Lucy: The Evidence For Evolution

I was quite young when Donald Johanson's book Lucy - The Beginnings Of Humankind was published in 1981. But, I read it and was captivated with the compelling story that it portrayed of how humankind as we know it today came to be.

In some respects, I've always thought of Lucy as the answer to the creationist arguments about the so-called "missing link". I realize that Lucy's story is far from complete even today, but it represents a great example of why evolution as a scientific model works.

Consider the story of Lucy's Foot that just emerged. Here's another piece of evidence that fills in some of the questions that were outstanding after the original work on Lucy was published in the mass media. Now we have good evidence that shows that Australopithecus Afarensis walked upright more or less the way that we do, which reinforces the idea that there is more than a small chance that the species is one of the predecessors of what becomes Homo Sapiens.

The beauty of the model of evolution is that every time new evidence is found, it either fits into the theory as it is already understood. Once in a while, a piece of evidence comes forth that changes the specific understanding of a particular line of the fossil record, but it doesn't result in the theory itself suffering a major change. ... and yet the theoretical construct itself stands open to refutation the moment that a fossil is found which contradicts the tenets of the theory.

Creationists can complain all they like, but the fact is that the body of evidence found to date fits the model that evolution postulates. You can argue that the earth is flat all you want, but it doesn't change the fact that the world is in fact a globe, does it?

I look forward to hearing what the creationists have to say in their efforts to dismiss this latest piece of the puzzle.

The Evolution "Debate" - An Observation

This post has its roots in some observations about the reactions I have observed when the "devout" (read fundamentalist) are confronted with evidence, or are pressed to provide evidence to substantiate their position.

The common pattern is to pull up a collection of largely disproven arguments. When those objections are reasonably disproven, one of two things typically get dragged out - a series of "why doesn't evolution explain ", or a variation on Pascal's Wager.

It doesn't matter whether we are talking about someone who is a member of the clergy or simply a follower of the faith, the pattern is consistent. No amount of persuasion will get them to even attempt to consider or assimilate new information.

This reveals a serious problem in the modern practice of Christianity, especially in the more hard-line groups. The real strength of Christianity in its early years was its ability to adapt and absorb as it encountered new situations and practices.

Through much of the re-awakening and renaissance, the Church was both the primary force of objection to the findings of early science as well as the sponsor of so many of those whose work ultimately became the foundations of science in some form or another.

Then there is what we see today - a concept of faith that is rigid and inflexible. One that is unwilling to consider anything except that which validates their interpretation of scripture. Whether I think about the current Pope in Rome, or the so-called "evangelical" leaders, the story is the same - rigid adherence to an inflexible understanding of the "absolute truth" of scripture.

It seems to me that what has happened is that monotheistic faith has reach a predictable point. No longer is it able to adapt to a changing world, but instead it is now insisting that the world must conform to it.

The railing of the Pope against "creeping secularism" is an excellent example. Instead of providing a meaningful alternative through leading by example, we find the Roman Catholic Church increasingly mired in scandal and its very credibility on such matters being rendered moot. The continued insistence of evangelical leaders on a very judgmental and harsh interpretation of scripture is being rendered equally irrelevant every time a high profile evangelical leader is found to be engaging in the very activities they decry as evil and sinful.

In the past, religions have been able to morph and change to fill the power vacuum that often exists with the gap between the day to day realities of governance and the guidance of that government overall. Today, the increasing rigidity of how scripture is interpreted for "truth" has rendered these bodies unable to morph and fill in the gaps. Instead, they are becoming obstacles to be overcome and later discarded as they cease to be constructive members of the dialogue.

This Will Get The Creationists Going...

One of the often repeated saws out of creationists is that science has never successfully produced life in a laboratory experiment.

There is a certain amount of reasonableness to that argument. Although science in general has a pretty good idea of how life got started on this world, those ideas have been largely unprovable, since the most that scientists have seemingly been able to do is form some of the basic proteins that are part of RNA.

But then again, unlike scripture, science isn't standing still for anybody. Sure enough, someone has put aside the "you can't do that" rulebook, and done some very interesting experiments that we should take note of.

