Is evolution being taught incorrectly?

[Acco40]

I saw a program on pax-tv which attempted to poke holes in the theory of evolution the other day.

Interested, I followed up on some of the claims they made in a book called Evolution: Fact or Fiction? by biologists at the U of Cal at Berkley... (I forgot the main author's name).

They brought up three or so points which I had not ever read about in school while studying evolution.

The Cambrian Explosion, or Biology's Big Bang.

They said that all of a sudden, in the animal kingdom, all sorts of phyla (pl. of phylum?) just came into being, without any fossil record of their ancestors.

The authors state that the slow progression of evolution is not evident, and that Darwin's theory doesn't address this phenomenon that occurred 500+ million yrs. ago.

Therefore, they claim, it isn't an evolutionary TREE or life, but an evolutionary THICKET which is responsible for the variety of life we see today. (I really didn't understand this point too well.)

This question kinda delves into GD territory, but it's relevant here:

There is still no explanation as to how life truly began.

They claim that the odds of life beginning are so slim (1.4 to the 40th power?) that there is no chance that such a random occurance could happen twice, or the three times needed to support the "evolutionary thicket" idea, which they claim is the only "chance" Darwin's theory has left.

Now I have always been a firm believer in evolutionary theory, however I must say that the issues this book brought up did stir up my beliefs somewhat.

If anyone needs a direct cite on any of the admittedly scattered info I've set forth above, let me know.

So what's the straight dope? Does the fossil record not support evolution?

[ultrafilter]

You'd probably do best to search through talkorigins (http://www.talkorigins.org). I'm no expert, but my understanding is that we don't really understand enough about the beginnings of life to make any meaningful calculations of probability (and besides, their calculations are probably based on overly simple assumptions).

As to the question of whether the fossil record supports evolution...basically, the fossil record doesn't leave a whole lot of doubt. Evolution is as well-supported a fact as gravity, or entropy; the question is how it occurred rather than whether it did. Again, go through talkorigins (http://www.talkorigins.org). There's a lot of information there.

[Running with Scissors]

Originally posted by Acco40
They claim that the odds of life beginning are so slim (1.4 to the 40th power?) that there is no chance that such a random occurance could happen twice, or the three times needed to support the "evolutionary thicket" idea, which they claim is the only "chance" Darwin's theory has left.
Just out of curiousity, did they have anything to say on the odds on the spontaneous appearance of a supreme being, of which there exists no concrete evidence? :)

[Darwin's Finch]

Originally posted by Acco40
The Cambrian Explosion, or Biology's Big Bang.

They said that all of a sudden, in the animal kingdom, all sorts of phyla (pl. of phylum?) just came into being, without any fossil record of their ancestors.

The authors state that the slow progression of evolution is not evident, and that Darwin's theory doesn't address this phenomenon that occurred 500+ million yrs. ago.

Therefore, they claim, it isn't an evolutionary TREE or life, but an evolutionary THICKET which is responsible for the variety of life we see today. (I really didn't understand this point too well.)[/B]

One of the major misconceptions about the Cambrian Explosion is that this represents a major origin of life. What it actually represents is a signifcant increase in the fossilizable (is that a word?!) body types. As such, we would not expect to see the soft-bodied ancestors of the Cambrian forms in any great abundance (organisms lacking "hard parts" don't fossilize well, except under extremely rare circumstances). That we don't see such forms, or, to put it another way, that we see just what we expect we should see, certainly does nothing to invalidate evolution.

As for the "thicket" vs "tree" analogy, I'm not sure what they meant by that either. Perhaps they mean that life supposedly evolved from numerous ancestors, rather than a single common one?

[Patty O'Furniture]

They claim that the odds of life beginning are so slim (1.4 to the 40th power?) that there is no chance that such a random occurance could happen twice...

I'd just like to pop in here and point out that "virtually no chance" is not the same thing as "no chance".

Thank you.

