In the course of a persistent debate with some familial fundies, an in-law suggested I read “Icons of Evolution” by Johnathon Wells. After reading this, supposedly I will fall to my knees in a display worthy of a Jack Chick Tract and declare aloud my shame at being so completely duped by the evolutionary fraud intentionally perpetrated on an unwitting public by the evil science industry.
My question then is this, has anyone here read this book or does anyone at least know the thrust of the argument? I have moral reservations against giving money to some shmoe who I suspect of being disingenuous or downright dishonest. Thus, I’m trying to avoid buying a book which I think might in some small way endorse ignorance.
jharding:Thus, I’m trying to avoid buying a book which I think might in some small way endorse ignorance.
Well in that case, according to the reviews and summaries at this site, you needn’t worry: Wells’s book does not “endorse ignorance in some small way” but rather promotes it in a big way.
I know this is an ad hominem argument, but it speaks to bias and motivation. Wells is a member of the Unification Church, who was convinced of the wrongness of evolution before he could tell a chromosome from a Creamsicle. He went to school specifically for the purpose of destroying evolution, which he believed was his divinely ordained mission. He got a biology degree just to give himself an air of legitimacy. He omits all of this information from the book, for obvious reasons.
I have not yet read this book, but the negative reviews I’ve read of it suggest that his scholarship is shoddy. (You’ll find both positive and negative reader reviews at amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0895262762/o/qid=994721915/sr=2-1/ref=aps_sr_b_1_1/103-5548342-7038233) However, the negative reviews also seem to confuse the author’s ultimate goal with the goal of this particular book. Opus1’s comments are only slightly off - Wells actually believes in evolution - he just believes it can’t happen unaided. His ultimate goal really is to destroy Darwinian naturalistic evolution (see here for an article he wrote himself: http://www.tparents.org/Library/Unification/Talks/Wells/DARWIN.htm) (BTW, the Unification Church are more commonly called Moonies, and the ‘Father’ he mentions is Sun-yung Moon) (hope I spelled Reverend Moon’s name correctly)
However, the goal and thrust of this book is to show that the proofs usually given for evolution in biology textbooks (even graduate-level texts!) is known to be outdated and in some cases even fraudulent, and yet they continue to appear in textbook after textbook (some of the ones he used were published in 2000). Here is a list of the specific ‘icons’ he talks about. I have included the particular beef he has when I know what it is (as I say, so far I’ve only read reviews of this book).
The Miller-Urey Experiment (no longer considered an accurate representation of Earth’s pre-biotic atmosphere; similar experiments using current beliefs about the pre-biotic atmosphere have all failed)
Darwin’s Tree of Life (says an outward branching tree from few life-forms to many does not reflect the actual fossil record; uses Cambrian explosion as support)
Homology in Vertebrate Limbs (says it’s circular reasoning)
Haeckel’s Embryos (known to be fraudulent for over a century)
Archaeopteryx (no longer believed to be a missing link)
Peppered Moths (the experiment was staged - moths were glued to tree trunks instead of resting on the underside of branches)
Darwin’s Finches (were not really the ipetus behind Darwin’s theory; also, most textbooks fail to mention that beak sizes grow during droughts and shrink again after, which is more indicative of changing ratios of alleles than of speciation)
Four-Winged Fruit Flies (no idea here)
Fossil Horses and Directed Evolution (no idea here)
From Ape to Human: The Ultimate Icon (no idea here)
From what I’ve been able to tell, his points are basically valid - most people in the respective fields know that these things are not valid evidence for evolution. However, that does not necessarily invalidate evolution - nor was he trying to. As I said, he believes in directed evolution. He seems to believe that most scientists know that undirected evolution is impossible and are trying to cover that fact up. He apparently wants a little more honesty and a little more leeway to question the established paradigm.
On an Intelligent Design website (http://www.arn.org), either he or Philip Johnson claim that the notion of working within the system (i.e., peer-reviewed journals) to question the paradigm is invalid when those journals won’t publish anything that questions the paradigm; this is their rationale for directing their works at the public rather than toward such journals.
