at different times in the past 5 million
years has provided a great deal of concrete proof that modern humans
evolved through a series of step-wise evolutionary modificationsstarting with
the most ape-like of our hominid ancestors, and then unfolding through a
series of successive descendant species, many of which had features that
were clearly intermediate between apes and modern humans, and then
finally producing our own fully modern human species roughly 200,000
years ago.
Do we now know everything that there is to know about the earliest
origins of human beings? Of course not. It sometimes seems that every
time you open a newspaper there is some report that a team of scientists
has discovered yet another fossilized hominid skull or some other part of the
skeleton of some hominid ancestor species that lived millions of years ago.
And every time this happens, all the different teams of scientific experts
in the field understandably get very excited, and then spend months (and
often years) verifying the fossils age and closely examining its features for
similarities and differences with modern humans, with living apes, with any
hominid fossils found in rock layers of similar age, and with all the older
and younger hominid fossils previously found. In this way, information is
gathered which makes it possible to figure out (often after much vigorous
debate between different scientific teams) exactly where a particular fossil
hominid fits into the overall family tree, relative to all the other fossil hominids that have been previously uncovered.
Again, back in Darwins day the idea that humans were descended from
ape-like ancestors was still just an untested ideaDarwin and a number
of other scientists were pretty sure this is what had happened, basing their
informed speculation on (a) the fact that humans had many anatomical
similarities with apes; and (b) the fact that all the other forms of life on
earth were quite obviously the product of the evolutionary modification
of various pre-existing species. So Darwin and his friends and colleagues
(and T.H. Huxley in particular) suspected that humans would not turn out
to be an exception to this rule. But, of course, the religious authorities of
Darwins day went nuts, as their whole belief system and mode of existence
was evidently very threatened by the suggestion that human beings might
simply be the product of natural biological evolution, rather than some
kind of special separate creation of a supernatural being. Darwin himself
was cautious about this, both because he kept getting mercilessly attacked
by the religious fundamentalists, the popular press, and others whose
beliefs were challenged by Darwins discoveries, and because he knew that
he didnt yet have enough solid evidence to make the case for human evolution the way he could for so many other species.
Darwin knew that, if humans had indeed evolved out of some preexisting ape-like species, it should be possible to dig into old layers of rock
and find fossil bones linking the human line to the ancestor ape line, but
this hadnt yet been done. In fact, before Darwins time people had not even
known enough to begin to look for such fossils (the very first such fossils
to be dug upthe ones we know as Neanderthalswerent discovered
until the late 19th century, around the time Darwins breakthrough work,
the Origin of the Species, was published). But, from that point on, scientists
discovered many hominid fossils, transitional between ancient apes and
modern humans.
Hominid fossil finds really took off in the 20th century (especially
thanks to the pioneering work of three generations of the Leakey family
working in Eastern Africa), and have been especially numerous in recent
decades. Today the problem is not the lack of fossils but the fact that there
are so many, and that new ones are being uncovered with such frequency
that it can be a real challenge to get them all properly sorted out in relation
to each other. As we begin the 21st century, we are able to reconstruct a big
part of our family tree, but new fossil discoveries of varied species of related
hominids keep adding more information to the mix and frequently cause
scientists to revise or fine-tune the exact sequence and degree of relationships linking the different hominid species to the older ancestor ape species
in one direction, and to the only remaining hominid species (our own) in
the other direction, through a multi-million year process of intermediate
evolutionary steps. And again, every time a new fossil is discovered there
typically follows months and even years of analysis and vigorous debate
among different teams of scientists before some consensus can be reached
about exactly where the new find fits in in relation to all the other fossils
previously found.
A Brief Summary
So let me try to very briefly summarize some of the things we know at
this point about where people came from. We know that there were many
different kinds of upright-walking hominid species living over a period of a
few million years, and it is clear that some of them were very successful (in
terms of being able to maintain themselves as distinct species for hundreds
of thousands or even millions of years before going extinct). We also know
that there were times when a number of different hominid species lived in
the same general time period (and sometimes even in the same geographical area), differing somewhat from each other in some of their particular
physical features (tooth and body proportions, brain size, etc.) and differing in some of the ways they related to their environmentsuch as what
kinds of foods they ate (which can be deduced from their fossil teeth) or
whether or not they used or made stone tools (and later on fire) to obtain
and process their food. We know that hominid evolution was not bound to
lead to modern humans, only that it did. And we know, absolutely beyond
the shadow of a doubt, that our very distant ancestors were an ape species whose later descendants gave rise, on the one hand, to the lines which
eventually led to the modern African apes (gorillas and chimpanzees) and,
on the other hand, to a whole complex series of upright-walking hominids
which eventually led to modern humans.
mammals and the first birds evolving out of two separate lines of reptile
ancestors).
As noted earlier, some of the earliest mammal species were small ratsized creatures that were already around some 150 million years ago, at
a time when dinosaurs still roamed the earth. Though there seemed to
have been relatively few of these mammal species around at the time of
the dinosaurs, some of them did manage to survive the global environmental disruptions of around 65 million years ago, when a somewhat more
protracted period of global changes (which had already been going on for
some time, involving such things as dropping sea levels, increased volcanic
activity and associated changes in physical and biotic environments) was
capped off by a truly sudden event, the dramatic impact of an asteroid
smashing into the planet with a force equal to many nuclear bombs. This
impact occured at a time when some previously dominant assemblages of
species (incuding most of the dinosaurs) were apparently already in a state
of severe decline and facing intensifying extinction rates. In this context,
a sudden weeks-long global reduction in sunlight (caused by the massive
amounts of dust and debris thrown into the atmosphere by the K/T impact
off the Yucatn Peninsula) would likely have been something like the straw
that broke the camels back for many still surviving species and lineages:
this dust and debris cloud was likely directly responsible for an estimated
80% loss of plant species at lower latitudes around the globe. This alone
would likely have provoked rapid population collapses and outright final
extinctions, especially among many of the biggest plant eating vertebrates
(and their own large predators), including any that remained of the already
nearly extinct dinosaurs. By contrast, small, warm-blooded, likely nocturnal, rodent-like mammals seem to have largely survived this event and
its aftermath and soon afterwards underwent a burst of expansion and
species diversification, ultimately spinning off a tremendous variety of new
mammal species. As is the case with all mass extinctions, the removal from
the scene of so many of the previously dominant species and lineages seems
to have cleared the way for whole new groups of species to take hold
and flourish, in this case allowing the surviving populations and species of
mammals (and also birds) to rapidly expand and undergo dramatic adaptive radiationsspreading into many newly open or available ecological
niches, and then undergoing a series of further evolutionary modifications in the process of adapting to these new opportunities.
In any case, there is no doubt that from that point on (around 65 million
years ago) the mammal line continued to evolve and spin off many new
species for millions of years. It produced the first anthropoid primates
around 35 million years ago (this is the group of mammals which would
eventually come to include include all the monkeys, all the apes, all the
hominid ancestors of humans, and humans themselves). The primate line
Part of the excitement of studying all the changes that took place in
the various hominid species, from the earliest Australopithecines to modern
humans, is that their fossilized remains give us clues not only about what
they looked like but also about how they lived and what it actually means
to become human.
Just to give you a taste of the truly rich diversity of species that have
all been identified as upright-walking hominids up to this point (a diversity
which will no doubt be revealed to be even more rich and complex as more
fossils are found) let me just list some of them, using their currently agreed
upon scientific names:
The oldest found so far seems to be Sahelanthropus tchadensis (nicknamed
Toumai) from 6 to 7 million years ago, though there is not yet general scientific consensus that this particular species was bipedal, so I am including
it here only on a tentative basis; I will do the same with the 4.4-million-yearold Ardipithecus ramidus who cannot yet be definitively confirmed to have
been bipedal.
Among the more unquestionably bipedal hominids we find:
Australopithecus anamensis from between 4 and 5 million years ago;
Australopithecus afarensis (including the famous nearly complete skeleton
dubbed Lucy) from about 3.5 million years ago; Meave Leakeys recent
find of a more flat-faced (and in this way more human-like) hominid from
approximately the same period (currently dubbed Kenyanthropus platyops
See Meave Leakeys Take on Her Latest Fossil Find, below).
Following that we get to Australopithecus africanus, Australopithecus
aethiopicus and Australopithecus garhi, all of which lived in the period
from about 2.5 to 3 million years ago. Of these, the 2.5 million year old
Australopithecus aethiopicus (the famous Black Skull found by Richard
Leakey, and so named because of the beautiful color of the minerals
c oating the bones) may actually have been the first of a side branch of the
Australopithecines which would later include Australopithecus robustus (also
known as Paranthropus robustus) and Australopithecus boisei (or Paranthropus
boisei)the so-called robust Australopithecineswho lived up to about
1.5 million years ago. These robust hominids differed from the so-called
gracile Australopithecines (such as A. africanus and A. garhi) because they
had really massive skulls and jaws, large chewing muscles and huge grinding teeth. They are thought to have represented an alternative pathway in
hominid evolution, one which consisted of species with a more specialized
diet of tough plant foods. These robust Australopithecines were ultimately
an evolutionary dead end, and they are not considered to be direct-line
ancestors of human beings.
Some of the robust Australopithecines from about 1.5 to 2.5 million
years ago did, however, overlap in time not only with the gracile species
of the later Australopithecines but also with some of the earliest species
in our own genus Homo. In fact, in the general period of about 1.5 million
years ago there seem to have been six or more different species of bipedal
hominids in Eastern Africa, with some of the robust species overlapping
with some of the early Homo species, which had most likely evolved out of
the more gracile lines of Australopithecines.
The new species in the genus Homo were bipedal hominids like their
predecessors, but they had many new features, including more human-like
body proportions and faces and much bigger brains. At this point, the fossils
in the new Homo line include the species Homo habilis (sometimes classified
as Australopithecus habilis because of its intermediate character) and Homo
rudolfensis, which both lived around 1.5 to 2.5 million years agocorresponding to the period in which manufactured stone tools first appear in
the fossil record.
These early Homo species were then followed, right around 1.5 million
years ago, by the much more long-legged, big-brained and more modernlike Homo ergaster (also known as the African form of Homo erectus). Homo
ergaster/erectus (which includes the famous and much studied nearly complete fossil known as the Turkana Boy) is the first hominid species known to
have made tools as complex as stone axes and to have had fire. It is also generally
considered to have been the first hominid species to have spread outside of
Africa, in the first great wave of hominid migration. Its descendants eventually
reached areas as far away as China and Southeast Asia (where their fossils
are generally known as Java Man, Peking Man, or the Asian Homo erectus)
but they all eventually became extinct. A variant of Homo erectus also made
it to the Middle East and to Europe, where its descendants fossils are commonly known as Homo heidelbergensis and Homo neanderthalensis or simply
Neanderthals. They too eventually became extinct.
It may turn out that bipedal hominids were already physically and
socially able to undertake far-ranging explorations even prior to evolving
the longer bodies, the much bigger brains and the more advanced stone tool
and fire technologies which are associated with Homo erectus/ergaster and
with our own later modern human species of Homo sapiens. Some people
think even some Homo habilis individuals may have begun to migrate out
of Africa (See Was Homo Erectus the First Hominid to Leave Africa? below). It
will be interesting to learn more about all this as more scientific data comes
in, including because the status of Homo habiliswhich has features that
appear to be intermediate between the more ape-like Australopithecines and
the more human-like later species in the Homo linehas always been somewhat controversial. Some people have been inclined to somewhat demote
H. habilis to Australopithecine status and to question whether habilis really
made simple stone tools, or whether those found in rock layers from the
time habilis was around were more likely made by a different species of
Homo living during the same period (such as Homo rudolfensis). In any case,
all this makes clear that there likely was already a lot of variety (and a lot of
potential for expansion) even very early on in the Homo line.
Back in Africa, our own fully modern human species of Homo sapiens
evolved (most likely out of Homo ergaster or a very similar species) roughly
200,000 years ago. Our new species was clearly quite successful, and by
50,000 years ago was migrating out of Africa and spreading to all other
parts of the world. This migration wave was therefore at least the second
time hominids had migrated out of Africa.
As Homo sapiens spread into different parts of the world, we encountered
and co-existed for some time with populations of different human species,
such as Homo neanderthalensis. These Neanderthals were the descendants
of some of the earlier Homo erectus populations which had migrated out
of Africa 1 to 2 million years earlier. Since Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis overlapped in parts of Europe for a few thousand years (and
since some of Homo sapiens more advanced stone tools have been found at
some Neanderthal sites, suggesting that the two species interacted to some
extent) it was once thought the two species might have actually mated and
interbred and that modern humans could be descendants of both. Today,
however, we know that this isnt the case: modern techniques of molecular
biology have been used to analyze the DNA and other biochemical molecules of modern humans all around the world, and this has determined
that all living human beings are derived from a single population that
lived in Africa around 150,000 years ago, and that the Neanderthals never
contributed to the overall gene pool of our species. It is now thought that
the hominid line leading to modern human beings and the one leading to
the Neanderthals separated about 600,000 years ago; such a long period of
reproductive separation could easily have allowed sufficient genetic differences to accumulate to result in two completely distinct species, and this
in turn would explain why populations of Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis which later encountered each other in Europe (around 40,000
years ago) seem to have been unable to successfully interbreed and produce
viable and fertile descendants.
Although Neanderthals were not a direct-line ancestor of our own species, they serve as a good reminder that, as recently as 40,000 years ago, there
were still at least two or three different human species on this planet: the modern
Homo sapiens (our own species), the Neanderthals in Europe, plus the various populations of the descendants of Homo erectus which had made it all
the way to Eastern Asia in that earlier migration wave. But, as Homo sapiens
spread throughout the globe, everywhere it went it ended up one way or
another replacing these different human species. We know from the fossil
record that Homo sapiens had, among other things, more advanced stone
and other tools than the other human species around at the time. The more
complex skills required to conceptualize and make these tools likely reflect
important differences in our species cognitive (mental) abilities, and this
may explain why it successfully replaced the other human species everywhere it went.
All the other upright-walking hominid species (including the other
essentially human species in the genus Homo) are gone nowexcept for us.
But it is important to remember that the mere fact that all those others eventually went extinct doesnt mean that the earlier hominids were somehow
flawed or inferior species: in fact, a number of these hominid species
had a good long run of it, and some, like Homo erectus, lasted for as much as
a million years or more. The fact that only our own hominid species is still
around is not surprising: all species eventually go extinct, and on average,
most vertebrate species dont generally seem to last more than a couple of
million years or so. Again, the fact that all the other hominid species are
now extinct doesnt mean that we are somehow the most perfect species
imaginable, or that all the others were somehow flawed or inadequate.
We do have some very unique particularities (such as our unprecedented
ability to continually modify ourselves and transform our world through
cultural means) which may end up allowing us to have an above average run
as a species; however, these same features and abilities could also easily
lead us to bring about our own extinction in record time, through the use
of weapons of mass destruction and/or by causing massive environmental
dislocations. Time will tell!
they cannot adapt quickly enough will simply tend to go extinct. But by the
time they go extinct, many species will already have spawned one or more
descendant daughter species (with which they may even have continued
to co-exist for a time) which will in a sense continue their evolutionary line.
When species go extinct without having produced any descendant species
or lineages, they simply become evolutionary dead ends. This was the
case with some (though obviously not all) of the upright-walking hominid
lines and species.
It is important to realize that all biological species eventually go extinct,
regardless of how successful they once were: it is estimated that something like 99% of the species of plants and animals that ever lived on earth
have become extinct! As for our own species, the fact is were the only
ones of the hominid species left standing not because were some kind of
miracle of progress and perfection and not because there was any kind of
inherent driving force in hominid evolution (or in any of the evolutionary
processes that came before) that was somehow magically bound to lead
up to humans as some kind of top-of-the-heap pinnacle of evolutionary
progress. It only sort of looks like that, from an understandably biased
and self-centered human perspective! Many biologists have pointed out, for
instance, that many much simpler organisms (such as the bacteria and
many parasites) have been around for so much longer than humans, and
are so widespread that they could easily be considered the most biologically
successful species on the planet!
Were the only species left standing in the hominid line in part simply
because were still sort of the new kid on the block, having evolved out
of our immediately preceding hominid ancestors (likely Homo ergaster or
a very similar species) only around 200,000 years ago. However, now that
were here, I think we can say thatgiven our unprecedented ability to
consciously transform ourselves and our natural and social environment
what happens to our species in the future (including when and how our
own species will pass from the scene) will be, at least to a significant degree,
up to us.
typically human features. For instance, they had the long arms and short
legs of apes, but they did stand and walk upright, as do humans. Their brains
were somewhat bigger than those of apes, but much smaller than those of
later hominids. Their faces jutted forward in a snout more like chimpanzees
than humans, and their teeth and jaws were also more like those of apes.
In fact, these early Australopithecines, together with their later descendants,
and then followed by the early and late species in the Homo line, constitute
one of the best examples (in all of the biological fossil record) of a series of
transitional species which can be seen to link one species to another through
a sequence of intermediate steps. Thisthe clear evidence of genuinely
intermediate species in, of all things, the human evolutionary linedrives
the Creationists nuts, because, if it were true (as is said in the Bible) that
human beings are the result of a special and separate Creation, there obviously wouldnt be any such intermediate species linking apes to humans in
such obvious step-wise fashion. Well, what can I say? The Creationists are
stubbornly and absurdly wrongthe whole long and diverse sequence of
different upright-walking hominid fossils proves them wrong way beyond
the shadow of a doubt!
What do the Creationists say about the growing numbers of hominid fossils
which are staring them in the face?
Well, as the paleontologist Niles Eldredge points out in his very helpful
book, The Triumph of Evolution and the Failure of Creationism, the response
of the Creationists, when they are confronted with the basic facts of human
evolution, is downright pathetic:
(a) The Creationists generally argue that the fossils of the earliest hominids (the ones which lived around 3 or 4 million years ago) are just apes.
This completely disregards the significance of the fact that these early
hominids walked upright, and that at least the later Australopithecines
made some use of primitive tools, beyond what we see in modern-day apes.
Some of the later Australopithecines likely were even beginning to make
some simple stone tools: Fossils of Australopithecus garhi from around 2.5
million years ago have been found associated with the fossilized remains of
antelopes whose bones had stone tool cut marks on them, indicating that they
had likely been butchered with stone tools. And simple stone tools have in
fact been found in nearby sites.
(b) The Creationists argue that the fossils that look the most like modern
humans are indeed humans, but they refuse to accept the reality that some
of these fossils are 100,000 years old (despite the fact that modern scientific
dating techniques leave no doubt that this is the case). The existence of
anatomically modern humans so long ago conflicts with the Biblical story
of Creation.
(c) The Creationists especially reject the evidence that shows that some
species of hominids were clearly intermediate between the more ape-like
Australopithecines and the fully modern humans: these are the various species
in the genus Homo, such as Homo ergaster and Homo erectus, which evolved
later than the earliest bipedal hominids but before our own Homo sapiens species. These hominid species are known from the fossil record to have made
much more complex stone tools, and to have used fire. Measurements also
show that their brain size was intermediate between the earlier hominids
and fully modern humans. So species like Homo erectus and Homo ergaster
are real problems for the Creationists, precisely because they are such obvious
evolutionary intermediates between the more ape-like early hominid species
and fully modern humans. So what do the Creationists do? They simply
declare that all these fossils are fakes!
Since more and more of these fossils are constantly being discovered
(and by a number of different teams of paleontologists and scientists
working in many different localities), it is not clear how much longer the
Creationists are going to be able to stick to that particular claim! I can only
wholeheartedly agree with Niles Eldredge when he writes:
That the best the creationists can do with the human
fossil record is call the most recent fossils fully human, the
earliest merely apes, and those in the middlethe intermediates if you willoutright fakes is pathetic...The irony is
great: the case toward which all their passion for producing
propaganda is ultimately directedhow we got hereis
about the most difficult one I can think of to support the
model of creation. (The Triumph of Evolution and the Failure
of Creationism)
for purposes other than locomotion, and provided an anatomical basis for
such relatively simple things as routine carrying of food or other objects
over longer distances and the simple use of unmodified natural materials
(such as found stones and sticks) as tools. It would be a few million more
years before any bipedal hominid species would actually begin to strike
stones together to produce sharp flakes and thus make (as opposed to just
use) simple stone tools. By objectively freeing the hands from near constant
use in locomotion, the very initial emergence of bipedalism in a line of
apes had set the stage for this later development. Again, even though the
fossil record (so far at least) suggests that hominids didnt get around to
making even the simplest stone scrapers and cutters until about 2.4 million
years ago (some millions of years after the first emergence of bipedalism),
it is worth noting that even chimpanzees, which are physically unable to
walk upright for any long periods of time, are nevertheless able to use their
hands to carry food for very short distances, to wield branches as clubs to
scare off predators, to use stones as hammers to crack open nuts, or to
strip leaves off twigs to fashion flexible probes used to fish edible termites
out of their nests. It seems likely that even the earliest and still very ape-like
of the fully upright-walking hominids would have made even fuller use of
their hands than the non-bipedal species from which they were descended,
especially during any times when they were moving about on the ground
and away from trees.5
As noted, the second crucial biological milestone on the path to becoming human occurred a few million years after the evolutionary emergence
of bipedalism, when a significant change in overall rates of development
seems to have emerged in a line of bipedal hominids. It is interesting to
note that many evolutionary and developmental biologists feel that many
significant changes in lifes evolutionary history came about as a result of a
relatively simple change in the rate of development of one or more bodily
structures in an ancestor population. In the case of the hominids, a general
slowing down of the anatomical and physiological development seems to
have led to a package of changes, including changes in the proportions of
the arms and legs, changes in the shape of the skull and facial bones, etc.
Probably the most significant of these changes was the fact that infants
were now born in a very immature and undeveloped state, requiring a
much longer period of parental care of these vulnerable and dependent
young. At first glance, one might think that giving birth to very immature
and dependent babies requiring long periods of care would be such a disadvantage that natural selection would quickly eliminate such an evolutionary
innovation from populations in which it appeared. But such a change also
would have meant that infants born essentially prematurely (relative to
the rates of development in preceding species) would continue to grow and
develop for a much longer time outside the mothers bodyand this included their
brains! In the earlier species of bipedal hominids, there had been a pretty
strict limit on just how much brain size could increase, simply because an
infant with too big a brain could not have passed out of the mothers body
without killing her. But if the brain could undergo most of its growth and
development after the infant was born, the total hominid brain size could
greatly increase.
And this is exactly what happened. At a certain juncture in the evolution
of bipedal hominids, one or more species evolved having an overall development pattern that was slower than that of the apes or earlier hominids,
but whose brains continued to grow and develop for much longer periods
of time after birth. In these later hominids, as well as in our own human
species, the average brain could actually triple between birth and maturity
(and in modern humans the brain continues to grow and develop for almost
2 full years after a baby is born). Thus, something as relatively simple as a
slowing down of the overall maturation process seems to have been all that
was needed to make possible an incredible expansion in the size of the brain
and post-birth period of brain development in these new hominids. This, in
turn, evidently allowed for an incredible increase in the hominid capacity
for learning, and for doing so in active interaction with the external natural
and social environments.
magnum hole is right under our skulls, so that our heads basically balance
on top of our spines. This is a crucial featurefound only in the hominid
specieswhich, along with some other changes in skeletal alignment,
allows us to stand and walk fully upright.
Modern humans also have skeletons which are differently proportioned
than apeswe have many of the same bony structures, but apes have
proportionally longer arms and proportionally shorter legs. Their feet are
different too, more suited for grasping tree branches than for walking on
the ground. When apes do walk on the ground, they mainly move leaning
forward on all fours, in a style called knuckle walking, which most of us
have probably had a chance to observe on TV or at the zoo.