No, wait- I've got more. How in the heck did they come up with that figure anyway? However they did it, I see it as another way of saying "We've calculated that -yes- there is a very small chance that the commonly accepted theory of evolution could have been the mechanism at work which resulted in the Cambrian Explosion." That sounds like a concession to me.

[hardcore]

Calculations on the origin of life, which concerns abiogenesis, not evolution, are riddled with logical errors. Trying to calculate the odds that an event which has already occurred will happen exactly as it did will always yield extremely improbable results. For example, take a deck of cards and deal out 4 hands of 13 cards each. Now pick up the hands and look at them. The chances that you would have dealt the precise layout you did are something like 8 x 10^67, or 10 raised to the 67th power. Does this mean you did not get that hand? Of course not. And there is no conceivable reason why abiogenesis would need to happen more than once.

For a more detailed explanation of these issues, see Talk Origin's The Abiogenesis Interim FAQ (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-abiogenesis.html) and Lies, Damned Lies, Statistics and Probability of Abiogenesis Calculations (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob.html).

[hardcore]

Acco40, can you give a cite to the book you mentioned? It may help someone answer your questions, if you don't consider them answered already.

[Acco40]

Just to address some of the things that have come up:

Just out of curiousity, did they have anything to say on the odds on the spontaneous appearance of a supreme being, of which there exists no concrete evidence?

No, the authors still believe in evolutionary theory; they just believe that is it taught incorrectly/leaving important parts out... it doesn't get into God or religion.

What it actually represents is a signifcant increase in the fossilizable (is that a word?!) body types.

The authors said that this theory is invalid because we have been able to get reliable fossil evidence from bacteria that is much older than the pre-cambrian soft-bodies forms that seem to be missing. The animals that led to hard-bodied animals are gone. The book uses the term "spontaniously appeared".

However they did it, I see it as another way of saying "We've calculated that -yes- there is a very small chance that the commonly accepted theory of evolution could have been the mechanism at work which resulted in the Cambrian Explosion." That sounds like a concession to me.
No. Their main argument was that Darwin's theory states that evolutionary processes work very slowly, and that one adaptation invites another. The authors cite evidence that different phyla appeared seemingly out of nothing... that these animals had features which were not supported in the fossil record of animals preceeding them.

Perhaps they mean that life supposedly evolved from numerous ancestors, rather than a single common one?

Yeah, I think that's what they meant. Especially to explain the differences between eukaryotic and prokaryotic cells.

[Acco40]

Hardcore:

In the OP I said that the name of the book was Evolution: Fact or Fiction? I also remember that the book was written by a evolutionary scientist at U of Cal at Berkley (I forgot his name though!) and it was published in 2000. That's all I know for sure.

It is intelligently written, only slightly subjective against current evolutionary edicts, and brings up weak points in Darwin's theory. They claim that Darwin's theory is at best faulty, at worst invalid.

They were bringing up points (the ones I've listed above) which I really didn't have an answer for... as I've stated before, I have long been an evolutionist, but this book was bringing up evidence to the contrary that I had never heard of before.

Now, I only read the juicy parts of the book because I was in the bookstore. I'll head back tonite probably and get the author's name.

That's the book.

Now the TV show I saw before it on pax-TV was hardcore pro-Christian, good ol' fashion science-stomper stuff which goes beyond the scope of GQ...

[bashere]

In the OP I said that the name of the book was Evolution: Fact or Fiction?


Are you sure the name is not actually Icons of Evolution: Science or Myth?, by Jonathan Wells?

The customer reviews on amazon are interesting. The "Customers who bought this books also bought..." is telling, though.

[hardcore]

bashere, that's the one I think it is also, but I prefer to wait on confirmation before I rip into it. ;)

[Ben]

Not directly relevant, but I thought I'd put in a quick plug for my molecular evolution faq:


http://psyche11.home.mindspring.com/molevol2.html

I'll address the OP more directly once we find out what, exactly, the book was.

-Ben

[wevets]

A search on Amazon didn't turn up an "Evolution: Fact or Fiction."

It does turn up: Icons of Evolution, The Evolution Man or How I Ate My Father, and Conquerors and Explorers.

