Does Modern Biology Really Depend on the (Full) Version of Evolution?
[UPDATE below.]
In a recent blog post on religious belief David Friedman wrote:
[U]nlike the (current) Catholics, a significant part of what [Protestant fundamentalists in the United States] reject is modern science, in particular the theory of evolution, which underlies quite a lot of modern biology.
You see that claim made a lot in the debates over evolution, but I wonder if it is a factoid rather than a fact.
Note that I am posting this on a weekday, rather than Sundays, because I am asking a purely scientific question: How much of modern biology really would collapse, if it turned out that “evolution” turned out to be wrong?
Well it obviously depends on what we mean by “evolution.” Michael Behe (in my understanding), one of the leaders of the Intelligent Design movement, is happy to concede that all modern organisms come from a single cell. His point however is that that cell couldn’t have arisen just by chance, that the information packed into it must have been consciously put there by an intelligent being. (The being could have engineered this by consciously structuring the inorganic environment such that it would give rise to the cell.)
If we take Behe’s views to be denying “Darwin’s theory of evolution,” then I submit just about nothing in modern biology depends on that particular issue.
Even if we broaden our definition of “evolution,” it’s still not obvious to me how much of biology would be vulnerable. For example, suppose there is a God and He created, de novo, the entire physical universe and all of the organisms on Earth, as they existed in the year 1500. Clearly, modern biology is consistent with that history, except for erroneous theories that extrapolated back before the year 1500 and assumed that there were ancestors to the creatures living in the year 1500, when in reality (in this thought experiment) all the millions of different lines started from scratch in the year 1500.
For an analogy, consider modern Austrian economics in the tradition of Mises and Rothbard. We are fond of stressing Mises’ regression theorem, which traces the purchasing power of fiat money back to the time it was convertible into precious metals, and then going all the way back to barter, when gold and silver were valued as regular goods.
But suppose it turns out that actually, some wise king really did invent money out of the clear blue sky, and got people to hold it through imposing taxation (as the MMTers suggest). How much of modern Austrian economics would collapse?
Not all that much, except of course for our views on the regression theorem. We would have to be a lot more agnostic about the limits of a ruler in imposing a “new equilibrium” etc., but those were really empirical claims. We could still believe in free markets, market-chosen money, Austrian business cycle theory, etc.
UPDATE: OK I shouldn’t have been so foolish as to suppose people would answer my question, rather than telling me why creationism is stupid. Let me give something more specific:
Suppose we are visited next week by aliens in advanced spacecraft. There is no doubt that they are the real deal; they do all kinds of crazy stuff like give us the cure for cancer, show us how to turn Mark Levin’s books into pure energy, and they give us the answers to three unsolved math problems from this list.
Then the aliens tell us, “Sorry to inform you guys, but your biologists went a little bit awry in the last two centuries. We visited your lifeless planet about 2 billion of your years ago, and we placed 18,000 different cells on it in various locations. We had designed each of these cells from scratch. Surveying your genetic material, we think we can still see remnants of about 3,500 of those original “seeds.””
So now my question: In this unlikely yet certainly possible scenario, how many modern biologists would say, “Oh crud, I really hope they are pulling our legs, because otherwise my career is done.” ? I submit that not even a single biologist would have to quit his job. All of a sudden they would “see” new patterns in the various hierarchies, and previously inexplicable problems would disappear (while new ones would emerge). All of the modern understanding of heredity, genetics, natural selection, and speciation would be intact. The only tweak is that we would no longer assume all modern organisms shared a common ancestor.
Does anybody disagree with me on this? If not, then it’s a bit sloppy when people say, “All of biology depends on the theory of evolution.” You can agree with me on this very modest point, and still think everything came from the same cell, which itself arose through pure chance interactions of inorganic molecules in the primordial soup.
It’s not that biology per se would collapse; ALL “science” as such, would collapse. Take the current state of modern philosophy as a parallel. Ever since Kant published his Critique, modern philosophers have been going around and around arguing how much they cannot know because they cannot trust the nature of their own conscious perception. Since then, modern philosophy has consisted primarily of denying the possibility of knowledge, reason, volition, certainty, etc. etc. For all intents and purposes and with few exceptions, modern philosophers are bankrupt. They have nothing to offer, no new knowledge. Why? Because they have accepted as truth the dogma that truth is unknowable. An irrational assertion was introduced into their premises, which they accepted and never challenged, and the rest of their theories have suffered the logical consequences. The same will happen with science. If modern day scientists cannot base their theories and hypothesis on the scientific method i.e. data gathered from inference and observation and must accept, on a logical and rationally equal footing, any arbitrary assertion about the causes and effects of the world i.e. creationism then what is left of reason, logic, evidence or science as such? Nothing but faith, which is that the proponents of intelligent design and creationism desire, just like Kant and his modern day incarnations, they want their arbitrary assertions to be accepted as equally plausible facts alongside with and as an “alternative” theory of biological life. Once that happens (it already has to a certain extent), nothing will be left of science just as nothing is left of philosophy. We might as well go back to alchemy and astrology in an attempt to understand the world we live in.
I think you misunderstood the part of Friedman’s quote I was questioning. He didn’t say, “Protestant fundamentalists want to replace the scientific method with the reading of Genesis,” though some of them probably do. Rather, he said that if we deny the theory of evolution, we would lose support for much of modern biology.
This is a purely scientific question, albeit with consequences for the religious dispute. A professor could put on an exam for biology PhDs, “How much of modern biology is dependent on the Darwinian theory of evolution? In your answer, be careful to specify exactly what you interpret ‘Darwinian theory of evolution’ to mean.”
In general, it means that the theory is based on inferences made on factual evidence observed and by denying the theory we are denying the evidence.
What portion of modern bioligy is NOT based on evidence? none. the implication follows directly.
What portion of modern bioligy is NOT based on evidence? none. the implication follows directly.
So the theory of evolution is now synonymous with evidence-based reasoning? What were biologists doing before Darwin?
If it turned out that aliens seeded life here billions of years ago, that would mean biologists would have to stop using evidence?
no, “theories” as such are based on evidence based reasoning. what other kind is there?
if it were known that aliens seeded life there must be evidence supporting such knowledge otherwise its not knowledge, it is just an arbitrary assertion, like IT.
oops. make that “ID” 😉
RS,
Suppose one physicist says to another, “I believe in string theory because otherwise physics would collapse.”
The other physicist says, “What are you talking about? Whether or not string theory is true, the rest of physics would continue.”
The first guy says, “What the heck?! You’re against evidence-based reasoning?!”
Does that make any sense to you?
OK, so now when someone says that evolutionary theory underpins modern biology, I can question that linkage without denying that science must be evidence based. The linkage might be weak, even if the evidence points to evolutionary theory being true.
On what basis do you question the linkage?
Denying without evidence is the same thing as asserting without evidence.
You would have to show how the evidence presented FOR the theory is either false or is not causually related or introduce new evidence that contradicts the old.
What evidence is there in support of ID?
What evidence for evolution is false? Where is the evidence that contradicts it?
Simply asserting that the theory is incomplete because we do not yet know the answers to everything is insufficient to invalidate a theory.
It would be the epistemological equivilant of a statis claiming a market failure in a free market. on what grounds did it “fail”?
On what grounds does evolution fail?
Bob’s not rejecting or disputing the linkage — he’s asking what the linkage IS!
“Since then, modern philosophy has consisted primarily of denying the possibility of knowledge, reason, volition, certainty, etc. etc.”
Well, except it hasn’t, you know. (Of course, there have been sceptics like Rorty, but they’re a minority.) You didn’t get your history of philosophy from Rand, did you?
In my experience, her narritive is accurate.
I thought so.
It’s good that you apparently expect that Austrians don’t read anything outside of their religious canon.
Uh oh. No wonder I cringed when you disparaged Kant.
She really did an abysmal job studying one of the most profound thinkers in the history of philosophy.
you are entitled to your opinion however, Ill still make my own determination on the matter.
Damn it. And Mattheus and I thought we were going to be able to determine this for you!
ahhh, but it was clear from your first post that you think that Rand made my determination concerning the state of modern philosophy so I too wanted to be clear that I make my own estimations and not just accept things willy nilly as you implied.
When I see history of philosophy that bad, my thoughts turn immediately to Rand!
As Jack Sparrow writes:
“What is to prevent a U.S. based business from holding its cash reserves in, say, a mix of Canadian dollars and Swiss francs, then converting the necessary funds to $USD only at the instant point of transaction, i.e. when they pay the tax?”
http://seekingalpha.com/article/242669-the-trouble-with-modern-monetary-theory
great article! thanks!
Nothing.
Someone has to accept US dollars to sell the Canadian dollars and Swiss francs, and someone has to have the dollars when the business buys them to pays its taxes.
What’s the point?
Very good, and also VG RS. Descarte begin with the existence of God, without nothing can be knowed. How could we have confidence on reason?
For example, suppose there is a God and He created, de novo, the entire physical universe and all of the organisms on Earth, as they existed in the year 1500. Clearly, modern biology is consistent with that history
The problem is that anti-evolution folks usually say this. Instead they will say that you can’t trust carbon dating because of blah blah and natural selection doesn’t work because of yada yada and so on. If you accept that, you do end up having to reject the foundations of most of modern biology (as well as other scientific disciplines).