Apes also have very different faces (those of modern humans are flatter overall) and proportionally more massive jaws and teeth that include
bigger canines. I wont get into a lot of detail here about tooth shape, size
and development patterns, but you should know that fossil teeth are very
important in figuring out pathways of hominid evolution. The size, shape,
and positioning of the teeth reveal a lot about what a species ate (whether
primarily plant foods, meat, or a more wide-ranging omnivorous diet like
modern humans) and also help to determine whether different species of
hominids are or are not closely related.
In addition, it has been demonstrated that the patterns of tooth eruption and development (which can be deduced from some hominid fossils)
can provide quite a bit of information about those all-important rates of
development of their entire bodies. An analysis of this data, combined with
calculations of such things as brain size relative to size of the birth passage
in a female of the speciescan, for instance, provide a good indication of
whether a particular species gave birth to young whose development rates
were more like those of apes, or more like those of modern humans. (For
an interesting discussion of this tooth developmental data see, for instance,
Richard Leakeys book Origins Reconsidered.)
So, when paleoanthropologists find hominid fossil remains (a skull
here, a part of a skeleton thereor sometimes, when theyre really lucky,
a number of pieces found together in one spot) they start by determining roughly how old these remains are (through various dating techniques
previously discussed in this book); and then they try to figure out whether
theyre looking at a brand new species never before found, or an additional
specimen of a species previously described (and sometimes they discover
that more than one hominid species lived in the same general time period).
Paleontologists then measure and study very specific things, such as the
proportions of arm and leg bones, the position of the foramen magnum
hole, the shape and size of the skull, the places where jaw muscles used to
be attached, the shape of the foot or hand bones (when availableunfortunately, these are rarely found); the size and shape and grinding surfaces
of the teeth (and sometimes their pattern of eruption and rate of development); the overall size, sex, and approximate age of the individual when
it died; whether it was found next to or in the same general area as any
primitive stone tools; whether there are any nearby fossilized remains of
animals which may have been prey species eaten by hominids and whose
bones may reveal cut marks made by stone tools used by some hominids
to butcher carcasses. Meanwhile, other scientists often contribute to the
emerging picture of the overall environment in which a hominid fossil lived
by studying geological features, ancient soils, plant and animal fossils of
the same age, and even fossil pollen granules from the same period, all of
which helps to recreate a fuller picture of the habitat in which the hominids
lived and died: whether, for instance, the area at the time consisted more of
forests, woodland savannas, grassland savannas or a mix of all three; what
other animal species (including potential prey species or potential predators
of hominids) were around; and also whether there is any evidence of any
major environmental changes (such as a drying or cooling trend) taking
place during that general period.
the early hominids made no stone tools and since the hominid brain didnt
expand until much later), and choose instead to emphasize the still ape-like
characteristics of early hominids by referring to them as bipedal apes.
This term may be fairly accurate in terms of capturing their appearance,
but I feel this is somewhat misleading and that it one-sidedly emphasizes
the ape-like features while downplaying what must in fact have been the
profound implications of the emergence of upright locomotion and more
fully freed hands in these unusual apes (or proto-humans)features
which likely enabled them to expand into a greater variety of environments
and engage in significantly new behaviors.
Some years ago, it used to be thought that the emergence of bipedalism was in and of itself such a significant evolutionary development that
any bipedal hominid could be thought of as being essentially human. The
thinking was that, as soon as our earliest hominid ancestors evolved the
ability to walk upright on two legs, their hands would have been freed
for purposes other than locomotion and therefore, the thinking went,
these early ancestors would automatically have started using their hands
for such activities as making tools and weapons, hunting and gathering
foods, carrying dependent infants, and so on. It was speculated that this, in
turn, must have created an immediate and compelling need for increased
intelligence, bigger and more complex brains, more advanced social communication and coordination and changes in family structure and broader
social organization. Well, all these changes did eventually take place, but
certainly not overnight! We now know that all this didnt happen as part of
one single package of evolutionary modifications at the time of the first
emergence of bipedalism: the early Australopithecines of 3 to 4 million years
ago or so walked upright on two legs, but their brains remained relatively
small and they dont seem to have made any stone tools. The big leap in
brain size, qualitatively extended periods of juvenile immaturity, post-natal
brain development, and the cognitive ability to actually design and make
even the very simplest of stone tools doesnt seem to have emerged until
at least 2 to 3 million years after the first appearance of bipedal hominids.
It is therefore true that bipedalism emerged as an evolutionary novelty long
before many of the other attributes that we think of as characteristically
human.
But, on the other hand, I think it would be wrong to fail to appreciate
just how significant the evolution of bipedalism was in the overall process
of becoming human. Even if the earliest bipedal Australopithecine species
didnt necessarily use their hands for tool manufacture and for the capture
or butchering of animals (and maybe not even for the gathering and transport of plant foods), right from the time bipedalism first emerged, it is still
the case that the evolutionary emergence of the ability to walk on two legs
effectively set the stage for those later capabilities.
Just think of it this way: Imagine if some non-bipedal ape species in the
distant past just happened to spin off a new daughter species which was
still incapable of upright-walking but whose crucial evolutionary modification was to give birth to young with a slowed-down rate of development,
requiring prolonged parental care of infants but also allowing the brain to
expand and develop for a much longer time after birth. Such a change might
well have allowed for a great increase in the capacity for learning, and might
also have made possible the development of a greatly expanded repertoire
of vocalizations (variety of sounds produced) and even perhaps the emergence of complex language. But, even if all this had happened, what kind
of species would have resulted from just such evolutionary modifications
if the hands had not happened to be freed for purposes other than locomotion
by the earlier evolution of bipedalism? The result might have been something
akin to a very intelligent chimpanzee, perhaps, but it probably wouldnt be
anything we would think of as distinctly human. It took the combination of
two major evolutionary leaps, spread out over millions of yearsthe evolution of bipedalism, followed some millions of years later by the evolution
of a mechanism allowing for unprecedented post-birth brain development
and learning capacityfor a line of apes to give rise to the modern human
species.
So, again, even though it is important to be careful to emphasize that
early Australopithecines were still very ape-like (and not little humans) and
that a number of these early bipedal species may have made relatively limited use of their hands for the first few hundred thousand or even millions
of years of bipedalism (perhaps until the brains caught up with the hands, in
a sense), I think we will be presenting a distorted view of our origins if we
dont also emphasize the fact that the later period of qualitative evolutionary transformations (the ones which led to the substantial increase in brain
size and capacity for learning) would not have amounted to nearly as much
if this second leap had not taken place among species whose bipedalism
already allowed their hands to be used for purposes other than locomotion.
Even if the early Australopithecines did not yet have the brain development
and mental abilities to make full use of their freed hands, so to speak
(though they probably did at least as well as modern chimps), the evolution
of bipedalism and the objective freeing of the hands marked the first great
evolutionary milestone on the road to becoming human. It made it possible for that second qualitative leap in human evolution (the later leap in
brain size and post-natal period of brain development) to have the effects that
it didproducing a species which gained the capacity to transform itself
and its surroundings from then on primarily through cultural innovations and
the accumulation and transmission of learned information rather than through
biological evolution.
It is worth reflecting on the fact that the difference (in forms of productive activities and social organization) between the first members of our
own Homo sapiens species (who maintained themselves as simple nomadic
hunter-gatherers for more than 100,000 years before inventing agriculture,
a mere 10,000 years ago, and starting to build cities) and modern-day
human beings (who build cars and computers and explore outer-space and
the bottom of the oceans) is primarily a difference in culture: none of this
required any further substantial evolutionary changes in the fundamental
biology of our bodies. Everything that we do today we do on the basis of
the same capacity for learning and for transmitting vast stores of accumulating knowledge across the generations through non-genetic cultural means that has
been the evolutionary hallmark of our hominid species from the beginning.
This, perhaps more than anything, is what makes us fundamentally human
and distinguishes us from all the other species.
But none of this would have been likely to occur unless the second
leap of roughly 2 million years ago happened to take place on a base which
already included bipedalism and objectively freed hands.
to each other! We should decide to do the right thingand act with each
other with some integrity and in ways that are moral and ethicalnot
because were afraid well get written up by some warden-like god if we
dont, but because what we do directly affects the quality of human life.
And, of course, our lives can and do have purpose (though different people
will define that in different ways in accordance with their world outlooks),
because we humans can choose to imbue our lives with purpose!
So here we are: a bunch of wonderfully complex living creatures, who
have been at one and the same time highly destructive and highly creative,
with an unprecedented capacity to consciously transform the natural world
around us and the societies in which we live. Theres nothing else out
there...but isnt this plenty enough?
stand upright and walk on two legs). The bipedal hominid line produced
a great variety of upright-walking species over the next few million years.
Some of these bipedal hominid species were direct-line ancestors of our
own modern human species, and some were more like separate branches
of the same bipedal family tree, representing a number of alternative evolutionary pathways. Many of these species were successful, maintaining
themselves as living species for hundreds of thousands of years or more,
and some of them produced their own descendant species, but they all
eventually became extinct.
We know that our modern human species, Homo sapiens, is the youngest of all the hominid species, having split off from its immediately
preceding ancestor species only about 200,000 years ago. Today, all the other
hominid species are gone. But as recently as 40,000 years ago, there were still
at least two, or possibly three, different hominid species running around.
They included:
1) Homo sapiens
This is our own human species, which first evolved in Africa about
200,000 years ago and then spread into Europe and the Middle East starting
about 50,000 years ago.
2) Homo neanderthalensis
This species (popularly known as the Neanderthals), lived in Europe and
the Middle East, and modern techniques of molecular analysis indicate that
it really was a different species of human. Homo neanderthalensis is thought
to have last shared a common hominid ancestor with Homo sapiens about
600,000 years ago.7 We know that early populations of Homo erectus had first
started migrating out of Africa more than a million years ago. The Homo
neanderthalensis species which later lived in Europe and the Middle East
is now thought to have evolved out of those early Homo erectus migrants.
Meanwhile, back in Africa and a bit later on (about 200,000 years ago), our
modern Homo sapiens species evolved out of some later decendants of the
African Homo erectus line. This new human species spread quickly, and there
is evidence that it started its own out-of-Africa migration about 50,000 years
ago. When it reached the Middle East and Europe it ended up overlapping
(for a period of thousands of years) with populations of the Neanderthal
species.
We dont yet know much about how these two human species might
have interacted. We do know that, while the Neanderthals had all sorts of
stone tools, the Homo sapiens populations had more advanced stone tools,
which were more complex in both conceptual design and technical execution.
Some of these sapiens tools have been found in Neanderthal archaeological
excavations, suggesting that at least some of the Neanderthals may have
been trying to adopt this more advanced technology. We dont know
what I think of as the second big leap in hominid evolutionthe one which
really distinguished the newly emerging genus Homo from the variety of
preceding Australopithecine hominids. And it was a change which seems to
have come packaged with a bunch of other important anatomical and
developmental changes, all of which made these hominids overall less like
bipedal apes and more like modern humans, including: taller bodies with
proportionally shorter arms and longer legs; flatter faces and more rounded
skulls; changes in the size, shape, growth and development of the teeth;
much less sexual dimorphism (much less difference in size between males
and females than in earlier species); and an apparent shift in the position of
the larynx (or voice box) to a lower position in the throata change which
allows humans to make many more vocal sounds than modern-day apes
(and probably many more than early hominids). This shift in the position
of the larynx, along with the significant post-natal brain development characteristic of the later hominids, could have been key to the development of
a fuller human language, with all the resulting implications this would have
for enhanced social communication and coordination.
been huge unbroken tropical forests, and then a patchwork mix of forests
and woodland savannas, there now appeared much larger areas of open,
dry and largely treeless grassland savannas. Again, periods of such dramatic
environmental changes can easily lead to lots of species extinctions (and
probably did!), but such changes can also create environmental conditions which favor the establishment and spread of significant evolutionary
modifications and of whole new species. The newly extensive dry grassland
savannas would have been a harsh environment for early hominids: sources
of adequate plant foods could well have become more unreliable and more
highly dispersed than in the traditional tropical forests and even the mixed
woodland savannas of the earlier periods, and the relative absence of trees
would have left the hominid groups vulnerable to big grassland predators, such as the large cats. Under such conditions, the emergence of any
increase in tool-making and reasoning abilities and in social coordination
would likely have been heavily favored by natural selection.
It may well turn out that the important environmental changes taking
place in Africa some 2 million years ago (the drying out and the development
of those more extensive grassland savannas) in effect indirectly spurred
the further modification of the hominids in a more human direction. Again,
one might think that natural selection would have eliminated any hominid
lines that started to produce essentially premature babies that were totally
helpless and could not fend for themselves for a long while; but the fact that
such a change also happened to allow the hominid brain to develop for a
much longer period of time after birth (allowing the new hominid infants
to expand their mental capacities through social interaction and learning,
rather than genetic programming, to an extent never before seen) probably
more than compensated for any disadvantages.
Maybe all this could have happened even without such major environmental changes taking place. After all, an increase in a capacity to learn,
to manipulate and refine tools, and to better communicate and reinforce
aspects of socialization in an already social line of mammals could well be
heavily selected for, even in a relatively unchanging environment. But the
new challenges that were likely posed by the significant changes in climate,
vegetation, available food sources, and exposure to predators in that general
time period around 2 million years ago could certainly help explain why
the new (once again quite odd for their time!) Homo species seem to have
been fairly rapidly successful, and to have undergone yet another burst of
expansion and additional species diversification over the next million years
or so.
Interestingly, not all the hominid species of that period ended up evolving
in the direction of modern humans. The robust line of Australopithecines,
whose teeth and jaws suggest that they probably specialized in eating mainly
tough plant foods in the arid savannas, show no evidence of significant
brain expansion, and fairly soon became extinct. The gracile hominid
lines, on the other handand especially the newly emerging species of
Homoseem to have maintained a more generalized diet (judging from their
teeth and facial structures, which are typical of less specialized omnivores).
It seems likely that they also started to consume increasing amounts of meat,
which would have given them a wider (and likely highly nutritious) range
of foods with which to sustain themselves in the increasingly harsh and dry
environments. Even fossils of the late Australopithecine A. garhi (who
lived in Eastern Africa just prior to the emergence of the first of the Homo
species) have been found associated with antelope remains whose bones
show stone tool cut marks, a sign of having been butchered. Any increase
in post-birth brain development in this period would likely have been very
helpful for learning such new skills, and would likely have been heavily
favored by natural selection.
But it was the somewhat later species Homo ergaster who really took
things one major step further, as this species seems likely to have been the
first to figure out how to use and make fire. This was a tremendous innovation, because it allowed these hominids to travel out in the open and still
keep predators away at night even when there were no trees to sleep in; and
fire can also be used to soften up and render more digestible a variety of
tough foods (such as fibrous roots and tough meats) through cooking.
Not surprisingly (what with their much bigger brains, increasingly
refined stone tools, fire, and their likely more developed language and
means of social coordination), Homo ergaster (also known as the African
Homo erectus) was the species which seems to have been the first to venture
out of Africa on a large scale and the first to succeed in establishing itself in
a variety of different environments in many other parts of the world. When
our own species Homo sapiens emerged in Africa around 200,000 years ago
(most likely out of the Homo ergaster/erectus line or in any case a very similar
hominid species) it had even more developed cognitive (mental reasoning)
abilities (as evidenced, for instance, by its stone tools, which were of significantly more complex design than those of Homo ergaster/erectus). Homo
sapiens by this point likely had fairly developed abilities for recognizably
human language, social interactions, and the general ability to transform
itself and the world around it more through conscious cultural modifications
than as a result of any ongoing biological evolution (and it is worth noting that
even some other human lines descended from the earlier Homo erectus
migrants, such as the Neanderthals, are known to have been capable of
developing some significant aspects of human culture, with some of them
beginning to bury their dead in a ritual manner, to cite just one example).
animals for meat, etc). Homo sapiens now had the means to accumulate
and transmit knowledge between groupsand across the generations
through all sorts of cultural means, including newly emerging art and ritual.
Everywhere it went, it ended up replacing the leftover populations of the
older human species who were the descendants of the earlier out-of-Africa
migrations undertaken by Homo erectus.
From our emergence in Africa around 200,000 years ago, we managed
to fairly quickly spread to all corners of the globe, even making it to the
parents) and the analysis of human mitochondrial DNA (a form of DNA present in cell
organelles called mitochondria but which is
passed from generation to generation only
through the mothers lines), along with
some studies of the distribution patterns of
human genetic variation around the world,
have all converged on the same conclusion:
our modern human species Homo sapiens
had a single African origin.
In fact, the mitochondrial DNA evidence
strongly suggests that all currently living
human beings are descended from a single
small population (though not just one single
woman, as is sometimes misrepresented
in the press) which lived in Africa around
150,000 years ago. Calculations derived
from an analysis of nuclear DNA came to
the same conclusions. Our overall human
genome obviously contains DNA information that goes back even further in time, and
some specific human DNA combinations
present in some of our ancestors have died
out by now (the same basic way human
names can die out when some lines stop
producing descendants). But the molecular
DNA calculations indicate not only that species like Neanderthals did not contribute to
the modern human gene pool (revealing, for
instance, that Neanderthals diverged from
the hominid line that would later give rise
to Homo sapiens some 600,000 years ago)
but also that all living humans still contain
segments of mitochondrial DNA that were
present in just one single small population
of Homo sapiens that lived in one single
geographical area 150,000 years ago, long
before Homo sapiens migration out of Africa
(documented in the fossil record) had even
begun. J
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Americas via the Bering Strait at least 12,000 years ago. We started off
in Africa as one single species, and we have remained one single species
ever since. (See the box We All Came From Africa on page 164.) No pocket of
modern Homo sapiens is ever truly reproductively isolated from the rest of
the species, so we are continually intermixing our genes, as we have done
since our earliest origins on the African continent. Most fundamentally,
our specieswhich today builds computers and explores the depths of the
oceans and the far reaches of spaceis essentially unchanged biologically
from the Homo sapiens who set out from Africa in that second migration
wave some 50,000 years ago. This is not just because relatively little time
has passed and individual species tend to remain relatively stable throughout much of their lifespans, but because the species that our richly diverse
hominid ancestry ended up spinning off some 200,000 years ago had an
unprecedented capacity to continually modify and restructure its own lifeways, and just about any aspect of its outside environment, through cultural
means. This proved to be a much more rapid and effective way of changing
the human condition than anything that could be accomplished through
any ongoing biological evolution. The individuals responsible for the first
prehistoric cave art, those who first ventured across the Bering Strait, those
who maintained a hunter-gatherer mode of existence for 100,000 years or
more, those who developed agriculture 10,000 years ago, and those who
created advanced technological societies in just the last couple of centurieswere all basically the same people. (See the box What Does the Science
of Evolution Tell Us About Human Races? on page 166.) We have undergone
no truly significant biological modifications (no further brain expansions,
for instance) in all this timethough the changes we have effected in every
aspect of the world around us through consciously initiated social and cultural modifications, in just a few tens of thousands of years, are astounding,
to say the least.
We humans long ago evolved an unprecedented ability to continually
learn new things, to consciously seek to modify and transform the material
world, including human society, and to pass on a tremendous amount of
accumulated information from one generation to the next through those
non-genetic cultural means. This is what allows our species to cope with
new problems and new opportunities presented by the outside world (or
even to fail to do so!) without undergoing significant biological modifications of our bodies and without spinning off any new species. (See Are
Humans Still Evolving? on page 172.)
This, however, doesnt mean we wont someday go extinct: Every particular form of matter eventually ceases to exist as such, and humansat
least what we think of as being human todaywill also eventually cease
to exist. The real question may turn out to be whether the extinction of
human beings is going to happen sooner rather than later, and what the
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Our close relatives, such as the chimpanzees, can do many of the same things to
a certain degree (they have complex forms
of social cooperation and communication,
use simple tools, teach their young complex
skills and form friendships; and in different
geographic areas chimpanzee populations
even develop somewhat different cultural
traditions in things like tool use or social
behaviors) but none of this comes close to
what human beings are capable of. Our
modern human species is the first species
in the history of biological evolution on this
planet to break out of the constraints of
biological evolution and evolve primarily
through non-genetic social and cultural
means. This is, in very large part, what
makes us human.
In fact, non-biological cultural evolution
has become so much more important than
biological evolution in effecting changes in
people that how well people survive, and how
many offspring they leave, generally has little
or nothing to do with any advantageous or
disadvantageous features that genetic variation and genetic mechanisms might bring
about. Whether a disease kills you or not
will, in almost all cases, have much more to
do with whether you get a vaccine, or antibiotic, or other medical treatmentor perhaps
just clean water and fresh foodthan it has
to do with any genetic variation you might
have relative to other individuals. And how
many descendants you are likely to leave in
subsequent generations has much more to
do with social factors (relative poverty or
wealth, and access to resources; customs,
traditions, and views and practices regarding birth control and the status of women;
the economic structure and organization
of society, favoring large or small families;
influences of religion and other ideological
factors; and so on) than it has to do with
features that you can pass on through
genetic material and genetic processes.
In the past 100,000 years or so, our
bodies (including our brains) seem hardly to
have changed, and it is with the same basic
biological bodies that we went from a stone
tool culture to being able to cure many
diseases and to explore (through the use of
technology) remote parts of the cosmos.
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Chapter 7 Endnotes
1. We also can (and should) apply the methods and techniques of modern science
to gain a better understanding of such things as why human beings created religions
in the first place, or why many (though certainly not all) individuals continue to feel
a need for religion.
2. As discussed earlier in this book, natural selection is a relatively simple
mechanism: new features (representing novelties of form or function not present in
earlier generations) can emerge in individual organisms simply as a result of various
kinds of reshufflings of the inheritable genetic variation which was present in their
parent generation; when such new features happen to provide individuals having
those features with a reproductive edge relative to individuals who dont have these
new features (allowing them to produce relatively more descendants who will in turn
be able to survive and reproduce), the new features will, quite naturally, end up being
passed on to a greater proportion of the individuals which make up the population in
the following generations. In this way, these features will tend to spread throughout
an entire population of plants or animals. This will happen automatically, as long
as the features in question really are inheritable (can be passed on from parents to
descendants through reproduction), and as long as they really do provide individuals
with some kind of reproductive advantage so that those having these new features
end up (on average) contributing more descendants to subsequent generations than
individuals who dont have these features.
3. The Catholic Church has never had a good track record when it comes to
recognizing and appreciating the advances of science: The astronomer Copernicus
first proposed that the earth orbits around the sun (rather than the other way around)
way back in the 1500s. His theory was then scientifically confirmed to be true by the
astronomer Galileo in the early 1600s. Outraged that the scientific evidence revealed
errors in the Bible, the Catholic Church baldly refused to accept this scientific evidence
and instead tortured and persecuted Galileo as a heretic until they could force him
to recant (take back) the Copernican theory. This was in 1633. The Catholic Pope
John Paul II did finally get around to giving a speech in which he admitted the Church
had been wrong, and that Galileo had unjustly suffered at the hands of the Church.
But this didnt happen until 1979!!! And while that Pope in 1996 did come around
to acknowledging that the theory of evolution was more than just a hypothesis,
his successor, the current Pope Benedict XVI, is once again making it clear that the
Catholic Church rejects the theory of evolution.
4. The overall effect of such periods of relative stasis (when not many new
species are being produced) is that the initial burst of species diversification is eventually trimmed and reduced over time, at least until a later point when something
appears to trigger yet another burst of speciationproducing a new crop of species out of a line which had become, in a sense, rather static and stodgy from an
evolutionary standpoint. There is a lot of scientific interest these days in trying to
better understand just what factors (or combinations of factors) spur on, facilitate or
in various ways contribute to such changes in the overall rhythm and frequency of
speciation in specific plant and animal lines, or even in many different lines more or
less simultaneously. As scientists make progress in the task of reconstructing the total
environmental picture at different times in earths history and in particular geographic
locations (including being able to reconstruct not only what the terrain and climate
were like and other features of the physical environment but also what assortment of
Chapter 8
Anti-Evolution Creationism:
An Assault on All of Science,
In the Name of God
To recap essential points that have been discussed in previous chapters
of this book: There is a tremendous amount of very concrete and mutually reinforcing scientific evidence which actually proves that all life on this
planet has evolved over a long period of time (billions of years) and that
all living species of plants and animals continue to evolve to this very day.
