Guest opinion; Dr. Tim Ball
Most of the loudest and most vociferous responses to my last article were predictable. Several topics trigger immediate, irrational, and emotional responses. The mention, or at least the questioning, of Darwin’s Evolutionary Theory, is one of them. All I got was arm-waving and references, but not one piece of empirical evidence to prove the theory. This is the same response you get when you ask for empirical evidence to prove the anthropogenic global warming theory (AGW).
There is another parallel between the two. Many call AGW a hoax, but it is not, partly because a hoax has a humorous component and there is nothing funny about the deception and its impact. A real and very effective scientific hoax involved the obsession with proving Darwin’s theory. It is called the Piltdown Man Hoax after the quarry in which the event occurred. As a traditional hoax, it was designed to prick pomposity, to underscore the weakness of unjustified and arrogant claims, to open eyes closed by obsession. The irony is the victim of the hoax, Charles Dawson, was determined to find the so-called ‘missing link. He sought the empirical fossil evidence that would provide the final link in the evolution of man from apes.
Dawson was so obsessed with his search and the belief that such a fossil existed that he was easy prey. It is this kind of blind obsession that is the sad situation with all those arm-waving supporters of Darwin’s theory. What is amazing is that the academic and professional world of museums and societies believed Piltdown for 41 years. There were doubters, but they were brushed aside. Eventually, in 1953, the hoax was revealed when it was shown that the Piltdown skull comprised a cleverly aged mandible and some teeth of an orangutan and the cranium of a human.
A major problem with this search for human ancestry is the entire fossil record more than 1 million years old fits on a dining room table. It is as sparse as the data for anthropogenic warming. However, this is only one part of the entire problem of determining evolutionary theory from the fossil record.
Estimates indicate that on average it takes 15 million in a species for one to survive in the fossil record. How many of today’s species will show up in tomorrow’s record? Don’t forget that is in species that have parts that can become fossilized. A remarkable discovery put this entire issue into perspective in a quarry called the Burgess Shales. This is on the boundary between the Canadian Provinces of Alberta and British Columbia. Ironically, the original discovery by Charles Walcott occurred in 1909 before the Piltdown hoax. He recognized the importance of the discovery because it consisted of soft-bodied creatures that rarely survive in the fossil record. Unfortunately, the full significance of these fossils was not recognized until 1962 when Alberto Simonetta re-examined the fossils and realized the full extent of their significance.
Today, we are no further ahead because we have no idea how many species exist on our planet. Of course, that does not prevent the fanciful speculators who will do what Mark Twain said,
“There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.”
Consider the fact that we don’t know how many plant or animal species exist. A 2011 estimate said approximately 8.7 million, 6.5 on land and 2.2 in the ocean. This sounds definitive until you learn that the error range is ± 1.3 million. In a recent ten-year span more than a million new species were discovered. How many remain undiscovered? PLoS Biology suggests,
“…a staggering 86% of all species on land and 91% of those in the seas have yet to be discovered, described and catalogued.”
In 2012, a story appeared with the headline, “One Million New Plankton Species Found.” The expedition led by Dr. Chris Bowler was actually looking at the uptake of carbon dioxide in the oceans. Bowler said, “It’s the first time that anyone’s done this expedition looking specifically for plankton life, and that’s why we found so many.” How does that change the formulae for CO2 cycles in the Earth’s system?
It is not just about small species. There are stories all the time.
• 2010 report said, “30 unknown species found in Ecuador’s highland forests by a team of U.S. and Ecuadorian researchers,”
• 2010 report said, Over 200 New Species Found In Papua New Guinea. The lead scientist said, there are, “large areas of New Guinea that are pretty much unexplored biologically.”
• 2012 report “New species of monkey identified in Africa.”
The importance of the Burgess Shales event entered the public awareness with Stephen Jay Gould’s book, “Wonderful Life” and a cover story in National Geographic. The discovery pushed the origin of the earliest species back 50 million years before the previous estimates. It also seemed to indicate a different evolution scenario than the Darwin tree of life. It suggested that there was an explosion of life with a multitude of species most of which became extinct. In other words, it was a decreasing number of species, not increasing. By the way, it was Darwin who likened his ideas to a tree. In his comments on Alfred Russel Wallace’s work he said, it was nothing new and “Uses my simile of a tree (but) it seems all creation with him.” But more of that later.
I was always disturbed by the number of biology students who didn’t know the definition of species. The Oxford English Dictionary provides this definition.
A group of living organisms consisting of similar individuals capable of exchanging genes or interbreeding. The species is the principal natural taxonomic unit, ranking below a genus and denoted by a Latin binomial, e.g., Homo sapiens.
That sounds clear and concise, but it is not the case even among today’s species. It is even more difficult in the fossil record. For example, we know that mules and horses cannot produce viable offspring. If we found such similar species in the fossil record, there is no way of knowing. How many other natural hybrids exist today or in the fossil record?
The designation of species originated with the system of classification developed by Carolus Linnaeus and known as the Linnaean System. Classification systems are a wonderful idea for trying to make sense out of a plethora of data. The trouble is, like all structures, they are rigid and fail to accommodate new discoveries. The classic example that challenged the Linnaean system was the Platypus. Not surprisingly, and appropriate to our story, many scientists considered it a fake and a hoax. Just like with Piltdown some believed an Asian taxidermist sewed a beak onto a water-dwelling mammal. The reality is the Linnaean Classification is a fanciful, arbitrary rigid system that determined most thinking about evolution.
Some of the more fanciful, such as birds evolving from dinosaurs illustrate the problem (Figure1).
There is no empirical evidence to support this supposition. A good deal of this is based on the fact that some creatures look alike. This is clear in the case of humans and apes (Figure 2).
I don’t mind being descended from a gorilla. They are better than some of the relatives I have, however, many people do. That resentment speaks to the issue Darwin knew about but never dealt with effectively.
Alfred Russel Wallace published a paper on natural selection in 1858, a year before Darwin’s Origin of Species. Some say it pushed Darwin to publish. Others say it caused Darwin’s supporters to push for publication. Wallace’s paper challenged Charles Lyell because it opposed his idea that species were immutable.
The ongoing Wallace and Darwin debate is not over the idea of natural selection. It focused on the place of humans in the pattern of evolution. Wallace publicly supported Darwin’s work. In 1889, he published a book titled, Darwinism. His differences with Darwin emerged from a different area, the large gap between humans and all other species, especially apes. He said a theory must include an explanation for that difference and Darwin evolutionary ideas didn’t. Darwin tried to address the issue twelve years after Origin in his book The Descent of Man. He failed. He did not explain how humans are superior to every other species. His ideas led to the satire about how if you had a number of chimpanzees working on typewriters they would eventually type Shakespeare’s plays (Figure 3).
Figure 3
Former genetics professor David Suzuki provides a good example of the bizarre thinking when he said,
“Economics is a very species – chauvinistic idea. No other species on earth – and there are may be 30 million of them – has had the nerve to put forth a concept called economics, in which one species, us, declares the right to put value on everything else on earth, in the living and non-living world.”