Lots of people have made claims that Darwin's Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection is invalid, but I've yet to see any proof of these claims.

Similarly, lots of people have claimed that abiogenesis is hopelessly improbable. However, since no one knows the mechanism(s?) by which abiogenesis may have taken place, how one goes about calculating its liklihood is a mystery to me. I look on all such calculations as highly suspect, and hardcore has posted some excellent reasoning in that respect.

Also, I know some of the evolutionary biology professors at Berkeley, and I'm at a loss to say which of them would publish a book with such claims in it. Perhaps you're thinking of Philip Johnson (http://www.origins.org/menus/pjohnson.html), who is a professor of law at Berkeley (not a biologist), and who has written books critical of evolutionary theory. He is, not coincidentally, a Christian.

[Tamerlane]

Acco40: The problem with this notion of "a sudden increase in Phyla", is that higher taxonomic categories are not comparable across different groups. They are merely artificial placeholders used for the sake of forming a hiearchical structure that our little brains find useful for categorizing things :) . A phylum is the terminal taxonomic designation ( short of "Kingdom" ) - All its application in this case means is that we have a bunch of critters who nobody is sure what they're related to. So by default the are placed in "new phyla". But this has no particular significance - You could say new family, new tribe, new order, it wouldn't really matter. We're talking about a relative handful of actual species here. Where this book ( and SJG in Wonderful Life, which this book is almost surely appealing too ) makes a mistake is claiming that there is something awe-inspiring about these dozens of diverse new phyla suddenly appearing, when we "only have 20-odd extant phyla around today".

Nonsense. We could have two extant phyla - The sudden appearance of twenty "new phyla" in the fossil reciord, each with a handful of species, would mean nothing at all. The obscure phylum Sipunculida is not comparable to the huge phylum Mollusca. They are not defined the same way. They do not have equivalent diversity. They do not have equivalent impact on this world's ecology ( every Sipunculid on this planet could die tomorrow and nobody outside of a handful of experts would ever notice ).

The word phylum is not invested with any significance - like I said, in this case it is just a default. Taxonomic categories above the level of species only have meaning internal to the particular group they are applied too. A few systematists ( Jacques Gauthier for one, who drilled this into my head :D ) have suggested scrapping the Linnaen system entirely, partly to eliminate this confusion ( and partly for a few others ).

- Tamerlane

[Darwin's Finch]

Originally posted by Acco40
What it actually represents is a signifcant increase in the fossilizable (is that a word?!) body types.

The authors said that this theory is invalid because we have been able to get reliable fossil evidence from bacteria that is much older than the pre-cambrian soft-bodies forms that seem to be missing. The animals that led to hard-bodied animals are gone. The book uses the term "spontaniously appeared".

Well, no one ever said we have no fossils prior to the CE. We have trace fossils, and some few soft-bodies were lucky enough to become fossilized. However, for the most part, it's a major crap shoot. As for the bacteria, there are a gazillion bacteria around, and even at one-in-a-million odds, you're still going to come up with a fairly large number of bacteria fossils/trace fossils. So, I'd say their argument is invalid.

Besides, bacteria are not the immmediate pre-cursors to the CE critters. So, I repeat what I stated earllier - the Cambrian Explosion represents an increase in the number of organisms with fossilizable hard parts. We would not expect to find their immediate ancestors, not because they weren't there, but because their body types were not conducive to fossilization.

[Darwin's Finch]

Originally posted by Tamerlane
A few systematists ( Jacques Gauthier for one, who drilled this into my head :D ) have suggested scrapping the Linnaen system entirely, partly to eliminate this confusion ( and partly for a few others ).

Jacques Gauthier is my hero (well, one of them, anyway).

[mmmiiikkkeee]

Although I didn't check the websites mentioned, I could add that evolution isn't currently being taught as one long, slow process. They talk about punctuated equilibrium, where things go along changing painfully slow if at all and suddenly there is a big change and new organisms popping up for numerous reasons. Several methods and theories of evolution are currently being taught, and I've never heard in school of any one of them being deemed as "the one and only way it happened". So no, I don't think evolution is being taught wrong (although the odd prof here and there may emphasize their personal favorite theory).