Evolution is so well supported by the evidence that it is no exaggeration
to say that there is no theory that is better proven or better corroborated
(supported by different kinds of evidence) in all of science. The overwhelming majority of working scientists in all fields of science (biology, geology,
astronomy, etc.) will tell you that the theory of evolution has been subjected
to extremely rigorous scientific testing for nearly a century and a half, and
that they are therefore absolutely confident in saying that the basic facts
and mechanisms of evolution have been proven well beyond the shadow
of a doubt. The theory of evolution is not somebodys unverified guess
about how life came to be the way it isit is not a bunch of untested (and
untestable) beliefsand this comprehensive scientific theory is neither
in doubt nor in crisis. The basic scientific facts of evolution are by now
as well established as the fact that the earth goes around the sun and not the
other way around (as explained by the Copernican theory) and the fact that
the force of gravity causes objects to fall towards the ground and not away
from it (as explained by the theory of gravitation).
Despite all the evidence, many people who hold religious beliefs of one
sort or another still find it difficult to accept the scientific facts of evolution,
because these scientific facts clearly contradict what is said in the Bible and
other religious Scriptures. The science of evolution has demonstrated that
all life is constantly changing (evolving) and that all currently living species
of plants and animals (including people) have evolved out of different preexisting ancestor species, through purely natural processes (such as natural
selection) taking place over millions and billions of years. By contrast, the
Creation story in the Bible (written more than 2,000 years ago, long before
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people knew anything about evolution or even the true age of the earth)
says that a divine higher power (a supernatural God) created all the different
kinds of life-forms all at once (in just a few days) and only a few thousand
years ago, and that every single one of the different life-forms was created
completely separately.
If this Bible story were actually true, it would mean that all the modern
scientific evidence is wrong, and that our planet is not really some 4.5billion years old, that the first simple life-forms didnt really appear some
3.5billion years ago, that none of the life-forms ever underwent any really
big changes or spun off any new species, and that none of the living species
we see around us today could possibly be related in any way to any other
species, past or present. If the Bible Creation story were literally true, every
different kind of life-form we see today (wolves, humans, catfish, chimpanzees, whales, bacteria, oak trees, turtles, corn plants, spiders, you name it)
would look today just like they looked when supposedly God created them
out of nothing and as separate and forever unrelated entities. Well, with all
due respect to peoples personal religious beliefs, Im afraid all modern science has shown that the Biblical Creation story is just thata story, a myth.
There is just too much concrete evidence that the earth is actually billions
(not thousands) of years old; that all the different life-forms on earth did not
appear all at once but over a period of billions of years; that every single
species came into being as an evolutionary spin-off of a somewhat different
species that existed at an earlier time; and that all the different species on
earth today are actually related to each other (to varying degrees) through
long lines of descent from a series of shared ancestors.
It all started with some simple one-cell bacteria like-creatures some
3.5billion years ago, but from that point on life evolved and diversified over
and over again, following many different evolutionary pathways. That history is etched into every single one of our bodies. On the branching bush
of life, every human is, in one way or another, and to varying degrees,
related to (and has at least a few features in common with) every other living
species on earth, going all the way back to some of the simplest bacterialike organisms which emerged out of the chemical soup some 3.5 billion
years ago and from which all life-forms on earth were ultimately derived.
Of course, you dont have to have a science degree to realize that human
beings are obviously more closely related to (and have many more features
in common with) chimpanzees (who are our very closest non-human relatives) or even to wolves, whales (or any other milk-producing mammals)
than to songbirds, or catfish, or corn plants or bacteria. But even with these
much more distant relatives we have at least a few features in common,
which are carry-overs from more distant shared ancestors of long ago (for
instance, we have skeletons and backbones, but so do catfish and songbirds;
and every cell in our bodies contains DNA, but DNA is also present in the
cells of all other living things, including corn plants and bacteria).
So, although many people have been taught to believe the Biblical
Creation story since early childhood, the evidence from the real world shows
it just isnt true. Evidence, concrete scientific evidence: this is what allows us
to be so sure evolution is a factthat it is how all life-forms on earth have
developed and how all life continues to change in an ongoing way.
As noted earlier, and as we will return to later on, many modern-day
religious believers have figured out ways to hold on to their basic religious
beliefs and values while at the same time accepting the scientific evidence
that life has, in fact, evolved. Among modern-day scientists, there are many
who are atheists (dont believe in God or any other supernatural powers)
and also secular humanists (seek to meet the needs of humanity through
secular, or non-religious, means). But among scientists there are still quite a
few people who choose to hold on to at least some of the religious traditions
of Judaism, Christianity or Islam, for instance, and who may even continue
to believe that there could be some higher-power supernatural force out
there that human beings just cant detect. But even among scientists with
these kinds of beliefs, there are literally only a tiny handful who have any
doubts that life on this planet has in fact evolved and that the basic facts and
mechanisms of biological evolution have long been proven to be true. This
is especially true in the life sciences, of course, since evolution is the cornerstone explanatory theory which lies at the very foundation of all their work
and without which further scientific advance would become impossible.
And this is true for molecular geneticists, cell biologists, physiologists, paleontologists, animal behaviorists, plant and animal population biologists,
community ecologists, conservationists, and so on.
c onsumed by humans). They have been looking for SARS viruses in areas
of rural China where, some scientists think, the virus could have jumped
from pig to human. And, as I write this, the latest news is that a species of
wild civet (a cat-like mammal which is apparently occasionally hunted and
consumed by people in the region) may harbor the SARS virus and represent
the pathway through which humans initially contracted the disease. It is too
early to tell for sure. But whether or not this particular source turns out to
be the right one, the point is that trying to figure out where this virus came
from is an important part of trying to figure out how to treat it and contain
it in human populationsbut scientists wouldnt even know where to look
for it if they didnt understand some basic facts about evolution, including
why it is that disease-causing factors can sometimes jump between prey and
predator species and sicken the predators, especially if they still share many
evolutionary features in common with their prey.
The SARS virus, human susceptibility to the brain-wasting mad-cow
disease,1 the rapidly evolving AIDS virus, the increasingly problematic
evolution of bacteria resistant to all known antibioticsall these are serious
public health problems, and they cannot be fully understood and correctly
addressed unless one takes into account the past and present evolution of
these disease-causing agents.
Do the Creationists who say that they just dont believe in evolution,
because it runs counter to the Bible, think we should give up on all modern
attempts to treat and manage infectious diseases, because such attempts are
rooted in an understanding of evolution?
That any attempts to transplant organs into humans from other species
(a tricky and problematic proposition from a number of angles in any case)
should currently not even consider using organs of species which are not
at least close evolutionary relatives of humans. This is because only organs
of species which shared common ancestors with humans in the relatively
recent evolutionary past would have enough similarities with human organs
to have even a chance of being accepted into a human body. Even among
mammals (the class of animals to which humans belong) some organ
transplants would be more likely to be rejected than others. Species of
mammals which have shared common ancestors with the human lineage in
the more recent evolutionary past (such as apes, or slightly more distantly
related pigs) have organs which have more features in common with those
of humansand are thus less likely to be rejectedthan would be the case
with more distantly related mammalian species.2
The point of all this is not to argue that cross-species organ transplants
(from other species into humans) are necessarily the best approach to
providing spare parts for sick humans (in fact, cross-species transplants
are so problematic from so many different angles that I tend to think that
developing research into growing brand-new functional organ tissue from
unspecialized stem cells will turn out to be the more promising avenue to
pursue). But the point here is that we wouldnt have a basis to understand any
of this if we didnt draw on what we have come to understand about how
evolution works and how evolutionary processes of the past have shaped
the way living species (and their body parts) exist and function today.
Again, it is our understanding of evolutionary biology (combined with
molecular and developmental biology) which allows us to see that one of
the best ways to eventually provide spare parts for sick people (new kidneys, livers, hearts, skin for burn victims, nerve cells for paraplegics, etc.)
will likely be to try to channel the growth and development of previously
undifferentiated human stem cells, rather than trying to make use of organs
taken from non-human species. The theory of evolution actually allows
us to expect certain health problems both when the donor and recipient
species are not related closely enough (greater likelihood of rejection) and
also when they are much too closely related (greater likelihood of transfer
of disease organisms along with the transplant). None of this would even
be an issue in research or in health care if the Bible Creation story were
true and humans and other living species had actually been created as
completely separate and unrelated entities rather than being descended
from a series of common (shared) ancestors.
Could it possibly be true, as the Bible says, that there really was a global
Flood that killed off all the living creatures on earth except Noah and his
family and two of each kind of the species we see on earth today (which
the scientific creationists claim are all unchanged descendants of the
creatures Noah packed into his boat)? Of course not. First of all, there is
no historical geological evidence that such a flood ever took place, and it is
essentially impossible for this to happenfor a flood to occur that would
cover the whole earth at once. And even today human beings could not
possibly build a boat big enough, or even a thousand boats big enough, to
contain even just two of each living species.
Of course, the human authors of the Bible lived some 2,000 (or more)
years ago in the area we now call the Middle East and they did not realize
what a huge blooper they were putting in the Bible, because they were not
very familiar with the natural world, all around the world: they would only
have known a small portion of even the species which lived in their own
region, let alone the rest of the planet. And so they had no idea just how
many different living species of plants and animals have populated the earth
(then or now). But since todays Creationists believe that all the species alive
today had to already have existed at the time God created everything all at
once (otherwise theyd have to admit the Bible is wrong on this), they are
pretty much stuck. All they can do is try to make ridiculously silly arguments about how two of each kind that is around today must, somehow,
have been able to fit in Noahs boat. Theyre asking us to believe that the
ancestors of ALL the hundreds of millions of living speciesall the different
species of mammals, all the different species of birds, all the different species
of reptiles, and amphibians, and fish, and insects, and marine invertebrates,
and of course all the many different living species of plants also, the many
different species of flowering plants, non-flowering plants, mushrooms, and
all the different species of bacteria and other microorganisms (which of
course are not even mentioned in the Bible)TWO OF EACH KIND of all
of these species are supposed to have fit into one boat? Come on!
Let me ask: Is this what science teachers should be forced to teach to
kids in school, as a supposedly legitimate alternative theory? The scary
thing is how close these Creationists have come to succeeding on a number
of occasions in recent years: they have actually managed to get entire
school districts in a number of states to consider giving equal time to
both Creation-science and evolution science in the science classroom,
and it has taken huge battles in the courts and the rallying of expert testimony of hundreds of prominent scientists to (so far at least) prevent this
insanity from becoming established law. And even where they have failed to
impose their full program (to get the state to introduce their religious views
in opposition to established science in state-funded public schools, and in
the science classrooms!) they have succeeded in confusing a lot of people
into thinking that maybe the facts of evolution arent so sure after all, and
they have gotten a number of corporate publishers of school textbooks to
stick little disclaimers inside quite a few high school science textbooks
telling students that evolution is a controversial theory (no its notat least
not among 99.9% of scientists!) and that some students may hold religious
views which run counter to evolution so its OK for students to make up
their own minds about whats true!!! Do we tell the students its OK to
make up their own minds about whether the earth is flat? Or whether bacteria and viruses can cause diseases in human beings and that there are steps
human beings can take to prevent or combat this? Or about any other basic
scientifically proven facts?
Traditional Creationists not only reject the many different kinds of evidence that show that living species have evolved; they also reject the clear
geological evidence that this has been going on for billions of years, and that
the earth itself is billions of years old (and that things like mountain ranges
and the Grand Canyon, for example, were formed by natural processes
of geological uplift and erosion taking place over millions and hundreds
of millions of years). Any knowledgeable geologist will tell you that the
Creationist idea that the earths landscape features were formed all at
once just a few thousand years ago (and have since then changed only as
much as could be explained from just a few thousand years of wind and
water erosion) is completely nuts! Modern science can actually establish
the age of different rocks in a number of different ways, and these various dating techniques have revealed that the earth itself is about 4.5 billion
years old. In addition, modern geologists now know and understand much
of whats actually been involved in the dynamic and large-scale processes
which have refashioned the face of the planet multiple times over the past
millions and billions of years. Even though most of these processes have
unfolded incredibly slowly and over almost inconceivably long periods of
time from a human perspective, modern geologists can still detect and even
measure such things as: how large land masses spread apart or crashed into
each other; how huge mountain ranges got pushed up from below (and
later became worn down, only to sometimes get pushed up yet again some
millions of years later); how the earths oceans have repeatedly grown or
shrunk at different times in earths history; how inland seas sometimes
drowned out the interior of continents for millions of years; how deep land
and undersea canyons were formed; how cracks repeatedly ripped open
the planets surface crust, providing outlets for hot steam and magma from
deep inside the earth to come to the surface in volcanic eruptions which
at one and the same time destroy and build new land. They can detect and
measure how many of these processes shaped the planet in the past, and
also how many of these processes are continuing to take place today (for
instance, some mountain ranges are continuing to grow, and the rate at
which this is happening can be concretely measured, even though its happening so slowly that we cant see it with the naked eye).
In short, there is no question that our physical planet is itself a very
dynamic placeits features are constantly changing, and in the course of
millions and billions of years the earth has dramatically restructured itself
quite a few timesbut all of these changes can be explained in terms of
completely natural processes (requiring no supernatural intervention) that
are today rather well understood by the science of geology. And its also
important to realize that geologists the world over are overwhelmingly unified in insisting that the really big changes that have molded the contours
of the earth that we see today could not possibly have taken place in just a
few thousand years (the amount of time a literal reading of the Bible would
suggest has passed since Gods Creation). They could only have happened
over millions, hundreds of millions and even billions of years!
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the first strands of replicating DNA molecules and the first reproductive cells.
Looking at this question from a somewhat different direction, a number of
researchers have used computer models
to show how even computer-generated
self-reproducing artificial life-forms start
evolving on their own (without any human
being or other intelligent designer directing the process), how they often produce
a bewildering diversity of new artificial lifeforms and even generate some unexpected
solutions to design problems that the
human experimenters would not have antici
pated. For instance, one such experiment
(run by Karl Sims in the 1990s) involved a
population of varied individuals (an
assortment of simple virtual blocks made
of two connected pieces) which were set
by the computer program to reproduce
(self-replicate). The experimenters did one
other thing: they essentially programmed
into the simulation the equivalent of a selective advantage for a given environmentfor
instance, programming into the computer
that any of the virtual blocks that managed to walk would automatically have
a reproductive advantage. Its important to
understand that the experimenters didnt
design any of the blocks to walkthey
simply programmed the computer to function like natural selection and give any blocks
which happened to have evolved on their own
any ability to walk a definite reproductive
edge, meaning that those blocks got to
contribute more descendants to the next
generations than the blocks which hadnt
evolved that new function. The experimenters didnt know ahead of time whether the
self-replicating artificial life-forms would
evolve such a function on their own or
not. They just started the self-replicating
program running and then just walked away
and waited to see what would happen.
What happened next is that the self-reproducing individuals produced generation
after generation of copies of themselves. But
occasionally minor copying errors would pop
up (the equivalent of mutations in real living
creatures). And, lo and behold, purely by
chance, some of these mutations happened to allow some of the blocks to move
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the Biblean insistence that every thing, every single word, in the Bible
must be accepted as literally true. But because they know theres supposed
to be a separation of church and state in the United States, they try to get
these religious views accepted by claiming to have scientific proof that
evolution is wrong. This is something that is really important to understand and be aware of: The main way these traditional Creationists try to
make their case is not to provide scientific evidence of their own (which
is impossible for them to do, by definition, since it is not possible to provide
scientific evidence of a supposed force or phenomenona godwhich
even they admit is not part of the reality of the natural world). So all they
can do is try to poke holes in the theory of evolution and then keep their
fingers crossed that if they can convince enough people to have doubts about
evolution then people will believe instead in the existence of a Creator-god
and in particular the Biblical creation story. (See The Cambrian Explosion,
Punctuated Equilibrium and the God of the Gaps Argument on page 195 and
also Misrepresenting Working ScientistsA Favorite Creationist Tactic on
page200.)
These traditional Creationists are not simply nuts (though they are
nuts!). They are also very dishonest. They remind me of nothing more than
the old-style charlatans who tried to take advantage of despairing and gullible people by selling them bottles of snake oil as a supposed cure for all
their ailments. And, just like the snake oil salesmen of old, they will change
their arguments, as many times as they need, to fit the circumstances and
the better to confuse people.
This is also very important to understand about the Creationist method:
If you answer their objections to evolution with well-documented scientific
Johnson and his colleagueswould
have us all think.
The more science advances, the more
human ideas about divine powers and
supernatural realms get repeatedly undercut and revealed to have been nothing more
than attempts made by humans to imagine
what they could not yet understand. So to all
those religious people who already acknowledge that there is overwhelming scientific
evidence for evolutionwho are already
convinced that, once life had emerged on
this planet, it proceeded from then on to
evolve and diversify by purely natural evolutionary processesI would suggest the
following: by all means, lets never lose our
sense of wonder at all we still do not know
or fully understand (as well as our wonder
at many things we now do understand); and
lets definitely keep asking all sorts of hard
questions, about everything; lets definitely
work to unite all those (religious believers
and non-believers) who want to try to do
everything that is within human powers
to positively improve the human condition; but lets also strive to be consistent
in applying the methods of science for doing
soconsistently materialist methods, aimed at
systematically uncovering the actual truth
of things. Scientific methods of exploration
and investigation have always helped us sort
out what actually corresponds to material reality as it really is in nature and in society, from
what doesnt actually correspond to reality
facts, they will just change the argument and claim to have good reasons
to challenge something else in evolutionary theory. Its as if theyre trying
to run some kind of three-card-monty sleight of hand: You can never pin
them down or get them to argue with any kind of real substance in support
of their own alternative theory. Since they are not particularly beholden
to the actual truth of things (that is probably one of the biggest understatements of the year!) this gives them a certain perverse freedom to keep
changing the terms of the debate until evolutionists finally give up arguing
with them because it is only too clear that these people simply will never be
convinced, no matter how much rational scientific evidence you present to
them.
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Misrepresenting Working
Scientistsa Favorite
Creationist Tactic
Creationists in general are famous for
their shoddy and unprincipled methods.
So-called scientific Creationists and the
Intelligent Design Creationists can produce no actual scientific evidence for their
theories. They have in fact never published a
single scientific research paper in any peerreviewed scientific journal (which publish
articles only after they have been critically
reviewed and assessed by multiple working
scientists with established credentials and
experience in relevant scientific arenas.)
Since Creationists can provide no scientific
evidence whatsoever for their own theories,
they focus instead on trying to tear down
the opposition (the evolutionists) any way
they can: they try to confuse people who
dont know much about science into thinking that the theory of evolution is wrong,
that the evidence for evolution is not solid
or that evolution is a theory in crisis as
proven by the fact that evolutionists argue
among themselves. This is all completely
ridiculous! Not only is the theory of evolution just about the most well-documented
theory in all of science, but there is no such
crisis in the scientific community: the
overwhelming majority of scientists are in
complete agreement about the basic facts
and basic operating principles of evolution
(including that all life on this planet has
been evolving for some 3.5 billion years and
is continuing to evolve; that natural selection has been shown to be a key mechanism
through which evolutionary change takes
place over multiple generations; that all
living species are related to each other by
lines of common descent from a succession
of shared ancestors, going all the way back
to the earliest forms of life; that human
beings are today one single species and are
descended from a long series of different
upright-walking hominid ancestor species,
the first of which split off a few million years
ago from an ape-like species which is also
the ancestor of modern-day apes, including
our closest cousins the chimpanzees).
200
201
202
consensus among scientists that there is undeniable evidence that evolution has taken place
(and continues to take place), including the
fact that human beings themselves evolved
out of different pre-existing species. The
Creationists always conveniently manage
to sidestep talking about that consensus in
particular. So here again the Creationists
are both lying and misrepresenting.
And another example: The Creationists
like to trumpet the notion that it is not
true that there is a universal genetic code
which binds all life forms together through
lines of common descent, and they claim
that even evolutionists now agree with this.
Once again, this is a gross distortion. It
is based on the fact that a few very minor
variants have been found within the generally universal genetic code (variations so
minor that they have been compared to
the difference between British English and
American English in the spelling of the word
colour vs. color). Most importantly, the
Creationists point to these findings without
bothering to let people know that the very
scientists who found these minor variants
of the genetic code consider them to be
evolutionary variations derived from a still
overwhelmingly universal genetic code. But
youd never know this from listening to the
Creationists, who, as usual, quote things
out of context to make it sound like these
scientists have somehow found some evidence against evolution! (For more on this,
see the separate Box Rare Variants of the
Almost Entirely Universal Genetic Code Are
Evidence of Evolution, Not Design, right.)
A final example of the absurdity of these
Creationist misrepresentations: In criticizing
the PBS series Evolution, the biochemist and
prominent Intelligent Design Creationist
Michael Behe complained that the program
did not include anything about the work
of Stuart Kauffman, a scientist who does
research looking into how complex biological systems can self-organize from simpler
components. Behe claimed that Kauffmans
work on molecular self-organization is
posed explicitly as an alternative to natural
selectionthus giving readers the impression
that Kauffman thinks natural selection is
not a valid concept, and that he probably
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are. People should be able to have their religious texts and places of worship
and religious ceremonies, as long as they still feel the need for this. But the
Christian fundamentalist Creationists should not be allowed to introduce
and forcibly impose their particular brand of religious dogma anywhere
in the public schools or in any other arena of public life. And especially if
we dont understand this and act accordingly, there is a real danger that we
could wake up one morning living under the regime of a religious theocracy (the rule of religious zealots giving their fundamentalist beliefs the
force of law and government power).
In case you think I am exaggerating, you might want to check into the
kind of political initiatives which have been taken by the Creationist movement in recent years. The most well known of these are their attempts to
take over school boards and get state laws changed to impose the teaching
of so-called Creation-science on an equal footing with evolution in public
school science classrooms. But they have also directly sought to influence
the government at the highest levels and to get the United States Congress
to change laws to make teaching religious Creationism in the public schools
mandatory in all states. And they came very close to succeeding! (See Look
Whos In Bed With Whom!, right.)
The current president, George W. Bush, and high-placed and
influential people such as former Attorney General John Ashcroft and
powerful Republican Congressman Tom DeLay have all openly flaunted
their Creationist beliefs. In the famous 1987 Supreme Court case known as
Edwards vs. Aguillard (which makes for some very interesting reading) the
Courts majority opinion overturned the Louisiana Balanced Treatment
Act, which would have forced teachers in that state to teach so called creation-science alongside evolution in the science classrooms. In declaring
this Act unconstitutional, the majority opinion of the Supreme Court at the
time (written by Justice Powell) correctly recognized that the purpose of
this Act was to advance a particular religious belief, especially since teaching creation-science would require that teachers put forward the religious
belief that a supernatural being created humanity. The Court concluded
that the First Amendment does not permit the State to require that teaching and learning must be tailored to the principles and prohibitions of any
religious sect or dogma. This was a significant defeat for the Creationists.
But it is interesting to also read the dissenting opinion, written by Justice
Scalia, in which he expressed the reasons why he disagreed with the Courts
majority opinion. Scalia wrote that, as far as he was concerned, imposing
the teaching of creation-science would not necessarily impose the teaching of religious beliefs. He referred to the affidavits provided to the Court
by Creationist experts who swear that creation-science is a scientific
body of knowledge, and that they have scientific data supporting the
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theory that the physical universe and life within it appeared suddenly and
have not changed substantially since appearing.