He is incorrect about the number of species. He is wrong about putting a value on things. All animals put a value on everything. Can I eat it? Only humans put other values on things. No other animal could even think of a concept like economics. Instead of realizing that humans are achieving success and adaptability better than any other species, as Darwin suggested, he considers these as failures. He doesn’t even see the philosophical contradictions in his view.
The question is what is really behind all of this illogic and attacks on anyone who questions Darwinism or the prevailing wisdom of his Evolutionary Theory? The gap between humans and any other animals is one of them. It is so great Wallace had the audacity to introduce the idea of what we now call “intelligent design.” His challenges are part of the questions today that speak about the origin of the Universe. The problem for Darwin and the Big Bang theory people is that the ultimate question remains. Who or what created the material for the bang and who triggered it.
Then there is the problem of accurate dating. I recall at a conference on the fur trade, a historian presented a paper about a sequence of events he claimed changed the pattern of exploration. His sequence derived from entries in the Hudson’s Bay Company journals prior to 1752. He didn’t know that in September of that year the government removed eleven days to the change from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar. Hubert Lamb devoted a large section of his Volume 2 Climate Present, Past and Future to discussing the methods, limitations, and importance of both absolute and relative dating. The problems exist across all attempts to reconstruct the past, from climate to fossil records.
Incorrect dating makes any attempt to determine cause and effect impossible. Relative dating is when you have a specific date for a known event and can say whether something occurred before or after. Absolute dating is when you have a specific natural measure such as rate of conversion of radioactive material from one form to another. The two most common are radiocarbon and Potassium/Argon (K/A) dating. This has caused problems in climate reconstructions before. For example, the Milankovitch sequence indicated ice conditions in a region of Alaska then radiocarbon on fossilized trees indicated they were growing at the same time. This was a major reason why Milankovitch, who was initially accepted, was later rejected. In my early career mention of Milankovitch immediately triggered derision. It wasn’t until the late 1980s that I attended a conference and Milankovitch was mentioned and nobody reacted. climate conference. Of course, it turned out the fancy new ‘scientific’ measure of carbon dating was wrong because it assumed a constant rate of solar energy output. As recently as 2012 a new calibration method developed to provide more accurate reconstructions. Then, in the first week of June 2018, we learn,
Archaeologist Sturt Manning and colleagues have revealed variations in the radiocarbon cycle at certain periods of time, affecting frequently cited standards used in archaeological and historical research relevant to the southern Levant region (Israel, southern Jordan and Egypt). These variations, or offsets, of up to 20 years in the calibration of precise radiocarbon dating could be related to climatic conditions.
The problems with K/A dating are more profound, especially for the fossil record. A study in Hawaii gave an age for rock of 2.3 ± 0.3 million years. I don’t care about the specific age except that it is relatively recent geologically. What troubles me is the ± 0.3 million years. That is 300,000 years or a full error range of 600,000 years. How much happened in the last 600,000 years? Of course, as you go back in time the error increases. A one-million-year error range is not unusual.
It is interesting that when you search the web for information of accuracy of geologic dating methods, several appear that are sponsored by religious groups. Some specifically identify themselves as creationists.
I am not arguing for creationism, but it appears to influence science so that there is irrational and blind determination to confirm Darwin’s Theory. Ironically, we witness belief in the environment and AGW taking religious, blind belief, positions. So it is with Darwin. The minute you even raise the topic you get hysterical arm waving responses, with no empirical evidence to support their position.
People outside of science have warned about these irrational reactions. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, speaking through his character Sherlock Holmes wrote,
“It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.”
Alternatively, as Mark Twain said,
Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.
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The rule of three:
1. God did it
2. Physics did it
3. Chance did it
Each explanation falls into one or more of these classifications.
Almost. If God created everything, then he created Physics too. God and Chance are more or less the same thing; God works in mysterious ways after all, and God create good and bad, so the bad stuff has to be blamed on God too. Acts of God or Chance. Chance is part of modern Physics. So I would restate the rule of three like this:
1. God did it
2. Classical Physics did it (deterministic)
3. Modern Physics did it (quantum mechanics, probability)
You can rule out #2 right away.
As an aside, why is it that those who don’t believe random processes of physics and chemistry can do it given an almost infinite time and places to try, they can easily believe in a god with infinite powers?
“God works in mysterious ways after all” that single statement has always, to me, been the biggest cop-out of any religion.
Here is the best empirical evidence I have seen for Evolution. Lenski study: after 20,000 generations, bacteria picked up a genetic change, by chance, that actually had some reproductive value: the ability to use yet another substance, citrate, as food.
This is science. In order for some claim of knowledge to be “science,” it must be observable. As far as I know, this is the first beneficial genetic mutation ever observed where it is known, and scientifically manipulated, and observed, that a documented genetic change produces a favorable-to-life, usable phenotype.
So, based on this, our most accurate piece of knowledge regarding evolution is this: as best we know, a single adaptation seems to take 20,000 generation.
Yet, given the Evolution Believers that, we have to recognize that we still have not yet observed a new organism; the bacteria was still just a bacteria.
So, while we have observed the acquisition of a helpful random mutation, we still have not yet observed a new organism.
Examining the family trees of apparent descent is a good idea, but this “evidence” still is less than complete. It suffers form the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy: we have the data, then we draw a “target” around the data and claim the post-data target is our a priori theory. If you truly are a sharpshooter, you post your target first, then go get the data afterwards.
[Evolution would suggest that we should keep getting more species. The Judeo-Christian belief system suggests, in this fallen world, both morally and physically, that we would expect to keep losing species rather than gaining them. Two competing theories with very different predictions/implications. Thus far, J-C fits the observed data better than Evolution]
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature24287
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._coli_long-term_evolution_experiment
We have observed hundreds of thousands of new organisms evolving from existing organisms.
Evolution is not a “belief”. It is a scientific fact.
Darwinism makes a lot of sense. He posits that after a completely random change, nature and competition will test it and value it. Good changes survive, bad ones do not.
The problem is that people demand that we see large changes in recent experience. We are long past the time when peduncles were being formed and moderated. And we have no direct evidence from that period of time. We cannot have a radical change from a species of ape, for example, into a species of bird. No surprise there.
Yeah, you get the complete idiocy of people like Kirk Cameron. According to him, because we don’t see a banana become a tiger, god exists.
Honk if you don’t believe in “god” and think there are problems in evolutionary theory. Get’s lonely out here I wonder if I am the only one.
Tim Ball, “but not one piece of empirical evidence to prove the theory.”
Not correct, Tim. Darwin’s very long discussion of artificial selection and variation among pigeons provided a huge positive empirical evidence for, and validation of, his theory of variation and natural selection.
I pointed that out to you in my posted reply here (June 25, 2018 3:59 pm), but you apparently didn’t see it.
In the same post, I also pointed you to Talk.Origins and their enormous discussion of common creationist arguments and the refutation of them. You apparently didn’t see that, either.
Here’s another piece of empirical evidence. Humans have 23 chromosomes, while chimps and gorillas have 24.