You’re on stronger ground if we’re talking about someone like Behe. Frankly I’ve never quite understood why Behe is embraced by Creationists while someone like Ken Miller (who believes that God played a larger part in the developed of humanity than Behe) is considered an enemy.
Bob, I am not quite sure what you’re asking regarding the “full” version of evolution. Do you favor one in which only the beginning (formation of first living cell) is different, wherein the cell components were formed by god, rather than random forces of the universe? Is the rest of evolutionary theory ok?
I’m not favoring any particular theory right now. I’m asking for clarification when people say, “If we abandoned evolutionary theory as some Christians want, then modern biology would fall.”
I’m asking, what exactly would fall? If I think that human beings might not have a common ancestor with apes, would penicillin stop working? Would doctors have to change the way they look for cancer cures? etc.
no they would not stop workign, but the knowledge that they do in fact work would slowly but surely be replaced by leeches and bleedings.
OK I guess I am going to stop taking you seriously on this thread because you’re not even trying. We can conduct double-blind, controlled studies to see what treatments work best for various medical conditions. Whether or not we share a common ancestor with apes has almost nothing to do with that, at least to my non-expert mind. I stand open to correction, but I don’t think you are going to provide it.
You are not seeing the forest through the trees. Controlled studies are based on observations of cause and effect. If science is open to accept effects witout causes then THAT is what fails.
Perhaps I should be more explicit in my time frame.
You are right, science would not immediately stop working if one rejects evidence based reasoning.
But, all future science and those who study the world would then begin to assign various and arbitrary causes to unrelated effects until, over time, the result would be that knowledge of how to conduct a controlled study, or to create and administer penicillin, would dissapear and be replaced by the kind of “science” that was done prior to the enlightenment.
RS,
I think Bob’s question is *why* denying evolution would mean you have to deny all evidence based reasoning, assign arbitrary causes to unrelated events, etc.
Lord Kelvin, for example, famously denied evolution because he thought physics showed there simply wasn’t enough time for what Darwin claimed to occur. He was wrong about that, but his error didn’t involve him abandoning evidence based reasoning (indeed, his rejection of evolution was based on evidence).
Thank you Blackadder. I like you a lot more on religious topics than fractional reserve banking. I can’t put my finger on why…
@Blackadder,
“Logical possibilty is a very very low standard”
This is at the heart of what I am getting at. Logical possibility is only a standard if it is predecated on some factual evidence, otherwise it is no standard at all, it is simply arbitrary. Which contradicts the premise to Dr. Murphy”s question i.e. that it is a “scientific” question. Without any basis to establish such a possibility it is not sceintific, it is not anything but pure speculation unfounded by any logic or reason.
You are right, science would not immediately stop working if one rejects evidence based reasoning.
No, that wouldn’t make me right, because I never said it.
YOU keep equating “the theory of evolution” with “evidence-based reasoning.”
I am saying it’s logically possible that the theory of evolution is false. To admit that possibility, is not to deny evidence-based reasoning.
“I am saying it’s logically possible that the theory of evolution is false. To admit that possibility, is not to deny evidence-based reasoning.”
And I am saying, explicitly, that Yes, it is, IF you do not have some real evidence to back up your assertion as to WHY it is false.
What justifies your hypothesis that evolution is false? Without such justification your assertion is without a basis in fact.
In Blackadders last post, Lord Kelvin thought he had evidence that contradicted Darwins theory. Turns out he was wrong but the point is that he thought the time element involved amounted to a contradiction, something that is falsifiable.
Lord Kelvin had a basis in fact to suspect the theory, which was testable.
Bob wrote: “I am saying it’s logically possible that the theory of evolution is false. To admit that possibility, is not to deny evidence-based reasoning.”
RS said: And I am saying, explicitly, that Yes, it is, IF you do not have some real evidence to back up your assertion as to WHY it is false.
OK ironically, you are actually now arguing that the theory of evolution is not evidence-based, if you say that we are prohibited from saying that it is logically possible that the theory is false.
Don’t you know that a lot of people think a statement must be falsifiable in order to be scientific? (I don’t subscribe to that formulation, but it’s quite popular.) You are actually not willing to admit to me that the theory of evolution is falsifiable, such is your obstinance on this trivial little point.
RS,
If Bob were actually claiming that evolution was false, then it would be fair to ask him for his evidence. But he hasn’t done that. Instead, he asked us to suppose that evolution was shown to be false and answer how that would affect our understanding of biology generally. Demanding evidence for the supposition is silly. It would be like if you said “suppose a man is trapped on a desert island” and I responded by asking for the GPS coordinates for the island.
Who is this guy you are talking about, Blackadder? Can we go save him? How can you sit here commenting while he is out there starving?
“If Bob were actually claiming that evolution was false, then it would be fair to ask him for his evidence. But he hasn’t done that. Instead, he asked us to suppose that evolution was shown to be false and answer how that would affect our understanding of biology generally. ”
I understand this. What Bob does not understand is the fact that our current understanding of biology does not exist in a vaccum. It is based on a body of factual evidence so the only way, THE ONLY WAY, mind you, for anyone to SUPPOSE, that it is false is to likewise SUPPOSE that the body of evidence on which it is based is ALSO false.
So then he is asking a loaded question and not a scientific one as he originally presented it.
Anyone can suppose anything he wishes but our idea of biology is based on those facts, replace those facts and you replace the idea so I dont see the point of the question unless its to introduce obfuscation and doubt.
@Bob,
“OK ironically, you are actually now arguing that the theory of evolution is not evidence-based, if you say that we are prohibited from saying that it is logically possible that the theory is false.”
This does not follow. All you have done here is setup a straw man.
All I have said is that, based on the evidence to date and within our current context of knowledge, it is not logically possible for evolution to be false.
You claim otherwise. OK, On what basis?
Tell me what facts you observed that led you to be able to “logically” arrive at the conclusion that it is possible for evolution to be false?
If this is not just an arbitrary assertion then “logically possible” means you have some basis for your skepticism.
If this is being obstinate then I am guilty as charged because for your question to be characterized as “scientific” (as opposed to arbitrary) as you claimed at the beginning of this post, then you must have some basis in “evidence” for your “reasoning” to lead you to the conclusion that the current theory is false, given our current state of knowledge.
If you dont, then you have indeed succeeded in denying evidence based reasoning, as I have stated.
Understand?
RS,
Logical possibilty is a very very low standard. Bob has already given a couple of examples of scenarios where we would have all the evidence we do now and yet evolution would be false. So it is logically possible for evolution to be false on the current evidence (though this is of course highly unlikely).
“would dissapear and be replaced by the kind of “science” that was done prior to the enlightenment.”
Wow, so real science only started around 1750?! You might consult, say Grant, _The Foundations of Modern Science in the Middle Ages_ to get rid of that erroneous belief.
RS wrote:
All I have said is that, based on the evidence to date and within our current context of knowledge, it is not logically possible for evolution to be false.
RS, I am not trying to be a jerk here. If you email the above statement to any biologist with a PhD who teaches at any college in the United States, and that person agrees with that sentence by itself, then I will PayPal you $20.
Before you waste your time though RS, consider this.
@ Bob,
The issue is not one of biology so there is no need to send emails to PhDs nor is there any need to pay me. The issue is one of logic and epistemology.
I am drawing a dark unbroken line between the possible and the certain. Which is something that not many people will do, even a PhD. You can thank Kant for that.
What I mean by that is that while it is possible for the theory to be metaphysically or epistemologically wrong it can only be logically known to be so given some factual evidence, some new discovery. In other words, no one can logically “know” or (even logically assert ) that the theory is false if there is no evidence to indicate that it is or even that it might be. Contrary to Kant and Mises, you cannot know something before you know it, without basing such knowledge on some kind of experience.
Moreover, If all of the evidence is in support and sufficient to establish cause and effect and there is none against then as far as the evidence is concerned it is true and it is certain.
That is the essence of good science.
Now, you can change the context, as you attempted to do by adding aliens or god or whatever, but as soon as you do this, in regards to the science of biology, you have left the realm of the epistemologically and metaphysically (respectively) possible and have entered the realm of pure speculation as there is no evidence of aliens in biology just as there is no evidence of god in metaphysics.
That is not to say that aliens are metaphysically impossible. I just mean that with regard to the context of biology there is no evidence so “biology” as a science, cannot acknowledge the existence or non existence of aliens until such time as there is evidence of their existence.
RS,
Forget biologists. Ask a logician, or a philosopher of science. They will tell you you are speaking gibberish (no offense meant, but it is gibberish).
@ Blackadder,
No worries, Im not offended. However, I dont see how it is gibberish to point out the inconsistencies implied in someones ideological postion. Science deals with facts. Bilogy deals with the facts of living organisms. Postulating about the causes of living organisms outside of the real of what is known to be possible (i.e. genetic material spontaniously transferring itself accross species) is not science nor can it be categorized as “evidence based reasoning” since there is no evidence to reason from.