Heres a supposedly highly educated Supreme Court Justice, who presumably went to both college and law school, unquestioningly repeating
something that is so patently false that it would cause a high school student
to totally flunk a basic biology test. Scalia astoundingly goes on to say that
nobody can say that the evidence for evolution is completely conclusive,
and so the people of Louisiana are entitled to have whatever scientific evidence there may be against evolution presented in the schools. Never mind
the fact that there is no scientific evidence against evolution! As countless
continued from previous page
scientists are provoked to stress over and over again, not a single shred of
actual scientific evidence against evolution has ever been found (not one!).
Scalia didnt seem to even know enough (or care) to be embarrassed by his
own gross (and reactionary) ignorance. And keep in mind that President
George W. Bush has said that Scalia is his idea of a model Supreme Court
judge!
In the years since Edwards vs. Aguillard there have been additional
important court cases, and many prominent scientists have testified in a
unified voice that so-called creation-science doesnt have a scientific leg
to stand on. And the fact that there is solid scientific evidence for evolution
sun, etc.) should be taught as what they are:
well-established scientific facts.
Unfortunately, while there is in the U.S.
a general recognition of the importance of
science and many of its concrete achievements, the level of scientific literacy of the
population as a whole is actually extremely
low. This makes it easier for various kinds
of Creationists to get over and mislead
people just by trying to sound scientific
(just by throwing in a few scientific words
and concepts along with their mystical
hocus-pocus) even though there is actually nothing scientific about what they are
putting forward or about the methods they
are using. These days the Intelligent Design
Creationists in particular are rather skilled
at confusing and misleading even generally
educated people, including members
of the press and other influential sectors
of society. A low level of scientific literacy
(working hand-in-hand with some reactionary social and political agendas) may well
have contributed to the astounding fact
that U.S. senators initially approved the
Santorum Amendment 91 to 8, with not a
single senator speaking against it!
It was only later, when this was taken
up in joint House and Senate discussions,
that the decision was made to leave the
anti-evolution (and anti-science) Santorum
Amendment out of the education bill. The
Santorum Amendment did not become federal law after all, but it sure came close!
If at first you dont succeed, lie, lie again:
In a move that illustrates the typical
unprincipled methods of the Creationists,
many of them are trying to mislead people
around thinking that nothing is ever sure, how could we ever survive or
get anything done? Should we walk in front of a moving bus because we
cant ever really know for sure whether well get run over? Should we not
bother setting an alarm clock because we cant ever know for sure that it
will ring, or that it even really exists, or that we really exist and have a reason
to get up? These examples may seem silly, but they make the point that,
even just to function in day-to-day life, we human beings really need to have
some way, some approach and method, which can help us to determine
when something is actually true (or false).
Project Steve:
Evolutionists Use Humor to
Make a Serious Point
In February 2003, at the annual convention of the American Association for
the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the
National Center for Science Education
(NCSE) introduced and circulated the following statement:
Evolution is a vital, well-supported, unifying principle of the
biological sciences, and the scientific
evidence is overwhelmingly in favor
of the idea that all living things share
a common ancestry. Although there
are legitimate scientific debates
about the patterns and processes of
evolution, there is no serious scientific
doubt that evolution occurred or that
natural selection is a major mechanism of evolution. It is scientifically
inappropriate and pedagogically
irresponsible for creationist pseudoscience, including but not limited to
intelligent design, to be introduced
into the science curricula of the
public schools.
This clear statement is something the
vast majority of scientists in the United
States and all over the world can agree
with. To illustrate this fact, the NCSE has
been circulating the statement in scientific
circles, asking scientists to sign it to show
their agreement, but only if their first name
Of course well never have absolute truthin the sense that well never
know everything there is to know about everythingbut we do have some
means and methods for getting to the point that we can say, with a high
degree of confidence, that something is truemeaning that it actually corresponds to some aspect of material reality as it really is.
Again, the point is that its good and important to question everything,
but its also good and important to recognize that not everything is forever
up for grabssometimes we can know enough about something to accept
it as true, stop agonizing about it, and move on. Such is the case with the
basic theory of evolution.
But a lot of people in the United States today still dont realize that we
can be that sure about evolution. Anti-evolution and anti-science Christian
fundamentalist Creationists have worked to confuse peoples thinking
on this since the late 19th century, typically becoming particularly active
and aggressive in times of social turmoil and when the overall direction
of society is being broadly questioned and debated. Its especially at such
times that reactionaries resist all forms of social progress and call instead
for looking backward and restoring core values and traditions. Today is
no exception.
The Creationists have waged such determined anti-evolution and antiscience campaigns in recent years that U.S. universities are now reporting
that they are getting very worried about growing scientific illiteracy in the
country as a whole as they notice that more and more freshmen are arriving
on campuses so poorly trained in even basic science that they actually believe
the scientific community is divided on whether evolution happened and
that evolution is still just an unproven theory. To state it clearly again:
both those notions are completely false. The scientific community (in the
U.S. and worldwide and in every field of science) is not divided on the
basic facts of evolution. The consensus is overwhelming that (a) life has
definitely evolved and that (b) the basic mechanisms involved in how life
evolved and continues to evolve (such as natural selection) are by now well
understood.
the words theory of evolution you will automatically think it hasnt yet
been proven to be true. But, in scientific circles, the word theory has a
very different meaning: a scientific theory is what scientists call a complex
body of thought that ties together a number of different ideas and proposals
which successfully explainfrom a number of different anglesthe basic
principles and mechanisms involved in a natural process, such as the origins
and later change and development of some part of actual material reality. So, for instance, scientists talk about the theory of gravitation or the
Copernican theory (of the motion of the planets, including the earth,
around the sun) but that doesnt mean theyre guessing that objects fall
towards the earth because of the pull of gravity or that theyre guessing
that the earth goes around the sun rather than the other way around. The
theory of gravitation and the Copernican theory are by now well documented and supported by the accumulated scientific evidence, and the same
can be said of the scientific theory of evolution.
Of course scientific theories are always being further extended and developed as human knowledge expands and comes to understand some things
that we didnt previously understand. And as knowledge develops, it is inevitably the case that some old ideas are discovered to be wrong and therefore
need to be discarded. Science actually advances by calling into question and
critically reviewing previously established scientific notions. It is true that
there is always going to be more to learn and discover about everything. But
that doesnt mean that we can never come down and say that something
is true. People who like to say things like but you can never be sure fall
into the mistaken outlook and approach known as philosophical relativism.
(Of course, since human knowledge is never complete and perfect, and is
always developing, people who think and act like they have absolute truth
about everything, or everything important, fall into the erroneous method
known as dogmatism, which is the flip-side of relativism.) But when we
say something is true it simply means that there is good, compelling and
concrete evidence (preferably from a number of different and mutually reinforcing sources and directions) that our understanding of something actually
does closely correspond to how that something really is in objective reality,
that is, in the real material worldwhich includes all that is part of the
natural world and which encompasses the features and workings of human
social organization as well. (See Reality and Distortions of RealityObjective
Truth and Subjective Influences on page 216.)
Scientific theories (whether pertaining to the world of nature or
human society) do not get proven to be true overnight. Before any great
idea or set of ideas can be confidently said to be true, it has to get put
through the scientific cruciblethat means it gets poked at and critiqued
and challenged and tested over and over again and from countless different
directions. A good scientific theory puts forward some predictions about
what we should expect to find in the real world if the theory is true; and
it is also makes predictions about some of the things we should not be able
to find in the world if the theory is true. This is known as the principle of
scientific falsifiability: a genuine scientific theory, as a matter of principle,
has to be capable of being disproved by facts (things which, if discovered,
species evolved. Biologists can give many such examples of the kinds of
things thatif they were ever found to existwould make a complete
shambles of evolutionary theory. So, like all good scientific theories, the
theory of evolution is falsifiable in principlebut, as a point of fact, science
continued from previous page
has never found anything (not a single thing) that actually falsifies it. It has,
however, found many, many things that support it.
The theory of divine Creation is a religious belief, not a scientific
theory. One of the sure signs of that is that the theory of divine Creation
is, by its very nature and definition, impossible to falsify. The Creationists
refuse to give people any examples of any kind of scientific discoveries that
they could accept as proof that their divine Creation theory is wrong after
all. They make a principle of this, because for them it is a matter of absolute
religious faith. But if you make a principle of saying that there is no possible
way that any information could ever come to light that would prove your
theory wrong, then you are, by definition, not being scientific, and your
theory has nothing to do with science!
Again, the theory of evolution was, from its very beginnings, falsifiable
as a matter of principle. But as it turns out, all the actual scientific data that
has been collected in the century and a half since Darwin published his
major work on evolution has repeatedly supported the theory of biological
evolution; and none of it has ever provided evidence to the contrary. This
more than anything is why there is such a broad and solid scientific consensus on the matter.
RECOGNIZE, DEMAND
AND FIGHT FOR SCIENTIFIC TRUTH
Throughout this book, it is has been shown, from many different angles
and different sources, that evolution is a well-established scientific truth
which is upheld and applied by the vast majority of scientists in the world.
But just because something is true doesnt mean it will prevail at all times,
especially when people who hold false views are able to wield or influence
the machinery of the state to spread and impose those false views. People
dont always think about this enough. For instance, in the United States
today there are some people who understand that evolution is a proven
fact but who think that its just a waste of time to worry about the crazy
Creationists because, after all, theyre not going to be able to change the fact
that evolution is true. They seem to think that, at least in countries like the
U.S., society will never go back to a time when most people didnt know
life had evolved through natural processesso why waste energy addressing the Creationist lunacy? But in my opinion its a serious mistake to be
complacent about such aspects of the culture wars in the United States.
Ive heard the same argument made about the anti-abortion movement.
(Dont worry, these people are nuts; women in the U.S. will never have to
go back to the days when abortion was illegal and women did not have the
right to determine whether or when they would bear a child.) Oh yeah?
Well, look around youone step at a time the fundamentalist religious
forces have managed to chip away at womens fundamental right to control
their own reproduction and in some parts of the country (especially rural
areas) it has already become a practical impossibility for many women. In
regard to evolution, the same types of fundamentalist reactionaries have
managed to confuse a lot of people, take over school boards and even get
disclaimers inserted into high school science textbooks, telling people that
evolution is controversial and an unproven theory (it is not!). So why is
it so hard to imagine that these people could make even further headway,
especially when their right-wing political programs are the order of the day
in the highest reaches of government?
And its not like there isnt still a strong material basis for lots of people to
be ignorant and confused about this. Looking not only at the U.S. but at the
world as a whole, it is still the case that tremendous numbers of people have
never been taught even the most basic facts of evolution (many have never
even heard of it!): most believe instead one or another myth or superstition
about how all the plants and animals and people came to be. Furthermore,
the aggressively expanding Christian fundamentalist movement is a wellfunded and well-organized movement which gets significant financial and
ideological backing from conservative and reactionary political organizations. Evangelical and fundamentalist Christian movements in the United
States in particular are closely allied with the political Right and growing
fascist trends and developments (think back to the Santorum Amendment,
for instance). Thanks to this support, Creationists have significant and regular access to mainstream media, where their viewpoints and activities are
often reported uncritically and as straight news. They also own or control
a lot of media outlets themselves: their radio and TV programs, books,
pamphlets, museum exhibits, professional-looking web sites (just do a web
search for the word Creationism or look up the web sites of the ICR or the
Discovery Institute) now reach (and no doubt confuse) millions of people.
They have money and other resources that allow them to regularly send
speakers on tour to address school boards and parents groups, to speak on
college campuses and in courtrooms, and to address Congress and other
government officials. And, as pointed out before, they have powerful ties
right up to the highest levels of the ruling class in American society.
Can a well-orchestrated and well-funded propaganda blitz in itself
reverse the truth of evolution? Of course not. But it can do a lot of social
damage by training legions of people (including the young and inexperienced) to firmly and zealously believe in completely wrong ideas and to
increasingly reject not only evolution but even science more generally, as a
method for learning about things and for transforming the world.
And dont think for a minute that this wont serve ongoing and increasingly reactionary political offensives coming from the highest levels of
government: sure the government, military and big corporate sectors
themselves have to regularly make use of actual science to carry out their
objectives (they need science to help them wage their wars or develop new
pharmaceuticals, for instance), so they are not about to throw all science out
the window. They will need to allow some people to continue to be trained
in actual scientific principles and methods and to learn some actual truths
about the way things are in realityotherwise they could not continue to
function and to enforce their rule and domination in the world. But that
doesnt mean they have to let everyone in on it!
For one thing, reactionary political forces have always found it useful
to try to pass off as genuine science all sorts of completely false and nonscientific beliefs when it helps them to justify a reactionary political agenda:
it should be enough to think for a minute about all the phony scientific
theories of supposed racial or gender inferiority (phony science, which
rested on absolutely no legitimate scientific evidence!) which have been
used repeatedly to buttress and justify such things as the horrific enslavement of Africans, the Nazi extermination of Jews, the countless forcible
restrictions on and coercion of women, and so on. So just because an idea is
not true, and a whole lot of people know it is not true, doesnt mean it cant
be put in the service of concretely aiding some very bad things!3
In short, dont underestimate the damage that can be done by the
unchallenged promotion of wrong ideas, especially when they are being
presented as scientific. What the Creationists of different stripes are
doing by packaging their religious beliefs as science is not just trying to
make their beliefs more acceptable to a somewhat scientifically oriented
public, or trying to get their religious teachings into the public schools even
though the Constitution is supposed to guarantee that people in the U.S.
are not subjected to the imposition of religious doctrine and the tyranny of
religious clerics and diktats. What the Creationist program is also doing is
working to undermine science itselfthe whole method of science and the
whole way science trains and encourages people to learn about everything
in the world (and also how to change it) through a process of systematic
and repeated observations and interactions with the material world as it
actually is.
If the Creationist frontal attack on science itself were ultimately successful it would set science back literally centuries and limit us to trying to
understand and affect the world (or passively accept the way it is) on the
basis of superstition and belief in the supernatural.
So what can people, in particular those who are not professional scientists, do to better understand what is wrong and untrue about what the
Creationists put forward? The accompanying box, Some Things You Can
Do to Learn More About Creationist Lies and Distortions on page 222
offers some suggestions and indicates important sources of information.
some of the most traditional of the Creationists in that they claim that
everything in the Bible is the Word of God and therefore none of it could
possibly be wrong (thats what inerrant means). In their view the Bible
must be accepted in its entirety as literal fact. Since a strict interpretation
of the Bible (for instance, calculating the number of generations which
have supposedly passed since Adam and Eve) leads to the conclusion that
the earth can only be a little over 6,000 years old (or 10,000 at the most)
the YECs automatically reject all the modern scientific evidence that this
planet is actually about 4.5 billion years old and that life-forms have been
around (and evolving) for roughly 3.5 billion of those years. The YECs take
literally everything that is said in the Bible, including that God created all
life in just a few days (literal days, of 24 hours each). They also believe as
literal truth the story of Adam and Eve (including that God made Eve out
of Adams rib), the story that Jonah lived for days in the stomach of a whale
(a mammal which the Bible mistakenly refers to as a big fish), the story of
Noahs Ark and the Flood which covered the entire earth for 40 days, and
the story that Methuselah lived to be, literally, 9,000 years old! And just
in case youre wondering: these Young-Earth Creationists and people like
Duane Gish and others associated with the Institute for Creation Research
are not some kind of isolated lunatic fringe-elements in the broader world
of Creationiststhese are the very same Creationists who have spearheaded
the campaigns to take over school boards and get the courts to force teachers to teach creation-science in the public school science classrooms in
states such as Louisiana, Arkansas and Ohio, among others. Duane Gish
toured the country for years debating evolutionists on college campuses,
and the well-funded ICR runs a museum of Creation, publishes books
and pamphlets, runs a slick web site, etc. So this may seem like lunacyand
in fact it isbut it is dangerous lunacy.
If it werent so pathetic and at the same time so dangerous, one could
laugh at the incredible contortions these people go through to try to prove
that the earths most striking geological features (such as the great mountain ranges, the great valleys and canyons, including the Grand Canyon,
the shape and relative positions of the continents, etc.) have been the way
they are today since the time of Creation, except for the ways they have
been shaped since then by nothing more than the effects of a 40 Day Flood
and only a few thousand years of wind and water erosion. It doesnt matter
to them at all that all modern geologists agree that there has never been a
single Great Flood, covering the entire earth all at once, at any time in the
history of the earth. And it doesnt matter to them that the lifes work of
modern geologists is doing science that requires an understanding of the
actual facts of earths geological history.
Unlike the human authors of the Bible thousands of years ago, modern
geologists now know a great deal about things like continental drift,
v olcanic activity, geological uplifts, wind and water erosion, the sliding and
crashing movements of tectonic plates in the structure of the earth, etc.
They understand, in very concrete and specific ways, how much the earth
has changed over time, and how these completely natural processes (which
we can still observe taking place) have shaped (and continue to shape) all
the landscapes and seascapes of our planet. Most geological processes
take place much too slowly for human eyes to detect, but they can still
be measured with modern scientific instruments and methods. Geologists
have gathered a tremendous amount of concrete scientific evidence showing things like how different kinds of rocks formed at very different times
in earths history and how the face of the earth has changed many times
in the past. For instance, they can tell that there was a time when all the
continents used to be stuck together in just one single land mass they call
Pangea, before they were (a number of different times) pulled apart and
separated by shifting plates under the earths surface. Look at a map of
the world even today and you can still see very clearly how the east coast of
South America used to fit right into the west coast of Africa like two pieces
of a jigsaw puzzle!
Geologists can also tell that the whole middle of North America was at
one time covered by a shallow inland sea, which is why today we can find
fossils of all sorts of sea-dwelling creatures in the middle of the landlocked
midwestern United States, a thousand miles or more from the nearest
modern oceans. Geologists can calculate things like how much time it has
taken for high mountain ranges like the Himalayas or Andes to get pushed
up (and how much they are still growing in places) or how much time
it takes for the Grand Canyon or the deep canyons under the oceans to get
carved out and shaped. And because they understand many of the processes
involved and can actually measure the rate at which such changes take place,
the worldwide community of geologists will tell you with one voice that
there is absolutely no way all of this could have taken place in just a few thousand
years! The natural forces and changes which have shaped and continue to
shape this planet have taken millions and even billions of years to unfold.
Incredibly, none of what these scientists say (and routinely demonstrate)
matters one bit as far as the YECs are concerned: they are true dogmatists,
who cannot be shaken from their preconceived notions by any contrary
evidence. For them, if the Bible indicates that the earth is no more than a
few thousand years old, then thats just the way its got to be! Since they
want to oppose evolution (because it contradicts the Bible), that means they
have to get their Creation stuff taught in science classrooms. But since a
religious viewpoint isnt supposed to be imposed on anyone in the public
schools, they knew they had to try to wrap their religious belief in some
kind of scientific-sounding cover to get it smuggled in. So they coined the
term creation-science and simply proclaimed that this is an alternative
scientific theory, even though they use no scientific methods and can present no actual scientific evidence to support their claims. Theyre deluding
themselves, but theyre also trying to pull one of the greatest con games
in all of history. Take a good look, and you will see that what they are
doing is not genuine science. The method of the Creationists is religiousinspired apriorism: apriorism is when someone starts off with an untested
core assumption about the way things are, and then works back from
that assumption, looking for evidence that can be made to fit the preconceived notion. The Young Earth Creationists start off with the untested
assumption that there is a supernatural power that created humanity and
everything else in just six days a few thousand years ago. And then they
work back from that and try to make their supposed facts (which consist primarily of trying to show evolution is wrong) fit their theory. This is
no way to get at the truth of things, and it certainly isnt science!
probly happened...is that God must have created the earth and things like
the long-gone dinosaurs in a first act of Creation, millions of years ago,
but then He must have destroyed it all and started over from scratch with a
second act of Creation, and thats the one that happened in just six days only
a few thousand years agothats the one thats described in the Bible.
No, you dont buy this? OK, OK, then how about this, say the OECs:
the earth really is as young as the Bible indicates it is (that should at least
make the YECs happy); but, see, God just made it look much older! Of
course, this cross between the YECs and the OECs (known as matureearth Creationists) has never been able to explain why on earth God would
want to be such a deceiver and play such tricks on people.
larger cosmos in such a way as to allow for the subsequent (later) unfolding
of certain natural laws. This included, in Tills view, allowing living species
on earth to evolve on their own, through natural processes, in the ways
that have been explained by Darwinian evolutionary theory. So Gods role,
in this view, was more or less to set the universe in motion at the very
beginning (after which things could evolve on their own), plus to somehow
continue to oversee all that is and to imbue life with purposewhereas
non-religious (secular) evolutionists argue that there is no reason to suppose that any super-natural force has ever been involved in the unfolding of
natural processes on earth or anywhere in the cosmos, and that it is human
beings themselves who imbue life with purpose.
Despite the growing influence of anti-evolution Creationists in recent
decades, one form or other of theistic evolutionism remains a widely held
view among many clergy and other religious people in the United States.
As an attempt to bring together and reconcile religious belief in a supernatural power with genuine scientific knowledge about the natural material
world, this kind of viewpoint runs into a lot of difficulties from both ends of
the creationism vs. evolution argument: On the one hand, it is considered
absolute blasphemy by the traditional anti-evolution Creationists, who feel
that any such concession to evolution science goes against the Bible and
welcomes in the influence of godless atheism. And on the other hand, any
thoroughgoing and systematic application of scientific methods will show
that there is absolutely no basis in the material world (other than in the
creative imaginations of human beings) to assume that any super-natural
force was or had to be in any way involved in initiating or directing any of
the natural processes taking place on earth or anywhere else in the universe.
For instance, as was discussed earlier, any serious grappling with modern
scientific investigations of the processes of self-organization of biochemical molecules shows how likely it is that the first basic building blocks of life
on this planet came together spontaneously out of some of the chemical
elements that we know would have been common in the chemical soup
of early earth and that there is no reason to suppose anything other than
such natural processes were involved when life first emerged on this planet,
some 3.5 billion years ago. And there are also no scientific grounds that
would lead us to suppose that anything other than completely natural
material processes were or had to be involved in the coming into being
and subsequent transformations of that broader portion of material reality
we call the known universe: in fact, increasing numbers of cosmologists
suspect that what we think of as the universe may itself be the result of a
completely natural process through which a number of different universes
get sorted out and themselves evolve (readers interested in evolutionary theory applied to the level of the universe might want to check out
cosmologist Lee Smolins interesting and provocative book The Life of the
Cosmos).
t hinking and about their past and current social purposes and motivations.
(And understood in that sense, it should actually be pretty obvious that science does in fact have a great deal to say about religionand in my opinion
should in fact say it! But this is a subject for another time.)
Ever since Darwin proposed his revolutionary theory that all life on
this planet had evolved out of a series of common ancestors over millions
of years, thanks to a purely natural mechanism he called natural selection,
scientists have been going out and checking it out to see if this holds up in
the real world. Does the fossil evidence conform to the predictions of the
theory of evolution?check. Does the molecular genetic evidence conform
to the predictions of the theory of evolution?check. Does the evidence
from similarities and differences of body parts and functions among living
species conform to the predictions of the theory of evolution?check. Does
the evidence from the geographic distribution of species around the world
and their networks of ecological relationships correspond to the predictions
of the theory of evolution?check. Can evolutionists provide examples of
the kinds of things we should not expect to find if the theory of evolution is
correct?check. Well, has there ever been a single discovery, in any field of
science, which constitutes evidence of something that does not conform to
the predictions of the theory of evolution? No, not onethere is a ton of
concrete data in support of evolution that has been met with broad scientific
agreement but not a single piece of actual scientific evidence has ever been
found to disprove the theory of evolution. Not one. Seriously, what more do
we need?
