BREAKTHROUGH OF THE YEAR: Evolution in Action

Science ^ | December 2005 | Elizabeth Culotta and Elizabeth Pennisi

[thomaswest]

Here are some actually posted sincere objections to evolutionary biology, taken from chat rooms, e-mails, and the Talk Origins Feedback Archive (original spelling, grammar, etc. left alone, except when necessary to make the quote readable):

1. I know you think you have fossils that proof stuff, but those fossils are all fake, they're made out of tar and stuff, this is fact not theory. They have factories in China mostly making the fossils.

2. If people came from monkeys, why are there still people?

3. If the strata layers were true, the missing links would be the dinosaurs because they came way before other evolutionary stages. But no, we are finding dinosaur bones left and right. We have over 35 kinds of dinosaurs and we have more than one for each. Is that a problem! How long have they been digging now?

4. Then perhaps you can explain how A fish crawled out of the sea and evolved into a mammal with lungs without dying before he evolved. You scientists make up something to explain all of your theories without ANY proof. You are fools living a lie. And being as Satan is the father of lies, he is your master. Turn or Burn boys!

5. Hey, i get so confused when i hear about all this evolution nonsense. was it once upon a time, lifeless matter came to life. became a mything link. then a boy. or was it once upon a time, a lifeless chunk of wood came to life, became a talking puppet, then a boy. please clear up my confusion.

6. DS I'm hoping you won't be like the others and we can have a nice two-way discussion where we each listen to the other persons...... As long as you understand that evolutionists have no proof and just the tail on an amoeba is proof of intelligent design and that's my view and I don't really care to read yours.

7. Evolution? Isn't that what Osama ben Laden believes in? Isn't that what the Taliban teaches in their madroseos? Nice company you keep, terrorist.

8. You have to ask yourself though, why are evolutionists so vile and disgusting and rude and why are scientists like DR Hovin so polite and courteous? [What makes this e-mail ironic is that just a few hours after I opened it I received an unsolicited Instant Message which read in part "You baby-killers make me sick with your slime are poeple bullshit and your jew teachers telling our kids they're nothing but monkeys. I know you're all gonna brn in jew hell but I hope first we round you pigs up and execute you first, slowly and painfully."]

9. Most mammals contain DNA similaities because mammals eat other mammals.

10. How do evolutionists explain the Caribbean Explosion?

Or, as Nietzsche said, when asked to comment upon the general education of his time: "A lot of people who have absolutely no need for the alphabet will just be made miserable when they learn to read."

[narby]

Why is this evidence of evolution? From an ID perspective, this is evidence that chimps and humans have the same designer

This article oversimplifies the evidence.

The significant evidence recently discovered are the Endeogenous Retro Virus (ERV) DNA sequences common in chimp, human, and several other primate species.

What makes this significant is that we know how these sequences got there. ERV type viruses inject their DNA into the host cell DNA and turn it into a virus machine. In very very rare occurances, the infection goes bad, and the cell survives, and it happens to be a reproductive cell that then gives that ERV sequence to all ancestors.

Since ERV sequences insert themselves randomly in host cells, and since these discovered sequences are in exactly the same location, with exactly the same "errors" that allowed the original infection to fail, then this is proof that these ERV sequences in chimps, humans, new world monkeys and others came from an ancient ancestor, a single individual, that passed his genes to all these species.

Doubting evolution in light of this is about the same as doubting whether OJ did it.

[MineralMan]

" isn't it odd that ALL animals and humans are so symmetrical?"

Not really. Symmetry is pretty common in nature. Look at crystallized minerals. Each follows one or another of the laws of symmetry, and they're not even alive.

Symmetry doesn't require intelligent design. It's just a good working way for molecules to assemble themselves.

[narby]

LOL. That's quite a Greatest Hits list....

[MineralMan]

"Why not 4 fingers on one hand and 3 on the other? "

Good question. I had a friend in high school who was born with 6 fingers on one hand. The sixth finger was removed when he was an infant. I guess it wasn't such a good idea. Just think how good a banjo player he would have been.

[tx_eggman]

many people seem to think that it implies a status of little more than a guess

I'm not in that camp ... but neither am I in the camp where "theory" (as you call it) is a weighty a word to me as, say,

"Theorem" when used in the context of Bayes Theorem or DeMoivre's Theorem

which are provable and, if relied on, produce repeatable results.

We, as a species, even as far as we have "progressed", are still woefully ignorant of the workings of our universe.

[Echo Talon]

my cousin was born with 2 thumbs on his right hand. :D He never learned to play guitar but he was in the US 101st Airborne Division

[Echo Talon]

Not really. Symmetry is pretty common in nature.

As if someone intended nature to be that way? hmmm

[jennyp]

Good question. I had a friend in high school who was born with 6 fingers on one hand. The sixth finger was removed when he was an infant. I guess it wasn't such a good idea. Just think how good a banjo player he would have been.

That's nothing. I have one heart on my left side - but zero hearts on the other side!

[Lurking Libertarian]

The genome data confirm our close kinship with chimps: We differ by only about 1% in the nucleotide bases that can be aligned between our two species

Why is this evidence of evolution? From an ID perspective, this is evidence that chimps and humans have the same designer, and that much of the same proven design that went into the chimp was also applied to humans. But, of course, an evolutionist's conclusions are going to be colored by his own bias.