Chromosome 2 in humans is just an end-to-end fusion of two chromosomes that are separate in chimps and gorillas.
In humans, chromosome 2 has vestigial telomeres and centromeres within itself. Telomeres terminate chromosomes, but chromosome 2 has a residual bit within itself.
Chromosomes have one centromere, but chromosome 2 has the residuum of a second one.
These are unambiguous evidence of an evolutionary divergence from a common ancestor with chimps and gorillas.
“Who or what created the material for the bang and who triggered it.”
Who or what creates the Casimir Force, Tim, and who triggers spontaneous pair production?
Matter and energy appear from nothing, and return to it.
Quantum effects, Tim, that’s what. The nothingness from which the universe emerged included all time and all space.
Under the conditions described by a delta function, an infinitely improbable event integrated over an infinitely long time has a unit probability of occurrence.
Nature breaks symmetry everywhere to attain a lower energy state. Nothingness has the highest possible symmetry. Breaking that symmetry to produce the universe is a transition to a lower energy state.
Our universe is inevitable. Other universes may be as well.
Dr. Ball apparently “didn’t see” any of the copious comments to his prior spew of gibberish which provided the empirical evidence which he claims wasn’t presented.
Tim: Si tacuisses philosophus mansisses. I respected your contributions so much. Now you lost me. AGW: There are more than enough real data not compatible with it. Evolution: I have not seen any real data not compatible with it. Nobody has to prove evolution. That is not how science works. Showing holes in a theory is rather cheap but does not prove anything. Disprove it if you have something to add.
Dr Tim Ball’s essay is meandering, superficial, and incoherent.
I’ll address just one of his comments: A good deal of this is based on the fact that some creatures look alike. This is clear in the case of humans and apes (Figure 2).
It isn’t just that the great apes looks alike, but that there are cross-species similarities and variation, and within-species variation in everything. Here is a short list:
neurophysiology: they all have similar neurons, that obey the Hodgkin-Huxley equations, and a have the same neurotransmitters. In utero, their eyes grow out as extensions from their developing brains;
Proteins: in all fine structures of their bodies, the species have similar proteins: albumin, insulin, hemoglobin, renin, pepsin, rhodopsin and pigments for color vision; theCYP 450 enzymes (similarly situated in the microstructures of the similar hepatocytes, that are layered similarly in the livers, that are similarly situated within the body to receive the substances of digestion from the intestines.)
Organs: similarly structured and similarly functioning hearts; similarly structured and similarly functioning lungs; similarly structured and similarly functioning kidneys; similarly structured and similarly functioning muscle cells and muscle groups; similarly structured and similarly functioning bone cells and bones.
Genes: all of the differences in phenotypic characters that have been studied and show similarities and differences between species and variation within species have been shown to be relatable differences in coding genes, regulatory genes, or both.
By far the best explanation for all of the recorded evidence is that these animals are descended from a common ancestral population. No doubt the explanation is incomplete, but the details of random variation and natural selection have been demonstrated in every species in which it has been possible to study many generations of the birth of progeny and their slaughter during maturation and adulthood. As an alternative to that, what have you got, “The God of the Gaps”? What isn’t yet known or knowable must be due to a powerful intelligent designer? “The Creator made them that way so that they would appear to have been descended from a common ancestor”?
If we are going to go with rhetorical questions about why something is not yet known, how about: Why would an intelligent, powerful Creator design a system in which the progeny in each generation display great variation (usually more than people can easily apprehend), and in which almost all of the progeny of every generation of every species are killed by their environment before they can reproduce?
Matthew Marler, that’s a pretty good, spirited, defense of evolution theory you’ve posted! However, I wonder if maybe you’re being a little on the rhetorical rough side to say that “Dr Tim Ball’s essay is meandering, superficial, and incoherent” ? As for “meandering”, I know myself that I’ve found Stephen Jay Gould’s popular essays to be pretty meandering at times, but that didn’t prevent me from reading a few of them!
You also complain that the current Tim Ball article is “incoherent”. In response, I have to concede that, well, it *is* difficult to tell exactly what Dr. Ball has on his mind here, isn’t it? I mean, he says he’s not a creationist, and he seems to praise Alfred Wallace over Charles Darwin, which is *something*, I suppose. My understanding is that Wallace independently presented a very similar set of ideas to Darwin’s, with Darwin’s only claim to precendence being a manuscript that he had sat on a long time without publishing. It’s not really obvious why Darwin immediately got the lion’s share of the credit for Evolution by Natural Selection? Darwin had better connections, maybe, *including* scientist connections who were inspired to do the detailed studies of the Galapagos bird populations, etc.
If I follow Dr. Ball’s comments about Wallace through to the end, it would seem that Ball is concerned about the “large gap between humans and all other species, especially apes”, with a general sort of implication that Darwin’s approach to this was in some way inferior to Wallace’s. To me, this fits in with Dr. Ball’s comments in earlier articles, to the effect that environmentalists have greatly exaggerated the dangers of human Malthusian-style population booms. Ball generally seems to be of the opinion that human resilience and responsiveness to economic realities will effectively prevent any worrisome Malthusian crisis (in other words, we humans respond to economic pressures in ways that prevent the global “overpopulation crisis” that mainstream “green” philosophy is so concerned with at times). If I’m right about the basic intention here, then maybe these anti-Malthusian ideas could be more simply stated — for the sake of a lot less philosophical confusion, if nothing else.
Darwin got credit not only because he was first, but because, thanks to his over 20 years of gathering evidence, was able promptly to bring out a large book detailing and defending his discovery of common descent and natural selection. Origin was published the year after the reading of Darwin and Wallace’s joint paper on what came to be called evolution.
Darwin’s colleagues knew of his work, even though he hadn’t published on “transmutation”, as evolution was then called. Wallace sent him his thoughts because Darwin was known to be in the transmutationist camp, although Wallace didn’t know that Darwin had already discovered natural selection in 1837 or earlier.
Ball’s take on Darwin vs. Wallace is, as is all of his other errant drivel, entirely wrong. Wallace was a spiritualist as well as a scientist, so thought, wrongly that human brains couldn’t have evolved via natural selection.
When Wallace first wrote on human evolution in the 1860s, he got right that bipedalism came before much bigger brains, but was, as noted, was wrong about brain size. This is understandable because fossils in the human lineage with ever increasing brain size hadn’t yet been found. Neanderthal brains are at least as large as modern humans’, although organized rather differently. But Australopithecus, H. habilis, H. erectus and other evolving human species showed the gradual increase in brain size under natural selection.
On the matter of Darwin’s Evolutionary theory this has now been observed in the genome at the generational level. I suggest people listed to
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00ssmcp/episodes/player
Ask any PhD biologist reading this list if he/she has heard of Dr. George Gaylord Simpson. If you haven’t heard of him, look him up, his books are still being sold by Amazon.com .
When I was an undergrad, I had a prof choose one of his textbooks for biology for scientists class. The prof was a missionary for evolution in that his goal was to convert us all to believing in Darwinian evolution, and that’s why he chose that book. It’s that textbook that convinced me that Darwinian evolution is not a scientific theory, never has been and never can be, by definition.