By contrast the scientific Creationists start off with a religious
assumption: that God made the earth and the universe and everything in it
and that the living species of plants and animals did not evolve out of any
pre-existing different species because, as the Biblical literalist Creationists
see it, species were created by God separately and all at once only a few
thousand years ago, and they are still today just like God created them.
Human beings in particular, say the Creationists, were Gods special creation, and so there is no way humans could have evolved out of non-human
ape-like ancestor species. But, once again, this is not science: it is a religious
or spiritual belief, rooted in a myththe Genesis story of Creation which
people who lived more than 2,000 years ago wrote down and which became
the first part of a religious text, the Bible.
So thats what the traditional Creationists start off with. They want
to believe what they want to believe, and scientific facts be damned! Some
of them on occasion go out in the world and try to find evidence which
would fit their theory, while of course insisting that their theory cannot
possibly be disproved, no matter what. A few of them actually go looking
for remains of Noahs Ark, or try to find fossil footprints of dinosaurs in
rock layers containing fossilized human bones in an effort to show dinosaurs
and humans lived at the same time (which would have to be the case if the
Genesis creation story of all species being created at once were true). Or
they try to make calculations to show that the Grand Canyon could have
been formed by water erosion in just a few thousand years, rather than the
millions of years the geologists agree upon.
Biblical literalist Creationists dont use any of the well-established
scientific methods, dont publish in any scientific journals, and have never
been able to come up with a single piece of actual scientific evidence in
support of their religious theory. But that doesnt keep many of them
from still wanting to appear to be scientific, especially when they are
trying to get their religious beliefs smuggled into science classrooms in an
attempt to confuse people and undermine evolution science, and science
more generally. So what do they do? Well, they spend a good deal of time
trying to make themselves look and sound scientific (at least enough to
try to fool people who have been denied a decent science education). As
mentioned earlier, the Institute of Creation Research (ICR), one of the main
headquarters of the more traditional Biblical literalist Creationists, even has
a museum near San Diego that people can visit and which tries to look like
a natural history museum! People can go there and see colorful dioramas
and displays about the supposed shaping of earths landscapes and the supposed origins of past and present life-forms, and read professional-looking
museum signs which explain (as if these were proven scientific facts) that
people are descended from Adam and Eve, that there once was a global
Flood which covered the whole earth, that all the species of animals alive
today are descended from the animals Noah managed to herd onto his
one boat when God sent the Flood, what Noahs Ark probably looked like
(complete with diagrams!) etc, etc. Of course none of what they show is
supported by any scientific evidence (and all of it is actually contradicted
by tons of scientific evidence), but hey, what the hell, these displays are in a
museum, so there must be some truth to it, right? Well, no, not right. As
the old saying goes, caveat emptor (buyer beware)!
It is important to keep pointing out that the preferred method of the socalled scientific Creationists is not actually to do any real science of their
own: they dont conduct any experiments and investigations in keeping with
scientific standards or accumulate and present any actual scientific evidence
of their own. They are in fact unable to present any evidence that could
withstand any recognized scientific process of testing and verification. So
what they do instead is resort to just trying to poke some holes in their
nemesis, the science of evolution. They figure that by doing this they might
be able to convince people that evolution science rests on shaky ground.
They seem to think that if they could only get people to at least have a few
doubts about evolutionto start wondering a little about whether evolution might not just be a hyped-up and unproven fantasy of non-believer
in many different directions over the past 3.5 billion years, back and forth
along a number of different tracks, including along a lot of short-lived side
branches which, as it turned out, ended up in evolutionary dead ends. And
the evolution of life has also been frequently punctuated with extinctions
(the going out of existence) of speciesincluding mass die-offs of a high
proportion of all the species alive at the time, a phenomenon which has
occurred at least five different times in earths history. One might say that
extinction is not exactly reflective of a uniform trend towards ever increasing biological order and complexity!
In addition, many very simple organisms still thrive on this planet. For
instance, there are so many different species of bacteria, and their population numbers are so great, that many biologists like to say the bacteria still
rule the earth! Similarly, it can be fun (and somewhat humbling!) to ponder
the fact that the estimated total weight (biomass) of the many different
known species of ants (and more ant species are still being discovered!) adds
up to roughly the collective weight of all the individuals who make up our
one single remaining species of humans.
But even if, by increase in complexity we simply mean that, in the
course of 3.5 billion years, life on this planet evolved features and mechanisms which are much more complex than what existed in the simplest
bacteria, and that, in the overall course of evolving, life has diversified into
a tremendous variety of species and complex ecosystems, this still doesnt
violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Why? Because this natural
law predicts that matter will tend to move towards increasing disorder
only in self-contained closed systems. But life on this planet is not in fact a
closed systemit continually takes in energy from an outside source (the sun).
As long as this external input of energy continues, there is no reason to
think that natural systems on this planet could not continue to produce and
organize additional biological order and complexity.
This false objection to evolution (the accusation that evolution supposedly runs counter to the Second Law of Thermodynamics) is typical
of the methods of the supposedly scientific Creationists: they dont even
know what theyre talking about, but they throw a little dust in the air and
make claims that sure sound scientific, and of course this can have the
effect of confusing people.
are willing to change their position? Of course not. They simply act like,
OK, that gap may be gone, but now theres two gapsbecause now theres
one on either side of the new fossil discovery! And if those two gaps later get
filled by the discovery of even more missing link intermediates, theyll just
act as if there are now four gaps that need to be filled...and so of course this
little game of theirs could go on forever. The Creationists will do everything
in their power to try to divert peoples attention from such things as the
already overwhelming, and constantly growing, evidence which connects
modern humans back to earlier primate ancestors through a long step-wise
series of intermediates (or, just to use another example, the evidence which
connects modern-day legless whales to earlier four-legged land ancestors
through a long series of step-wise evolutionary modifications taking place
over millions of years).
In addition to flat out lying about how there are supposedly no intermediates showing step-wise evolutionary modifications in the fossil record
(when any biologist or paleontologist can point to quite a few such series of
intermediates!), the Creationists also fail to understand the fundamental
point that the theory of evolution itself predicts that it should be difficult
and likely even impossible to find fossilized remains of clear intermediate
species representing every single evolutionary modification in neat stepwise fashion, including for the reasons explained above. And the fact is that,
given this, it is nothing short of amazing that so many millions of fossils
of so many different species have been found and continue to be found in
growing numbers on a daily basis.
But in addition to this, our current understanding of how evolution
actually works tells us that brand new species often evolve out of really small and
geographically isolated populations which are reproductively cut off from the
bigger ancestral population from which they were most recently derived.
For reasons that were reviewed earlier in this book (having to do, among
other things, with the disproportionate influence on small populations of
mutations and other changes in gene frequencies in a population), it seems
that major evolutionary innovations (dramatically different features of
form and function) are much more likely to appear at first in really small
populations than in a larger and more stable ancestral gene pool. And once
these evolutionary modifications appear, it takes a lot of time for them to
spread to significant numbers of individuals and to generate even more
diverse variations on a theme, so to speak. All this should make it pretty
clear why finding fossils of those very first small pockets of individuals
(which represent the first appearance of a brand new species) is actually
very unlikelywe tend to catch the evolutionary modifications that have
happened only a bit further down the time line, once they have become
more solidly established and widespread and have come to represent a larger
evolutionary branch. Given all this as well, it is even more amazing that so
many clearly intermediate life-forms have been found in the fossil record!
So, in sum, Creationists at one and the same time lie about gaps
in the fossil record that have long been filled by linked series of ancestors
and descendants, and also reveal their ignorance of how evolution actually
works in not understanding some of the basic reasons why the theory of
evolution actually predicts that not every single gap in the fossil record
will ever likely be filled.
and reassemble multiple times. Its not a perfect system, and at each step in
this molecular process copying errors (mutations) can (and frequently do)
occur. Many of them are minor enough not to have any significant effect
on an organisms offspring. But sometimes mutations cause functional
abnormalities that are severe enough to cause the malformation or even
death of egg or sperm cells or of an entire offspring. Genetic mutations that
are severe enough to kill an offspring or prevent it from ever reproducing
obviously cannot continue to spread from generation to generation. But not
all mutations are harmful, and so it is important to remember the old saying:
mutants are not monsters!
There are in fact many genetic mutations that dont cause significant
harm to descendants, and some of these even contribute to helpful new
features or capacities that may provide descendants with some kind of new
reproductive advantage in a particular environment (especially if the environment happens to be changing in important ways). These kinds of more
favorable new features will tend to spread by natural selection to increasing
numbers of individuals over the generations. For instance, the very first
bipedal (upright-walking) hominids were no doubt genetic freaks in one
sense (relative to the non-bipedal apes from which they were descended)
but bipedalism must have provided some major reproductive advantages
for these early ancestors of ours (and the environments do seem to have
been changing in significant ways around the time bipedalism emerged,
as discussed earlier) because it is evident from the fossil record that, once it
emerged, bipedalism took hold and spread and it was a distinguishing feature of
a great many successful new hominid species over the next few million years.
This is just one of countless examples of how mutations and other genetic
reconfigurations are not always harmful and how they can sometimes open
up whole new reproductively advantageous evolutionary pathways.
I wont repeat here everything that has already been discussed about
how new species can come into being. I simply want to remind readers
that many of the changes involved in this process have actually been directly
observed (even if only on a relatively modest scale) both in the lab and in
the wild (where whole new species of plants have been observed to evolve
simply through chance doublings of chromosomes, for instance, or in cases
where geographically separated species of animals have been shown to
accumulate sufficient genetic differences over many generations that they
have becomeor are in the process of becomingwholly separate species). And it is important to realize that population geneticists and other
evolutionary biologists are routinely able to actually measure such things as
the rates at which genetic changes are taking place in living populations, and
the degree to which these genetic changes are being sorted out by natural
selection in a given environment, producing descendant populations that
are different in measurably significant ways from their ancestors going back
a number of generations.
Again, especially when environments change, some genetic mutations,
instead of being harmful, can actually turn out to be very beneficial to
organisms and ultimately to their populations. The same can be said of the
typical reshuffling of genes individuals inherit from each parent in sexually
reproducing species, which ends up producing new genetic recombinations;
and of the kind of change in gene frequencies at the level of whole populations that can come about simply through genetic drift, as when individuals
migrate in and out of an area for instance. All this genetic shuffling provides
living populations with a constantly changing genetic pooland it is this
that serves as the raw material of evolutionary change.
The Creationists dont have a leg to stand on and just reveal their gross
ignorance when they insist that mutations are always harmful, that nobody
understands the mechanisms through which life evolves, and that the only
thing that could possibly explain why so many species seem so well adapted
to their environments is because a designer god made them that way. All of
these ideas have long been disproved by actual concrete scientific evidence.
also couldnt care less that astronomers today can peer into distant space to
study stars, galaxies, super-nova explosions and so on, and can calculate that
many are billions of light-years away (they are so far away from us that often
what we are detecting now is actually how those stars and so on appeared
and what was happening with them billions of years ago!).
As we have seen, the Young Earth Creationists respond to all this by
claiming that either the physicists are simply making mistakes in all their
calculations of the age of the earth and the universe, or else the divine
Creator, for reasons known only to him, just decided to make the universe
look like its billions of years old, even though, these Creationists insist, it
really isnt.
Its important to understand that if these Young Earth Creationists were
right, and the earth really werent much older than what the Bible suggests,
it wouldnt just be the entire science of modern biology which would go
down the tubes; it would also be all of modern physics, chemistry, geology,
and astronomy as well. All of these sciences, and much of what they have
accomplished in the past couple of centuries, is built on a foundation that
includes the understanding that the earth and its elements and what we
know so far about the larger universe is billions (not thousands or even millions) of years old.
The idea that all these fields of modern science could be so fundamentally wrong (as the YECs insist is the case) is obviously ridiculous to anyone
who stops to think about it, and this seems to be part of what is driving
the emergence of the new school of Creationists who promote Intelligent
Design theory. As we will see, at least some of the Intelligent Design
Creationists (IDCs) are willing to set aside a rigidly literal reading of the
Bible, to accept the scientific evidence that the earth and the universe are
much older than what is indicated in the Bible, and to recognize many of
the advances made by modern astronomy, physics, geology, etc. But when
it comes to biological evolution, they try to argue that natural evolutionary processes and mechanisms cant possibly account for all the features
of living organisms (such as the complex structures of some biochemical
systems functioning inside of cells) and so they too end up imagining that
a super-natural higher power, a divine designer, had to be involved at least
at some point in the process. (The Intelligent Design Creationists and their
mistaken beliefs will be discussed more a little later.)
But the Young-Earth Creationists (including most of the so-called
scientific Creationists lobbying to change laws to enforce the teaching
of Creationism in science classrooms) arent willing to give up on any of
their core beliefs, including the age of the earth and the fossils within it.
The YECs say all the scientists are simply wrong in calculating the age of
the earth at roughly 4.5 billion years. They say that evolutionists arrived
at this figure through circular reasoning: dating the age of rocks by the
fossils they contain, and then dating the fossils according to what rock layers
they are found in. This sure makes it sound like the evolutionists are applying bad scientific methods, doesnt it? But the truth is that there really is a
consistent, time-ordered sequence of similar fossils that are found in similar
rock layers all over the worldlayers of sediments which were deposited
and hardened into rock in different time periods of this planets history (different geological eras). This ordered chronology or sequence of different
kinds of rock layers and their associated fossils (known as the geological
column) is very familiar to geologistsit was known about even before
Darwins time. Geologists realized that the different layers in the geological
column had formed and accumulated at different times in the past and so
represented different eras in the geological history of the earth long before
anyone knew anything about the evolution of life. And there is a real (not
imagined) correlation between certain kinds of rock layers and certain
kinds of fossils, which is repeated all around the world. The more 19th
century geologists and early naturalists thought about this, the more this
started to suggest to some of them that what they were looking at was
evidence that not only the shape and form of the inanimate earth but also
the living creatures themselves had actually changed over time, had in some
way evolved.
As we have seen, the Young-Earth Creationists explain the fact that different collections of fossils are consistently found in different kinds of rock
layers by saying ridiculously absurd things like that, during the supposed
40Day Biblical Flood, some creatures must have drowned early on (and
immediately sunk all the way to the bottom), which supposedly explains
why their remains are now found in the deepest layers of sediments;
while some other creatures (the better swimmers and the more intelligent
creatures) must have managed to survive longer, which would supposedly
explain why their remains would be found in upper layers of sediments
deposited by the Flood. I find it actually incredible that adult human beings
of supposedly sound mindespecially people claiming to practice some
kind of sciencecould actually say such things with a straight face! Of
course, these Creationists are completely unable to explain why not a single
fossil organism is ever found out of place with respect to the geological layering:
were they all such equally bad, or equally good, swimmers?
Many biologists have a lot of fun exposing this nonsense. For instance,
Brown University biologist Ken Miller (a Catholic and a religious believer
who tries in various ways to reconcile science and religion, but who has no
doubts that about the evolution of life) often makes the point that not a single
fossil of the flowering plants is found in the first 2 billion years of the geological
recordnot a dandelion, not a rose, not an acorn, not so much as a mustard seed.
And so he poses the obvious question: wouldnt the churning waters of the
supposed Biblical Flood have mixed together many of these seeds and plant
parts and deposited them throughout the layers of muddy sediments which
later turned to rock? One would think so, but as it turns out only plants
that produce leaves (but no flowers), such as club-mosses and giant ferns, are
found in the older (lower) sediments. The distribution patterns of fossils in
the different rock layers has nothing to do with any global Flood that supposedly covered the whole earth (and for which there is also absolutely no
evidence either): the real reason not even a single one of the flowering plants
has ever been found in the lower 2 billion years of sediments is simply
because flowering plants hadnt yet evolved back then. In fact, even though
flowering plants dominate the earth today, they evolved fairly recentlyless
than 100 million years agoin what is known as the Cretaceous era.
The Creationists also dont have a good explanation for why all the
human fossils are found only in the very top layers of sediments. As Ken
Miller humorously points out, for the Creationist Flood theory to be right,
it would have to be the case that all the humans alive at the time of the supposed 40 Day Global Flood managed to swim or tread water for something
like 39 days, drowning only on the very last day!
And of course, as has been spoken to earlier, the age of things and the
time at which they lived is something which is not just a matter of speculation but which can now be quite accurately and consistently determined
through a great many scientific dating techniques, including various forms
of radiometric dating based on the known rates of decay of radioactive elements in the earth as well as newer techniques of molecular dating. There
are so many dating techniques now, and it is so clear that scientists can get
reliable approximations of the age of just about anything by using a combination of such techniques (to see whether they keep coming up with the same
age), that it is getting harder and harder for anyone to take seriously the
Creationists so-called critique of actual scientific dating or to entertain
seriously the Creationists notion of the Biblical Flood being responsible for
the orderly distribution of species in the geological layers.
While the YECs still stubbornly cling to the literal Biblical view of a
young earth and a divine creation of everything all at once (and no more
than 10,000 years ago), more and more Creationists seem to be willing to
abandon this view, accepting the old age of the earth, accepting that the
fossils reveal that different plants and animals lived in different eras, but then
concluding either that God must have engaged in multiple acts of creation at
different times, or, alternatively, that God simply created the beginnings of
life but then allowed life to evolve.
Because this kind of modified Creationist view is in stark conflict
with what is said in the Bible, it is a source of great tension and disagreement within Creationist circles.
sacks (like our distant reptilian ancestors) not because we need them (we
dont) and not because they make sense from the standpoint of any kind of
conscious and intelligent design (they dont) but simply because these are
left-overs from an earlier evolutionary time, the kind of marks and reminders
of past history and of distant ancestors which all living species (including
people) carry within them to this day. Creationists dont have any good
explanations for these kinds of featuresonce again they can only attribute
these apparent design flaws to the capricious and mysterious mind of
God.
Not surprisingly, one of the reasons many religious people in modern
times reject such creationism and actually recognize and accept the scientific evidence of evolution (even if they choose to still believe in God) is
because they dont particularly like the idea of conceiving of God as some
kind of deceiving trickster who made everything in just the right way to
fool people into believing that things are older than they are and that life
evolved when it really didnt. Theyd rather try to redefine God in some
new waysways which dont involve rejecting the accumulated scientific
evidence about the great age of the earth and the universe or the evidence
that all life has evolved and that even people evolved from non-human
ancestors.
Unfortunately creationism remains far from a dead issue among other
sectors of people. In fact the new breed of Creationists known as the
Intelligent Design Creationists (IDCs) are currently growing in influence,
in part because they are perfectly willing to completely abandon much of
what is said in the Bible which science has long proven to be factually incorrect, while still clinging to the belief that living species could not have come
to be the way they are merely through natural evolutionary processes and
insisting that some kind of super-natural intelligent designer (in other
words, God) has been involved at some point in the process. We will further
discuss the Intelligent Design Creationists and their baseless attacks on evolution science (and science more generally) in the next section.
try to take over local school boards and change textbooks and state laws setting criteria for science education; they still launch courtroom challenges to
try to get the government to order public school science teachers to teach
a set of religious beliefs (so-called creation-science) in clear violation of
the constitutional separation of church and state, etc. But while this is all
still going on, these Biblical literalist promoters of so-called creation-science (the ones who insist that every word in the Biblical story of Genesis is
literally true) have been increasingly discredited in recent years as growing
numbers of scientists from all fields of science have stepped forward to
expose and denounce so-called creation-science as pseudoscience (phony
science) and to explain, over and over again, why the scientific evidence for
evolution is rock solid, how the methods of the Creationists are not at all
scientific and how they are promoting not science but religion.
Although the Biblical literalist Creationists who were trying to get
creation-science taught in the public school science classrooms were very
active throughout the 1980s and 1990s and made some gains, they also suffered some significant setbacks, especially in the wake of their defeats in a
number of the more high-profile court cases during those years. For instance,
in a very important case in 1982 known as McLean et al. v. Arkansas Board of
Education, many prominent scientists from a number of different fields of
science (including a number of Nobel Prize winners and some well-known
evolutionists such as Stephen Jay Gould and Francisco Ayala) got together to
explain to the Court why evolution is such a well-established fact of science
and once again to make the case that there is absolutely nothing scientific
about so-called creation-science. In addition to the testimony from the
scientific community, a number of religious scholars and philosophers of
science also joined in to further explain the differences between science and
religion and to make clear why creation-science does not belong in the
science classroom. The result was a setback for the creationists. Then in
the 1987 Louisiana case known as Edwards v. Aguillard, the Supreme Court
ruled that it would be unconstitutional to order that creation-science be
taught in science classrooms alongside the science of evolution (a law the
Creationists had managed to get the state of Louisiana to adopt) because
this would require that students be taught a particular religious belief in state
run schools (including the belief that a super-natural power created human
beings) and this would clearly be unconstitutional. Despite all these setbacks, the traditional Biblical literalist Creationists are far from down and
out, and to this day they are spreading a lot of confusion at the grassroots
level, where they continue to try to get local schoolboards and legislatures
to force teachers to teach anti-science creationism, and they have had some
success in getting some school textbook publishers to insert little evolution
disclaimers into high school biology textbooks, encouraging kids to think
that evolution is not a settled question and to keep their minds open (!) to
(obviously religious) alternative theories.
The Creationists are not satisfied with the successes they have had
(taking advantage of many peoples ignorance and gullibility) at the local
and state levels. They want to impose the teaching of their religious dogma
on the country as a whole. And to be successful at doing thatespecially in
the wake of those high-profile courtroom losses and widespread denunciations of creationism by an increasingly outraged scientific communitythey
need a new strategy: they need to find some new arguments to get over with
a general public which has become a bit more aware and suspicious of the
anti-scientific nature of their creation-science claptrap in recent years;
and they also need a revamped legal strategy if they hope to get U.S. courts
to give a green light to the forcible teaching of a religious viewpoint and
agenda in the public schools.
This is where the new breed of Intelligent Design Creationists comes
in:
The Intelligent Design Creationists are increasingly in the forefront
of trying to undermine the science of evolution and smuggle faith-based
theories of life into the high school science classrooms. And they are even
making some beginning inroads into some college campuses! These new
Creationists are much more slick than their Biblical literalist brethren and
they therefore have the potential to create a great deal more confusion and
harm, including among people who are relatively well educated.
Philip Johnson, a Berkeley professor of law, is generally recognized as
the leading ideologue of their movement. A believer in divine creation,
Johnson knows enough about the law and the U.S. Constitution to realize
that the legal strategy of the so-called scientific creationists of the 80s
and 90s (promoting the Biblical creation story as literal truth) is unlikely to
succeed in changing the laws at the national level. So he is revamping the
terms of the Creationist argument: no more talk about the Bible, Genesis,
Adam and Eve, Noah, or the idea that God made everything in six days.
That kind of talk makes it too easy for the theory of divine creation to be
barred from the classrooms on the basis that it is teaching a specific religious
viewpoint (duh). Johnson realizes that the Biblical literalist Creationists have
been hurting the Creationist cause by coming off too much like fanatically
irrational religious dogmatists.
What to do? Well, why not make it look like its the other way around?
Yeah, thats it... make it look like its the evolutionists who are stubbornly
close-minded and dogmatic and that they have turned the science of evolution, and scientific naturalism in general, into what amounts to a new
state religion! And then make it look like your breed of new Intelligent
Design Creationists are by contrast much more open-minded and reasonable people, who are pretty much open to any possibilities, but who simply
feel that evolution is far from proven, and that in addition there are good
and rational reasons to think that it is more likely that a divine power created
biological life. You can do this, Johnson basically argues, without explicitly
promoting the Biblical story of Genesis, and if you handle it that way youll
have a much better chance of being able to convince Congress and the
Supreme Court that it would be viewpoint discrimination (and therefore
unconstitutional) to keep the alternative scientific theory of Intelligent
Design out of the science classrooms or any other public venue.