That is not gibberish. It is logic.
reposted from above (sorry!)
@Blackadder,
“Logical possibilty is a very very low standard”
This is at the heart of what I am getting at. Logical possibility is only a standard if it is predecated on some factual evidence, otherwise it is no standard at all, it is simply arbitrary. Which contradicts the premise to Dr. Murphy”s question i.e. that it is a “scientific” question. Without any basis to establish such a possibility it is not sceintific, it is not anything but pure speculation unfounded by any logic or reason.
I’m asking, what exactly would fall? If I think that human beings might not have a common ancestor with apes, would penicillin stop working? Would doctors have to change the way they look for cancer cures? etc.
I don’t think we can answer this question unless we know what has supplanted evolution as an explanation.
For example, medical researchers do use evolutionary theory as a tool to help them figure out what causes human diseases and so forth. If it turned out that evolution was false, that would mean either that (1) whatever successes we’ve had though these methods have been a combination of dumb luck and illusion or (2) the theory of evolution approximates truth in those circumstances (just as Newtonian physics, while not true, approximates the truth in ordinary circumstances).
If the answer is (1), then doctors might very well have to change the way they look for cancer cures. If (2), then maybe not, but it’s not easy to see what a plausible alternative might be (and whatever it was, it almost certainly wouldn’t look like Creationism).
Or (3) the researchers were using intuition from a broad array of observations not related to evolution, while mistakenly believing that evolutionary theory was actually guiding them the whole time — perhaps due to the (very common) human bias of being able to fit any conclusion to any premise.
(I know your example presupposed that researchers “do use evo-theory as a tool…”. But my point is, they can be “using” it as a tool in the sense that some guy is claiming the Bible gave him hints for how to design his [effective] artificial heart — he’s wrong about what the actual source of his scientific insights is, even as he claims to be “using” some particular, irrelevant aid.)
I’m not saying the theory of evolution is wrong or unhelpful. I’m only sympathizing (very strongly) with Bob’s frustration at people who overstate exactly what role evolutionary theory plays and what you would miss out no by rejecting this or that part of it.
As a religious agnostic and practicing biochemist who uses the theory of evolution regularly in my research: BA hit the nail on the head with #2. I waffle between whether I’m convinced that (full) evolution is true or whether it’s historically incorrect, but a very useful model. The Newtonian physics analogy is exactly the way I explain this whenever it comes up.
And, in case this isn’t clear, I think Bob is absolutely right on this post.
I believe that if there is a god who created all life on earth, it makes complete sense for him to make it all internally consistent so that men could study it and make sense of their world. Isn’t this what Christians believe with respect to the laws of physics (I’m really asking here)? If so 1) it doesn’t make quantum physics wrong or useless and 2) it’s silly that people get up in arms over evolution and not physics mixing with religion.
Why does it matter if modern biology falls partially or completely? It’s probably the former, but you are still denying science.
WHO is “denying science”? What are you talking about?
Whoever rejects evolutionary theory without replacing it with a better scientific theory.
They don’t know what science is.
I think that’s right – biology would fall without evolution by natural selection. But the ultimate origin of life is still somewhat of a mystery who don’t even consider the prospect of divine creation, so I can’t imagine there’s anything resting on it. Logic, physics, liberalism, Western Civilization, etc… these things might crumble. But I suppose not biology 🙂
I think there are a lot of anti-evolutionists who reject evolution by natural selection too, though. Certainly this is only a subset of all anti-evolutionists. But still – it’s not uncommon at all to here stuff like “I think micro-evolution is true but not macro-evolution”… in other words: “I’m smart enough to know the gene pool can change but I’m going to conveniently decide the extent to which they can change so that I still feel like I’m being biblical.” This view – which as far as I know is not what Behe said – would overthrow much of biology.
Daniel, how does it overthrow much of biology? Be specific please.
And nobody who is remotely scientific denies evolution by natural selection. Maybe some guy calling Sean Hannity does, but not any of the scientists involved in the ID or even creationist movement.
Well you can’t really have much of modern biology – heredity, homeostasis, growth and development, etc. without genetics and I suppose I just can’t conceive of genetics without evolution by natural selection.
Evolution really is just the logical conclusion of heredity. Dawkins points out that it’s amazing the Greeks didn’t establish it. You don’t need genetics to figure out evolution – you just need some concept of heredity. But without this heredity/evolution theoretical framework, genes and genetics become something of a curiosity, do they not?
You could always say “God created organisms that already had genes”. That gets around evolution by natural selection up to 6000 BC or 1500 or whenever you posit your theoretical creation even. But how would genes and genetics make sense without a concept of variation in heredity?
I do agree with you that the scientifically literate would not reject natural selection.
But if natural selection goes out the window, it seems to me heredity and genetics goes out the window.
Evolution really is just the logical conclusion of heredity.
Whoa whoa whoa. And here I thought there was all kinds of empirical evidence for it. Now you’re saying we can deduce the theory of evolution, if we buy heredity? (I’m being facetious everyone, don’t flip out. I’m just pointing out the wildly exaggerated claims being made on behalf of “evolution” when these debates heat up.)
I think you misunderstood me above, when I asked for specifics. I was talking about macroevolution. If I deny that, what happens to the rest of biology?
Suppose, for example, that I discover what appears to be a video recording made by an alien explaining that his colleagues seeded life on earth with 18,000 different “lines” about 2 billion years ago. I’m saying, would most biologists say, “Holy cow, that better be a fabrication, or my career is over”?
I think I understood what you meant – perhaps my response was unclear.
I think of heredity and evolution as largely the same thing if you’re willing to accept variation and time. Right? How do you not get natural selection as a necessary part of all that? The speed and scope of evolution may be an empirical question, of course.
So – when you say “no macroevolution” I can’t imagine “no macroevolution” where there is heredity. Can you?
And without that, what is left? If you don’t have heredity how is genetics intelligible? And with genetics unintelligible all sorts of biological regulation goes out the window. Biology might be reduced to pure descriptive anatomy, perhaps – but that’s not all that much.
So – when you say “no macroevolution” I can’t imagine “no macroevolution” where there is heredity. Can you?
I’m a firm believer in evolution (macro as well as micro), but it’s pretty easy for me to imagine having heredity without macroevolution.
“Right? How do you not get natural selection as a necessary part of all that?”
Yeah, but look, macroevolution was rejected for a long time on scientific grounds, for instance, by Linnaeus. And he certainly understood heredity existed.
As for your seeding example, that seems to be wholly different.
If life was seeded with 18,000 lines that throws some natural history out the window and it throws the spontaneous origin of life out the window…
… it does not change anything about macroevolution as far as I know.
What do you want to talk about – throwing the origin of life out the window (ie – Behe’s case)? I don’t see how that would harm biology itself all that much.
Or instead do you want to talk about throwing “macroevolution” out the window? That would make all of genetics and vast swaths of biology unintelligible.
“Well you can’t really have much of modern biology – heredity, homeostasis, growth and development, etc. without genetics and I suppose I just can’t conceive of genetics without evolution by natural selection. ”
As far as I know, Mendel wasn’t an evolutionist and Darwin didn’t know any genetics.
Well, people *do* often claim that natural selection is a meaningless tautology, and not just guys who call into talk shows (I think Popper may have even made a version of this argument).
Well “meaningless” is wrong, but yeah, that’s my point: nobody denies a tautology who has any sense.
…somewhat of a mystery TO THOSE who don’t even consider the prospect…
When most people say creationism undermines all of science, they are thinking of young-earthers who have to reject what astronomy and geology reveal about the age of the universe & earth, what paleontology and biology (especially genetics) reveal about the relatedness of all creatures, etc.
The average American who professes Intelligent Design still believes that macroevolution is impossible and species were created separately–or, at the very least, that humans were created separately. Behe is a rarity in his movement by saying everything came from a common ancestor. Phillip Johnson would never say that.
One reason I got sick of ID is the deception many of its leaders practice by completely avoiding questions of the age of the earth, common ancestry, etc. Their “wedge” strategy is to create doubt about evolution among the populace, without offering a clear alternative that scientists can go about testing.
The Kenneth Miller books are a good place to start….
I’m not defending Johnson or the wedge strategy etc. I’m asking, when people typically claim that modern biology is dependent on the theory of evolution, what exactly do they mean? If you want to back off that statement and just say, “People who deny radiocarbon dating would undercut modern physics,” then I have much more sympathy. But I don’t see how most practicing biologists today would have their day-to-day research affected, if it turned out that (say) intelligent aliens seeded earth with 18,000 different lines a billion years ago.
Hmm… Maybe the problem is that if you believe that some things are “irreducibly complex,” it cuts off scientific inquiry. i.e., Behe looks at the bacterial flagellum, throws up his hands, and says “it must have been designed!” While Miller keeps investigating, looking for understanding as to how such a complex thing came to be organized without supernatural intervention.
When I decide all of the structural devices in the novel Ulysses must have been designed, am I throwing up my hands?
Actually I threw up my hands at that book because it seemed undesigned.