[Tamerlane]

Darwin's Finch: He's a sharp one, there's no denying :) . I try to keep his big list/paper of vertebrate synapomorphies lying around for quick reference. Only I can never remember where I left it, on those rare occasions I actually need it ;) .

- Tamerlane

[Smeghead]

For an excellent, excellent discussion of both of these issues, check out "At Home in the Universe" by Stuart Kauffman. He discusses both issues, and several others, in a very unique way. Long story made short: far from being wildly improbable, these types of events are almost inevitable, given the right conditions. It should be a must read for anyone interested in evolution, IMHO. No, I'm not him. :D

Oh, and as for the old "Darwin didn't cover this" argument, I hope everyone is reassured, rather than disturbed, to find out that we've made some progress since his time...

[Alan Smithee]

Actually, Darwin did cover this, and a surprising number of other objections to his theory. Of course, both the objections and Darwin's responses were often substantially different in form than they are today, because both biology and archeology have advanced immeasurably, but the root issues are not new, and Darwin addressed them as amply as he could at the time in the various editions of The Origin of Species.

For anyone interested in what Darwin did write, and what modern evolutionary biology makes of it today, I highly recomend Steve Jones' book Almost Like a Whale: The Origin of Species Updated. I got it from my uncle while I was in the UK, and I'm not sure if it's available in the US, though.

[JRDelirious]

Going back to the OP's final question:

(And BTW I can't find "Evolution: Fact or Fiction" by a "biologist at Berkeley" either.)

The fossil record supports evolution stupendously. It clearly shows that life on Earth has undergone dramatic change as we move along the time axis; including the rise and fall of entire types or classes of living thing as dominant components of the ecosystem and indeed of whole ecosystems (e.g. flowering-plant forests). It has evolved. The real scientific debate is over what causes these changes and how the changes happen. (The philosophical debate is whether there is any purpose, design, or lesson to be drawn behind that what-and-how.)


I would agree that at the elementary and High School level, when they even try to teach about it, too many students end up receiving an irregular mix of good, bad, and ugly information, and taking tests where the "right" answers are obsolete, distorted or only half-right. But I must point out this also applies to the teaching of a lot of other subjects, schools do the same disservice to History all the time.

jrd

[Wendell Wagner]

Acco40 writes:

> In the OP I said that the name of the book was Evolution:
> Fact or Fiction? I also remember that the book was
> written by a evolutionary scientist at U of Cal at
> Berkley (I forgot his name though!) and it was published
> in 2000. That's all I know for sure.

. . .

> Now, I only read the juicy parts of the book because I
> was in the bookstore. I'll head back tonite probably and
> get the author's name.

O.K., let's start with some basic requirements for citations of sources. First, you apparently haven't got the name of the book correct, since we have tried various sources and can't find any book with this name. You also don't supply the name of the author. You aren't even consistent in your posts about whether this book was a collection of articles or was written by one person, since at some points you say that it's a multi-author work and at other points you talk as though the book had a single author. You claim that this book was written by a biologist at Berkeley (or several biologists?), but since you don't give his or their names, this claim is impossible to check. Furthermore, you haven't even read the entire book. You've just flipped through it in the bookstore. You're trying to summarize the main arguments of a book that you've only glanced at.

If you want us to reply to the arguments in this book, you're going to have to buy it, read it completely, and then tell us the points in the book that you want us to reply to.

[Acco40]

Are you sure the name is not actually Icons of Evolution: Science or Myth?, by Jonathan Wells?

Fuck. Yeah that's it. I should've gotten better info before posting. I thought many of you would be able to address the issues without a concrete source.

And contrary to what many of you believe, as I stated in the OP I personally believe in evolution! But I'm always questioning my beliefs; IMHO everyone should.

I mentioned that this book shook up some of my beliefs, and brought up some issues about evolution I had never heard of before.
So, I aired them here, and have received good sources to go to for differing opinions.