Of course the basic problem with this version of Creationist reasoning
is still that:
1) there is plenty of concrete scientific evidence that conclusively supports
the fact that evolution has occurred (and that life continues to evolve), and
which has demonstrated time and time again some of the basic mechanisms
through which evolutionary change takes place (such as natural selection).
So the theory of evolution is not just some kind of untested viewpoint
which could just as equally be true or false; and
2) the theory of Intelligent Design is an alternative viewpoint
alrightbut it is still a religious viewpoint and cannot be legitimately passed
off as any kind of alternative science.
In fact, as we will show, Intelligent Design is just as lacking in scientific
basis as all those older versions of scientific creationism. It can however
be more confusing (and to a broader variety of people) for the following
reasons:
The more traditional old-style Biblical Creationism has often been promoted by relatively unsophisticated people who more often than not end
up coming off like irrational zealots and who are obviously deeply ignorant
of even the most basic scientific principles and practices. But the Intelligent
Design people are generally a mild-mannered bunch that includes a number
of highly educated scholars and college professors. Some of them even have
multiple graduate degrees in fields such as law, philosophy, mathematics,
engineering and even a few with degrees in biochemistry and molecular
biology. And while they generally do admit to believing in a super-natural
higher power and divine creation as a matter of religious background and
ongoing faith, they also insist that they are the ones who are being truly
scientific, because, unlike the evolutionists, their minds are supposedly not
clouded by the institutionalized secular prejudices of modern American
science. Philip Johnson in particular strenuously argues that secular science
(science which seeks to understand the natural mechanisms of natural processes without reference to any super-natural power) needs to be replaced
with a theistic sciencea method of doing science which would actively
incorporate the idea that God exists into the scientific process itself! With
this broader philosophical broadside the Intelligent Design Creationists
aligned with Philip Johnson show themselves to be even more profoundly
at the beginning of the 19th century, the Reverend William Paley famously
argued that only a divine designer could have brought into being something
as complex as a human eye. Charles Darwin himself was very aware of
such arguments, which were popular throughout the 19th century. In The
Origin of Species Darwin paid a lot of attention to explaining how, given
enough time, complex features of living things (including something like
the human eye) could in fact have been brought into being and shaped by
nothing more than the simple and entirely natural mechanism of natural
selection. Modern evolutionary biologists today know Darwin was in fact
correct, and can trace and map out the likely series of step-wise evolutionary modifications involved in something like the evolution of mammalian
eyes in much greater detail than Darwin could ever have imagined. But,
even back in the 1860s, Darwin had grasped the basics, which is a lot more
than can be said about the modern-day Intelligent Design people who are
resurrecting William Paleys tired old argument.
At the same time, todays IDCs are finding some new ways to modernize the Creationist argument from design: Not only do these IDCs
seem perfectly willing to cut their losses and accept that the Bible is not
the literal Word of God (this of course infuriates the old-style Biblical literalist Creationists who accuse them of selling out the Bible) but they
generally also go even further, and accept the fact that life-forms on this
planet have undergone some amount of biological evolution, and even that
some amount of biological evolution continues to occur (this, of course,
also lands them in trouble with some of the more traditional anti-evolution
Creationists, with whom theyd still like to maintain some kind of united
front on basic religious grounds).7
These modern-day IDCs dont all speak with a single unified voice, but
in general their opposition to the theory of evolution could be summarized
as follows:
1) Intelligent Design tries to oppose the theory of evolution on
philosophical and methodological grounds
The Intelligent Design people (and in particular their head ideologue
Philip Johnson) basically argue that modern scientists have fallen into a fundamental error by adopting the methods of scientific naturalism through
which science traditionally seeks to understand natural phenomena by
investigating exclusively natural processes (the only kind of processes that
can be investigated!). They say that modern scientists are wrong not to
make room for an operating assumption that an overarching super-natural
force could be overseeing and guiding these natural processes and the universe as a whole. Scientific naturalism, which concerns itself only with
natural phenomena, is how all modern science is actually done, and it is
how all modern scientific advances are actually accomplished. Despite this,
IDCs like Johnson insist the modern scientific community is prejudiced and
closed-minded for not allowing for God and building this possibility right
into the scientific process itself. But the fact is, and most scientists (even
the ones who are religious) are very clear on this: If scientists abandoned
the secular methods of science and attempted instead to investigate the
workings of the material natural world under the guidance of an outlook
and method which takes as its fundamental point of departure the idea that
there exists a super-natural realm (which, by definition, is not subject to the
laws of change and development of the material world and which cannot
itself be investigated or verified), this would end up completely destroying the
scientific process and would cause modern scientific advances and the overall development of human knowledge to grind to a halt! I will return to some of these
philosophical issues a bit later on.
2) Intelligent Design tries to oppose the theory of evolution on
scientific grounds
The IDCs go on to claim that any scientist who frees his or her mind of
the supposed prejudice of scientific naturalism and is willing to be open
to the idea of God will come to realize that there is actual evidence in the
world around us that life was designed by a higher power, a conscious intelligence. Today the Intelligent Design claims that attempt to masquerade as
science seem to center on William Dembskis idea of a design filter (also
known as the design inference) and, even more so, biochemist Michael
Behes argument about irreducible complexity in natural systems.
To briefly summarize these two pseudo-scientific arguments:
Evolution is Not
Just a Chance Process
Intelligent Design Creationists (and
Creationists in general) somehow always
seem to have trouble remembering that
evolutionists dont claim that evolution is
just a randomly occurring chance process,
where everything happens just by accident. So when they constantly say things
like such and such very complex structure
or function could not possibly have arisen just by
chance, therefore it must have been designed,
they are revealing, among other things, that
they dont have a clue about how evolution really works. Evolution is not in fact an
entirely chance or random process, as any
serious student of biology should be able to
explain. First of all, the appearance of any
new features, at whatever level of organization (from the molecular to the ecological),
is always going to be severely limited and
constrained by the properties of whatever it
is that they are evolving out of. Once again
(you can never say this enough!) evolution
can only work with the material at hand
in preceding generations; it cant come up
with just any old thing any old time. Second
of all, it is important to remember that
natural selection itself (a central and crucial
mechanism of evolutionary change) is the
very opposite of a chance process.
The actual chance part of the evolutionary process has to do with the frequent
occurrence of unpredictable genetic copying errors (mutations), with the kind of
relatively random reshufflings of genes that
occur when individuals (especially sexually
reproducing individuals) reproduce, and
with the often unpredictable changes to a
local populations overall gene pool which
occur through such things as genetic drift.
So chance is clearly an important component of evolutionary change.
And even these occurrences are ultimately only
relatively random since there are, after all, certain
limits and restrictions on precisely what random
genetic changes can occur at any given time; but from
253
able to clot. He argues that these kinds of highly complex molecular systems could not have been shaped merely by natural evolutionary processes
(which, like Dembski, he also incorrectly refers to as chance processes).
Therefore, he concludes, the very fact that such complexity even exists is
itself concrete evidence of intelligent designi.e., that some kind of
conscious intelligence (basically a divine super-natural power) must have
stepped in at some point to bring such complex processes into being.
Behe and other IDCs have extended this reasoning even further, arguing that some biological systems can be described as irreducibly complex.
They define a multi-part biological system as irreducibly complex if
it appears it would collapse and stop being functional if it were missing
even just one of its interlocking parts. Using examples from his field of
biochemistry, Behe points to a number of systems (in this case biochemical
reactions) which would in fact be unable to perform their current functions
if they were missing even one of their components. He then declares that
he considers this proof of design by some kind of conscious intelligence
(in other words, god). Why? Why would it necessarily be the case that, if
a particular biochemical system cant perform its particular (current) function unless it has all its parts up and running, this is automatically proof
of intelligent design? Because, argues Behe, natural biological evolution
couldnt possibly have brought all those necessary parts into being (and into
such complex coordinated functioning) all at once, in one fell swoop. Even
if this were true, the evolutionists point out, we know that natural evolution is perfectly capable of bringing complex systems into being through
a step-by-step process spread out over a very long period of time, rather
than all at once. But Behe simply doesnt believe evolution could have built
up complex biochemical processes one step at a time. Why not? Because,
argues Behe, a system still missing some of its parts would be non-functional (and even likely to collapse) and so it could never provide organisms
with a reproductive advantage and therefore natural selection would never
favor such piecemeal evolutionary development and allow such incomplete
and non-functional systems to spread over the generations.
But as we will see, the only reason Behe and his fellow IDCs cant understand how relatively simple and well-known evolutionary processes could
have brought such genuinely complex features and processes into being
without any super-natural powers having to be involved is that (a)they
dont actually understand how evolution works, and (b) they dont even
understand the nature of biological complexity very well. But, since Michael
Behe is one of the most influential of the current crop of Intelligent Design
Creationists, and since the fact that he is a trained biochemist is probably
enough to mislead some people into thinking that he must know what hes
talking about, it is worthwhile examining, and refuting, his arguments in
some detail.
yet been fully described or understood in complete detail, and then basically
acting as if what is not yet completely understood (by him or by scientists in
general) is automatic proof of gods involvement in the matter.
If this sounds familiar it should: its basically no different than the reasoning of the more old-fashioned Biblical literalist Creationists who try to
discredit evolution by pointing to some gaps in the fossil record (or gaps
in human understanding more generally), only to turn their attention to
something else that has not yet been found or understood as soon as those
particular holes get filled by the advances and development of science.
But lets look a bit more closely at Behes specific arguments.8
In his book Darwins Black Box and in his various presentations, Behe
often likes to start off by making the point that: for the Darwinian theory of
evolution to be true, it has to account for the molecular structure of life. This is
in fact very true, and any evolutionary biologist will readily agree with this.
But then Behe goes on to say that the purpose of the book he has written
is to show that it does not.
This is a bold claim, but the reality is that Behe has ultimately failed in
his mission: the examples of complex sub-cellular biochemical systems he
claims represent evidence of Design are nothing of the sort, and there
is nothing which legitimately would cause one to think that they cant be
accounted for by standard principles and mechanisms of evolution.
Lets look at this a bit:
Behes basic argument is that evolution may account for the features of
life at every other level of organization, but not at the sub-cellular molecular
level. Unlike the Young Earth Creationists, for instance, Behe is at least
willing to acknowledge that the universe is billions of years old, and even
that living species are biologically related to each other through lines of
common descent. I find the idea of common descent (that all organisms
share a common ancestor) fairly convincing, Behe writes, and have no
particular reason to doubt it.
According to the biochemist and evolutionist Ken Miller, who has personally debated Michael Behe on a number of occasions, Behe even goes so
far as to say that he has absolutely no problem with the idea that humans and
apes shared a common ancestor. (OK, now hes really distanced himself from
the Biblical literalist breeds of Creationists!) But if Behe accepts so much
of the concrete evidence of evolution and common descent then what is it
about the theory of evolution that Michael Behe doesnt agree with? Well, it
seems that its only the complex biochemical systems operating inside cells
which he thinks are evidence of divine designhe just doesnt believe they
could have come about simply through the known mechanisms of entirely
natural biological evolution.
As a biochemist, Behe knows many of these systems well. Actually
part of his problem seems to stem from his being too narrowly focused on
other biologists would ever even bother to respond to Behes silly arguments if it werent for the fact that he has been built up as something of a
poster-boy for the larger Intelligent Design movement.
How could it be possible for all of the molecular information needed
for all the later complex biochemical processesthe ones operating in
organisms that even Behe admits had not even evolved until hundreds of
millions of years after the first appearance of lifeto already have been
contained in the very first living cells (the ones that didnt even use these
processes) billions of years ago? Behe says he cant prove it of course, but he
speculates that a lot of preformed genetic information (which would not
be called into action for hundreds of millions of years) must have been kept
dormant thanks to the control of a regulatory gene (the kind of biochemical on-off switch that we find in many sub-cellular systems today) that
Behe imagines must have remained turned off for hundreds of millions
of years.
Again, this is really, really bad science! Of course we know that there
are regulatory genes in todays living cells which sometimes keep certain
molecular functions temporarily turned off. But it is completely ridiculous to suggest that genes coding for all the sub-cellular molecular functions
which later appeared could have already been present in a dormant
(turned off ) state in the very first living cells and then been passed on from
Do Lottery Winners
Win By Design?
In an interesting article entitled A
Designer Universe? which has been
reprinted in numerous publications (see, for
instance, the October 21, 1999 NY Review of
Books or the Sept-Oct 2001 Skeptical Inquirer)
the Nobel physicist and cosmologist Steven
Weinberg explained that he finds absolutely
no evidence of design in the larger universe,
nor any reason to think that what are called
the constants of nature have in any way
been fine-tuned to provide just the right
conditions for the appearance of life. He
makes the point that our own existence in
a corner of our solar system that happens to seem ideally suited to support life
could seem at first to be rather amazing and
miraculous, until you step back and realize that its obviously only in a part of the
universe that happened to already be suitable for the emergence of life that life could
seem miraculous anymore when you consider the huge number of players who didnt
win anything at all).
It is a demonstrated fact that, as soon
as self-reproducing life emerges, it naturally
starts to evolve. It does this through a combination of chance factors (such as copying
error mutations) and non-chance factors
(such as natural selection, which sorts
out reproducing individuals in relation to
particular environments). The natural development of the many different (present and
past) species on earth through evolution,
without any supernatural designer having
been involved, could seem hard to believe,
unless and until you get a sense of how
this process actually works and you put the
existence of the many different species in the
larger context of the operation of the evolutionary process over not just a few decades,
or a few hundred or a few thousand years,
but millions and billions of years. J
In short, even if some super-natural intelligent designer had somehow packed the first cells nearly 4 billion years ago with all the chemical
instructions which would ever be needed, and then simply allowed natural evolution to take place for the next hundreds of millions of years (which
seems to be Behes view) theres simply no way the genetic information
needed for those later molecular systems (such as the mammalian bloodclotting mechanism) would have remained unchanged and in its original
state all that time. And yet it is the way that complex molecular systems
are structured today inside living cells that Behe claims is evidence of the
initial intelligent design which supposedly occurred billions of years ago.
There is therefore an enormous logical inconsistency in Behes basic argument, and it is one for which he has no answers.
But leaving aside for now the total nonsense of Behes idea that life
somehow started off with simple cells designed by a super-natural power
to contain preformed instructions for all later cellular functions, lets look
at whats wrong with Behes most fundamental argument: the idea that if
a biological system is extremely complex it cannot have been brought into
being by the known mechanisms of evolution.
This is simply not true. Again, all biologists would agree that many
biological systems can in fact be described as highly complex, whether
youre looking inside of cells or at any other levels of organization, such
as are represented by complex body parts, entire organisms, whole populations of organisms, or even larger-scale ecological communities. Something
is complex when it has many interacting and interdependent parts or
components (and many biologists and others will tell you that they find
that much of the beauty and wonder of life resides in the great diversity
of life, itself a form of complexity). And one could even think of living
cells as complex little ecosystems of biochemical molecules involved in
all sorts of complex interactions. For instance, it is a fact that it takes many
different distinct chemical steps for cells to do things like metabolize (process) energy sources, reproduce their genetic machinery, produce defensive
mechanisms, repair themselves, interact with other cells to perform complex functions such as blood clotting, etc., etc. But to say that a system
is complex really only means that it is not simplethat it has many
(rather than only a few) different parts, working together in some kind of
larger integrated process. Complexity is not in and of itself mysterious or
unexplainable by natural processes.
To illustrate another example of biological complexity, you can think,
for example, of the difference between a piece of land that a lumber company has planted with just one single species of pine tree, and compare that
to a piece of land on which grows a natural forest. The pine plantation
designed by the lumber company for quick turnover doesnt have a whole
lot going oneverywhere you look, you see row after row of just one
species of tree, and such uniformity in turn produces little variety in food
and other resources that other species can make use of. So the diversity of
animal species occupying that environment tends to be very low as well
(in fact, despite the number of trees, such a pine plantation is something
of a biological wasteland). It is, in any case, a very simple system. By contrast, think of a tropical rain forest (or even a mixed deciduous forest in
North America): there you will find a great many different species of trees,
of shrubs, of fungi and flowering plantsand all this will create a whole
complex patchwork of many different pockets of resources and habitats,
which will be used in a near infinite variety of ways by thousands of different species of insects, birds, amphibians, reptiles, mammals, and so on.
And one way or another (directly or indirectly) the various components
of this overall systemincluding all these different species of plants and
animalsinteract and interconnect in complex ways. A great many species
are actually directly inter-dependent in such systems: they are unable to be
fully functional and to sustain themselves in a healthy state one without
the other. This is true, for instance, of the two-way interactions that bind
animal pollinators (insects, birds, bats, or even monkeys) with the flowering
plants they pollinate, or bind predators with their prey. In fact, these kinds
of complex interactions are often so integral to the healthy functioning of
a larger complex ecosystem that if you take out some of these living links
(by killing off too many insects and birds with pesticides or causing the
extinction of a top predator, for example) entire biological populations, and
sometimes even entire ecosystems, have been known to collapse.
So any complex biological system, whether at the molecular level or
at the level of a whole larger ecosystem, is made up of a web of many
interlocking and interdependent links between different life-forms. The
sheer number and variety of links often seem to provide complex systems
with greater relative steady-state stability than can typically be found in
much simpler systems. But if too many of the links in a complex system get
disrupted (or even if just a particularly critical link gets disrupted, as might
be the case when a top predator is eliminated from a system, for instance)
then it is the case that even such complex systems can collapse, in which
case they often fall hard (unfortunately this is exactly what has been
happening to the vast bulk of the planets richly complex rain forestsa
human-engineered disruption and dislocation of some of this planets
most rich and complex ecosystems which is taking place on a monumental
scale).9
Why bring up this question of complex ecosystems in a discussion of
Behes Intelligent Design proposals which focus on the sub-cellular level?
In part to make the point that the sub-cellular molecular world Behe talks
about does not have a corner on biological complexity. And yet, as far as
I know, Behe doesnt choose to argue that these other levels of biological
were less functional in a harmful waythe genetic variation at that earlier point may have given rise to some more limited but still reproductively
advantageous functions for the organisms involved (such as a more simple
or primitive version of what would later be further modified into a more
developed and complex feature); or it may simply have generated features
which performed entirely different functions. Furthermore, the genetic
reshufflings that go on as each generation reproduces can also bring forth
some features which are basically just neutral and non-adaptive by products
of this process and of prior development, and which confer no particular
reproductive advantage or disadvantage to the organisms having these
features, and so are not particularly subject to being spread nor eliminated
by natural selection. Such relatively neutral features (which Stephen Jay
Gould and Richard Lewontin called spandrels) do however sometimes
end up becoming integrated as one component of some new evolutionary
structure or feature at a later time, and in this way can end up contributing
to building up more complex features performing entirely new functions,
which, at that later time, may well become subject to natural selection.
Behe seems to have difficulty conceiving of how a complex multi-part
system can have evolved in a step-wise process of evolutionary modifications of pre-existing parts and systems which performed different (but not
necessarily in any way harmful) functions. He often likes to illustrate what
he calls irreducible complexity by showing people a five-part humandesigned mousetrap (which has a platform, a spring, a hook, etc). Behe
says the mousetrap is irreducibly complex because it requires all of its
five parts to be present and functioning all at the same time in order to be
functional (catch mice). A mousetrap missing any one of its parts would
be completely useless and non-functional says Behe (and he uses this as
an analogy, to say that a biological system which requires all its parts, to
function could not have evolved out of a system missing some of those
parts because that incomplete system would have been harmfully nonfunctional and would have been eliminated by natural selection). But as the
evolutionist Ken Miller often humorously counters, there are ways in which
the mousetrap can be missing one or more of its parts and still be perfectly
functional...though in a different way: Miller demonstrates this in front of
audiences by removing a couple of the components of the mousetrap and
showing everyone that it is still perfectly functional...but as a tie-clip! In
this way Miller is humorously illustrating the fact that the evolutionary
precursor of a now seemingly irreducibly complex biological system
(at the biochemical level, or any other level of organization) could indeed
have been functional in ancestor lines even if it had fewer parts (or parts
arranged or interacting in different ways)as long as you understand that
its function may have been significantly different in the ancestor lines.
Consider another of Behes favorite examples of supposed irreducible complexity: the series of biochemical reactions which allow bacterial
or cellular cilia or flagellamicroscopic hair-like or whip-like structures
found on some living cells (including sperm cells)to move through their
environment. These complex series of chemical reactions take place inside
tiny, microscopic tubes inside the cilia and flagella. Disrupt some of those
chemical steps and the cilium or flagellum cant properly move anymore.
Is this biochemical system complex? Absolutely. Do we know every single
last thing about these processes yet? No, not quite. But do biologists have
very good reasons to think that even the most complex of these structures
(ones Behe would actually consider to be irreducibly complex) could
have evolved naturally and without divine intervention out of simpler preexisting structures, which were already present in earlier ancestor species?
Yes. In fact Ken Miller (himself a biochemist) provides real-life examples of
many such structures, which are made up of a smaller number of tubules
(they are in this way simpler) and which dont provide the full range of
functions found in the more complex onesbut they do have some of the
structures and some of the parts, and they do function (in more limited
ways). These simpler systems still exist in living organisms where they have
obviously not been eliminated, as somehow faulty, by natural selection.
If genetic mutations appear in some of these simpler precursor systems, and they happen to provide some new functional capacities that end
up giving organisms a reproductive edge in a given environment (betterswimming sperm, for instance) natural selection will typically spread these
modifications over subsequent (following) generations. This happens
automatically (without any divine intervention being required), and in this
way evolution can build new structures and produce new (or enhanced)
functions out of those simpler parts which were already present (and performing different or more limited functions) in earlier generations and in
pre-existing ancestor species.
Why isnt the great complexity of something like human and other
mammalian eyes (camera-eyes with stereoscopic vision) not evidence of
divine design, as has been argued by many intelligent design types ever
since the 19th century? Because there is no reason to think that standard
evolutionary mechanisms wouldnt have been sufficient to build up such
complex structures over time (lots of time) through a series of step-wise
evolutionary modifications involving the usual mix of chance genetic
mutations and reshufflings (which we know are constantly occurring in any
living population) coupled with non-chance natural selection. Once even a
primitive and very limited ability to detect light (or crude shapes or motion)
happened to emerge in an ancient line of organisms, it is not difficult to
imagine that natural selection would likely have heavily promoted its
spread.
Even the evolution of the very first simple and primitive eye-spots,
which are simple clusters of a few light-detecting cells with only very limited
light-detecting capacities (and which can still be observed in various living
organisms today) would have been likely to provide any animals which had
them with a huge reproductive edge in any environment in which there is
any light at all (just think of the kind of reproductive edge that an organism
could gain from being able to even just crudely detect motion and shadows
and in this way evade predators, for example).
So in reply to the argument that Creationists have been making since
the 19th century: what good is half an eye?the short answer is: plenty!
Later on, any genetic modifications which occurred among the descendants
of these organisms, and which happened to cause further improvements in
the ability to see in various ways, would also likely to be heavily favored by
natural selection (and this is clearly what has happened!), producing even
more fancy eyes and expanded visual ranges.11
What these examples illustrate, once again, is that biological structures
and systems can evolve from the more simple to the more complex (and
sometimes the other way around, as in the case of the blind cave fish) in a
step-wise evolutionary process spread out over a very long period of time.
The evolution of increased complexity in any system doesnt have to happen
all at once: less complex and more limited partial systems and features
present in older evolutionary lines can still be perfectly functionalto a
different degree, or in a different way.