No, if anything, Joyce might be accused of way over-designing it — he worked out elaborate systems of correspondences that fed into the constructions — colors, anatomy, disciplines, parts of the Odyssey, etc.
only if you think novels can appear spontaneously out of thin air or can somehow write themselves but if you think that then you have much larger issues to address.
RS, so if I think Ulysses was designed I might also be thinking it appeared out of thin air? I’m not getting the thrust of our comment.
If a tree falls in the forest, it’s throwing up your hands to say it was cut down, since trees do fall down on their own sometimes.
Sam,
As a matter of historical fact attributing certain features of the world to divine action hasn’t shut off scientific inquiry. Newton held that God played an active part in maintaining the orbits of the planets, but that didn’t stop later scientists from developing alternative theories that didn’t assume this.
And Kepler thought angelic intelligences guided the planets in their orbits!
I think what is meant is that neo-Darwinism is the chief organizing paradigm of modern biology. Similarly, physicists in 1920 worried that rejecting strict causality might undercut the whole field. (E.g., Einstein’s “God does not play dice.”)
and it did. “true probability” if by that you mean universal uncertainty is a stolen concept.
Yes, that’s why physics stopped advancing in 1920.
“Stolen concept”… that wouldn’t be from… Rand, now, would it?
uh, yeah. so does this mean that if I reference relativity or heliocentricity you are going to derisively say “that wouldnt be from…Einstein or from…Galileo would it?
is that supposed to replace some kind of rational argument or are you just displaying a pavlonian reflex for all to see?
I say: “Similarly, physicists in 1920 worried that rejecting strict causality might undercut the whole field.”
You respond, “It did.”
But, of course, physics has flourished like never before since 1920.
So I like to identify the source of false ideas.
“But, of course, physics has flourished like never before since 1920.”
Well, thats debatable. The birth of modern science can be traced back to Newton and his development of the scientific method around 1670 or so so from Ancient Greece to then (2000+/- yrs)man new very little of how the world worked. From 1670 to 1920, roughly 250 years (12%) saw such an explosion of new knowledge that it literally transformed the planet. So from 1920 to today, roughly 90 years or 36% of the time from Newton nothing very new or very interesting has been discovered since then. Scientists are still unsure about how Newtons Laws and Einstiens laws go together and have spawned all kinds of nonsense about transportation, string theory, multiverses, multi-dimensions etc. etc. I would say they are suffering from their own misinterpretations of thier own data (ala Kant) and that has contributed to their impotence.
I dont consider that a very good track record, given historical fact.
“So from 1920 to today, roughly 90 years or 36% of the time from Newton nothing very new or very interesting has been discovered since then.”
No, RS, physics has advanced more in those 90 years than in the entire previous history of the world combined. But you have your beliefs; don’t let me shake them with facts!
“Scientists are still unsure about how Newtons Laws and Einstiens laws go together …”
No, they are very, very sure that relativity supplants Newtonian physics, which is a special case of the former.
Yes, I think your update gets to the point, Bob. The aliens’ announcement would seriously shake biology — just like the introduction of true probability did physics. But biologists would adjust, and biology would go on.
And it’s curious why everyone keeps answering Bob’s question by critiquing ID or creationism: That wasn’t what he was asking about!
On your update – no, that wouldn’t change much biology (it would certainly confuse paleontologists).
I believe I said that in my first paragraph.
But what’s confusing is that that’s not really “evolution”, is it? “Evolution” is a foundation for biology. A spontaneous origin of life isn’t especially foundational.
Not much would collapse- not much of biology depends on evolution being true. Now, if evolution were proven to not have happened, we might need to start questioning how we view reality since the preponderance of the evidence is that life evolves over time.
Now, if evolution were proven to not have happened, we might need to start questioning how we view reality since the preponderance of the evidence is that life evolves over time.
And that’s why no Protestant that I know of would deny that life evolves over time.
I’m not a biologist, but my impression as an observer is that a lot of biology uses the Darwinian explanation as input in making sense of how organisms work. So your “God created the world in 1500” hypothetical only works if God deliberately created the world as it would have existed had it been produced by the standard secular mechanism, including evolution by natural selection.
That’s not to say that biology could not have been done without Darwin. One can figure out how a machine works without knowing why it is “designed” in the way it is. But, to take a simple example, the existence of the human appendix would be a puzzle absent some version of evolution, as would the inside/out structure of the human retina.
David Friedman wrote:
So your “God created the world in 1500″ hypothetical only works if God deliberately created the world as it would have existed had it been produced by the standard secular mechanism, including evolution by natural selection.
I totally agree, and that’s what I had in mind.
That’s not to say that biology could not have been done without Darwin. One can figure out how a machine works without knowing why it is “designed” in the way it is. But, to take a simple example, the existence of the human appendix would be a puzzle absent some version of evolution, as would the inside/out structure of the human retina.
Just to follow up, a fundamentalist Christian who believes in Genesis, obviously thinks that God created Adam and Eve with appendices and inside/out retinas. If you’re saying that we don’t have a good reason for why they’re like that in the Genesis account–except to say, “For God’s pleasure”–then fair enough. I’m just saying, when I talked about the 1500 thing, I was just making the basic point that our present observations are consistent with all kinds of past events. And so the principles of biology that “work now” wouldn’t suddenly turn off, if it turned out that our conjectures about things in the distant past turned out to be wrong.
Well, I was only a molecular biologist in graduate school, and I’m not sure that I can parse this issue as well as you all seem to, but my two cents would be this:
I spent many years trying to clone genes from unknown organisms based on their sequence homology from known organisms. My strategy was based on the fact that it is known that sequences of protein and DNA are conserved across species for genes which are (supposed to be evolutionarily) related. In fact, it works. If you look at the gene for a telomere or a ribosome, or practically whatever you want, it will in fact be similar across species, depending on the degree of taxonomic separation between the organisms. If you compare sequence homology from organism to organism, the similarity generally decreases as you move further away from its branch of the tree. Are there exceptions? Sure. Sometimes the sequence divergence is less than you would expect, sometimes more. But by and large it works.
If you remove the idea of evolution, you must replace it with some notion of what it means to be ‘related.’ Basically, I think Blackadder’s comment above was the best. Either you have evolution, or something extremely similar to evolution, or for the most part a good deal of biology does not make much sense. Might it be shown to be basically untrue someday, or might some other large contributing force be discovered? Perhaps the second possibility, but I doubt the first. But I don’t think that proposing contrived answers at this point is the way to go.
On a side note, this is one issue that has often alienated me from churches and other Christians. I was involved in a Bible study group of graduate school science students who could not seem to refrain from bashing evolution at every meeting. I really got sick of it and left, and for the most part, I assiduously avoid this topic in Christian company. In my opinion, it is a big loser for the church and I wish they would drop it. The problem with evolution isn’t evolution, it is what Christians and atheists alike try to say that evolution implies — that there is no God, that life is meaningless, etc. There is no compelling reason to do this, in my opinion, and I do not see the purpose of it except to alienate intelligent people. This really is a side issue for Christianity and it is counterproductive to beat it over the head the way that is done.
The proper answer to atheist taunts that evolution disproves Christianity is not ‘evolution isn’t true,’ or ‘evolution is a theory not a fact,’ or ‘evolution might not be true.’
The answer is ‘no, it doesn’t.’ If you don’t like others making a strawman of you, don’t be the strawman.
“Well, I was only a molecular biologist in graduate school, and I’m not sure that I can parse this issue as well as you all seem to…”
It’s nice to get this perspective. Now me, I only studied the history and philosophy of science in graduate school, so let me add this: Around 1880 probably almost all physicists thought that absolute space and time, strict causality, and the ether were crucial parts of their science. Four or five decades later, all three were gone.
Paradigms change and scientists find a way to struggle on. I don’t doubt your description of how useful evolutionary theory is to your work, and I don’t doubt that it is essentially true. But if Bob’s aliens showed up tomorrow, biologists would cope.
Well, the last time I took a biology course was in high school, and I nearly flunked it.
That is true — science is rather fallible, more than most scientists want to admit. Every now and then I would read an old (30 yrs or so) journal article and laugh at how off base the discussions were compared to what is known today.
I just can’t see the relentless browbeating of this subject for no good reason. Maybe Bob will be proved correct eventually. But, either way, I don’t see what it accomplishes today.
Scott wrote:
I just can’t see the relentless browbeating of this subject for no good reason. Maybe Bob will be proved correct eventually.
?? I might be proven correct today, depending on how you answer the other questions I’ve put to you. 🙂
Let me please clarify: I am NOT saying I doubt the theory of common descent. In my view, I think if God gave a vision of the actual creation of the universe to some guy writing things a long long time ago (in a book eventually called Genesis), that the guy would quite possibly describe it as, “On the first day…” etc. because his puny mind couldn’t even comprehend everything he had seen in the vision.
I don’t want to be coy, I’m actually very sympathetic to the ID movement, but that’s because they are talking about information and things like that. I am not arguing about fossils and family trees.
In this debate, Scott, I hear again and again that if a Bible-beater dares to deny “the theory of evolution,” that (a) all of biology or even (b) all of science itself crumbles to the ground.