But I gotta say that I've been put over the torch the past two days for bringing up these issues to my Darwin fish friends who never question evolutionary theory. Sometimes the blind zeal with which they preach for evolution is just as bad as the holy-roller I ran into last week arguing pro-creation.

All I'm saying is look for the truth; have an open mind.

[ultrafilter]

Originally posted by Acco40
Fuck. Yeah that's it. I should've gotten better info before posting. I thought many of you would be able to address the issues without a concrete source.

It helps to be able to respond to the specific issues raised by a given book. There were replies here that did justice to what you presented, but they could've given more detail (not that they weren't adequate) if they had known what book they were dealing with.

But I'm always questioning my beliefs; IMHO everyone should.

Good for you.

But I gotta say that I've been put over the torch the past two days for bringing up these issues to my Darwin fish friends who never question evolutionary theory. Sometimes the blind zeal with which they preach for evolution is just as bad as the holy-roller I ran into last week arguing pro-creation.

You'd be in the right to give these people holy hell. IMHO, Darwin-fish-thumpers are worse than creationists, simply because they could so easily be doing so much better. And if you approached them in the spirit of honest enquiry and they shot you down for expressing some doubt, then you should probably never talk to them about this sort of thing again.

All I'm saying is look for the truth; have an open mind.

Just don't keep it so open that your brain falls out. ;)

[DanBlather]

Originally posted by Acco40
[
There is still no explanation as to how life truly began.

They claim that the odds of life beginning are so slim (1.4 to the 40th power?) that there is no chance that such a random occurance could happen twice, or the three times needed to support the "evolutionary thicket" idea, which they claim is the only "chance" Darwin's theory has left.


Other people have alredy responded to this point, but I thought I'd add my two cents as well. One way to think about the problem of how life began is to consider that the world is like a large-scale parallel multicomputer. You don't just have a few molecules lying around in a test tube trying to become an amino acid, you have billions of billions of molecules, in billions of places, in millions of different conditions, for billions of years.

[hardcore]

Acco40, I suspected you may have been exposed to Dr. Wells' book which is why I asked the question. In this case it has some bearing, because although he holds a doctorate in Biology from the University of California at Berkeley, he had a stated mission of doing so in order to tear down the theory of evolution. You may want to start here (http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/creation/icons_of_evolution.html) to see reasons why the ideas from his book have been discredited (IMO).

You might wish to move this thread to GD or start another one there, since this topic can become rather heated as shown by this recent GD thread (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=77435) where many of the topics in Dr. Wells' book were addressed.

By the way, I don't see that anyone has questioned the authenticity of your personal beliefs with respect to evolution. Personally, I just want to address your questions as best I can.

[JRDelirious]

Now we're getting somewhere...

Icons of Evolution's Dr. Wells, after becoming involved in the Evolution debate, obtained a second doctorate, in Biology, I believe that's the one from Berkeley. (His first was in Religion from one of the Ivies)

Dr. Wells is "a Senior Fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for Renewal of Science and Culture," which has as its agenda "to challenge materialism on specifically scientific grounds." Wells has openly and honestly stated that it was with that mission in mind that he went for his Biology degree; he is a committed advocate of the "Intelligent Design" theory of the development of life. (1) Hence his emphasis on how statistically unlikely X, Y or Z event may have been -- which has been addressed already as not constituting "proof" of anything after-the-fact.

(1)(This is the latest -- and very interesting, may I say -- flavor-of-the-month for those who reject that life may have developed entirely through natural, physical processes of the Natural Selection mechanism.)

Wells' analysis also fails in that he tends to extrapolate bad or inappropriate representations of the science into a weakness of the science itself. The "Cambrian Explosion" has already been discussed. Another Example: The March of Progress diagrams in which you see in single file an ever-more-upright ape, australopithecine, h.erectus, neanderthaloid and Cro-Magnon; or ever-bigger and toothier 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1- toed equines from eohippus to the horse; moving in the direction of "progress." Sure, these ARE oversimplified presentations that will seem to imply to a grade or high school pupil a uni-directional and direct-successional evolution, if it's not explained properly by the teacher. But in the world of real science it is well understood that these diagrams merely show a temporal distribution of the appearance of each species, that many of them coexisted for millions or hundreds of thousands of years, that which one ended up surviving was a contingent event, that species do not "turn into" others, etc.