I haven’t read this particular book, but I’ve seen plenty of articles along the same lines in various conservative magazines. And while none of the articles delivers anything resembling a knockout blow to evolution, they deliver enough pinpricks that evolution’s advocates have a duty to take notice, and DO something about the shoddy job most basic scientific texts do in explaining evolution.
It may well be that the most advanced biologists and evolutionary theorists have long since dismissed Stanley Miller’s attempts to explain the origins of life… but Miller’s experiment is PROMINENT in most high school biology texts today. So is the long-discredited pepper moth anecdote. Indeed, most standard high school (and even introductory college) biology texbooks “prove” the theory of evolution with a lot of moldy, outdated evidence.
Perhaps that’s because the leading lights of the scientific community are too lazy or too busy to take any real interest in secondary school education. Or, maybe, they’re perfectly content to let kids fill their minds with bogus information, just so long as the bogus “facts” lead them to the proper, Darwinian conclusions.
Regardless, if there’s newer, BETTER evidence in support of evolution, THAT evidence should be in the texts today. Until it is, you can be sure that plenty of folks on the religious right will be only too happy to point out the lies, errors and anachronisms in current science texts… and if they manage to convince many people that the foundations of Darwinian evolution are mighty slim, the Darwinians will have only their only lazy selves to blame.
And the thing is, there is better evidence than what’s in the books: I read an article last year about two subspecies of salmon in a lake (if anyone knows of a link to this article, please post it) - they are slightly different in size and shape, and members of one subspecies tend not to mate with members of the other (altough they do occasionally do so). This is more change than was observed in the moths, and even better, it happened in nature, without human intervention. There are fossils discovered in China that paleontologists think are much better candidates for a missing link between dinosaurs and birds (or, as is more likely, between the ancestors of dinosaurs and birds).
That being said, evolution isn’t as open and shut as textbooks would have you think. There are lots of holes in the theory. BUT: Darwinian evolution via random mutation and natural selection is the best scientific candidate we have so far. A little more open debate might allow those holes to be plugged.
As far as buying this book goes, if you’re worried about your money going to support the Moonies, I wouldn’t suggest buying it. If you feel that studying a subject for the sole purpose of debunking it is dishonest, don’t buy it. And, one of the reviews I read claimed that during a debate Wells denied any ulterior motive in studying biology, only to have the article at the address I posted earlier thrown back in his face by his opponent. That seems ‘downright dishonest’ to me.
PS to opponents of evolution: Please don’t jump on me for saying random mutation and natural selection is the best scientific candidate we’ve got. The NAS Guidebook on Teaching Evolution (http://www.nap.edu/readingroom/books/evolution98/) clearly states that science cannot appeal to supernatural causes. That is pretty much accepted within the scientific community. Therefore, any theory which appeals to the supernatural cannot, by these rules, be scientific. Ruling out all such theories leaves us with Darwinian evolution as the best candidate.
jalopeura wrote, re. incorrect examples of evolution in textbooks:
Ooh! Ooh! I know this one! Stephen J. Gould talked about this in one of his essays (I forget which one).
The standard progression shown in textbooks of the evolution of modern horses starts with Eohippus and works its way through about 4 or 5 intermediary forms before arriving at the modern horse. Along the way, several features – most notably the overall body size and the configuration of the hooves – are shown “slowly” to change, in a seemingly directed manner, from the small five-toed Eohippus to the large one-toed modern horse.
The problem is, none of the fossils used in this sequence are true transitional forms. Every single one of them is an extinct, dead-end side-branch of the lineage that became modern horses.
And there’s a second, more subtle problem with the picture it paints. Showing horse species slowly transitioning from small and 5-toed to large and 1-toed implies that the evolution of horses – and, by extension, the evolution of all species – is “directed” toward some ultimate goal. In truth, this kind of “slow progression” is very rare in the fossil record. Most species do NOT slowly progress to a larger size through intermediary stages lasting tens of thousands of years. Much more common are cases where the size of the average member of a population varies up and down wildly, several times over the course of its history. Similarly, a species left with only one working toe, with the 4 other toes being only vestigial remnants, would be just as likely to have those vestigial toes turn into back into useful toes or turn into something new and totally unexpected, like glider wings.