However, though researchers have been able to show how RNA’s component molecules, called ribonucleotides, could assemble into RNA, their many attempts to synthesize these ribonucleotides have failed. No matter how they combined the ingredients — a sugar, a phosphate, and one of four different nitrogenous molecules, or nucleobases — ribonucleotides just wouldn’t form.

Sutherland’s team took a different approach in what Harvard molecular biologist Jack Szostak called a “synthetic tour de force” in an accompanying commentary in Nature.

“By changing the way we mix the ingredients together, we managed to make ribonucleotides,” said Sutherland. “The chemistry works very effectively from simple precursors, and the conditions required are not distinct from what one might imagine took place on the early Earth.”

Is this life created in a lab? No. But it has established one more piece of the picture, and as you add pieces to the picture, the number of unknowns drops off, until you are left with a fairly coherent sense of the possibilities.

Not Good Enough, Mr. Goodyear

I've tried to ignore Gary Goodyear's idiotic tirade over being asked if he "believes in evolution". Frankly, it was a poorly phrased question, and Mr. Goodyear's response was childish, immature and off-topic:

Science minister Gary Goodyear now says he believes in evolution.

“Of course I do,” he told guest host Jane Taber during an appearance on the CTV program Power Play. “But it is an irrelevant question.”

That's a different answer from the one Mr. Goodyear, a chiropractor and minister of state for science and technology, gave The Globe and Mail when asked the same thing during an interview published in Tuesday's paper.

“I'm not going to answer that question. I am a Christian, and I don't think anybody asking a question about my religion is appropriate,” he said at the time.

Frankly, I don't care if Mr. Goodyear wants to believe in the Tooth Fairy. The real issue here, besides Mr. Goodyear's obvious religious fundamentalist sensitivities (his outrage is enough to convince me that underneath all that bluster, he really would prefer not to think too hard about such questions), is whether or not Mr. Goodyear understands the basic concepts of theory (as opposed to hypothesis) and the evidence that supports the theory.

It would seem that he doesn't actually understand. His recent attempts to clarify himself make my point for me:

“We are evolving every year, every decade. That's a fact, whether it is to the intensity of the sun, whether it is to, as a chiropractor, walking on cement versus anything else, whether it is running shoes or high heels, of course we are evolving to our environment. But that's not relevant and that is why I refused to answer the question. The interview was about our science and tech strategy, which is strong.”

If Mr. Goodyear really understood the science, he would not have used those examples, because they do not represent the kind of long term picture that the broad theory itself represents.

Between this, and Mr. Goodyear's attempts to defend a brain damaged approach to science on the part of the HarperCon$ by being a complete drama queen, we can safely conclude that Goodyear really is in the wrong place - in large part because he clearly neither understands nor supports the actual day to day work that science involves.

I suspect that like Bush II, the HarperCon$ are fundamentally opposed to science. Science represents knowledge and thought - and modern era political conservatism has been very opposed to people thinking for themselves. Conservatives succeed when they can keep people in the dark - just look at Alberta's government.

Putting Down "But It's Soooo Improbable" Arguments

One of the favourite - and utterly brain dead - criticisms of evolution that is often raised is the "sheer improbability" of the world - and the universe we live in - having "simply occurred" as a result of highly unlikely events coinciding.

Fundamentally, this is an emotional reaction - one firmly rooted in the same insecurity that gives religion its foothold in our world in the first place. There's something very unsettling to humans about the notion that we are in many ways simply a part of nature, and not divinely privileged in any respect.

However, one has only to look as far as the complex computer systems that we have today to get some idea of how these seemingly infinitely small probabilities line up.

A number of years ago, I was tasked with finding a bug in a piece of software I was responsible for at work. Every so often a handful of projects would pop up with exactly the same fault occurring, but we could never reproduce it in our test lab.

Eventually, we did track the fault down to a single line of code that had a small, but significant coding error. However, the coding error was not likely to cause a serious problem unless the following combination of failures happened to coincide:

1. The faulty line of code executed and produced a fail condition.
2. The program received a 'page' of memory that just happened to have a meaningful value in the correct location from the last execution of the loop
3. The correct sequence of related programs executed, and left the system in a state where 1 and 2 could in fact occur and coincide.