So, to touch again on the OP:

Is evolution being taught badly? Knowing our schools, probably.

Is it because of some fundamental fatal discordance between the fossil evidence and Darwinian Theory? No.

[DPWhite]

Let's see, let's remember, that it is not survival of the fittist, but survival of the best adapted. Evolution doesn't explain religious beliefs, and religious beliefs do not explain evolution. There are many people (including the guy at Berkeley) who are making a buck in the popular press suggesting a theory of "intelligent design" to explain the extraordinary complexity of life. These are not peer reviewed scientific papers as far as I know. Life is indeed very complex.

Darwin was himself a devout Christian and wanted to publish the Origin of Species posthumously. But as he was the world's leading naturalist, he was asked to review (as in peer review) a paper from a bright young man who had also come up with a theory of evolution similar to Darwin's. Darwin had been writing drafts of his work for two decades to explain his lifetime of observations and rushed his book to print. The young fellow (whose name I forget, but you don't need everything handed to you on a silver platter), was surprisingly gracious about it, recognizing that Darwin could not have faked his work from the manuscript under review in such a short amount of time. Darwin's examples of his theory in action were so numerous and exhaustive as to remove all doubt of plagerism, and to utterly convince nearly all the scientific minds of the day, which the young man's manuscript would not have done by a long shot. When Darwin published the Origin of Species, he left out the portion he later published as The Descent of Man because he correctly observed that it would have been far too controversial for Victorian England. Darwin acknowledged that the young man had independently arrived at the theory, and the two occasionally gave joint lectures.

As exhaustive as Darwin's evidence was, he only began to describe the evidence supporting evolution. There is no scientific data that undermines the basic theory, but there do remain questions about the origins of life in single cell organsims that remain, as well as the jump to multi-cell organisms and complex organisms. But for the most part, the evidence supporting evolution is everywhere.

As for the intelligent design version of creationism, it still isn't science. (I'm a Christian myself, I just know the difference between faith and facts.) What intelligence? Show us, that is what the analytical tool of science is all about.

Some people take comfort in having the world as a simple place that can be explained by one unchanging book as interpreted by a fellow telling them what to do from a pulpit. Do not begrudge them this comfort. Life is difficult and some people would be at a complete loss without simple answers to the most complicated questions.

[sjc]

Originally posted by DPWhite

Let's see, let's remember, that it is not survival of the fittist, but survival of the best adapted.

You know, it might be more accurate to say the survival of the luckiest. I mean if a meteor hits the earth and squishes all of the members of a species that species isn't badly adapted, it is just plain unlucky. After all, how can you expect them to be adapted to an essentially random meteor strike. Survival of the best adapted is still a factor, it is just one step after survival of the luckiest.


My personal theory on what we call religion is that religion is the part of our mind that covers the things in the universe which we do not understand. This may be why many (or at least some) religious people dislike it when science tries to explain something that had been part of their religion. After all, who wants someone else explaining god to them? (God being a personification of religion.) The thing is, given a finite lifetime and an infinite universe, what we do not understand will always be larger than what we do. So why not keep an open mind and attempt to understand as much as you can, all the while secure in the knowledge that you'll never understand it all?

[Floater]

Originally posted by Darwin's Finch
As for the "thicket" vs "tree" analogy, I'm not sure what they meant by that either. Perhaps they mean that life supposedly evolved from numerous ancestors, rather than a single common one?

Here goes. The "tree" is the classical way of looking at evolution with one species succeding another in a steady progress. The "thicket" means that evolution sets off in many directions at once, so at a given time there are several branches with "cousin" species. Some branches die out and some evolve into a new set of subbraches etc. In other words the total opposite from your guess.