So rather than take their word for it, I am asking people with knowledge to clarify this typical claim.
So far on this post, your comments (and David Friedman’s) are making me more sympathetic to the claim, but I’m still not totally convinced.
Scott wrote:
Well, I was only a molecular biologist in graduate school, and I’m not sure that I can parse this issue as well as you all seem to, but my two cents would be this…
I don’t see why you are being sarcastic and condescending. I asked a simple question in the original post, didn’t I? As you are skimming my exchanges with RS above, are you saying I’m out of line? I should concede that it’s not logically possible for evolution to be false, etc.?
I’m only saying I think you (and others here, especially those with Ph.D.’s… and yes, I’m in that camp) often make things more complicated than they need to be. I did not intend to be condescending.
Sometimes fine points on things are needed, but as far as I’m concerned, it does little good to parse things that far when you are already quite far afield of your own expertise. I like Austrian economics, but I don’t need to go as far as you do with it to toy with it as a hobby. I understand it is in your nature, that’s the way you’ve been trained to approach problems, but it isn’t always necessary or a good idea. Using it for economics for you is a different thing than attempting to use it with people who may be deeply embedded in, say, biology, or even only tangentially attached to it.
Just a workin’ Joe look at molecular biological work would show you that evolution is quite important and quite a useful tool. You don’t need all the fine points. Would you stop using a hammer, or pepper people with detailed questions for using hammers, if it gets the job done well and you didn’t have another good tool for the job, just for spurious reasons? Do you really have a compelling reason for not believing evolution? Is it compelling enough to risk aggravating people? I should think that the issue of belief in Christ would be enough for one day’s work. Why make evangelism harder than it already is?
Perhaps I’m just bitter on the topic, but I got really tired of seeing Christians trying to evangelize people away from Darwinism before ever bringing up Jesus. For some reason they thought they needed to do it, but it obviously isn’t necessary. Why risk rejection of your message for the sake of something that isn’t really that important after all?
Yes, of course it is possible for evolution to be false. It is also possible that economists have been mistaken all these years and the price mechanism does not influence the allocation of resources. Serendipity may have led to both conclusions.
But why take either position, unless you had hard, compelling evidence to bother to do so?
@ Scott,
Thanks for your perspective. Can you tell me, given your knowledge of biology and your experience as a scientist, is it logically possible for the relatedness that you have observed accross organisms to be caused by something other than genetic heredity brought about by natural selection?
As a scientist, how far can you go in expounding on the logically possible given a fixed amount of data available to you at any given time?
My exchanges with Bob seem to go around and around and I dont seem to be able to get the point accross that “science”, if it is to remain “science” (and not say astrology) can only make certain statements about cause and effect within the context of that fixed amount of data.
I would be interested to hear your thoughts on this.
Thanks
I would like to be able to answer this, but I don’t know how. I’m sorry.
I personally cannot imagine another plausible explanation, but that may be because I’m not creative enough. Data is data, facts are facts, but theory is something else. Theories are rationalizing frameworks, and all of them hang by the same thread. Evolution is what people work with now, and it is not scrutinized the way it is in places like this, I suppose because the vast preponderance of the data are consistent with it and there is no good reason to abandon it. The period where it would have undergone such scrutiny is long past. Those people are dead and gone. It has become accepted as an article of faith (which I would hope was not a dirty word among the religious). To some extent, I think operationally people overblow the difference between the way real scientists think and everybody else thinks because they want some special credibility for science. There is no special credibility for science. Scientists are people like everybody else.
To me, questioning evolution is like one of those ‘brain in a vat’ or ‘maybe I’m stuck in the Matrix’ philosophy questions. Maybe its fun to toy with, but come on. You can’t live your life taking things like that seriously all the time and expecting others to. An asteroid might fall on your head if you leave the house. You can’t exclude that from the realm of possibility.
But you can get on with things better in the meantime if you take some things on faith. Maybe evolution will only be fleshed out in the future. Maybe it will be heavily modified. Doubtful, but it might. You can’t know anything like that for certain. But spending time questioning whether that plate of spaghetti on the table really is there, or if your sensory organs might be fooling you, seems silly to me unless you have a really good reason to do so, or are just doing so for fun to toy with hypothetical possibilities. I would not hang my belief in God on the idea that it wasn’t really there.
Maybe that doesn’t put evolution on the footing you want. I don’t know. But most of this seems to me much ado about nothing.
Scott,
Thanks for your response. I can appreciate where you are coming from as I too once though along similar lines. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on ones worldview) I have been reading too much philosophy by now to be able to not take these philisophical ideas seriously. Many of our problems as a species originate from those ideas and it is only there that the solutions can be found.
Scott wrote:
Just a workin’ Joe look at molecular biological work would show you that evolution is quite important and quite a useful tool. You don’t need all the fine points. Would you stop using a hammer, or pepper people with detailed questions for using hammers, if it gets the job done well and you didn’t have another good tool for the job, just for spurious reasons?
But Scott, that’s the whole point of my post: I don’t have a “workin’ Joe look at molecular biological work.” Instead, I came across a physicist/economist who asserted that evolutionary theory underpins modern biology. (If you’re reading this Dr. Friedman, I hope you realize the tone of my last sentence is not hostile. I assert things all the time on this blog; there’s nothing wrong with assertions!)
So I came to my blog, and posted the question, hoping that somebody who actually works in biology could clarify.
Let’s go back to your hammer analogy: You’re thinking that I’m seeing someone pound in nails, and then I say, “You know, I read a book one time saying that hammers don’t really exist. Are you sure we need to keep picking that thing up and swinging it?”
But that’s not analogous to what’s going on here. Instead, we are using a hammer, and there’s a powersaw on the shelf that I personally have never seen anybody use. The church I go to gives me a lot of wisdom on personal matters etc., and a lot of those people tell me, “We don’t think powersaws are useful.”
So I go talk to some carpenters, and they say, “If we didn’t have access to powersaws, hammers wouldn’t work.”
Then I ask, “Really? Can someone please explain that, cuz I don’t see the connection between the two.”
OK I should stop with the analogies now…
I’m sorry, I don’t understand your powersaw analogy, and it’s getting late, and I’m getting too many questions.
I would love to answer them, but I’ve gotta go.
Thanks for the discussion, everyone, though…
I think I get your powersaw analogy now — the aliens are the powersaw. When I first saw it, I couldn’t get the idea of the powersaw being God out of my mind. But then you had the church disallowing the powersaw, and I couldn’t connect it to anything.
I think Woese’s data refutes the aliens pretty well in the way you are thinking of. As far as abiogenesis is concerned, there are scientists who do entertain your powersaw. They think that we are descended from the aliens, not that the aliens put us here.
Actually, I suppose I should modify my previous comment:
It’s not that a lot of biology doesn’t make much sense without evolution. It’s that biological data would be chock full of unbelievable coincidences without evolution. What wouldn’t make sense would be to look at the subject of biology and think ‘nah, this probably wasn’t caused by evolution or something very similar.’ I don’t think you could get biologists to stop using evolution if you tried. They use it because it works.
As to your example of penicillin, suppose I wanted to get the genes required to make penicillin from the fungus that makes it. I could look at the structure and say, ‘gee, this structure looks like it was produced by a non-ribosomal peptide synthase.” I could look up non-ribosomal peptide synthase sequences from related fungi, produce DNA sequences that would theoretically be homologous to the gene I was looking for, and use them to probe a DNA library I constructed from the fungus. I would in fact find the gene. This is done all the time.
If you took evolution away from me, I would probably just observe empirically that ‘related’ genes had ‘related’ sequences in ‘related’ organisms, and I would still get my gene, but I would have no immediate basis for understanding ‘relatedness.’ However, I would have to be something of an idiot not to come up with the theory of evolution on my own to rationalize this relatedness to myself. I don’t think you could purge evolution from biology at this point. Given what biologists know, they would spontaneously postulate it on their own.
Thanks Scott this is EXACTLY the kind of informed answer I was looking for.
Can you please be a little clearer on what’s at stake? It looks like you are saying for your particular work, it was necessary to presuppose that various types of fungi have a common ancestor, etc.
So what if it turned out that there were, say, 18 different “original” lines of organisms, that independently emerged out of the primordial soup? Would *that* undercut modern biology in any way?
I am trying to get people to be more specific. As you can see in the comments above, some people are leaping from the concept of “natural selection” to the theory of common descent, and those are two vastly different things.
So if you agree that “evolution” is necessary for modern biology, what exactly do you mean by “evolution”? E.g. I assume the possibility of speciation, but what about common descent? And further, what about the (separate) claim that the original cell(s) arose randomly, rather than being deliberately designed?
There is a lot packed into “the theory of evolution” and I’m trying to unpack it to see which elements are actually crucial for modern biology.
Goodness, I’m not sure I’m qualified to be the ‘informed’ opinion on this. I became alienated to the issue so long ago that I don’t think of it much anymore. I became very workin’ Joe about things.