As the resident Drosophila scientist on the boards, I would like to know how this is used to demonstrate evolution. I have only seen it used as a demonstration of large scale body changes with a minimum of mutagenesis. I flipped through the Icons of Evolution book, which seemed just to show that the duplicated set of wings was useless because it had no primary flight musculature, which is a moot point if you are just using it to demonstrate quick body changes.
Some background :
Several mutants in fruit flies (called homeotic mutants) cause a transformation of one body part into another. Some of these were discovered on accident, and some of them were very cleverly engineered to test a hypothesis. Some of the wackier ones were antenna->leg transformation (Antennapedia), thorax duplication (one Ultrabithorax mutant), and haltere (balance organ)->wing transformation. This last one was a spontaneous Ultrabithorax mutant IIRC.
I only flipped through the book once a few months ago, but Wells seemed to be talking about the last example. Mutagenesis took place and a fly with 4 wings popped out. Happens sometimes in mutagenesis – we had one come out a few years ago in our lab. He says that it is an evolutionary dead end, because the extra wings don’t function. Big deal. I think all it shows is that dramatic body change can happen relatively easily by just spontaneous mutagenesis. I don’t think anybody has ever claimed that it is “superior” to the ordinary fruit fly – in fact you would suppose that if it were, the fruit fly would have long ago developed 2 sets of wings (since it is a relatively common spontaneous mutant). It just shows dramatic change with little effort.
In line with what tracer said, the “From Ape to Human” concept is similarly flawed - it portrays a gradual change from one species to another, which is not how it is theorized to have occurred at all.
I would like to address several of the items that have accumulated in this thread to date:
Then I suggest you peruse the link provided by Kimstu earlier in the thread. All of the points you mentioned are specifically refuted. To wit:
Not true. Although there is much debate about the actual composition of the early Earth atmosphere, even in a weakly reducing atmosphere the experiment will produce organics, but the yields will be less. And if you conclude the atmosphere was neutral or oxidizing, Miller’s experiment almost certainly simulates the processes that originate organic materials inside meteorites.
This makes no sense at all. The Cambrian explosion happened over tens of millions of years, and this “explosion” is exactly what you would expect, given there was no competition from existing lifeforms in the exploited environmental niches.
“Homology was recognized before the theory of evolution and is now interpreted as a logical outcome of the same. A perfectly non-circular way to think about homology is that similarities among organisms that cannot be explained by functional similarity are the result of common descent. Alternatively, common descent can now be established by independent means (using molecular markers, for example), again avoiding the charge of circularity.”
The conclusion that all vertebrates develop in a pattern that reflects evolutionary history is fully confirmed by modern studies (see Hox genes). Using a simplified drawing to make a point is NOT fraud and does NOT invalidate evolution, any more than using a simplified representation of the solar system in a classroom negates astronomy.
Archaeopteryx is important regardless of whether it is a direct intermediate between two forms. Archaeopteryx illustrates the viability of intermediate forms and fits perfectly with evolutionary theory.
“Staging” the picture in no way invalidates the conclusion that the peppered moth story represents evolution in action. Certainly the story is more complicated than the one presented in high school textbooks, but so what? Does using the Ideal Gas Law, or Newton’s Law of Gravitation, or Bohr’s model of the atom give you equal reason to doubt these sciences? As Bruce Grant indicates:
"We now know from genetic analysis that the colors of adult peppered moths are determined by genes; thus, the changes in the percentages of pale to black moths over generations reflect changes in the genetic makeup of moth populations…Evolution is defined at the operational level as genetic change over time, so this is evolution. "
Darwin’s Finches show evolution, and evolution is defined as the changing ratio of alleles in population. I’m not sure why you feel it should be limited to speciation.
I would be very interested to know what you think the “holes” in the theory are, unless they are just the points mentioned above. And I wonder how you characterize the dialog in the peer-reviewed scientific literature, since I gather you do not consider it “open debate”?
astorian said:
Please read the Bruce Grant link above and let me know if you still consider the peppered moth story to be discredited.
The Miller experiment was also addressed previously, but keep in mind that it has to do with abiogenesis, NOT evolution. Certainly they are distantly related, but the exact method of biogenesis has no bearing on the veracity of evolutionary theory.