When we found the error, one of the team spent a few hours working out what the likely combination of events was that was necessary to coincide for this result to occur - and the number was surprisingly close to 1 in a million - quite literally. When we sat down and ran the numbers, the average time between errors happened to be awfully close to when the millionth execution of that could would likely have taken place on that system.

With the exception of the code error, the rest of the events that had to coincide were quite beyond our control - effectively random for all intents and purposes. While one might argue that the computer system itself was the result of intelligent design, that misses the point. The systems in question were never designed to produce the result that was observed. The second point is that the various aspects of the computer environment were acting as independent, but interacting, systems - not unlike those we see in the world around us (admittedly the computer software involved exists on a far smaller scale than the world we live in).

So, if one were to draw out the analogy a bit further - especially when considering the fundamental concept of evolution - we find ourselves examining the probability that random biological events would be occurring, some more successful than others at propogating themselves. So, let's consider that any particular biological event (e.g. DNA mutation) has a probability of 1 / 1 x 10^7 of occurring (my estimate of the probability here is arbitrary). Now consider how many biological events occur in the world every second of every day. Cells split and reproduce all the time - think about the number of cells in our world - even in one body - the numbers are unimaginably huge, far more than 1 x 10^7 - which means that the odds are that somewhere, any one arbitrary event has occurred.

Now, thinking beyond that, then the question is whether that event occurs in a context which makes it significant? Well, if the event itself can occur, and has a pretty reasonable chance of occurring, then it is hardly an unreasonable assertion that the events could occur in the correct context to become significant.

Is this guaranteed? No. Is it impossible? No - which is by far the more significant point.

Does this preclude the existence of some metaphysical being and their involvement in our universe? No - of course not. By definition the metaphysical being is unprovable until we ourselves become peers to that being somehow.

However, it does provide us with a knowable explanation that does not require the intervention of an unknown and unprovable entity. This produces a logically consistent explanation - one which stands to scrutiny.

For some, what I postulate here is going to be emotionally unsatisfying - but that's not surprising - statistics and the mathematics of probabilities are seldom emotionally satisfying. Science in general isn't about sating someone's emotional needs.

"Dr." McVety's Wisdom...

It would seem that all of the degree mill diplomas that "Dr." Charles McVety claims to have earned (paid for) haven't exactly enhanced the man's critical thinking skills.

For example, consider the following bit of drooling stupidity published on http://www.charlesdarwin.ca.

Entitled "Sexism in Schools" sexism in schools, it attempts to portray evolution theory as outright sexist, and all of the evil things that it says to put women into a second place status in society:

Darwin’s theory of natural selection as the process for progress of a species places the developmental responsibility on the male; therefore, man is further developed than woman. The stronger, more fit man will out do the weaker man and win the woman, ultimately producing stronger offspring, contributing to the evolution of man. This conclusion that the woman plays little or no part in development leads to the belief that women have not evolved as far as man.

Ummm...no, it doesn't Mr. McVety. Even the most egregious abuse of what Darwin wrote in 'The Origin of Species' could justify that particular position.

However, even if Darwin had written precisely that in The Origin of Species, it hardly reflects the current day understanding of evolution - or science in general for that matter.

You see, unlike raving nutballs like Charles McVety, science long ago figured out that it must change as new data emerges - and plenty of data to refute whatever piece of Darwin's writing McVety is nitpicking about has come along. (Remember, Darwin wrote much of his material long before women were considered equal citizens in our society - if some of it has undercurrents of what today we would call sexism, we shouldn't be surprised).

However, I suppose McVety can be forgiven such failings, as he comes from a tradition where reading and actually interpreting things is verboten - after all scripture is the "unchanging word of God", is it not?

But, then he goes on and proceeds to drop an even better turd out of his intellectual orifice:

Evolutionists also teach that the woman resembles an eleven-year-old male therefore is clearly lesser developed than man is. This type of superficial conclusion only reveals the ignorance of so-called scientists that propagate such nonsense. They obviously do not look beyond outward appearance and have no understanding of women.

