If I might add to the excellent comments that have already been made:
Part of the problem is that “creation science” is really Potemkin science. There’s really nothing there. Let’s look at a real science, like chemistry: there’s a lot of stuff there, like hybrid orbitals and lactones, that most of the public doesn’t really know a lot about. It affects them, since you can make medicines and plastics based on it, but there’s a lot of “behind-the-scenes” which most people don’t see unless someone explains it in a popular work.
In creation “science”, OTOH, doesn’t go much deeper than what the public sees, because it’s really a PR campaign instead of a scientific quest. Back in the 1970’s creation science talked about fossils (Evolution: The Fossils Say No!) because you saw big dinosaurs in the museums and you heard about Lucy on the news. There was a lot more to biology besides fossils, but creationists didn’t bother, because nobody was asking embarassing questions about much other than fossils. Then the evolutionists started talking about humans and apes being 98% genetically identical, and the creationists whipped up an explanation on the spot: similar organisms require similar proteins. Why didn’t creationists do any work on genetics back when they were talking about fossils? Because the public didn’t know about genetics yet, and there wasn’t any need to bamboozle people on a subject that they didn’t know about anyway.
Of course, the latest round of creationist explanation is wrong too. Similar organisms don’t have similar proteins; similarity of proteins correlates with the evolutionary relationships between organisms, not with their overall similarity. And, as I pointed out, there’s a whole world of transposons and whatnot that the creationists- even the pundits- don’t really know anything about. Just look at this webpage:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/molgen/
If you look at the creationist reply, the creationist doesn’t know how to handle it. He can’t go back in the creationist scientific literature and look up “pseudogenes,” because no evolutionist had mentioned pseudogenes yet, and thus there’s no reason why any creation “scientist” would have even bothered to learn what they are. So he has to flail around like a drowning man, trying to find something, anything, that will explain them away. I find this comment telling:
“At first glance, this appears to be a strong argument for evolution. Indeed, I found it troubling for a while.”
What- you found the existence of pseudogenes to be “troubling for a while”? Didn’t you learn about them in grad school like all the evolutionist scientists? Shouldn’t you guys have explained- or at the very least studied!- the basic facts of biology long ago, before any mainstream scientist realized that pseudogenes would make a handy argument for evolution? I guarantee you, if PBS ran a popular series akin to “Cosmos” which explained the workings of DNA and the genome and how they relate to evolution, the creationists would suddenly strike out into the wilderness of molecular genetics (a wilderness already heavily settled by evolutionists, mind you) and present us with a wealth of creationist explanations for introns and transposons and all the other words on the tips of the public’s tongues. Until then, they’re just not interested.
Here’s another illustrative site:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/fitness/
If you read about how Gish responded to the arguments presented on this site, you’ll see that Gish plainly has never heard of the genetic workings of the vertebrate immune system. Now, let me give you an idea of whether or not Gish should have heard of this Nobel-winning research before. Back when I was an undergrad I learned about the genetics of the vertebrate immune system in my biochemistry class. I learned about it again in protein structure class. Then, as a grad student, I took a molecular cell biology class, and we went over it again. I also read a molecular genetics textbook, and read about it again there. I recently read an immunology textbook, and obviously I read about the genetics of immunity there. I also read a textbook on protein evolution which discussed it, and I’m currently reading an evolution and development textbook which also has a section on it. I may be missing a few textbooks here; I’d be hard pressed to point to many (or any) textbooks in my field which didn’t cover the topic in detail.
Remember, Gish is a bit of a surprise to many evolutionists because his PhD in biochemistry didn’t come from a diploma mill; it came from Berkeley. But does Gish know basic molecular biology which students these days learn as undergrads? No, he doesn’t, and I don’t know how he avoided it. Maybe he just quit reading after he got his doctorate. And even more tellingly, when he tries to critique Max’s arguments regarding the genetics of immunity, Gish doesn’t run to the nearest genetics or immunology textbook, read up on the subject, and then present a devastating critique based on a full and informed understanding of the subject. Instead, clearly working purely from what he heard the evolutionist say, he says that if all this stuff about genetics were true, the body would produce antibodies against itself. Never mind that if Gish were to randomly pick up a textbook in his own field, there’s a 90% chance that it would tell him that the thymus screens out autoimmune antibody-producing cells. Why doesn’t he crack a book? I don’t know, but maybe, deep down, part of the reason is that he knows that most of his audience will never bother to find out anything about the subject beyond what the evolutionists have already presented, so why address any facts that aren’t already in the evolutionist argument?
And that, my friends, is a big part of why I issued the 11-question challenge. Creationists just can’t explain them, because there’s no explanation there yet. It’s not just about the fact that the evidence which I ask the creationists to explain in my 11 questions constitutes particularly good evidence for evolution. It’s that words like “intron phase” and “exon class” probably have never been printed in any creationist work yet, because the public at large hasn’t heard them used to defend evolution.
-Ben