As it turns out, so far as I remember biological theory that far back, people believe there probably were several primordial ‘lines’ way back when. If you want to see some of that, look up Carl Woese. Basically, people think that genetic information was passed between organisms to such a high degree that it becomes difficult to define one organism from another. It’s like genetic soup, as distinct from primordial soup. Even today, the simpler life forms (viruses, bacteria) do the same thing, but to a lesser degree. They have speciated enough that genetic material has a lowish likelihood of functioning in an unrelated species. But sometimes it still works, and you can find big chunks of bacterial DNA that looks like it came from another species in some species.
In fact, the non-ribosomal peptide synthetase (NRPS) machinery I talked about looks like sometimes it is passed between bacteria and fungi. Which is a big jump taxonomically.
They think that two branches, possibly three, came out of that genetic soup, based on ribosomal sequences. But it would be hard to know. There might have been 15 or 20 or whatever, but if the others died, there would be no trace in modern organisms.
I do not understand what you mean by the difference between natural selection and common descent. Sorry.
As far as I know, I don’t think that people think that the original life was cells. But as far as that goes, nobody can really know. It is too old. There is no point in getting too worked up about it, in my opinion.
Scott wrote:
I do not understand what you mean by the difference between natural selection and common descent. Sorry.
By “natural selection” I mean that organisms reproduce, and that only some of them survive. There are genetic mutations, so that sometimes imperfect copies of the genetic code are made. That means over time the genetic material changes in the organisms in a particular line of descendants.
I don’t know of anybody who denies the above, not even Phillip Johnson.
In contrast, “common descent” (to me) means you run the clock backwards. You keep following organisms to their predecessors generation by generation, closing up the various family trees. Eventually, you end up at a single organism, which is the ancestor of every currently living thing on earth.
See? I don’t understand why you think this distinction is important.
You want to say that evolution probably goes back a little bit, but maybe not most or all or some significant fraction of the way. Why surrender the first if you’re going to deny the second? What’s the difference? Who cares? Why make a big deal about it? It seems you want to support direct creation by some innate need, and you are grasping at straws to justify holding out on strange possibilities. I do not understand it.
Why? I do not need God as my Creator to believe in Him or to obey Him. If I found out tomorrow that I was created by Satan or Ba’al Moloch the Destroyer, I’d tell ’em both to go to Hell, I’m worshiping Jesus Christ. Hanging your faith on creation would seem dangerous to me. Why does it justify your worship, and what will it do to you to find it refuted?
Have you ever heard of primary and secondary causation? Isn’t that good enough?
There’s a very real difference between speciation and natural selection. This is what Darwin was all about. It wasn’t that mind-blowing that a single species evolved over time. What was way out there was that entirely new species developed through the natural selection mechanism.
This is what the popular debate over evolution is about. So this is why Bob is interested in understanding it more.
I maintain that of course an omniscient god would be capable of creating a world that appears to follow the rules of speciation and even mimic a single ancestor. But, I also believe that the theory works without such a god – just starting from primordial soup.
Scott wrote:
I don’t think you could get biologists to stop using evolution if you tried. They use it because it works.
…
If you took evolution away from me, I would probably just observe empirically that ‘related’ genes had ‘related’ sequences in ‘related’ organisms, and I would still get my gene, but I would have no immediate basis for understanding ‘relatedness.’ However, I would have to be something of an idiot not to come up with the theory of evolution on my own to rationalize this relatedness to myself.
Allow me to be nitpicky Scott, because I really want to understand this. On the surface of this, it seems like you are conceding that evolutionary theory is useful to “explain” or “interpret” what is going on, and not so much because it “works.”
Note that I’m not saying, “Evolutionary theory doesn’t work.” Rather, I’m saying you set out to show us how it “works,” but really told us that you could get the same answer without it, you just wouldn’t have a very good understanding of how you got the answer.
So can you give us a modified example, where one researcher couldn’t achieve his result because he lacked knowledge of the theory of common descent, whereas another researcher *could* achieve his result because he knew of the theory of common descent? (Or of speciation or “macroevolution” or whatever parameters you want to use.)
Look, you’re making too much out of it. I think this is why I let the topic alone all those years…
It would simply be incredulous to me for someone to look at genetic sequences and say they probably arose independently, or the gods are uncreative copycats or something like that. Anti-evolutionists like to use probability arguments against us. I’m using one against you.
Could it have been that way? Yes. But if I think that way about it I’m a useless person. I won’t make any headway in any investigation because I’ll be worried about disproving every nitpicky improbability. (And if you’ve been involved in science, you know what a tarbaby that can be.)
If I’m going to throw away a useful tool, I want good reasons to stop and a better one in my hand. Carl Woese provided such evidence, and his evidence was heavily corroborated.
If you had something like that, I’d give it a look. Hey — I switched to Austrian theory, didn’t I? Otherwise, sorry.
But I’ll try to address your question more exactly. A theory’s utility is that you can hang facts on it in a way that makes sense, and it will point you to new hypotheses with a high probability of success. If you want to say I could ‘do’ biology without evolution, ok. You could ‘do’ economics without Austrian Theory. You would just have a gamish of correlations, patterns, etc. in your head that would allow you to pick correct answers with a higher probability than random chance. I could do biology that way, too.
But it would be slower. Evolution should allow a scientist to pick new hypotheses with a high probability of success quickly instead. I realize that is a very general task, but a direct answer.
How about if I wanted to do something like a Jurassic Park type experiment? Where should I look to get dinosaur DNA from modern organisms? I should consult the family tree, cross reference sequences and try to divine what parent sequence could have branched off to give the daughter sequences. That would presuppose evolution. If it was only a matter of ‘relatedness,’ I would have no reason to try such a thing. I would probably just go for the consensus sequence, which would be a different thing. That would give me a higher probability of guessing the correct sequence. I realize that is esoteric, but it is what I can come up with off the top of my head. Does that satisfy you?
Or maybe the process of directed evolution is something you are looking for? I don’t know if you’ve heard of that…
@Scott-
Bob is not asking if you can do biology without using the theory of evolution. He’s asking: If the history attributed by evolutionists turned out to be false, would the entire theory suddenly be useless?
The answer is: No. We could continue to use the theory just like we use Newtonian physics even though we now know that is only an approximation. We just would have to readjust our assumptions. Paleontologists might have a hard time, but molecular biologists could keep plodding along as if nothing changed.
Kathryn,
Yay! I’m glad you chimed in on all this; I was hoping you would.
I actually think you are being too fair to me in this particular response. 🙂 I think we would have to be more specific about exactly what turned out to be false in “the theory of evolution.” So yeah, if it were my alien example that might not do too much “damage” to current biological practice, but if the Genesis account turned out to be literally true, then evolution couldn’t even be approximately correct, right? It would be like the ether, rather than Newtonian mechanics?
Remember that the ether was a pretty good theoretical tool! It “worked” pretty well for about a century or so.
Reading your update, Bob, I think I get it…
Science doesn’t rest on evolution. Rather, it’s the other way around: evolution rests on science (it was a conclusion drawn from scientific evidences). So, if scientific evidence was discovered that revised the theory of evolution, it wouldn’t destroy science or biology itself.
In the book “Why Evolution Is True,” the author says (I’m paraphrasing) that if a single fossilized rabbit was found in precambrian rock, it would disprove evolution. So, in his hypothetical scenerio, he would throw evolution out the window, not all of biology or science.
So, biology doesn’t depend on evolution… Is that it? 🙂
Sam wrote:
So, biology doesn’t depend on evolution… Is that it?
Yep, that’s it–so in the debates over it, people should stop beating those who question (some version of) evolution with the stick, “You are denying all of biology, not just evolution.”
Instead, they could just say, “You don’t know what you are talking about. There is tons of evidence supporting the theory of evolution.”
(Of course, David Friedman and Scott above do not agree with your “surrender” on the point. :))
Hmmm… maybe *I* misunderstood your post. See the reply to Scott two up.
If this is what you’re saying then I’m going to have to agree with Scott: The vast majority of modern biology does rely on evolution.
However, I maintain that none of the examples you gave would come close to destroying modern biology because scientists could understand why evolution appears to be true and continue to use it as a model while knowing that it had limits.
Kathryn,
If you have time, can you please try to spell out exactly what would happen in your own work, if it turned out that there really were (say) 10,000 independent lines of descent, and that (say) humans never had a common ancestor with chimps?
It doesn’t have to be the Genesis account, and it’s fine if bacteria are 3 billion years old (rather than “young earth”), but I’m saying if the current understanding of relatedness among different species were utterly wrong, what would be the consequences?
I sense a lot of confusion in this thread, so I’ll throw in my two cents. But let me point out, I am not, nor ever have been, a graduate student doing any kind of biology–this is all self-taught. So I won’t be using the fancy technical terms Scott does, let alone have the same understanding (though I hope I come close). Therefore Scott (or anyone else), feel free to correct me if you think I’ve screwed up:
1) Some definitions: Natural selection comes down due organisms being able to reproduce just by being successful at survival. For example, a tree-dwelling creature that is susceptible to death from a fall from a tree, is an unlikely candidate for natural selection, whereas a creature with some sort of defense mechanism against the force of gravity (like, say, gliding or flight) would be a stronger candidate for natural selection. Common descent is a tautological term for a group of organisms that have the same common ancestor. Universal common descent is a theory proposed by Darwin (and so far confirmed by modern science), that said all organisms in the world had the same common ancestor. Abiogenesis is the creation of life from non-life. A theory is an evidence based explanation of a phenomena. A hypothesis is a conjecture about certain phenomena, without sufficient evidence. A fact is something that is evidently true. There is both the fact of evolution (organisms changing intergenerationally), and the theory of evolution (natural and sexual selection, random mutations, etc. as the driver of that change). Abiogenesis is still in the hypothetical stage, from the primordial soup to ‘seeding’ to extra-dimensional beings.