By the same definition of science, Creationism also is not a scientific theory.
The textbook started with the most complete and concise definition of science that I have seen in any textbook (I checked several). By his definition, science is based on observation. In order for an observation to be scientifically valid, it must be a repeatable observation. Upon that foundation are built hypotheses, theories and experiments. He gave examples of theories that are not scientific and showed why, most often because they dealt with unobservable presuppositions. This definition of science is recognized as “modern science”.
The only repeatable observations that can be made are of present phenomena. The past is no longer observable, and the future not yet observable.
After a few pages of concisely defining “science”, he then defined evolution as the teaching that all life has developed from simple, common ancestors by natural means over a long period of time. Notice this definition is of the unobservable past, therefore cannot be a scientific teaching, by definition.
Present, repeatable observation finds fossils in rocks, but cannot tell how and when they were deposited. Present repeatable observation can observe present ratios of isotopes in rocks, but it cannot be observed what were the original ratios of those isotopes, nor what events may have adjusted those ratios over time (there go all radiometric dating methods).
The only way to make Darwinian evolution a scientific theory, is to change the definition of “science”. That’s exactly what I see is happening today, that the definition of “science” is being changed. But that change is gradual, in fits and starts, because there are too many old codgers like me around who still operate on the basis of the old definition of “modern science”. I expect that Dr. Timothy Ball is also an old codger who still holds onto modern science. What I’ve seen of the new science is that it seems to be a reversion to pre-modern science that we know from ancient Greece through the Renaissance.
So much of “climate science” seems also to fit the pattern of pre-modern science.
Notice I didn’t include intelligent design in the above monologue—that teaching is based on repeatable observation that the type of complexity found, not complexity in general, but the type of complexity found in nature is of the nature found only in designed systems. As scientists you can argue about that, because there are repeatable observations that can be used in the arguments.
So I guess the question boils down to, what is your definition of “science”?
Of course the past is observable. We see what happened hundreds of millions of years ago not only in the rocks, but in our own genes, proteins and anatomical structures, which are biochemical fossils, and in embryological development.
Astronomers observe billions of years in the past.
Clearly, Simpson’s definition didn’t sink in.
Felix:
You don’t observe the past. All you observe is the present. You then make conclusions based on unobservable presuppositions that may or may not be true.
What were the original ratios of isotopes in rocks? Where are your observations that can verify your claims?
Genes, proteins and anatomical structures are taken evidence for intelligent design from just a few thousands a years ago.
You mention “embryological development”: do you mean Ernst Haekel’s “ontology recapitulates phylogeny” theory that was disproved when the role of DNA in heritage was discovered?
Astronomers see only the light that arrives now.
Did the speed of light remain constant? There’s historical observtions that call that presupposition into question. Because those measurements were made in the now unobservable past, today we can neither verify nor falsify those historical observations.
Is the speed of light constant throughout interstellar space? We can’t answer this question because of our technical limitations prevent observation.
Every aspect of a theory must be based on repeatable observations. The moment you introduce arm waving and speculation, even for only part of a theory, automatically makes the thole theory a non-scientific (not necessarily unscientific as in opposing science) theory.
Shouldn’t write in the middle of the night when tired, that introduces typos. The worst one above, “makes the whole theory non-scientific”.
I understand what you are saying, but I believe you have missed the point. By the same token any observation you made yesterday could simply be a false memory.
Your definition of science is a little flawed here: Science is, ultimately a testable narrative that fits generally accepted facts. And no more.
And generally accepted facts do include a concept of time and geological time.
What I mentioned is not MY definition of science, rather the definition that was unanimously taught by scientists back when I was an undergrad in the university.
Modern science was developed largely as a rejection of “generally accepted facts” inherited from the medieval through Renaissance periods. It developed a methodology by which facts could be discovered and tested through observation.
History is different from science in that it studies often one-time events that happened in what is now the unobservable past. As such, it has developed its own set of tools different from the scientific method. Even though in archeology it often uses tools that were originally developed for scientific studies, that still doesn’t make history a scientific study.
So much of what is called “geological time” is based on unobservable presuppositions that go back to Charles Lyell and James Hutton, presuppositions that are neither provable nor falsifiable because they are unobservable.
Today the definition of science is being changed from what I was taught when I was a student in the university. One of the changes is that theory, which you call “narrative”, is supplanting observation as being the cornerstone of scientific knowledge. Further, often “generally accepted facts” includes the rejection, often even suppression, of inconvenient observations that call “narrative” into question. These changes resemble the medieval through Renaissance “science” that early modern scientists explicitly rejected in the development of modern science.
Similar changes are happening in the study of history.
So which definition of science do you use: modern science or medieval “science”?
What an extraordinary piece.
The big difference between evolution as theory and global warming as theory is that one is an all or nothing theory – either evolution happened, and accounts for the origin of the species we see around us, or it did not happen. I suppose you could conceivably argue that it accounts for the origin of all species except one, but you would then have to explain the exception, so you would just have dug a deeper hole.
Global warming theory on the other hand is a complex collection of propositions, of varying degrees of plausibility and connectedness to observations, and the main issue with it is one of degree. It is certain for instance that the absorption spectrum of CO2 is a certain value. Its certain that rising CO2 levels have a forcing effect. But the total magnitude of the resulting warming is not certain, and the whole complex chain of events involving real or imaginary feedbacks is most uncertain.
There is therefore no similarity, and to think that skepticism about the theory that our CO2 emissions will lead to catastrophic warming is similar to skepticism about the origin of the species from evolution is just silly.
The argument is commonly misused from the other direction: that is, the claim is frequently made that to doubt CAGW is as irrational as to doubt evolution. No, it is not.
It is true that in accounts of evolution a logical circularity sometimes creeps in. You fail to see how a small stub had any survival value, which it must have had at different stages into its supposed evolution into wings, and you are told, well, it must have, because wings finally did emerge. Yes, its uncomfortable. And similarly the rejoinder that there is no other plausible evidenced explanation for the origin of species is uncomfortably like arguments from ignorance. We sometimes meet with an argument of this form in the claim that we can think of nothing other than CO2 to account for recent warming.
But its different. There is an obvious other empirical cause which can be and is being investigated, its whatever has caused previous warmings. There is no alternative empirically testable explanation for the origin of species.
All the same, on evolution, the balance of evidence is decisive. In a way that the evidence for some warming effect from CO2 is also decisive. And in the way that the evidence for catastrophic warming from CO2 simply is not.
There is no circularity in the evolution of wings, which didn’t evolve from stubs. Wings evolved from arms and hands identical in construction to the first wings.
Comparison of the forelimb of “early bird” Archaeopteryx (right) with that of “raptor” dinosaur Deinonychus (left).
Yes, it was just a ‘for instance’. The general point still applies. How do we know the initial evolutionary steps to wings (or anything else) were survival assets? When they were not fully formed wings or whatever?
Because they survived.