Or perhaps you haven’t done enough research to support these wild speculations.
I’ll gladly admit that high school biology texts generally do not give adequate coverage of the theory of evolution. But far from being a “conspiracy” by scientists exposed by the religious right, it is instead a result of enormous pressure brought about by these same religious extremists that causes book publishers to not give due diligence to this important topic.
Granting your points about other experiments (for the sake of argument only), then why is the Miller-Urey experiment still used as ‘proof’ of evolution in textbooks?
But the tree-of-life diagrams used in textbooks also cover tens of millions of years, and do not bear resemblance to the actual pattern found in the fossils.
But that’s not how it’s presented in the textbooks.
Your link doesn’t refute the idea being expressed here. Your link discusses the genes that control development. The idea here is that embryonic development mimics the evolutionary developmnent. However, embryologists have found embryos start diverge at the beginning, reach a point of similarity in the middle, and then diverge again. This refutes that idea. And while using simplified drawings may not be fraud, deliberately altering them is. (I will head down to the university library as soon as I can and find the source so I can provide a title and call number - the book is by an embryologist contemporary with Haeckel.)
The why is it presented as a missing link in the textbooks?
Any experiment that is staged is invalid as scientific evidence. It should not be presented as such in the textbooks.
Then why is it presented as evidence of speciation?
I don’t see that you have refuted the main point of the book - that is, that these ‘proofs’ are not valid evidence for evolution. What you have refuted is the idea that these things prove evolution wrong - but that is a straw man argument: the book nowhere states that the use of fraudulent evidence for evolution proves the theory wrong. Nor did I state that in my summary.
Well, for a hole consider the fact that the fossil evidence as it stands does not support evolution as it is currently formulated. For lack of open debate, consider the fact that when Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge pointed this out and suggested that evolution be reformulated to fit the facts (I believe the exact quote was “the neo-Darwinian synthesis is dead”), they were hounded by others in this ‘open forum’ until they stated publicly that their statements had been misinterpreted. They said that their work did not disprove gradualism, all it did was show that it wasn’t as gradual as previously thought.
It’s interesting - nowhere did my summary state that evolution was false - as I said, the author believes in evolution - and yet you leap to its defense at the perceived threat. If you’ll reread my posts, you’ll see that I suppply two pieces of evidence that are better than what’s in the textbooks, and true to boot. The whole point of the book is that textbooks provide fraudulent ‘proofs’ of evolution. This is an entirely separate argument from the merits of evolution itself. If you wish to discuss what I think are the flaws in evolution, then we can do it by email or you can start a new thread; this thread is not the place for it.
If Wells has as an objective the improvement of the general science texts that are foisted upon high school and college students, then he should probably be joining forces with Stephen J. Gould and getting his facts straight.
One of the central themes (I would say the central theme) of Gould’s Reflections on Natural History series has been the problems created when scientific history is reduced to mythology. Throughout that series (of collected essays from his column in Science), Gould goes back to restore the reputations of those people who have been dismissed for “getting it wrong” (when they actually did much to further either knowledge or understanding) while he restates and clarifies the actual positions of the participants of the many debates that have accompanied our development of current knowledge in biology.
Gould is very critical of the mythological presentation of the history of biology.
As to the state of the textbooks, hardcore got the basic problem correct in his final statement: school districts and state school boards would rather buy pap than face a hostile discussion. Textbook publishers seek out the least offensive (least informative) works so that they will be able to sell more books. Many very good scientists have written excellent popular works that could easily be used as textbooks, however, not one school district in a thousand would be willing to look at such works, even if they had the (never granted) approval of the state school boards to use such works in credited classes.
It isn’t. No biology textbook refers to the Miller-Urey experiment as evidence for evolution. It is presented as a plausible mechanism by which the first of many steps needed for one possible abiogenesis scenario could have occurred. (The biology textbook I used in high school also discussed the later Stanley Fox experiment, in which amino acids like those formed by the Miller-Urey experiment were baked in ultraviolet light, resulting in chains of amino acids that resembled short proteins. This was another necessary step in the same abiogenesis scenario.)
The current issue of Skeptic magazine reviews Icons along with many other antievolution books. I would recommend for those interested in the current ant-science assault by the “new creationists” I.E. intelligent design to give a look to the most recent Skeptic.