2) What you are proposing with your aliens ex machina theory would be a strike against abiogenesis, not evolution. Evolution assumes life, and explains the changes thereof. Abiogenesis purports to explain how life came to exist from not-life. So in your alien scenario, it wouldn’t necessarily affect evolution, although, as pointed out above, it would be very, very weird for such a supposèd (that just happened) wide variety of organisms to have so much in common. It would, however, very significantly impact phylogenetics (the relatedness of organisms) and taxonomy. However, if I may predict, given the success of the current models, I doubt it would have as large an effect on practical/applied biology. Like, maybe if we learned that rats and humans don’t have the same ancestor, but humans and squirrels do, there might be a shift away from using rats as test animals towards squirrels.
3) There are many applications of evolution. I’ve already alluded to testing for medicine; the most practical and widely used application is in agriculture. Here describes how cross-breeding fish that had evolved to be blind produced fish with functioning eyesight (that is really neat!).
So in conclusion,
-Evolution and abiogenesis are entirely different things.
-If aliens said they planted life on Earth, that would most affect our understanding abiogenesis. It would only affect the science of modern biology in its effect on phylogeny (i.e. the shape of the tree of life)
-Evolution has a lot of applications–post-third-kindian-encounter all that would change would depend on the significance of the changes in phylogeny.
-Chrome’s spell check approves of ‘phylogeny’ but not ‘phylogenetics’
So Bob, does that answer your question or clear up any confusion? Scott, did I make any mistakes? Gene, how has Randthbard ruined my understanding of the epistemology of evolution/philosophy of turning blind fish into seeing fish?
Excellent, Ash. I was about to make the same point between abiogenesis and evolution that you did when I realized that you had saved me the effort and done a better job than I would have in any case. I might add that, as I understand it, macroevolution is simply the aggregated effect of the process of microevolution over time, i.e., the process by which macroevolution takes place is microevolution. It appears that therefore creationist arguments are mostly about how far back the process in each species or population extends before its particular abiogenesis moment.
Thank you, but I’m not at a level to evaluate much of what you said. The distinction between evolution and abiogenesis is important, though.
I think that people who have not been involved in graduate school understand what it is like, especially the sciences. We are not enthusiasts like you when we come out. Most of us are angry, more or less. We were used as workhorses and stopped caring about the finer points of terminology and of all of this except as it related to getting out of the cursed place. There’s no time for that other stuff. I know the fragments that I do more or less against the will of my advisor, who would rather me not think too critically about things, keep my mouth shut and just do my work.
So, if you want to know practical things about polyketides, terpenes, NRPS, and other such secondary metabolites, etc., or about the processes we use to look at those things, like DNA sequencing, cloning, etc. and how to troubleshoot such processes, I can help you.
Beyond that, you’re squeezing oil from a turnip.
Yes Scott that is why I hate it when people want me to explain Fed policy to them in layman’s terms. 🙂 (Just kidding, I appreciate your comments on this post.)
And I much appreciate your fine blog.
Good points Ash. One minor thing: I was sensitive to the distinction between (universal) common descent and abiogenesis. That’s why I had the aliens seed the earth with many thousands of different “lines” of descent. It’s not just blocking abiogenesis, it’s also blowing up universal common descent.
You’re right, I missed that point.
Ok, I went back and took a look at your post. Apparently, the update wasn’t there when I read it and I just refreshed it in the comments the second time.
Your proposed alien thing 2 billion years ago would be inconsistent with the fact that in the oldest rocks that can be found, there are microscopic fossils of bacteria. Those rocks are 4 billion years old or so. Some people contest that, I don’t know much about it, and am not one who can observe it myself because it is outside my realm of expertise.
Worse, it would also be inconsistent with genetic data (like Woese’s) that shows all organisms that anyone has encountered and bothered to test are related as far back as there seems to be able to go. I am familiar with that, and it seems legit to me. It’s about as concrete as it gets. I don’t see how you could get away from it.
Many people in science accept that life probably came here from another planet. They think so because of the bacterial fossils that suggest that life on earth appears to be as old as it possibly can be. Which suggests that it may have come from somewhere else. But the ‘coming from someplace else’ does not solve how the thing started in the first place. Beyond that, I’m not sure how many of them care. Most people inside of science just think it is something neat to look into, but there’s little money in it because there is practically no practical application. So there isn’t much research on the topic. It does not really affect their existential beliefs.
This is what I mean about getting too wrapped up in details you are unfamiliar with. You are taking on Leviathan with a pea-shooter. You don’t know what the real debates are within the field or what evidence things rest on because you are not intimate enough with it. Just because you rarely encounter people with that kind of knowledge does not mean the theories are not pretty well supported by evidence.
As for the practical doing of biology, evolution is a major assumption in many approaches. The cloning I described to you was come up with long before I had anything to do with the subject, and was no doubt inspired by evolution because in that day sequencing DNA was a tricky and extremely expensive proposition, and the early investigations were based on cutting up DNA and probing it and things like that without much direct knowledge of sequence. Without evolution, such approaches would not occur to people. Woese’s experiment is another example that changed the whole subject of bacterial taxonomy. The fact that evolution was around long before DNA sequencing and managed to survive its test — the most direct test I can imagine — ought to be sufficient. If the idea of evolution had never existed, and had not emerged, I doubt the field would be where it is today. It is easy to criticize the lack of difference it would make ‘today,’ because we are at today already.
On the operational level, I’m probably not the best person to defend evolution on the level you are trying to attack. You would need a PI, someone who proposes hypotheses and tests them. Bench people like me have faith in their experiments because they have faith in the theory behind them. The idea that things are related evolutionarily is a sort of ‘air you breathe’ assumption. It is hard to ask someone to operate outside of it, either to do experiments, or to argue with people who are calling them into question. If you asked me to spend my life researching things at low pay on bland notions of ‘relatedness,’ I think I would find another line of work. In fact, I probably would not have the chance to do even that, because there would be no money in the endeavor, as nobody would have faith in casting about like that with the huge sums of money it takes for scientific research.
All science operates on the idea that things are not provable, but any thing may be proven false. The acceptance of any scientific proposition always requires faith. If I were to treat every scientific proposition I know with the withering scrutiny you propose, I would never get anything done.
Evolution is an explanatory theory, nothing more,and nothing less. As such, it really does help explain a lot of the empirical data collected. Should evolution fall as a theory, it would still be useful as a tool, though a new theory would have to be developed. I think it very useful to consider the state of physics in the late 19th century- up until then, Newtonian physics was sufficient to explain much of the empirical data that was being collected, but it fell as a theory because some empirical results could not be explained any longer. The development of Einsteinian physics and quantum mechanics filled in those explanations, however, Newtonian physics is still useful as a tool for understanding empirically derived results.
If evolution was shown to be wrong, the empirical results would still be the empirical results. I think Scott more or less communicated this with the following:
All in all, I think people get too wedded to their theories in all fields of science, and they make exaggerated claims about the consequences of them being wrong. The statement that evolution underpins all of biology is just another of those exaggerations. The truth is that it will be the dominating theory until empirical results show otherwise- at that point, the theory will be modified, or discarded. This is how science works. Indeed, we will likely find that quantum mechanics and Einsteinian physics are also incomplete explanatory theories, but that won’t invalidate the empirical results that they explain.
I’m glad someone more articulate than me came along. I was in over my head.
Thank you, Yancey.
*like*
@ Bobmurphy
“RS, I am not trying to be a jerk here. If you email the above statement to any biologist with a PhD who teaches at any college in the United States, and that person agrees with that sentence by itself, then I will PayPal you $20.”
Ok, after consulting with a PhD in biochemistry who teaches at a college in the US (Univ of Ill), I will amend my statement as follows,
“Based on the evidence to date and within our current context of knowledge, it is not logically possible [to believe] evolution to be false.”
There! Does that clarify things?
“Based on the evidence to date and within our current context of knowledge, it is not logically possible [to believe] evolution to be false.”
Given that lots of people actually do believe evolution to be false, isn’t it obvious that your claim here is false?
Oh, people can believe whatever they want, but logic may or may not have anything to do with it.
basically I am saying that it is illogical to believe that evolution is false, not that its impossible to believe as such.
Then learn how to form sentences that articulate what you mean.
your comment is disengenious and unfair.
go back and read my posts, as I amply articulated exactly the conditions and context uder which my assertions were applicable. it is hardly 100% my fault if it takes so much explanations to get through.