I don’t feel deeply uncomfortable about this, it goes no way to refuting evolution. But it does nag a bit. Not just at me by the way. I think also at Jerry Fodor
No, the general “circularity” point doesn’t apply. As with the evolution of complex structures such as the eye, the features preceding wings were adaptive, hence selected for, as were those innovations leading to further evolution into wings.
We can view the steps in the formation of complex structures via various lines of evidence, to include not just comparative anatomy and fossils, but embryology and genomes.
In the case of wings, the flight stroke apparently evolved before flight, as a means of grasping prey. Feathers also evolved before flight, for thermal regulation, display, nesting, etc. Gliding also apparently preceded flight. Adaptations for life on the ground, and for life in trees before flight facilitated the evolution of powered flight. They were in effect preadaptations coopted for the new ability.
Feathered flight appears to have evolved more than once among maniraptoran dinosaurs.
Fodor was a philosopher, not a biologist, hence lacked the least little clue about which he presumed to pontificate out of utter ignorance, like Dr. Ball,
I doubt Dr. Ball is still reading, but there are examples of recent human evolution. What do creationists think of this one? Africans have black skin, Swedes have white skin. In general, natives of the hot sunny tropics have darker skin than the natives of the cold cloudy north. Science can explain that by the need for Vitamin D from sunshine and the need for protection from UV from the sun.
https://www.nasw.org/article/vitamin-d-levels-determined-how-human-skin-color-evolved
The Bible hardly mentions skin color, perhaps because when it was written, those who wrote it did not know there were any skin colors other than olive.
Song of Solomon
5 I am black, but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon.
6 Look not upon me, because I am black, because the sun hath looked upon me: my mother’s children were angry with me; they made me the keeper of the vineyards; but mine own vineyard have I not kept.
Granted, could refer to sun tan.
The Bible explains the “races” through the sons of Noah, and in the following chapter:
https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Genesis-Chapter-9/
But, yes, of course human evolution continues. Indeed, it has rapidly sped up in recent generations, thanks to there now being so many more of us. We are however also actively participating in our own evolution through cultural innovations, genetic engineering, surgery and medicine.
One day has passed and Tim Ball hasn’t replied to any inquiries.
One wonders if he really reads the comments. Apparently he doesn’t, since none of the points raised on the comment section of his first article is replied here. No comments about epigenetics, temperate viruses, point mutations, frame shifts, methylation of nucleotides… nothing, nada de nada.
And then there he wrote this sentence
Does he even know how the scientific method works? I could explain it, but he doesn’t seem to read the comments. Besides, some commenters have already explained what it so wrong with that sentence.
Is this article a click-bait? or more accurately, comment-bait?
IMO our host isn’t that nefarious.
Our esteemed host may contradict me, but IMO AW probably likes and admires Dr. Ball, so allowed Tim further to embarrass himself, at Tim’s own request.
That Dr. Ball asserts falsehoods against commenters from his first pack of errant nonsense, refusing to reply to specific comments, further brings shame down upon his head.
Urederra,
It is a pity, but while I like his straight-forward stance on AGW and its main promotors, he doesn’t listen to (or even read?) any argument that does contradict his own ideas. The same for evolution as for the origin of the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere…
That makes that he undermines his (and our) own valid arguments by keeping strong on unsupportable, false opinions…
Urederra:
When I was an undergraduate first learning about science, I did a search in the university library of all the introductory textbooks in the university library that I could find that contained a definition for science. Those that I found that had a definition for science (about a third of introductory textbooks) were unanimous in their description. That is, introductory textbooks in chemistry, physics, and biology.
But then there were plenty of examples of scientists who stated the description of the scientific method, then didn’t follow it themselves. Prominent examples include George Gaylord Simpson and Stephen Jay Gould.
Dr. Tim Ball is older than I, and from what I have seen operates on the same definition of science that I was taught.
According to that definition of science, I too have not seen any empirical evidence that can be explained only by the theory of Darwinian evolution. Then there is empirical evidence that calls Darwinian evolution into question, mostly commented on by those who teach Intelligent Design, though also in geology.
More recently I’ve noticed attempts to gloss over those difficulties by redefining the scientific method. More and more what passes for “science” resembles the pre-modern science taught in the medieval monasteries.
It comes down to, to which definition of science do you ascribe?
We are really going down a slippery slope if we start talking about Creationism vs Evolution on this site.
I suggest if anyone is interested that they Google “Talk.Origins”. You will find 18 years of blog entries discussing just about every aspect of the controversy.
As my biology teacher used to say. “You can explain ANYTHING as the result of the action of angels in heaven or demons in hell. However, you can forecast NOTHING”. This is the basic problem with Climate Science – it claims to explain everything, but it can forecast nothing.
Well said by your teacher.
But in science, there is no controversy over the fact of evolution.
Like any other valid scientific theory, such as gravity, the body of work explaining how evolution works is always evolving.
This completely misses the point. There is nothing wrong or unscientific about the theory of evolution by means of natural selection, and there is absolutely no need to to involve God in the discussion.
The best way I can explain it is by pointing out that evolution by means of natural selection needs no empirical observation evidence to support it whatsoever. If anything, Darwin was wrong to try to support it that way. It is, instead a perfectly reliable logical outcome of selective reproduction.
What can be scientific or unscientific is specific histories of the kind Darwin tried to construct and/or the idea that any of this can tell us anything whatsoever about the role of God. Instead, the theory just forms a basis for further investigation.
Conversely, the “Greenhouse” characteristics of CO2 is an empirical observation. It didn’t need to be that way, but just is. But that doesn’t allow us to construct a theory about climate from it. It does not *logically* follow that because CO2 traps heat at certain wavelengths that more CO2 would increase global temperature. Not at all.
What connects these two is the fact that proponents of specific points of view want to improperly transfer statements about one level of analysis onto another. Natural selection does not make your pet theories about the origin of the appendix scientific, and that fact does not render natural selection unscientific, and certainly does not warrant any conclusions about metaphysics. Similarly, climate is climate, it is not gas laws or solar cycles or spectral signatures. A good theory about climate makes good predictions about the behavior of climate. Period. We can use these underlying theories as the basis for trying to construct a theory about climate, but their scientific credentials has zero bearing on the ultimate theory about climate, just as the truth of the fact of evolution by means of natural selection has zero bearing on either God or any particular derivative theory of particular evolutionary histoey.
Agree of course that there is no need to invoke divine intervention in the history of life on Earth, or specifically in evolution by natural selection.
Also that selection follows rationally from the facts of variation and differing reproductive success based thereupon. Yet, it’s still good IMO to provide instances of speciation by selection observed in nature, and of the evolution of higher categories.
However, I wonder what are the “specific histories which Darwin tried to construct” of which you write. Darwin offered evidence supporting the common descent by modification of life on Earth. He may have gotten something wrong about that history, but it doesn’t immediately spring to mind, so would appreciate your elucidation.
Of course, he got inheritance wrong, since he never read Mendel. And phenomena which were still in some ways mysterious in 1858 aren’t any more, or are much less so, such as the evolution of the eye or the so-called Cambrian Explosion.