I really do appreciate all the information posted thus far. And certainly not to diminish the efforts put forth, but I realized after I submitted the OP, that a simple search on Amazon.com (as jalopeura pointed out earlier) would have answered my question too.
Note to self: “Don’t post stupid questions when it’s late in the day and your brain is squishy from thinking too hard.”
Repeat three times.
Okay, I think I’ve got that into my head now.
BTW, my moral dilemma about purchasing this book has been resolved when I can offer the simple retort to my fundie in-laws: “Bad information in school science books does not invalidate evolution.”
You’re right. And a closer look at hardcore’s post showed me that he made the same point. It’s abiogenesis, the origin of life, not evolution, the origin of diversity in life. But in any case, the main point still stands: it is no longer considered valid by the scientific community, yet they let it stand as is in the textbooks.
Now, I think that YECs (Young Earth Creationists) don’t really have a scientific leg to stand on, but why is it that when they use outdated or fraudulent data to back up their claims, they’re being purposefully deceitful and shouldn’t be trusted, but when the scientific community does the same thing, it’s okay? Is it okay to lie in support of the truth?
Yeah, well, as I said in my post, that’s only the goal of this particular book. His ultimate goal (proving that eolution couldn’t happen unguided) is incompatible with working with Gould.
He’s also one of the few people in the scientific community willing to question evolution. NOTE: I am not claiming that he is a closet creationist. He wants the theory of evolution to be reformulated so it fits more accurately the evidence of the fossil record (for more details, do a search on your favorite engine for ‘gould’ ‘eldredge’ ‘punctuated equilibrium’).
Yeah, but who’s writing the pap? A group of scientists. Then the pap is reviewed by several scientists. If they would stop writing and approving pap, school boards would be forced to stop buying pap.
I don’t know if the National Academy of Sciences has some kind of ‘Seal of Approval’ or something for textbooks, but if they do, whoever’s in charge isn’t doing a very good job, and if they don’t, maybe they should. If, as they claim, they only want to see America’s children get a good science education, they should start at home. (If, on the other hand, as the creationists claim, they simply want to indoctrinate children, then a ‘mythological presentation’ is the best way to go about it.)
jalopeura, I’ll try this once more in the hope that you will attempt to understand what I am saying, but I fear you may have become so influenced by Well’s rhetoric that you will be unable to do so. Let me know if I should skip this step and go straight to slamming my head against the nearest wall.
I don’t suppose you have anything remotely resembling a cite indicating the Miller-Urey experiment is still used as ‘proof’ of evolution in textbooks? Something other than this offal from Wells, if you please. (Note: this will be a recurring theme throughout this post)
As has been previously noted, this experiment showed a possible pathway of abiogenesis, which you finally realized. And why do you think the experiment is no longer valid? The experiment was a breakthrough, in that it showed organic molecules forming spontaneously, and rightly deserves placement in textbooks.
And you have some evidence of this, or are you just repeating Well’s claim?
You wrote this about Homology of vertebrate limbs:
Again, I would like to see an actual quote from a widely accepted high school biology book that supports your position. Do you have one?
Concerning Darwin’s Finches, you wrote:
I sincerly doubt that variable beak lengths are used as evidence of speciation. Maybe you have something besides unverified supposition to support your claim?
On the topic of Archaeopteryx, you said:
I’m not trying to be pedantic, but do you even know of a biology textbook using the phrase “missing link” in conjunction with Archaeopteryx? When I reviewed my daughter’s biology textbook recently, it classified Archaeopteryx as a transitional fossil having both reptilian and avain characteristics, which is entirely accurate.
Your response to the peppered moth explanation was:
What on earth are you talking about?? What experiment are you referring to? The picture of the moth was staged, just like many of the pictures in textbooks. The peppered moth story is a prime example of evolution and should figure prominently in textbooks. The story is simplified for high school students, but so fucking what? So are many of the concepts we teach students. Why do you choose to single out evolution for your concern?
The fossil evidence doesn’t support evolution? Man, I’ve got more work ahead of me than I thought if I intend to address the ignorance of that statement.