Try that in Family Court some time: "Your Honor, the similarity in DNA between me and the plaintiff's child just shows that we have the same designer. It has nothing to do with whether or not that child is related to me."

[Antoninus]

The triumphalism of the Darwinian fundamentalists recently reminds me of the broadcasts of great victories on German radio in 1944.

[tortoise]

As if someone intended nature to be that way?

No, it only means that it requires a simpler and more probable causal mechanism to produce. In fact, rampant symmetry increase the probability that evolution could have produced it -- it requires less complex machinery.

[Echo Talon]

No, it only means that it requires a simpler and more probable causal mechanism to produce. In fact, rampant symmetry increase the probability that evolution could have produced it -- it requires less complex machinery.

The simple answer is that it was designed by the same creator, the one who created the heavens and earth.

[Echo Talon]

The fossil record reveals that over 90% of all species have gone extinct. The designer has some explaining to do.

Tigers and the Apes will soon be extinct whats your point?

[MRMEAN]

Recently, I read that a common field mouse has about a 97% match with human DNA. Is this accurate?

99% of mouse genes have human homologues (though their protein coding is only 70% similar); the detailed nucleotide alignment is only about 40%; which includes functionless DNA regions not under selection pressure.

Interesting discussion of the relationship between the mouse and human genome inWhat does the mouse genome draft tell us about evolution? by Alec MacAndrew

From the press release for The international Mouse Genome Sequencing Consortium

• Human Sequence: It's Bigger, but Is It Better? The mouse genome is 2.5 billion DNA letters long, about 14 percent shorter than the human genome, which is 2.9 billion letters long. But bigger doesn't always mean better, say scientists. The human genome is bigger because it is filled with more repeat sequences than the mouse genome. Repeat sequences are short stretches of DNA that have been hopping around the genome by copying and inserting themselves into new regions. They are not thought to have functional significance. The mouse genome, it seems, is more fastidious with its housecleaning than the human. Although it is actually accumulating repeat sequence at a greater rate than humans, it is losing them at an even greater rate.
  
  
• Shuffling the Chapters of an Ancestral Book. The mouse and human genomes descended from a common ancestor some 75 million years ago. Since then there has been considerable shuffling of the DNA order both within and between chromosomes. Nonetheless, when scientists compared the human and mouse genomes, they discovered that more than 90 percent of the mouse genome could be lined up with a region on the human genome. That is because the gene order in the two genomes is often preserved over large stretches, called conserved synteny. In fact, the mouse genome could be parsed into some 350 segments, or chapters for which there is a corresponding chapter in the human genome. For example, chromosome 3 of the mouse has chapters from human chromosomes 1, 3, 4, 8 and 13, and chromosome 16 of the mouse has chapters from human chromosome 3, 21, 22 and 16.
  
  
• Heavy Editing at the Level of Sentences. Although virtually all of the human and mouse sequence can be aligned at the level of large chapters, only 40 percent of the mouse and the human sequences can be lined up at the level of sentences and words. Even within this 40 percent, there has been considerable editing, as evolution relentlessly tinkers with the genome. The change is so great in most places that only with very sensitive tools can scientists discern the relationships.
  
  
• Preserving the Gems. Despite the heavy editing, about 5 percent of the genome contains groups of DNA letters that are conserved between human and mouse. Because these DNA sequences have been preserved by evolution over tens of millions of years, scientists infer that they are functionally important and under some evolutionary selection. Interestingly, the proportion of the genome comprised by these functionally important parts is considerably higher than what scientists had expected. In particular, it is about three times as much as can be explained by protein-coding genes alone. This implies that the genome must contain many additional features (such as untranslated regions, regulatory elements, non-protein coding genes, and chromosomal structural elements) that are under selection for biological function. Discovering their meaning will be a major goal for biomedical research in the coming years.
  
  

[mc6809e]

"you could still be so ignorant of the theory."

Is your choice of words a concession to the other side or simply an oversight on your part?

It's neither. Every claim is in some sense a theory. There are only degrees of certainty.

That said, the theory of evolution deserves a much higher degree of certainty as to its truth than does intelligent design.

[Dimensio]

but neither am I in the camp where "theory" (as you call it) is a weighty a word to me as, say,

"Theorem" when used in the context of Bayes Theorem or DeMoivre's Theorem

Theorems apply to mathematical constructs, not scientific explanations. Scientific explanations rise to the level of "theory" and no higher. "Theory" implies an extremely high level of confidence in an explanation, and theories will never graduate to anything "higher". Theories are the end-points of scientific inquiry (though inquiry continues to occur at the theory level, to either refine or, if necessary, overturn the theory).

[ThomasNast]

Studying the origins of the universe while assuming there was no creator is about as useful as studying the origins of Symphony #40 in G Minor and assuming there was no composer.

[Dimensio]

Studying the origins of the universe while assuming there was no creator

You've been told before that scientists do not "assume" that there was no creator.

[Dimensio]

The simple answer is that it was designed by the same creator, the one who created the heavens and earth.

And your evidence to support this answer is?