The first part of evolutionary biochemist Ken Millers book Finding
Darwins God is full of examples of actual observable biochemical evolutionary pathways which could easily have undergone such series of step-wise
evolutionary modifications before later producing what Behe thinks of
as irreducibly complex systems. This is no different in essence than the
well-documented step-wise evolutionary processes we can see in the fossil
record, as we discussed earlier and which Miller also reviews. For instance,
there are three little bones in the middle ear of mammals which make up the
apparatus that allows people and other mammals to hear. This system fits
Behes definition of irreducibly complex, because if you remove any one
of those bones, all hearing is lost! So how could evolution have come up
with enough simultaneous mutations to generate such a complex three-part
system all at once? Well, thats just itevolution didnt do it all at once.
Time-ordered sequences of fossils reveal that evolution built a mammalian
inner ear out of some of the rear jaw bones which existed in the reptile-like
ancestors of the first mammals. Reptilian jaws had undergone many earlier
evolutionary modifications themselves over time, and the result of some
of these earlier evolutionary processes had been that, in some of these old
evolutionary branches, the reptilian jaw bone components had (over many
generations) moved way back towards the back of the head. And we can
also tell, by looking at the fossils, that at a certain point in this evolutionary
process, the position and interrelationship of some of those rear jaw bones
would have been configured in such a way that they would just have happened to pick up sound vibrations. This wasnt planned or designed
by any outside powerit just simply emerged as a byproduct of some of
those earlier evolutionary changes which had long been reconfiguring the
relative positions of the bones in the rear jaw. But imagine what an advantage it would likely have been like for some of these reptile-like creatures
to develop even limited hearing. Natural selection would have been very
likely to preserve (and over time to further develop) this capacity to hear
(which helps to avoid predators, and so on). As Ive stressed many times,
such an evolutionary progression is never bound to happen, but in this case
we know that it did, because we can see evidence of these changes in the
fossil record of extinct speciesincluding in a species of intermediate fossil
which has bony parts in the far back of the jaw that still served a function
in relation to opening and closing the jaw, but which are situated in such a
way that we can also tell they would have picked up on sound vibrations.
So this is an example of a more complex system (the three-part mammalian
inner ear) evolving out of a simpler one, which fulfilled a different function
previously.
The emergence of the more complex (and better hearing) mammalian
inner ear out of an evolutionary modification of pre-existing reptilian
jaw bones and a simpler hearing apparatus is just one of many examples
that shows that Michael Behe is flat-out wrong when he argues that an
irreducibly complex system cannot be produced directly by numerous,
successive, slight modifications of a precursor system, because any precursor to an irreducibly complex system that is missing a part is by definition
non-functional.
As Ken Miller sums up: To fashion the three-bone linkage that conducts
sound from the eardrum, evolution didnt have to start with a non-working incomplete one-bone or two-bone middle ear. Instead it started with a
perfectly good reptile-style ear, which had a single internal bone. Then it
grabbed two other bones from a different organ, the jaw, and used them to
expand and improve the apparatus. And you can actually see that transition in the fossil record.
Another thing that is important to remember is that geneticists and
evolutionary biologists have also known for a long time that sometimes
even very minor genetic changes can lead to very big changes in function.
This can happen, for instance, when a relatively minor genetic restructuring
ends up changing the rate at which some structures (or a whole organism)
develops. To refer to an important example discussed earlier in this book,
it is thought that a slowing down of overall rates of development (which
could have come about as a result of chance mutations) may have played a
crucial role in opening the door to a huge leap in brain capacity and related
functional abilities at a certain point in the evolution of our own human lineage. Members of the human species are born much more undeveloped
and helpless than the infants of other primates, and humans take much
longer to develop and mature, but this also goes along with having brains
that continue to grow and develop outside the mothers body for a long
time after birth and in interaction with the richly stimulating and diverse
outside physical and social environment. Thus, what may have started
off as a simple genetic modification occurring in an ancestral species of
humanssuch as a mutation in one or just few genes which just happened
to slow down rates of developmentseems likely to have opened the door
to the tremendous increase in intelligence and behavioral flexibility which
is the hallmark of our current human species (all of which would have been
strongly favored by natural selection).
Or consider another example: In the plant world there are a number of
species of flowering trees which engage in whats called mast-flowering and
fruiting. What this means is that all (or most) of the individual trees in a
population of such trees manage to flower all at the same time, and generally also end up producing their seeds or fruits at the same time. This makes
for an extremely efficient system of pollination and seed dispersal because the
mast-flowering and fruiting of so many individuals all at once serves as sort
of a great big advertisement to the insect or bird or other species which visit
these flowers to obtain food (sugary nectar and/or seeds and fruits) and in
so doing end up unconsciously helping the plants to reproduce. In visiting
the flowers for food, the insects, birds, etc., also pick up male pollen and
end up transferring it to the female flower parts where it fertilizes the plant
eggs and starts a new seed growing. The species of animals which visit
the trees to eat some of the fruit end up unconsciously helping the plants
to disperse their offspring (many seeds go through the digestive systems of
animals and are later released in their droppings in new locations).
Pollination and seed dispersal occurs in much the same way in many
species in which individuals dont flower or fruit all at the same time, but
the point is that mast-flowering and fruiting in some species makes for
increased efficiency, as both pollinators and seed dispersal agents cant miss
these showy events and often key in to the flowering and fruiting schedules of these particular plant species, actively concentrating on visiting
these species when they are flowering or fruiting. Of course, the plants and
the animals engaged in this complex series of interactions obviously dont
know theyre being so efficient and so tightly locked in a web of such
exquisite interdependency, and yet this complex system also didnt have to
be planned or designed by any outside force. Such wonders of nature are
actually pretty easily explained by the well-known, well-documented and
often-observed mechanisms of natural selection operating on genetically
One of the significant things about this experiment, as Miller points out,
is that it shows how two proteins, two parts of a biochemical machine, can
evolve together (emphasis added).
The Lactose-Galactosidase Story
Do we know for a fact that natural evolutionary processes can produce
even very complex multi-part biochemical systems? Yes, we do. For instance,
Miller discusses the example of bacteria which produce an enzyme called
galactosidase, which enables the bacteria to digest a sugar called lactose.
These bacteria also have a regulatory gene which controls the production
of that enzyme. That control gene is switched on when lactose is present in the surrounding environment, but it remains temporarily switched
off when there is no lactose available for the bacteria to feed on (natural
selection often seems to favor the evolution of such energy-conservation
mechanisms in populations of living organismsin this case the presence
of the regulatory on-off switch means that the bacteria dont waste any
energy making the galactosidase enzyme when there is no lactose to use
it on).12
But heres where the lactose-galactosidase story gets really interesting:
A few years ago a researcher named Barry Hall conducted an experiment in
which he chemically deleted the gene which made the galactosidase enzyme: so
now the bacteria couldnt make the enzyme needed to digest lactose anymore. Then he placed these altered bacteria in an environment containing
lactose (which those bacteria could no longer digest), and simply allowed
the bacteria to reproduce on their own for many generations. And it just
so happened that after a period of time (many bacterial generations) some
mutant strains of bacteria happened to emerge which were once again capable
of digesting the lactose. But how could this be, since Hall had completely
deleted the gene required for the production of the necessary enzyme?
The answer to this apparent mystery illustrates some important evolutionary mechanisms at the biochemical level. First of all, as the bacteria
reproduced, generation after generation, small genetic mutations started
to appear, due to the usual chance genetic copying errors that always
occur (randomly, in no preset or predetermined directions) whenever
living organisms reproduce. At one point, one of these chance mutations
happened to occur in a different gene than the one which had originally
produced the galactosidase enzymebut this mutation now allowed this
different gene to start producing the enzyme which digests lactose! So now
those mutant bacteria could, once again, eat lactose. In addition, in at least
some individuals in these same mutant strains, an additional mutation happened to appear in the regulatory gene which controlled the mutated gene
which had started to produce the missing enzyme: now the regulatory gene
was changed in such a way that it could once again switch the production of
the enzyme on or off, depending on whether or not lactose was present
in the bacterias environment. And then a third change took place: some
generations later, some of these same mutant bacterial strains, grown now
in a different sugar environment, started evolving additional mutant strains
(still through the same kind of simple random mutations which are always
happening as organisms reproduce) which now happened to switch on
the production of a protein in the bacterial cell membranes (known as lac
permease) which makes it even easier for bacteria to take in lactose from the
outside environments. Imagine how well bacteria which had all three of
these mutations must have fared (how well they would have reproduced) in
any environment that happened to contain the lactose food source!
In this way we can see that a living population of organisms, which at
first could not eat lactose at all, evolved (over many generations) into populations which could easily and efficiently make use of this food sourceand
this evolutionary process took place through a purely natural and completely undirected and unscripted combination of chance mutations sorted
out by non-chance natural selection (since in a lactose containing environment the bacterial strains which happened to evolve the capacity to digest
lactose would have produced more descendants than those that could not
eat lactose, resulting in the natural spreading of these evolutionary modifications over the generations). As the evolutionary biologist Doug Futuyma
(quoted in Millers book, Finding Darwins God) summed up: Thus an entire
system of lactose utilization had evolved, consisting of changes in enzyme
structure enabling hydrolysis of the substrate; alteration of a regulatory gene
so that the enzyme can be synthesized in response to the substrate; and the
evolution of an enzyme reaction that induces the permease needed for the
entry of the substrate. One could not wish for a better demonstration of
the neo-Darwinian principle that mutation and natural selection in concert
are the source of complex adaptations (emphasis added).
Miller points out that this is exactly the kind of really complex multi-part
biochemical system that the Intelligent Design Creationist Michael Behe
generally considers to be irreducibly complex (and which he therefore
doesnt believe could have evolved on its own). The way Behe looks at such
a system, he would likely argue that it cant function properly without all
its parts being present all at the same time (because the protein which helps
bring lactose into the bacteria would, in Behes view, be of no use if the
galactosidase enzyme needed to digest the lactose werent already present;
and that enzyme in turn would be of no use in the absence of the regulatory gene to turn it on when lactose is present in the environment; and in
turn such regulatory genes would be of no use if the enzymes they turned
on or off werent there in the first place...) So such an intricate multi-part
biochemical system is exactly the kind of thing Behe thinks could never have
evolved in separate steps spread out over timeand that, Behe insists, constitutes evidence of the involvement of some kind of intelligent designer.
But the example we just went through is direct proof that such a complex
multi-part biochemical system can in fact evolve completely naturally and
all on its own, in a number of steps spread out over time. As Ken Miller
concludes about this concrete example: we know that it was not designed.
We know it evolved because we watched it happen right in the laboratory!
In sum, there is every reason to believe that the evolution of the various
complex biochemical systems present today in many living cells evolved in
just such a step-wise fashion, out of different, simpler, but still functional
pre-existing biochemical machineries which existed in earlier lines of ancestor organisms.
The blood-clotting cascade:
This biochemical system is one of Behes favorite examples of a supposedly irreducibly complex biological system which he believes couldnt
possibly have evolved simply on its own, through merely natural evolutionary processes. The way blood clots in living mammals and other vertebrates
(animals with backbones) involves an incredibly complex series of stepsa
kind of chain reaction (or cascade) of proteins which causes blood
components to stick together and form a kind of plug or clot which stops
vertebrates from bleeding to death at the site of a wound. I wont even try
to spell out all the steps involved in vertebrate blood clottingtrust me, it
really is complex! But, as Ken Miller puts it, the key to understanding the
evolution of blood clotting is to appreciate that the current system did not
evolve all at once. Like all biochemical systems it evolved from genes and
proteins that originally served different purposes (emphasis added).
It is known that much simpler blood-clotting mechanisms have existed
in the past (systems in which simple clumps of protein fragments functioned as primitive clots, for instance); and in fact we can still find such
simpler clotting systems in todays living invertebrates (animals without
backbones). It is therefore reasonable to suspect that such simpler clotting
systems could also have been present in invertebrates which lived long
ago, including in the invertebrates which were the ancestors of todays
vertebrates. It is also known that such simple and commonplace events
as chance gene duplications (spontaneous doublings of certain genes,
which can occur accidentally in the course of genetic reproduction) could
have resulted in genetic modifications in the clotting mechanisms of some
invertebrates, leading to improved clotting. This is a development which,
whenever it happened to appear, would likely have been heavily favored
by natural selection, especially in the descendant vertebrate lines, since the
blood of vertebrates happens to be maintained under much higher pressure than in invertebrates. (This means that vertebrates can bleed out much
more easily; selection would almost certainly favor the spread of any mutations which happened to improve more rapid and effective clotting under
these new circumstances.)
It has been suggested that the gene for one of the most important
vertebrate clotting proteins, fibrinogen, likely emerged originally through a
simple random gene duplication of a gene that was present in an ancestor
species but which initially had nothing to do with clot formation. And in fact
a gene that still produces a fibrinogen-like protein (but which has nothing
to do with blood clotting), has been discovered in some living species of
invertebrate sea cucumbers. This strongly suggests that the evolutionary
modification of a protein which already existed in earlier invertebrate ancestor lines (where it served an entirely different function) is the likely source
of the chemically very closely related fibrinogen molecules which today
perform a different function (clotting) in their vertebrate descendants.
But do we have concrete evidence that brand-new biochemical functions and processes can emerge through such natural evolutionary processes
without completely disrupting pre-existing functions and killing off organisms
and populations?
This is an important question to explore, because one of Behes claims
is that complex sub-cellular biochemical modifications are unlikely to have
evolved on their own (without a designer) because, especially at this subcellular molecular level, any significant evolutionary modifications would
have been too likely to severely disrupt an organisms entire functioning.
But is this true?
Consider the fact that molecular geneticists now know that things like
simple random gene duplications are commonplace occurrences. And it is
apparently often the case that such gene duplications occur without having
much effect one way or the other on any of the organisms functions. But if
such a gene duplication occurs and a mutation then also occurs in the extra
copy of the gene, this can result in a new function (such as the new clotting function in a protein that wasnt previously involved in clotting). If
such a change happens to provide organisms which have this new function
with a reproductive advantage, we know that the new feature will tend
to spread to more and more individuals over the generations (by simple
natural selection). But if this change takes place only in the extra copy of
the duplicated gene, this new function can be added in without losing the
original function of the original gene.
An example of just this sort of thing can apparently be seen in lobsters.
Lobster cells have a protein which is involved in nourishing the lobster eggs
(the vitellogenin protein). It appears that, at some point in the evolutionary past, the gene responsible for this protein spontaneously doubled, and
that the extra copy of the gene then underwent some degree of genetic
modification which happened to allow it to play a role in clot formation.
But, throughout this evolutionary process, the original form of the gene
continued to function: it still continued to be involved in egg nourishment.
It is only the extra and slightly modified duplicate copy of that original
gene which became involved in the new and additional function (clotting),
so there is every indication that this new function evolved without in any
way disrupting the original biochemical process (the production of the eggnourishing protein).
The blood clotting process in lobsters is different than the blood clotting process in vertebrates (which, as a sidepoint, shows that there is more
than one evolutionary pathway which can bring forth similar functions).
But this example nevertheless shows that Behe is wrong to assume that
such step-wise evolution would spell disaster for living organisms: it is a
concrete example of how evolution can work to produce whole new functions out of pre-existing genetic material (through just the kind of relatively
small and routine changes which are known to occur randomly) without
in fact causing the total loss of a pre-existing function, or other major and
detrimental disruptions of an organisms overall functioning.
K
A QUESTION OF METHODS,
A QUESTION OF STRUGGLE
As has been already examined at some length, the basic methods which
the IDCs (Intelligent Design Creationists) use to investigate the world and
try to get at the truth of things are actually quite wrong and unscientific.
For instance, whenever they run into a complex process which science cant
yet fully explain or understand, they immediately jump to the conclusion
(no doubt based on their preconceived religious assumptions) that some
kind of conscious intelligence designed at least those aspects of lifes
features or processes which we cant yet fully explain. And they stick to
this completely unscientific reasoning and approach despite the fact that
a great deal of accumulated scientific evidence about the actual workings
of natural processes (including known evolutionary processes) provide
ample reason to expect that still incomplete human knowledge about natural
processes and mechanisms will keep growing into more complete knowledge
of those same processes. But it is important to realize that actual scientific
understanding (and advances made on the basis of that understanding) will
continue to expand only if we continue to apply systematic methods of
materialist scientific analysis to the exploration of the natural world and
is why they argue for theistic science (which means god-based science).
They actually believe science would be better done that way, whereas the
vast majority of scientists are convinced that if theistic beliefs and principles
became part of the basic conception of and approach to science and the
day to day operations of science, science itself would go down the tubesas
indeed it would. So here, in broadly sketched outline, we see two opposing
camps lining up in what is already becoming a key battle in the culture
warstwo very opposing outlooks and methods for how to both understand, and seek to transform, existing material reality. Only one of these
basic methods and approaches (the methods of naturalistic science, also
known as materialist science) expresses real confidence in humanitys
ability to increasingly understand and ever more consciously transform
reality on its own, without recourse to an imagined super-natural world.
The other approach (undertaking so-called theistic science) would from
the start define limits beyond which human scientific investigation could
not proceed, and would ultimately surrender human initiative to understand (and transform) material reality and instead wait (and wait) for divine
revelation.
material reality really does exist, and we know for a fact this is so because we
can bounce off of it in various ways and then observe the resulting ripples
and transformations that occur as a result of our initiatives.
If a rotten tomato existed only in your imagination, it wouldnt splatter
all over the place when you drop it on the floor. So material reality is not
some kind of subjective dream or illusion which exists only in the imagination of human beings where it might be subject to limitless redefinitions
or reinterpretations. This may seem obvious to most people, but it is not
uncommon to still hear some people say that we cant really be sure objective material reality really exists. Such people often agonize that maybe
reality is only an idea in the mind of people (or in the mind of someone
or something) and so maybe we should just accept that reality is whatever
individual human beings at any given point think it is. In philosophical terms
this way of looking at things is called subjective idealism.13
Of course, many people will point out that the conditions of life and the
social position and relationships of individuals and larger social groupings
inevitably color their perceptions of how reality really is. And this is true.
Any individual, and any social grouping, can fall into making subjective
interpretations of what is supposedly true that dont at all correspond
to actual material reality, (in other words, people can be wrong!). And it
is also very true, as many of the postmodernist deconstructionists have
argued, that people who occupy positions of power and influence in society
generally have a disproportionate opportunity to impose on the broader
public what their particular perceptions and interpretations of reality are at
any given time, and that they will tend to give disproportionate emphasis
to those perceptions and interpretations of reality that happen to be most
in line with their own particular concerns and objectives (whether they do
so consciously or not).
But the fact that people are capable of being subjective and distorting
truth doesnt mean that truththat which actually corresponds to objective
material realitydoesnt exist. The philosophical idealists and relativists
deny either that objective reality actually exists, independently of human
perceptions, or conceptions, of it; and/or they argue that there is no way
to determine what objective reality actually is, and what is objectively true
and not true, that all notions of truth, and all perceptions or conceptions of
objective reality, are simply the subjective ideas (or narratives) of different
people, or groups of people, with each having as much (or as little) claim
on the truth as the others. But concrete proof is all around us that material reality exists objectively, which means that it exists independently of
human beings or their imaginative subjective conceptions (and distortions)
of it. And, at the same time, concrete proof is all around us that human
beings can investigate, learn about, and in fact determine the truth about,
many different aspects of (though never all of ) objective reality. When we
interact with outside reality, things happen and things change, and we are
ourselves affected and changed in the process. How could any of this take
place if material reality were just a figment of our imaginations?14
Thats the thing about objective realityit doesnt disappear just
because some individuals choose not to believe in it. And you can make it
come to light and actually see whats there by actively interacting with
it, manipulating it in various ways to make its properties come to the fore.
This is what scientists (including evolutionary biologists) actually do when
they collect observational data and conduct scientific experiments. When
they have a theory about what something might be like in the real world,
they make predictions about what they would expect to find in the real
world (and also about what they would expect to not find) if in fact their
theory is correct. And then they go out in the world and actively interact
with reality (conducting various kinds of investigations or experiments)
and discover whether or not their original predictions hold up. This is how
all scientific knowledge is ultimately extended and developed (in both the
natural and social sciences)in the crucible of scientific practice, which
tests and verifies whether the material world and its workings actually do,
or do not, conform and correspond to the predictions we make about it. So
its not like theres nothing we can ever do to get at the truth of things!
The challenge we face is not so much to ascertain that material reality exists, but to figure out, and consistently apply, methods of scientific
investigation which can best minimize our subjective distortions, and systematically uncover whats actually real.
By contrast, the methods and outlook of the Intelligent Design
Creationists would, if allowed to prevail, seriously undermine or even
demolish the most basic scientific methodology. By proclaiming the existence of a super-natural power or influence (an intelligent designer which
supposedly exists outside of detectable material reality and which is not
itself part of matter) the IDCs are, first of all, like all other Creationists,
condemning us to a perpetual state of ignorance by telling us that there
is a whole other sphere of non-material reality out there that supposedly
influences everything about our lives but that we will never be able to learn
about through the standard methods of science, since (by definition) such a
super-natural power would exist outside the reach of natural science (which
can only explore and investigate tangible material objects and processes).
And of course this would also mean that we could never really be sure of
anything, since the measly explorations of material reality we can conduct
with the materialist methods of natural science would, according to this
view, be missing that whole other crucial non-material dimension of
things. If that were true, wed essentially have to call into question and even
reject everything weve ever learned and achieved through science because,
after all, how accurate could any of it be if all along weve supposedly been
missing such a big part of the picture, and since the methods of naturalistic science cannot, by definition, be used to explore and investigate
anything that is not part of tangible material reality. If what the IDCs are
saying were true, wouldnt modern science be essentially useless? Think
about it.
Essentially that is the logical extension of the kind of thinking that is
promoted by Intelligent Designs leading theoretician, the Berkeley law
professor Philip Johnson. He is basically arguing that the standard methods of science (so-called naturalistic science) are no good and should be
abandoned altogether! What should we replace them with? A new kind of
theistic science which would build into the methods science uses to investigate things the core assumption that a super-natural designer exists, or
at the very least the assumption that such a super-natural power could exist
and influence natural processes and all of life.
But thats not science, its religion. And its religion aimed at undermining science.
We cant learn about reality only by thinking about it (though thinking about it is one important part of the process!). The way scientists can
learn about things (and ultimately verify whether a particular idea about
reality is true or not) is to actively interact with aspects of real, tangible
realitypoking it and probing it in various ways, so to speak. And you just
cant do that with something the Creationists assume exists but which, by
their own definition, has no tangible material presence. So what Johnson is
really calling for is throwing all of science as we know it out the window
and replacing it with blind religious faith.
Of course some of the Intelligent Design types dont go quite this
far: Some of them (like the biochemist Michael Behe) speak of a personal
God, dont think of themselves as seeking to overthrow the basic methods
of science, and are content to proclaim that theyve simply found concrete
tangible evidence of the existence and influence of an intelligent designer
in the features of living organisms. As we have discussed previously, Behe
claims that the very complexity of some biochemical reactions that occur in
living cells is itself convincing evidence that an intelligent designer must
have been involved at some point in shaping and directing the development
of life. Since hes pointing to an actual material aspect of reality, which can
actually be detected with standard materialist scientific methods (the real
biochemical reactions he is discussing) you might at first think that maybe
at least a few of those IDCs are managing to stick to the basic methods and
principles of science. But thats not in fact the case.
Just look at what an IDC like Michael Behe is proposing: He points
to some real biochemical reactions which everyone can agree are actually
complex. So far so good. But then he says he sees evidence of intelligent
design. Where? Well, he basically says, the complexity itself constitutes the
evidence (because he cant figure out quite how evolution could have produced such complex chemical reactionsso therefore God must have done
it). But is he talking about actual scientific evidence about a designer, the
kind of evidence that comes from applying the standard methods of science
to poke and probe, test and verify whether an idea about reality is correct
or not? No, of course not. Hes not at all talking about that kind of evidence. So basically what he is calling evidence is just an ideaan idea in
his own mind about what something he is actually observing (natural complexity) supposedly represents (the influence of an intelligent designer).