“Only humans put other values on things. ”
I just want to say that some birds put other values on things. Shiny things, they take back to their nest, lyre birds being the prime example.
Does anyone actually suggest humans are descended from gorillas??
What evolution proposes is a common ancestor which is neither human nor gorilla.
And seeing as the theory of evolution does explain many real world phenomenons it has empirical evidence which clearly supports it, such as drug resistance in bacteria. These are real world demonstrations of the mechanism.
The use of bacteria to process some gold ores shows the bacteria evolving in a manner of days to more efficiently process the ore.
“the entire fossil record more than 1 million years old fits on a dining room table”
So are all those dinosaur bones throughout the world’s museums only Plaster of Paris?
He refers to the hominid fossil record supposedly leading up to modern humans.
So, yet again, Ball shows how out of date his ill-informed opinions are:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_human_evolution_fossils
For example, six skeletons, almost two million years old, found in 2008:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australopithecus_sediba
Over 220 fragments recovered to date, with more to come.
One of the six skeletons:
Felix:
First of all, WikiPedia is not a trustworthy source. A reference to WikiPedia is automatically discounted on other discussion boards to which I subscribe.
Secondly, it’s recognized by many who believe in Darwinian evolution that both, or all varieties of australopithithicus were not in the line leading up to modern humans. Rather they were apes separate from the hominid line.
Dr. Ball may be more current than you are.
700 comments…this must be a record…
Critical numbers…or critical mass…or critical energy…whatever…
Still amazing…thanks doctor..:)
Oh, well, not really considering the best of… the length and the sharpness of the 700 comments, as per the thought expression;
Evolution of the expression of one’s mind and thought…put simply…
Good participation… 🙂
Not a record.
This was a double-header. Someone didn’t describe evolution quite right and didn’t describe how science works quite right.
Participation…Toto.
I guess this shows that readers who want WUWT to stick to climate, WX and maybe energy issues must be in a minority.
Felix
Are you really sure that this is what the WUWT readers want,,, is it really what you say or claim the real deal…at this point?
I think that it has more to do with the participation…in the sharing as per the free expression of thought at best possible…
That is what I think this platform offers best…better than any else…at the moment. 🙂
Evolution of expression….again critical numbers…critical mass… 🙂
Felix..
All this said…you still good… 🙂
Very.
Dr. Ball,
It appears, sadly that you don’t intend to reply to comments here, but I’d appreciate hearing your reasons for rejecting the fact of evolution, as I’m sure would others. Please say which aspects of evolution you deny?
1) That genetic variation exists in all populations of reproducing organisms, from a variety of sources, to include errors in cell division, gross chromosomal alterations, mutations such as deletions, additions, substitutions and duplications of from individual nucleobases on up to whole genomes, and inclusions from bacterial and viral genomes, etc. Hence, genomes are subject to change in every generation and during organisms’ lives.
2) That such variation is heritable, to include the changes.
3) That, depending upon environmental conditions, mutations can be beneficial, neutral or deleterious. And that, given changed conditions, previously negative mutations can become positive, as in the case of nylon-eating bacteria.
4) That favorable variations will be selected for, ie tend to increase in number in the population in future generations, thanks to conferring a survival and reproductive advantage. Such was the case, for instance, with longer hair in northern populations of steppe mammoths, en route to becoming woollies, as Pleistocene climate cooled. Or in the adaptations of ancestral brown bears for seal hunting, leading to the increasingly divergent new species, polar bears.
5) That even without selective pressure on a trait in one direction, differences will emerge over generations between reproductively isolated populations of a formerly single species, whether by geographic, behavioral or other isolating factors.
6) That new species can arise not just gradually by longer-term selective and stochastic processes, but in a single generation, via such quick and dirty evolutionary processes as polyploidy and hybridization. Instances abound of new species formed in these ways, such that the daughter species can no longer produce fertile offspring with their closest relative species, ie the strictest definition of species for sexually reproducing organisms. Many if not most plant species have arisen thusly, thanks to polyploidy, and hybrid species are plentiful.
7) That not only new species and genera, the evolution of which has been repeatedly observed by the processes mentioned above, but higher classifications, ie families, orders, classes, phyla, kingdoms and domains, evolve via the same processes, only over more time. That there is no barrier in genomes to their continuing to change in succeeding generations.
8) That genetic innovations giving rise to new structures, functions, biochemical processes and behaviors have also been repeatedly observed. The innovation can be a simple deletion point mutation, such as which turns sugar-eating into nylon-eating bacteria, the only slightly less simple mutation which permitted human brains to grow larger, or more profound changes such as the evolution of a whole new vast gene complex, such as the Hox genes which “primitive” animals, sponges and ctenophores (“comb jellies”), lack, but which “higher” animals have.
It seems that you haven’t read the responses to your blog posts, yet feel free to dismiss them with hand-waving as “arm-waving” without empirical support. That small changes, accumulated over a long time, can lead to new families, orders, classes, phyla and domains is supported by all the empirical evidence in the world, with none against it.
For instance, the first tetrapods were virtually identical bone for bone to their lobe-finned fish relatives, but had fin rods more calcified and fused, en route to becoming fingers and toes, rather than cartilaginous and separate. The genetic basis of these changes has been discovered through genomic comparison. The inescapable inference is that tetrapods evolved from lobe-finned fish, a fact also revealed by genetic analysis, embryology and every other line of evidence, not just the paleontological record.
Evolution is a consequence of reproduction. To deny such obvious reality can only be motivated by preferring faith over fact. Under oath in court, even Dr. Behe, instigator of the antiscientific ID hoax, admitted that evolution was a reality.
On the genetic innovation leading to tetrapod hind limb development, as shown by genomic comparison with our closest living lobe-finned fish relative, the lungfish:
Lungfish provides insight to life on land: ‘Humans are just modified fish’
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/10/111004180106.htm
Our gonads even start out in the fish position, ie in our chests, then migrate into the abdomen, and out of it in the case of male mammals, leaving behind two hernia-prone holes.
More Idiotic Design.
more on the historical migration of gonads:
https://nationalpost.com/news/world/what-elephants-and-other-animals-have-taught-us-about-the-evolutionary-origin-of-descending-testicles
“Scientists often rely on geologic fossils to piece together evolutionary history, but this study shows that there is also a “fossil record in the genome,””
I think Dr Tim Ball has not advanced the case for AGW skepticism at all with his post, and you have shown up his ignorance of the current state of evolutionary theory. Your posts have been thoughtful, educational and convincing as well as courteous. You are a credit to this blog and I will be looking out for your contributions in future.
Thanks. I regret that my courtesy has at times worn thin over raging lunacy and idiocy.
Thank you very much Dr Tim Ball for this excellent article outlining the shortcomings in the proof for the theory of evolution! It’s something I’ve been looking into for a while and the shortage of intermediate species is looking like more and more of a problem, as well as the irreducible complexity of the cell. Even Richard Dawkins was recently positing creation by aliens.
One problem as I see it is that DNA is clearly a symbolic system for the representation of information, i.e. a plan, from which the life-form constructs itself, i.e. DNA is a language in effect. It doesn’t make sense to me that such a sophisticated system could come into being by chance, even over millions of years. It is like Monkeys writing Shakespeare, only even more incredible.