Another “brain storm” of evolution is that women are over burdened by strong senses to the point that they have no ability to develop intellectually. Evolutionists compare women to lesser developed species like dogs that have such strong noses that their minds are constantly overwhelmed by the sense of smell, so that they cannot progress mentally. This is utter nonsense and highly offensive to all mankind.

I don't even want to know where he derived that bit of nonsense from. It's beyond stupid, and lands firmly in the realm of just plain crap. If one were to make an utterly ridiculous extrapolation from observed evidence, you could probably derive whatever McVety is dribbling on about (it's fairly well known that women have more sensitive senses of sight and smell than men do - on average - but I don't think anyone with half a brain views that as anything other than a difference, especially in the context of science classes).

As for what is supposedly taught in high school science courses, I don't think it comes anywhere near to spouting the kind of drivel that McVety is manufacturing. He's actually being somewhat less coherent in his arguments than Behe was in Darwin's Black Box - a feat that I find somewhat surprising.

Mr. McVety might want to do a couple of remedial exercises - actually read "The Origin of Species", as well as one or two current day books that talk about evolution. Shouldn't be a difficult thing for a man with a PhD. to do ... if he actually earned that PhD the old fashioned way...

No, no, that's not the point...

In what he thinks is a revelation, we find the resident genius over at "shock and blog" whining because critics of the film "Expelled" just won't give the movie a break.

It's the half-baked claim that he uses to justify it that gets me though:

So really, what the critics of "Expelled" have a problem with is the origins of life, even though they claim evolution has no opinion on the issue. ... Funny how no one ever defined science as excluding any sort of intelligent designer.

This couldn't be further from the truth. The simple reality is that there is no testable means to test the claim of an intelligent designer. Period. You can claim it all you like, but you cannot demonstrate it in any meaningful sense. (and no, a Behe-style argument-by-credulity approach doesn't count either)

The second, and more serious problem with the film, is the fact that it grossly mischaracterizes the political/academic situation by essentially claiming that the oh-so-evil evolutionists are trying to suppress a valid theory. Nothing could be further from the truth, but none of ID's proponents has come up with anything that substantiates their claims that would survive peer review.

The reason that science in general has no opinion on the "origins" of life is because to this point, there is no means to prove or disprove what exactly happened at the moment that life became identifiable. In the purest sense of the word, science is quite atheistic (in the "without god" sense, not the "excluding god" sense that is so often inferred). Science in general concerns itself with what it can describe based on what we know, not the utterly unknowable.

Along the lines of the classic philosophical "brain in a bucket" model, we cannot prove the validity of anything that we cannot describe with our senses. However unlikely, it is possible that our entire experience is the result of someone artificially stimulating our brain while it sloshes about in a bucket of fluid somewhere. Since we have no means to prove or disprove the assertion that we are just floating in a bucket somewhere, we cannot meaningfully support it or refute it.

Accepting as "fact" the notion of an "intelligent designer" being involved in the creation of life falls into the same category - it is simply an assertion. As a hypothesis, it remainjavascript:void(0)
Publish Posts quite untestable - which is why ID doesn't even qualify as valid science.

Dawkins on Expelled

Here's Richard Dawkins' review of the movie - go read.

Ha Ha Ha Ha !

Over at Pharyngula, we find out that blog owner PZ Myers tried to attend a screening of the movie Expelled, which is supposed to show us all of the evils of Evolution theory. Prof. Myers was denied entry to see the movie.

I can only imagine how truly awful Expelled really is, but you really do have to chuckle at the reality that its producers are so thin-skinned that they have a list of people that they don't want to see the movie.

Oh - I see that the New York Times has a story on this.

It doesn't say much for the "argument" that the movie is making when they are so afraid of someone poking holes in it (and thus making it look bad) that they specifically ban that person from the movie. Granted, Myers is sometimes less than gentle in his critiques, but that's the blogosphere - it's not necessarily the most genteel of places. (and I've seen my own share of the kind of unreasoning hostility that some are quite happy to dish out)