Yet theres no way science could actually concretely test and verify Behes
idea that an intelligent designer actually designed that complexity (even
Behe would likely agree that is impossible). But if thats the case, he cant
legitimately say that hes found any kind of scientific evidence of design;
hes just coming up with an untestedand untestableidea, and hes doing
so on the basis not of science but of religious belief.
And Behe and all the other Intelligent Design Creationists also violate
one of the basic principles of science in essentially declaring some parts of
reality off-limits to scientific exploration and understanding. They make the
fundamental error of thinking that something we dont yet fully understand is actually something well never be able to understand. Once
again they find god in one or another gap in human understanding.
As we have seen, Michael Behe doesnt understand how the natural processes of evolution could have brought into being some complex chemical
reactions all on their own (in large part because he doesnt really understand
how evolution actually works). But because he personally doesnt understand it, and also because the general scientific understanding of all the
steps involved in the evolution of some of these biochemical processes is in
fact not yet complete, he automatically assumes that all this must somehow
be the work of God and that well never be able to fully understand how
it all came into being. Once again, this is religion, not science. And it is
religious faith being used against scienceit objectively discourages the use
of systematic scientific methods for making further discoveries (including
about evolutionary mechanisms involved in producing biochemical complexity) and deepening our understanding of actual reality.
Mao Tsetung used to like to say that to know the taste of a pear, you
must change the pear by eating it yourself. In other words, its not enough
to have beliefs, convictions or even expectations about the way reality is (or the way it has been, or might become). If you want to get to
an understanding of the way something really is (or the way it has been,
or the way it might become) you cant just do it by staring at your belly
button: you have to actively and systematically investigate it; you have to
poke and probe reality in various ways. You can form some theoretical idea
in your mind about the way reality might actually be (and again, doing this
is actually an important part of the process) but then you also have to go
out and actively and repeatedly test and verify that theory. And the way
you do that is to systematically investigate reality by first of all bringing to
bear previously accumulated and previously verified human knowledge (such as
the whole body of accumulated scientific understanding known as the theory of
evolution) which can help better illuminate and clarify a new problem or
question; and then you make verifiable predictions about what you should
(and also what you shouldnt) be able to find in the world if your particular
idea (or theory) about a piece of reality is correct and actually corresponds
to the way something really is.
In other words, you dont have to start from scratch every time you approach
a new problem, as if nothing in nature or society had ever been previously proven to
be true! But, since all matter is always in motion (continually changing), you
cant get to know it by making predictions from the sidelinesyou have to
grab a hold of it while its passing by, so to speak, and consciously act on it
(bite into the pear) to see what happens and then learn from that.
Active and well-thought-out human investigation and experimentation
(whether in relation to the organization of the world of nature or human
society) is a process which can and will itself change some of the features
of reality (you are going to affect it, like it or not), but repeatedly examining
whether or not these changes seem to be taking place in line with predicted
expectations is one of the best ways to learn and confirm more about the
actual truth of something.
Do you see how damaging it would be to the advance of science and
human knowledge about the actual material world more generally if the
Creationists, including the intelligent design types who call for the replacement of naturalistic science with a theistic science, had their way and
were allowed to dictate the practice and the teaching of science?
Creationists at least had the excuse that the sciences of molecular genetics
and of developmental biology didnt even exist yet. But todays Intelligent
Design Creationists have no such excusetoday there is a much greater
basis to understand just how such evolutionary modifications can and do
take place. For instance, we now know that it takes very little genetic and
developmental modification to go from a pre-existing vertebrate arm bone
to a wing, or even to a fin for that matter.
The combination of molecular genetics and developmental biology
has shown us that very small genetic mutations can at times have large
effects on bodily forms and functions. Sometimes all it seems to take is for
a genetic mutation to cause a slight slowing down or speeding up of the
rate of development of particular structures, or even of whole organisms.
And, as we have seen, sometimes an important new structure has evolved
out of some pre-existing structure which used to serve a completely different
function in an ancestor species. A well-known example of that is the pandas
thumb, which it uses to grasp and hold things like the bamboo it eats.
This looks and functions very much like a thumb, but on closer examination it turns out not to be a finger bone at all but a modification of a wrist
bone. Evolution is full of such examples of pre-existing structures present
in ancestor species being transformed (through relatively minor genetic
modification) into new structures capable of entirely new functions in a
descendant line.
Some (though not all) evolutionary modifications produce new adaptations, as living populations evolve in continual back-and-forth interaction
with their physical and biotic environmentthe physical climate, landscapes, and so on, as well as the other living (biotic) plants and animals
which are present in the same area. It is in this way, for example, that, over
evolutionary time, some plant species have evolved in seemingly finely
tuned tandem with some of the animal species (insects, birds, bats) that
pollinate them. Some plant species produce flowers that are near perfect
fits for the tongues of the insects or the beaks of the birds that pollinate
them, or have evolved the ability to synchronize their flowering schedules
(all individual plants in local populations of such a species flower at the
same time), which serves as a mass signaling to pollinators and increases
successful pollinations. Similarly, we know of many examples of species of
plants or animals that have evolved in tandem (co-evolved) with species that
eat them. There is concrete evidence, including in living populations, that
prey species tend to evolve improved defenses in relation to their predators
and that predator species tend to evolve more efficient predation strategies
and mechanisms in relation to their prey. In fact, these kinds of continual
back-and-forth relations between species are a driving force of evolutionary
change, resulting in many specific adaptations.
material which are in no way tied to any specific purpose or any particular direction. And even natural selection itself is not a perfecting
mechanism. As complex and marvelous as they are, the mammalian eye
or the wings of birds are not absolutely perfectly suited to their respective
functions. And they did not evolvenor were they designedfor their
specific functions.
It just so happened that in populations of genetically varied individuals
living in light-filled environments, individuals with improved light reception
and an improved ability to discriminate shapes would almost certainly have
an enormous reproductive advantage over individuals with more limited
sight; so any new genetic features (arising through chance mutations and
recombinations) which happened to improve sight (in whatever fashion
or to whatever degree) would tend to spread over the generations. Wings
were not designed for flight either: randomly occurring modifications of
vertebrate forelimbs could (and did) lead to a number of different functions
other than flying, including swimming (fins), digging (scoop-like appendages of moles), or climbing and swooping (as in flying squirrels, whose
arm webbing allows them to climb tree trunks and soar between trees,
although not truly fly). On the other hand, any genetic modifications which
happened to produce features which allowed individuals to more fully fly
and therefore to function a good part of the time in zones previously unoccupied by any other species (the sky) would almost certainly have given
those individuals quite a reproductive edge, and allowed the innovation of
true flight to spread and diversify quite rapidly once it had emerged (as in
fact it did). But this still doesnt mean flight was bound to evolve: its just
that when this capacity did evolve, it would likely have given individuals
enough of a reproductive edge as to be preserved, consolidated and spread
by natural selection.
Michael Behe actually admits that he can imagine how the basic structure of a mammalian eye might have evolved in stages from some more
primitive pre-existing structures (such as simple light-sensitive eye spots
and the like); but what he cant get his mind around is how something as
complex as vision itself could have come about in this way. He is referring
to the complex integration of a number of different biochemical processes
which have to operate in concert to enable a mammalian eye to actually
see. Thats where he draws the line and says that these molecular processes
have so many different components that he just cant see how they could
have evolved. At least at the molecular level, he argues, such things seem
genuinely irreducibly complex and therefore this in itself is evidence of
design. But, as we have seen, all sorts of biological systems are complex
(meaning that they are made up of many interlocking components) and
complexity exists at every level, from the molecular, to the cellular, to the
level of organs, whole individuals, whole populations, whole ecosystems.
Just because something is complex does not mean it cannot have been
derived from some simpler pre-existing structures, or even been co-opted in
whole or in part from a pre-existing structure or structures which had very
different functions.
And it is also important to remember: that there is generally a lot of
redundancy (multiple copies of things) in living biological systems; that it
is whole populations (made up of genetically diverse reproducing individuals) which evolve, and then only over multiple generations; that natural
selection repeatedly sorts out the many different individuals who actively
interact with their outside environment (as some of them are able to contribute more descendants to the next generations than others); but that it is
the entire genotype of reproducing individuals (the totality of their genetic
make-up, as opposed to just one or another gene or gene cluster) that is
subject to that sorting-out selection process. One implication of this is that
lots of different mutations and genetic recombinations can emerge and
get passed on from generation to generation even if they dont have any
particularly notable effects on the reproductive capacity of individuals at
the time. Intelligent Design Creationists act as if most significant genetic
modifications (occurring through mutations and the like) would necessarily tend to harmfully disrupt the bodies and the functioning of individuals
in which these modifications appear, and that this would generally result in
any such modifications getting eliminated from the gene pool as organisms
got sick or died. But, this is not in fact the case: in part because there is so
much redundancy in natural systems (including at lower levels of organization, such as the biochemical molecular level) there is no reason to suppose
that the basic components of many highly integrated biological systems
(including those of complex biochemical reactions) could not have evolved
in a series of somewhat distinct evolutionary steps (rather than necessarily
all at once) without all hell breaking loose.
Methodologically, many of the IDCs seem to me to be very stiff and
actually unable to really and fully appreciate the genuine complexity and
diversity of life, including the extent to which there is a lot of slop and
redundancy in natural systems which allows for a certain amount of
departure from established norms without entire systems collapsing as a
result. Aside from the fairly obvious fact that they are working back from
wanting to make room for the assumption that god exists, it seems to me
that part of the IDCs methodological problem is that they look at complex processes in a very narrow and reductionist manner which artificially
divorces what is happening at one level from what may be simultaneously
happening at another level. For instance, Michael Behe, as a specialist in
biochemistry, focuses in on something like the complex machinery of protein synthesis taking place inside a cell, and argues that even a very slight
modification in this molecular apparatus can totally disrupt the synthesis
that evolution is real. So, on the one hand, it is obvious that learning the
facts of evolution doesnt in and of itself cause people to automatically give
up on religion and belief in god. But, on the other hand, it is true that
an understanding of evolution and how science has repeatedly proven and
documented that evolution is a fact can and does cause many people to
call into question fundamental, literalist religious notionsand, indeed,
even religion more generally. So it is not without reason that the religious
fundamentalists in particular cannot simply rest easy with the knowledge
that many people have managed to hold onto their religious beliefs while at
the same time accepting evolution as a scientifically established truth.
The Creationists are linked to, and a key force within, a social and political movement largely rooted in the zealotry of Christian fundamentalism,
which considers that the slightest departure from the supposed revealed
Word of the Christian God will bring hell and damnation upon the land.
And many of them think it already has: they see American society as being
in a state of moral decaybut not, as others might suggest, because of
the arrogance and grasping brutality of the American Empire as it runs
amok in the world invading, pillaging, occupying distant lands, everywhere
imposing its will by force and crushing entire peoples in the name of
corporate profit and world domination. No, this isnt the kind of moral
decay the Creationists are concerned about! It is the morality of people
on the home front that particularly concerns them: they look around them
and they see trouble, trouble everywherewomen insisting they have the
right to control their childbearing; immigrants ignoring borders in their
search for work; Black people and other oppressed nationalities unwilling
to passively resign themselves to subjugation and play by the rules which
are stacked against them; young people getting increasingly alienated and
restless for global societal and environmental change; people who oppose
unjust wars and the American occupation of other lands and who insist
that the lives of people over there (wherever) are no less valuable than
the lives of Americans...all this is deeply upsetting to these fundamentalist
reactionaries. They worry also about a decline in the traditional respect for
government, police and other established authorities (including churches).
And they lump together all that disturbs and horrifies themyou name it,
abortion, prostitution, AIDS, women and children who defy the man of
the house, drug abusers, homosexuals, environmentalists, godless atheist
communists, secular humanists, non-white troublemakers...the whole of
society is pretty much going to hell in a handbasket as they see it! And all
they can think of is that if they could just get God and the Bible back into
the schools (and into the policy-making halls of government, and in the
institutions of science themselves) everything would be alright again. Thats
why these anti-evolutionists are the same people who want to impose both
prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools (with the religious
phrase under God included in the pledge), support imperial wars waged
with God on our side, and continually try to break down the separation
between church and state which poses an obstacle to the imposition of a
theocracy run by religious fanatics!15
In the United States today it is the Christian fundamentalists who are
trying to move things in the direction of theocratic rule. They work to
impose their particular religious beliefs on every private and public domain
(and so far they have successfully influencedand found powerful backers
and allies ineverything from local school boards and PTAs to the Congress,
Supreme Court and White House). Their campaign to impose the teaching
of Creationism isnt about their right to their personal religious beliefs, and
it certainly isnt about any holes in the well-supported theory of evolution. It is about the desire to recast the whole of social and political relations in
the U.S., to bring them more in line with a Christian fundamentalist outlook
and agenda, all the better to serve an empire with god on its side (God
Bless America!).
It is ironic to note that people like the Taliban or other fundamentalist Muslim clerics are routinely criticized in the U.S. for the way they try
to impose rigid theocracies. But thats exactly what these Christian fundamentalists would increasingly like to do! And their attempts to place
anti-evolution Christian fundamentalist candidates on school boards, get
courts to force schools to include religious doctrine in the science classrooms
and insert anti-evolution disclaimers in science textbooks, and start building up anti-science Science and Religion clubs and institutes on college
campuses (a recent trend)all this fits into their larger reactionary social
and political mission. And they have the financial and political backing of
highly placed politicians, as well as heads of major financial institutions and
corporations, along with relatively easy access to mass media, so its not like
they are being relegated to fringe status by any means.
And dont for a minute think the Intelligent Design Creationists are
really any different, just because they are more literate and sophisticated
and know how to argue in seemingly more reasoned and collegial tones
than many of the old-style scientific Creationists. Some of the IDCs may
be embarrassed to be lumped together with old-style Biblical literalists
and may even reject the name Creationist; and some of them, like Michael
Behe, may insist that theirs is a personal God, and may even allow that a
certain amount of evolution has in fact occurred (in accordance with Gods
overall designs). But none of these attempts to present Creationism with a
more modern and reasonable face changes the essence of what theyre
all in bed with: the Creationist movement in the United States today is an
organized political and social movement which is attempting to reverse
established scientific methods and knowledge and replace it with religious
dogma, in the service of an extremely reactionary ideological viewpoint
and political program. And every single word which tries to mislead people
into thinking that the theory of evolution is not fully supported (at least as
well as any other theory in all of science) by mounds of scientific evidence,
and every absurd suggestion that such things as biological complexity are
actually evidence of divine design, immediately becomes incorporated
into the larger mission and program of the right-wing fundamentalists; and
this will continue to be the case regardless of what any particular individual
Creationist might think about that larger mission and program.
Especially given this larger social and political context, I find it rather
disturbing that many evolutionists and other scientists (with a few notable
exceptions) often seem to make a point of bending over backwards to
constantly reassure everyone that evolution science (and science more generally) poses absolutely no threat to religious doctrines and beliefs. For one
thing, this is not necessarily true: While recognizing that evolution is a wellestablished scientific fact does not, in and of itself, necessarily cause people
to abandon religious beliefs (as is made very clear by the large number of
people who acknowledge the facts of natural evolution while still believing
in god), there is little doubt that even a beginning understanding of how life
(including our human species) has evolved through natural processes may
cause many people to seriously question and reexamine long-held beliefs in
one or another god or other super-natural power. In line with this, I have
appreciated physicist and cosmologist Steven Weinbergs bold statement
that:
One of the great achievements of science has been, if not to make
it impossible for intelligent people to be religious, then at least to make
it possible for them not to be religious. We should not retreat from this
accomplishment. (Address to the April 1999 Conference of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science)
Evolutionists should not be defensive about the fact that the reality that
life has evolved through entirely natural processes (which are within the
grasp of human understanding) objectively challenges many traditional
religious beliefs: A scientific understanding of evolution and how it works
should be promoted not according to whether it does or doesnt weaken
the hold of religionit should be promoted on the basis that evolution is a
demonstrably true fact of life.
Now to be fair, many of the scientists and others who go to extra
lengths to remind people that science is not trying to undermine religion
seem mainly to be trying to show respect for individuals personal religious
beliefs (which they may or may not share) and trying also to emphasize the
correct point that science is a method human beings have devised for learning about natural material realitystressing that the methods of science
are such that they can only be applied to the investigation of strictly natural
(i.e., material or non-super-natural) processes and phenomenathose that
have a clear and concrete existence in the tangible material world. This is
all true. But that doesnt mean scientists and others should go overboard
and take a completely hands-off attitude towards human belief in a supernatural realm, constantly repeating to each his own and the province of
science is science and the province of religion is religion or science doesnt
have anything to say about religion because it is by definition limited to
addressing only natural phenomena which can be scientifically tested and
verified.
In my view it is actually very unscientific to claim that science doesnt have
anything to say about religion. It is of course true that science cannot test
for the presence of any supernatural force or power, which by definition
(and believers admit to this) has no tangible existence in the natural material world. But what about human ideas about gods and other supernatural
forces or powers? Doesnt science have anything to say about that? Cant
scientific methods be applied to uncovering where such ideas came from,
and how they have been given material expression by human beings? What
about the social history which concretely records when and how human
beings in different parts of the world started to tell or write down stories
about various super-natural realms (the social origins of the many different kinds of Creation myths and religious scriptures from all around the
world)? What about the roles that religious belief, rituals and practices have
played, and the purposes they have served, at everything from the personal
individual level to the larger societal (and world) level? And what about the
history of how religious beliefs have changed over time (whatever happened,
for instance, to the ancient Egyptian, Greek or Roman gods that people
used to believe in as firmly as many modern-day people now believe in the
God of the Jewish, Christian, or Islamic scriptures)?
Cant the same kind of scientific methods which are used to investigate
questions in any other historical science (evolution, cosmology, archaeology,
comparative linguistics, and so on) be applied to investigating the history of
human belief in supernatural powers? And cant the methods of science be
applied to gaining a better understanding of why some religious beliefs have
at times been officially encouraged and promoted or, alternatively, severely
restricted or even targeted for annihilation? All these phenomenaand the
various human beliefs in a supernatural realm themselvesundeniably have
real, tangible, material existence even if the objects of such beliefs (gods or
other super-natural powers) by definition have no such tangible material
presence. So arent all these various religious phenomena and beliefs open
to systematic scientific investigation and exploration, by the usual methods
of science? If so, it would be much more in keeping with the methods of
science to acknowledge that the sphere of human religious belief is not
actually outside the province of science, and to stop making defensive
claims that science doesnt have anything to say about religionfor that
is clearly not the case.
The very same scientific methods of investigation (which have verified
over and over again the basic principles and mechanisms of how life has
evolved, and continues to evolve, without a divine designer having had to
be involved in any way) can also be applied to getting at the truth about
both the social origins and the mechanisms of change over time (through
cultural, rather than biological, evolution) of the various human ideas
about the super-natural. In short, I would argue that applying a scientific
methodologyand in particular the outlook and methodology of dialectical and historical materialismto arrive at an understanding of what is
represented by religion, and how it actually leads away from systematically
understanding and changing reality, is both possible and necessary.
Even many religious believers acknowledge that human beings have
often done a great deal of harm to other human beings in the name of
religion. But, on the other hand, experience has also shown that no good
has ever come from trying to forcibly coerce people to give up (or for that
matter to take up) the practice of religion. Among socially progressive
people, many religious believers and non-believers will no doubt continue
to find many ways to make common cause and to join forces in upholding
and promoting the actual truth of things around many important social
issues, without making belief or non-belief in God a dividing line question.
Actively resisting the attempts of the organized Creationists to spread doubt
and confusion about the well-established scientific facts of evolutionand
to undermine science more generallyis one of those issues.
Chapter 8 Endnotes
1. The horrible brain-wasting disease known as mad-cow disease is caused by
virus-like bits of proteins called prions, which have gotten into and sickened normally
herbivorous (non meat-eating) cows as a result of their being fed a highly unnatural
diet of growth-enhancing high-protein feed supplements made up of the ground-up
organs of related mammals, such as sheep. These prions then passed into human
beings (who are also mammals) when people unknowingly ate the meat of these
diseased cows and as a result also contracted a devastating and fatal brain-wasting
disease. The practice of feeding ground-up carcasses or organ remains (offal) of
butchered domesticated species (such as pigs, sheep, cows, etc.) to other domesticated animal species across species linesdespite the fact that nothing in these species
evolutionary history would have led them to encounter and process these particular
food sources in the pasthas apparently become rather commonplace in modern
agriculture. An understanding of even some of the most basic principles of biological
evolution can sound the alarm about such unwise practiceswhich, if unchecked,
will no doubt lead to an increased occurrence of devastating diseases.
2. Even though pigs are not quite as closely related to us as are chimpanzees and
other apes, it is thought that pigs may actually be better candidates for cross-species
organ transplants into humans than primates. Why? Because while apes are by far
our most closely related relatives among currently living species (thereby making their
organs especially similar to ours), they appear to be actually too closely related to
us to be good sources of replacement organs for sick people. For one thing, exactly
because chimpanzees are our closest living relatives and have so many features in
common with us, many people find it deeply disturbing (and even ethically and morally wrong) to consider routinely killing any of the great apes (chimpanzees and also
gorillas and orangutans), even if it could benefit human beings. But even leaving aside
for now this complex question (as well as problems having to do with the need to
keep these very endangered species from going extinct), a knowledge of evolution
tells us that transplants from apes could be very dangerous to humans because the
fact that the human lines and ape lines split from a common ancestor not so very
long ago (roughly some 4 million years ago or so, which is not much considering the
3.5 billion years life has been evolving) means that there is an increased chance that
viruses and other disease-causing organisms in apes could spread to humans through
such organ transplants, and that what sickens apes could also sicken humans. So pigs
are considered an interesting compromise, because their relationship to humans
in evolutionary terms is recent enough (at least recent enough to have very similar
organs), but distant enough that disease organisms they may carry have themselves
evolved separately for a longer period of time and are therefore at least somewhat less
likely to be able to sicken humans.
3. Perhaps there is no clearer example of this than what has happened in recent
times to scientific ideas and theories about the organization of human society: Just
a few decades ago it was a broadly accepted truth in many progressive circles that
alternatives to capitalism were not only desirable but in fact possible and realizable,
that socialist and communist ideals were objectively in synch with the largest interests
of humanity even if not everyone realized this yet, and that at least initial steps had
been taken to implement these ideals in practice (for instance, through the Russian
and Chinese revolutions, in the days before revolutionary leadership was overthrown
in those countries, bringing capitalists back to power). These social truths were
299
popularizing the methods of science, without which she feels there can be
no valid understanding of reality or of how to change it.
Ardeas life experiences and work have taken her from major urban
areas the world over to exotic wilderness locales, from teaching in academia
to working in factories for minimum wage.
She is equally at ease engaging with artists and intellectuals or sitting
with the residents of a housing project around their kitchen table talking
about life and philosophy.
As a writer with a revolutionary communist perspective, she has
explored a wide range of social, political, scientific, and philosophical
topics. Her writings include Of Primeval Steps and Future Leaps: An Essay on
the Emergence of Human Beings, the Source of Womens Oppression, and the Road
to Emancipation; Some Ideas on the Social Role of Art; Not in Our Genes
and the Waging of the Ideological Counteroffensive; Remembering
Stephen Jay Gould; and Working with Ideas and Searching for Truth: A
Reflection on Revolutionary Leadership and the Intellectual Process.
A voracious reader and observer of popular culture, she draws on history, philosophy, anthropology, political science, art, music, moviesas well
as the natural sciencesto make her subject matter come alive. At the core
of everything she writes, and what her latest book conveys so powerfully, is
the importance of knowing whats realand why it matters.