A few other recent discoveries etc.-
http://andrewppartington.blogspot.com/2018/06/theory-of-evolution-in-tatters.html
Dr. Ball did no such thing.
All he did was display his profound ignorance.
He’s an embarrassment to CACA skepticism.
I think Tim Ball is making the wrong analogy here. It is creationism with Goddidit and CAGW with CO2didit that are the analogies. Both philosophies share a mysogynic world view and claim both that, unless man changes his wicked ways, the world wil come to an end soon.
Well, if we believe the fossil evidence, the basic pattern is sudden appearance, followed by a long period of variation on a theme, followed by extinction. Not what Darwin predicted in his iconic Tree of Life at all.
But if you say what paleontologists knew even in Darwin’s time, you’ll be called a creationist who believes Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a dinosaur.
By the way, it now appears increasingly likely that almost all complex traits come from ALL active genes, not just one or a few. Neo-Darwinism asserts that traits can be changed by just one or a few mutations. Wrong again.
Totally wrong on every falsehood you spew.
Try studying biology before presuming to blather about it.
I’m a climate skeptic. I like trying to help others see how incorrect and unscientific the idea of CAGW is.
Tim Ball:
You make everything more difficult. You set back the skeptic cause. If you won’t educate yourself, why won’t you at least shut up about this subject? You are cartoonishly, laughably wrong.
Instead of debunking alarmism, we have to spend valuable time explaining that not everyone who is correctly skeptical about the anthropogenicity of climate change is also unable to understand very basic biology.
You ask for empirical evidence?
“The Greatest Show on Earth” contains entire chapters devoted to decades long experimental evidence confirming the fact of evolution. The supporting data is overwhelming. And there is not a single iota of evidence to falsify it. If you choose not to read “The Greatest Show,” then STOP ASKING FOR EVIDENCE.
———
WUWT:
It is unbelievably frustrating that a source with so much valid information about the false idea of CAGW obliterates its scientific credibility by engaging in long-disproven, illogical, unscientific attacks on one of the most fundamental discoveries in human history.
Publishing this nonsensical essay eliminates any claim to integrity. Why is there no version of Wattsupwiththat that is COMPLETELY dedicated to scientific accuracy? It shouldn’t tarnish the skeptical side of the climate debate, because the messenger of a true statement shouldn’t matter. But in the real world, it matters.
As a climate skeptic, I could use a referral to this site as the answer to almost any alarmist question. Instead, this inexplicable rejection of a scientific theory that has NEVER been falsified makes it impossible to use WUWT as a reference AT ALL.
Tim Ball and WUWT: Please educate yourself on the subject of evolution. Your current lack of knowledge makes you 100% irrelevant in ANY scientific discussion.
It’s a dumb, tragic waste
Bonus fact for deists: Not one aspect of evolutionary theory prevents anyone from believing in any supernatural being they find appealing. The Catholic Church (not exactly a cutting edge beacon of progressive thinking) OFFICIALLY accepts that evolution is a fact.
Why not join them?
————————-
Reading this comment section is dismal and depressing. The simplest concepts of a cornerstone scientific theory (a theory that not a single rational scientist disbelieves) are ignored, mangled, rehashed and misunderstood as if the 20th century didn’t happen.
These are the people on “my” side of the debate?!?! Awesome. The battle is lost before it even begins…
I’m not putting myself above anyone else. We are all wrong about many,things, for many reasons, at various times. But the subject of evolution has been thoroughly covered. There are minor details yet to be discovered, but not one iota of evidence to falsify it. Denying it is silly. Go read a book. There are hundreds that only a fool with an agenda can reject. A few are even written by believers in various gods.
Anyone who currently doesn’t accept the fact of evolution is actually lucky. You have the amazing opportunity to learn about an incredibly fascinating, beautifully complex aspect of life on earth. The scientific disciplines which confirm, and are informed by, evolutionary theory are so numerous and wide-ranging, there is something for everyone to be amazed by.
Creationists won’t permit themselves the joy of taking that opportunity. Their minds, like Dr. Ball’s, are firmly closed.
Yes.
And why is Ball’s collection of factual errors so personally offensive? My first source to study climate for myself was the book “Resilient Earth.”
The second was WUWT.
This website is an amazing clearinghouse for rational debate and information about the subject of climate. But it is useless because it publishes people like Ball.
It’s like finding out that Einstein was a child molester. It wouldn’t change the truth of his scientific discoveries. But it would obliterate his influence on the general public.
———————
To the Tim Balls AND the Jim Hansens of the world:
When I first started questioning what I “knew” about global warming, the first thing I did was look for research and resources that CONTRADICTED what I believed.
Not a second-hand summary of the opposition, made by people I already agree with. But the actual, complete words of valid scientists and journalists who aren’t driven by an agenda.
How else can someone feel like they have studied an issue well enough to have a valid opinion?
If I am wrong about something scientific, I bloody well want to know it.
If I preordain the outcome of my “research,” I’m wasting time and guaranteeing ignorance.
Which is why creationism and CACA are birds of a feather. Or dinosaurs.
It’s a shame that so many who are right about CACA’s being wrong are wrong about evolution’s being right.
“This website is an amazing clearinghouse for rational debate and information about the subject of climate. But it is useless because it publishes people like Ball.”
No, it’s better to have this out in the open for everyone to see; evil lives in the dark. Why should Einstein have any influence on the general public anyway? He wasn’t a Hollywood star. Give Einstein credit for where he was right, but he was human and was not always right. He helped invent quantum mechanics (and got the Nobel for it) but he thought it was wrong (he changed his mind and thought it was incomplete).
https://motls.blogspot.com/2009/03/albert-einstein-130th-birthday.html
WUWT is not useless because it also publishes responses to “people like Ball”.
True, but it would be better IMO if this blog never published creationist cant, lies and lunacies in the first place, the better to preserve its scientific integrity. It might as well publish posts defending a flat earth.
Whole industries, among the most useful to humanity, are based upon the fact of evolution, to include the development of new drugs and treatments against infectious disease.
For almost a decade now, we’ve been able directly to observe evolution continuously in action among pathogenic bacteria:
https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/the-evolution-of-drug-resistance-41575
It’s not just ignorant and idiotic, but insane to imagine that evolution has never been observed.
“True, but it would be better IMO if this blog never published creationist cant, lies and lunacies in the first place, the better to preserve its scientific integrity. It might as well publish posts defending a flat earth.”
If it only published the scientific consensus, there would be no climate skeptics, there would only be dogma. Scientific dogma, but still dogma. Believe it because we say so.