First, read this FAQ on transitional fossils to get an idea of exactly how well the theory and evidence match. Next, examine the common errors in discussion of PE to understand that punctuated equilibrium is complementary to gradualism, not exclusive. PE theorizes that the speed of evolution is tied to pressures exerted by the environment. Therefore, some species may evolve quickly, while others evolve more gradually. Quickly, of course, is a relative term, and would still seem very gradual to the human observer.
And the idea that this is something new is pure poppycock, if I may use so technical a term. No less an authority than Darwin himself noted, in the The Origin of Species:
“I believe in no fixed law of development, causing all the inhabitants of a country to change abruptly, or simultaneously, or to an equal degree. The process of modification must be extremely slow. The variability of each species is quite independent of that of all others. Whether such variability be taken advantage of by natural selection, and whether the variations be accumulated to a greater or lesser amount, thus causing a greater or lesser amount of modification in the varying species, depends on many complex contingencies, on the variability being of a beneficial nature, on the power of intercrossing, on the rate of breeding, on the slowly changing physical conditions of the country, and more especially on the nature of the other inhabitants with which the varying species comes into competition. Hence it is by no means surprising that one species should retain the same identical form much longer than others; or, if changing, that it should change less.”
Try reading the entire book. You’ll find that Darwin was well aware of the rapid change evident in the fossil record by some species, while others appear to change more slowly. He attributes much of this to the incompleteness of the fossil record, but obviously realized the possibility of variable evolutionary rates.
I especially find it ludicrous that you depict the debate between gradualism and PE as something not representative of “open debate”. I find it to be exactly that – a prime example of challenging discourse in the scientific community. Perhaps you only see what you expect to see.
I hope to have shown exactly what I intended – namely, that Archaeopteryx, the peppered moths, Darwin’s Finches, and homology are all valid evidence for evolution, which is entirely in opposition to your stance. Also, the Miller-Urey experiment is an important one in the field of abiogenesis, and should rightly be given space in biology textbooks. I leave it to others to judge whether I have been successful.
Hardcore is all too typical of Darwinians- he’s wrong on the facts, but rather than admit it, he prefers toi close his mind and circle the wagons, pretending that Jalo and I are fanatical creationists.
Hardcore, get something straight: the errors, distortions, lies and anachronistic “facts” in most high school (an many college) biology textbooks are many, and they’re obvious. DON’T take my word for it! Pick up a few such texts, and leaf through them at your leisure.
Now, it’s important to note something: though Jalo and I have noted that Stanley Miller’s model was highly flawed, and that the famous pepper moths anecdote does NOT prove what it was supposed to prove, and that a host of “proofs” offered for Darwinian evolution in a standard science text are utterly bogus (archaeopteryx IS invariably cited as a “missing link”), that does NOT mean God made the world in six days, and it does NOT mean the creation story in Genesis is literally true.
What it DOES mean is that science education is in MAJOR need of repair. That repair can come from either of two sources. MAYBE the scientific community will get their heads out of the sand, and acknowledge that they’ve done a crummy job of spelling out the basic principles of evolution. MAYBE they’ll make a real effort to write secondary school texts that spell out the facts as scientists NOW know them.
Or… maybe scientists will remain lazy and out-to-lunch, and will refuse to acknowledge the problems Jalo and I (among many others) have noted. Maybe they’ll tell themselves that, even if the Miller model is wrong, even if the pepper moth story is meaningless, even if the “Progression of man” sketches in every science book are way off the mark, even if embryo sketches perpetuate the erroneous belief that all organisms are pretty much alike in utero… that even if ALL these things are wrong, it’s okay, because at least they promote absolute belief in Darwinism (“so what if most teens get a bit of a distorted view… the ones who study biology further will learn the real facts in the advanced classes.”)
In that case, people who DO believe in the Genesis account of creation will be only too happy to refute the falsehoods perpetrated in Darwin’s name. And when they’ve made their case, they may well manage to persuade the science-illiterates of the U.S. that evolution is a lot of bunk based on fallacies and half-truths. What will you do THEN?
It’s time Darwinians formulated NEW models for evolution, and made a case for evolution that doesn’t rely on the old myths that they’ve grown comfortable with.