RS, again, I am not trying to be a jerk here. The problem in this thread is that just when I think I understand your position, you go and say something far far stronger than the (quite reasonable) thing you had been stressing in a different line of argument.
You seem to be alternating between the following two propositions, which are very different:
(A) “If you show me somebody who doubts evolution today, I will show you an illogical person.”
(B) “The only way you could possibly convince me that evolution is false, would be to convince me that all of science itself were dubious.”
Can you at least agree with me that statement (B) is a lot lot stronger than (A)? Nobody here is fighting you an (A), we’re fighting you on (B).
RS,
I think part of the problem here is that you are using certain terms in a non-standard way. To say that something is logically possible is merely to say that it does not involve a logical contradiction. It doesn’t mean that it would be rational or reasonable to believe it. So, for example, it is logically possible that the world depicted in the Matrix movies is real and that you and I are really unconscious in a tube somewhere. That’s logically possible, but it wouldn’t be rational to believe it.
Bob is asking us to consider the logically possible albeit highly unlikely scenario in which aliens reveal that they have created life on earth without evolution. He’s not saying that we should believe aliens have done this, or that it is rational to deny evolution given our actual state of knowledge (which, of course, does not include alien revelation).
“Bob is asking us to consider the logically possible albeit highly unlikely scenario in which aliens reveal that they have created life on earth without evolution”
OK, and as I have stated before. I understand this. The point is that we have evidence for evolution which would contradict anything the aliens would tell us so and….therefore…the consequences to biology and all of science as such woudl be that all of our evidence amounts to nothing since the aliens have just refuted everything we know about how the world works.
RS, I keep thinking that you and I are just using terms in slightly different ways, as Blackadder was trying to explain. E.g. you seem to be saying, “Bob, it wouldn’t be logical for someone to deny evolution right now,” whereas that’s not at all what I am saying when I claim, “It is logically possible that evolution is false.”
But then you go and say things like this:
OK, and as I have stated before. I understand this. The point is that we have evidence for evolution which would contradict anything the aliens would tell us so and….therefore…the consequences to biology and all of science as such woudl be that all of our evidence amounts to nothing since the aliens have just refuted everything we know about how the world works.
So now I think you *are* making the stronger statement, that it is literally inconceivable to you that evolution could be false. That you don’t even need to consider any more evidence, nothing could possibly come to light that would make you doubt evolution.
Anyway, I think we are probably not going to get past this point.
ONE LAST TIME EVERYONE: I do not say that the Genesis account is literally true, like a newspaper account. (Well, a newspaper that doesn’t lie.) I am responding to David Friedman’s claim, which I read a lot in the debates over evolution. For what it’s worth, I try to keep the creationist side “honest” too, like when they claim evolution violates the laws of thermodynamics, I point out to them that solar calculators work.
well, look at it this way. contradictions cannot exist in reality so if aliens landed on earth there would be nothing that they could tell us that would contradict the evidence we already have, all they could do would be to add to it, to expand the context if you will. they would have to explain how natural selection was NOT the cause of genetic similarities spread accross time and species and that they would have to show how they caused it all, by some means that does not contradict reality.
so in essence your question has only two consequences, either they confirm all of our observations but offer an alternative not yet known cause OR they contradict all of our observations and science itself disintegrates.
that is the ultimate answer to your question.
On a serious note, if you reject evolution, you cannot possibly make sense of the Jerry Springer and Maury Povich shows.
God could have a sense of humor.
My understanding is that Bob’s argument has nothing to do with evolution being true or false. It has everything to do with the fact that if it were proven to be false by aliens, God, or you wake up from a controlled dream experiment, that it wouldn’t change our approach to science. If it turned out to be that the earth was only 6,000 years old and that God had created the fossils, craters, and all other evidence showing that the earth was > 4 billion years old in such a way that the 6,000 year old rock appeared to be 3 billion years old then it wouldn’t change our approach. The only thing it would do would be to change our starting point.
I don’t remember my birth. Maybe the photos were faked and I was manifested into the world at the point in time where my first memory occured. Maybe I was created yesterday with all of my knowledge and memories already implanted in me. It won’t change anything. I won’t disappear. I won’t live any differently except I will have a stronger skepticism of what people tell me is reality (as most libertarians do already). I won’t have any reason to change the way I eat or walk because it is based on knowledge that I have. The source of the knowledge is not as important as the truth of the knowledge. The source can change, but the truth will never change.
Paul,
If our current scientific knowledge were proven false by aliens then that would pretty much HAVE to change our approach to science, since everything we currently know would be wrong, assuming of course, that science is the quest for truth and understanding about the real world as opposed to just accepting any alternative explanation or assertion that someone can dream up (e.g. creationism, brain in vats, etc.) willy nilly without any basis in reason or logic and throwing it against the wall to see if it sticks.
If our current scientific knowledge were proven false by aliens then that would pretty much HAVE to change our approach to science, since everything we currently know would be wrong…
Would this statement have been true in, say, the year 1850? If aliens came along and told people back then, “You can’t go faster than light, and time slows down as you approach its velocity,” would all of science circa 1850 have come crashing down?
If not, then why would all of science today come crashing down, if it turned out that some major theory (not just evolution) turned out to be wrong?
The approach to science doesn’t have to change. Having new knowledge (we’ll assume truth) that discredits our current knowlege simply means that our assumptions/proclamations/books based on the evidence that we had now are wrong (we weren’t as smart as we thought we were). Nobody said anything about accepting any alternative explanation. You just have to accept that there is always the possibility of being wrong and being wrong big time. If we stopped studying things everytime we came to a conclusion about something then we wouldn’t know half the stuff we know now. Maybe we’d still believe that the earth is flat. I happen to believe that evolution is true, but I am leaving the door open for some other scientist to present evidence to the contrary even though I doubt it will ever happen.
The presumption here is that the new knowledge does not contradict the old evidence, it may contradict our old knowledge but for that to happen would require the introduction of some new evidence, say a new discovery (or alien revelation), that does not contradict the old evidence but puts it into a different context. The way relativity did for mass/space/time. If the new knowledge contradicted the old evidence then what you have is a paradox, which is impossible, so one or the other has to go.
If you contradict evidence it could mean that the evidence was analyzed incorrectly, fabricated, tweaked, or compromised in any other way, leading to a false (but believed to be true) theory. Evidence does not equal truth. If new knowledge contradicted truth then there would be a paradox, if, in fact, the new knowledge was truth. However, the new knowledge may not be true as the old knowledge may not either.
RS wrote:
The presumption here is that the new knowledge does not contradict the old evidence, it may contradict our old knowledge but for that to happen would require the introduction of some new evidence, say a new discovery (or alien revelation), that does not contradict the old evidence but puts it into a different context. The way relativity did for mass/space/time. If the new knowledge contradicted the old evidence then what you have is a paradox, which is impossible, so one or the other has to go.
RS, the reason I am keeping up with this, is that I really want to get you to see that you aren’t simply disagreeing with me (or with Bible thumpers) here, you are in fact disagreeing with every practicing scientists’ understanding of how science works.
You seem to be saying that the ONLY POSSIBLE WAY the current theory of evolution could be wrong, is if it turns out that the fossil records were faked, or that the other evidence we have was actually bogus in some similar respect.
In other words, you seem to be suggesting that the ONLY POSSIBLE explanation of the current things we can observe (in the fossil record, in DNA of various organisms, etc.) is that the standard consensus view of evolution is correct in all its major details.
But no practicing scientist believes that. In fact, they stress in the debates with religious people that evolution IS falsifiable, and that’s why they say it is scientific, not an article of faith. They give examples (like that Wikipedia link I put above) showing what sorts of things could turn up tomorrow, that would make them abandon the current theory of evolution.
If you think I’m trying to do a Jedi mind trick on you, please copy my entire comment here, and send it to that biology professor you trust. Ask him/her if I am right in just these comments on this one thing.
Re the question in your update, I think the major new question in biology would be: Why was there so much convergent evolution? Here we had 18000 different cells that all processed chemicals in (presumably) very different ways, but their descendants — the cells we see around us — all process chemicals in pretty much the same way. That would become a central research question, but it would not displace most of the questions that are currently central. (Hat tip to my biologist wife.)
Cool thanks Steve tell your wife that is a neat point. I get what she is saying but I never would have thought of that, being an economist and an armchair one at that. (See what I did there?)
This was quite enjoyable. It’s one thing to say, ‘A good scientific theory can be falsifiable.’. But it is another profound statement to say,’Is it logically possible the Evolutionary theory is false?’. For the sake of argument, Darwin and any of his works do have ‘mistakes’. But the mistakes were made on subsets of methods, and calculation with insufficient data; (e.g. Age of the forestry of Europe and the hereditary mechanism of ‘plasmids’.). These things were replaced by more accurate geographic data and larger discoveries of genetics. It didn’t invalidate the Theory… just refined it and moved on. It’s more likely that what will replace Evolutionary Theory will have to explain, with evidence and predict some profound undiscovered truth about LIFE? Waiting on the next genius? There is still a lot left to the Universe; how will Darwin’s work apply to the biochemistry of Nebulae or possible non-carbon based lifeforms? Just speculation.