Besides, if it didn’t publish Tim Ball, Felix would not have had the chance to counter him. Tim Ball may not have been converted, but we can hope some other borderline creationists were. We can hope. I had not realized how many creationists there still are. The US is second only to Turkey (as per a graph in this interesting article):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creationism
As for flat earthers, I think that is mainly just an insult, something that almost doesn’t exist except for some true nut cases. It’s a fascinating history though.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Earth
It seems that Dr. Ball wants to remain blissfully ignorant. But should he ever wish, at his advanced age, to educate himself on the numerous experiments demonstrating the fact of evolution, here’s a good summary by Zimmer of those conducted with microbes.
https://ncse.com/files/pub/evolution/Excerpt–lightofevolution.pdf
It’s a little outdated, at around eight years old, but still valid of course.
Microbes are hard to organize into distinct species, but Lenski’s lab definitely evolved a new species of Escherichia via natural selection from E. coli, among its many other demonstrations of evolution. As with the nylon-eating bacteria which evolved naturally, then were recreated in the lab, the new Escherichia species feeds on a different substrate from E. coli.
It’s too bad that Dr. Ball has hidden from those who were kind enough to take the trouble to try to educate him in elementary biology.
Maybe he’ll respond to one simple question.
Why do flightless beetles, which can’t open their carapaces, have wings underneath those permanently closed carapaces?
Thanks.
I’m not sure you understand my point. Even though the bias is WRONG, people will still be influenced by alarmists saying “WUWT is a crackpot, creationist website.” So potentially teachable people at the far left end of the spectrum will feel justified as they avoid learning, just as people at Tim Ball’s end of the spectrum avoid it.
Far Left = Far Right, by almost every metric.
And, while we are at it, WHY does WUWT publish essays that aren’t related to climate issues anyway? Ball’s word jumble above clearly only mentions climate in order to make it seem acceptable to be published here, logical and grammatical misfires notwithstanding.
The most ludicrous (I guess) statement Ball makes is “I don’t mind being descended from a gorilla.”
He clearly doesn’t even know what “evolution” MEANS. If you are going to expend so much energy denying a well-proven scientific theory, shouldn’t you at least know what you are denying?!?
Humans are not descended from chimps, or gorillas, or monkeys. We share a common ancestor.
Has Tim Ball not heard of an up-and-coming, fancy, new fangled thing called “genetics?” Evolution is written all over the genomes of living things. It is undeniable…unless you refuse to read the evidence because you have been taught from an early age to reject it.
Also, enough of the blah blah about “species” already. As has been amply discussed elsewhere, “species” isn’t some fundamental property of life. It is a word we created because humans like very much to categorize everything. There are exceptions to almost every definition of the word.
As a species evolves (usually over a vast amount of time) into another, there is never a generation where the daughter is of a different species than the mother.
This is truly embarrassing. As a biologist I have tried to understand absorption spectra of CO2, but failed because it is not my speciality. Too much maths. One should keep to your own speciality field to avoid saying thing about what you do not understand. I had great respect for you until I read this. Please keep to what you know and not say incorrect things.
Philip, if your comment is directed at me, I welcome any corrections you have to offer. Please be specific.
What do you imagine that Allen got wrong?
Are you really a biologist?
The only statement with which I’d quibble is that speciation usually requires a vast amount of time. Over the past century we’ve learned that species and genera often arise in a single generation, which for microbes can be 20 minutes.
Higher classifications do however generally require more time. But evolution proceeds at various paces, both rapid and gradual.
Yes. Various paces, same process: Evolution by Natural Selection.
BTW, if you use the fertility definition for species, drug resistant bacteria don’t always constitute new species. They become new “strains.” Same with dog “breeds” and human “races.” And the many “sub-species.” They are all artificial labels for organizing and discussing our knowledge about genetic relatedness. Humans are hardwired to categorize.
Whether it is artificial or natural selection at work, all of those examples ABSOLUTELY DO demonstrate the mechanics of Evolution.
Before comments close here, one more thing…
Evolution is everywhere. Start with “intelligent design”. The 747 (the favorite example of creationists) did not just appear one day out of the blue. It is the product of evolution, an evolution we can trace back to Leonardo da Vinci, the Wright Brothers, and many others, each taking what they knew and adding something to it or improving something. Not one super-human intelligence, but many human ones.
You can say the same thing for many other things. Automobiles, Electronics, Science. You can even say it about Religion. The King James Bible did not just appear out of the heavens. It is a product of evolution, and that evolution that can be traced back thousands of years.
https://ultraculture.org/blog/2015/11/30/map-world-religions/
Just take recent history. Christians split from Jews. Eastern Orthodox split from Catholics. Protestants split from Catholics. Calvinists split from Lutherans. And so on. It’s a mess, but that’s what you get when everybody thinks they have God on their side.
Getting back to the evolution of species. Dr. Ball blames it all on Darwin. That is rather shortsighted and unfair. The idea of evolution itself has evolved, a lot of it after Darwin. Darwin gets some credit as a father, and everyone believes in family trees, even if they don’t believe in “evolution”.
To discuss evolution, there are three names you just have to mention.
First, Linnaeus, a creationist who classified the plants and animals. His classification scheme of living organisms still works. You might say he established the “what” of evolution, the facts on the ground.
Second, Darwin, who studied for the priesthood. He didn’t set out to discover evolution either. Except he saw it in action and made a note of it. Linnaeus’s system was not fixed and static. It was dynamic and still moving. You might say he established the “why” of evolution.
Third, Mendel, a monk who discovered genetics, that “what” of genetics. Without Mendel, Darwin’s ideas are just a theory. You might say he established the “how” of evolution.
Fourth and beyond, those who discovered DNA and how it works. You simply cannot talk about evolution anymore without mentioning genetics and DNA. DNA is huge. Without DNA, no life, not that we know of.
So if you want to be a creationist, you have to believe that the truth of the Bible is figurative. Adam and Eve were one celled “animals”, if that, and there wasn’t any Eve. Nobody knows how life started on earth, but the rest is evolution.
Toto,
Your heart is in the right place, but …
Your statement “Without Mendel, Darwin’s ideas are just a theory.” Yikes.
First, people always confuse “theory” and “Scientific Theory.” Common use of theory=hunch. Scientific Theory = “fact.” Special relativity, gravity, etc. Darwin had a hypothesis that eventually fit all the criteria to be accepted as a Theory.
Second, without genetics, evolution is still extremely well supported by many disciplines. Genetics isn’t necessary to “prove” evolution.
You also understate the genius of Darwin. He was an amateur scientist who made one of the most important discoveries in human history.
Somehow Tim Ball received a PhD from a university without ever learning that evolution does not mean “humans descended from gorillas.” How is that possible?
Thanks; remember that this was written for someone like Dr. Ball who is not as convinced as you are, someone who still thinks Darwin’s ideas are a hunch but not proven. Theory is an unfortunate word since it does mean different things to different people. I don’t underestimate the genius of Darwin nor his discoveries. On the other hand, if he didn’t do it someone else would have. Sure, even without genetics, evolution is way more proven than Dr. Ball thinks, but with genetics and DNA it is just about impossible to deny.
As a special treat for those who are still reading, these two books are highly recommended.
https://www.amazon.com/Your-Inner-Fish-Journey-3-5-Billion-Year/dp/0307277453/
https://www.amazon.com/Gene-Intimate-History-Siddhartha-Mukherjee/dp/147673352X/