Great Moments in Evolution Debates

I watched the debate at the time as it was just as the time I was starting what turned into #TIP project www.tortucan.wordpress.com. You might find of interest my follow-up on Michael Behe's abortive silent partner role in prompting Philip Johnson on a science (or rather Nature) paper on whale evolution, in "Creationism Lite" section of the old TIP work.

“I’m in the mood for something light-hearted today, so here’s a YouTube clip …”

Yes, light-hearted.
Or rather light-headed.
The old ‘Things are similar, so they must have evolved from a common ancestor’
and the old ‘This/that/the other SUGGESTS evolution…’.
.............
Time 0:48:
Miller: “… However, our understanding of the interrelationships between organisms, phylogeny**, and natural history, does indeed only make sense in light of evolution.”

1:10:
Miller: “… a prokaryote called prochloron … the very first prokaryote… that had both chlorophyll both A and B. This SUGGESTS very strongly that in an evolutionary sense prochloron is the EVOLUTIONARY ANCESTOR of the chloroplasts of higher plants… Low and behold we found that they were enormously SIMILAR to higher plant chloroplasts. If they had been dissimilar, it might have been an argument against evolution. It turned out not to be the case.”

2:27:
Miller: “The very reason why we study the translocation of proteins in lower organisms such as yeast is because we believe we learn something about how our own cells work, by studying other organisms. And the UNDERPINNING ASSUMPTION for that is in fact EVOLUTIONARY biology.”

3:45:
Berlinski: “A dog like animal and a whale are very far apart.”

Miller: “That’s right. And the other end of the room is very far away. And it should not surprise you that we get there one step at a time. And that’s what we’re talking about.”
[APPLAUSE!!!!!]

5:10:
Miller: “That transition [from reptiles to mammals] is exceedingly well-documented.”
5:25:
Berlinski: “I agree that the late reptile to mammal sequence IS well-documented. No question about it.”

[Why Berlinski makes this concession, I don’t know. It’s ridiculous.]

** Merriam-Webster on “phylogeny”: “the EVOLUTIONARY history of a kind of organism; the EVOLUTION of a genetically related group of organisms as distinguished from the development of the individual organism.”

So, like, it’s like, our understanding, you know, of the EVOLUTION of a genetically related group of organisms does, like, indeed only make sense in light of EVOLUTION.

It’s like, you know, like a circle, man. You know?

Where’s the popcorn, dude?

Berlinski is more a philosopher than a scientist, and as a philosopher his take is more anti science-methodology-and-certainty, than pro-creationist or ID, which makes him hard to pin down... almost a sort of solipsist/agnostic view that we can't know what we think we know, and thus all evidence is inherently weak. Anyway, one of the scariest things about him is that he supposedly helped teach Anne Coulter most everything she knows(?) about science :-((

I'll need to make popcorn first!

"So, like, it’s like, our understanding, you know, of the EVOLUTION of a genetically related group of organisms does, like, indeed only make sense in light of EVOLUTION."

No, it's not like. it's not that "our understanding of evolution only makes sense in the light of evolution" but that "our understanding of a large body of observations (such as genetic and peptide homologies, conserved retroviral insertions, transpons and pseudogenes, comparative anatomy, biogeographic distribution of species, etc.) only makes sense in the light of evolution.

Consider an example I've offered you before:

L-gulonolactone oxidase (GULO) is the final enzyme in the biosynthetic pathway for vitamin C in most plants and many animals, allowing them to produce vitamin C from glucose or galactose. There are a animals, however, that can no longer synthesize their own vitamin C and are dependent on dietary sources to provide it (which is why humans can develop scurvy).

The GULO-P gene found in humans, chimpanzees, orangutans and macaques is no longer functional, rendering it a pseudogene. What’s notable is that in all these the functional gene is no longer functional due to the 164 nucleotide sequence of exon X exhibiting the same single nucleotide deletion.

That s, not only do humans, apes and old world monkeys all possess a GULO-P pseudogene rather than a functional GULO-P gene, the pseudogene is broken in exactly the same way in all three, as a consequence of a random mutational event.

Evolution explains this observation as being the result of these primates all arising by descent form a sahred common ancestor in which the GULO-P gene had already undergone the single nucleotide deletion, such that they inherited the non-functional GULO pseudogene instead of a functional copy.

How does whatever model you prefer to evolution explain this instead, See?

To JGC #5:

Me: “So, like, it’s like, our understanding, you know, of the EVOLUTION of a genetically related group of organisms does, like, indeed only make sense in light of EVOLUTION.”

You: “No, it’s not like. it’s not that “our understanding of evolution only makes sense in the light of evolution” but that “our understanding of a large body of observations (such as genetic and peptide HOMOLOGIES, … PSEUDOGENES … COMPARATIVE anatomy… only makes sense in the light of evolution.”
…………….
First, a word from our sponsors, Merriam-Webster and the National Human Genome Research Institute!

M-W on “Homology”: 1: a SIMILARITY often attributable to COMMON ORIGIN. 2. a: LIKENESS in structure between parts of different organisms (as the wing of a bat and the human arm) DUE TO EVOLUTIONARY differentiation from a corresponding part in a COMMON ANCESTOR.

NHGRI on “Pseudogene”: A pseudogene is a DNA sequence that resembles a gene but has been mutated into an inactive form over the course of EVOLUTION. A pseudogene shares an EVOLUTIONARY HISTORY with a functional gene and can provide insight into their SHARED ANCESTRY.

We have a great CIRCLE of sponsors. Thank you, sponsors!
………………………….

“Consider an example I’ve offered you before: L-gulonolactone oxidase (GULO) is the final enzyme in the biosynthetic pathway for vitamin C in most PLANTS and many animals, allowing them to produce vitamin C from glucose or galactose.
There are a animals, however, that can no longer synthesize their own vitamin C and are dependent on dietary sources to provide it… [like, you know] humans, chimpanzees, orangutans and macaques is no longer functional, rendering it a pseudogene.”

So, like, then, like, humans and chimps have a common ancestor that’s, like, a PLANT!
Cool!

“What’s notable is that in all these the functional gene is no longer functional due to the 164 nucleotide sequence of exon X EXHIBITING THE SAME single nucleotide deletion…
the pseudogene is broken in exactly the SAME WAY in all three…”

No WAY!
WAY!
That’s, like, WAY cool!

You know, JGC, sometimes when I’m high as a kite I feel like a bird in the sky, and that I was a bird in another life.
But, check this out.
The other day, when I was high, I noticed that birds have two eyes and two feet JUST LIKE…
and I thought, Dude! You ARE a bird!
Or you came from a bird, or whatever.
Whoaa.
How cool is THAT!

Where’s that joint, dude?

Got nothing, huh See?

SN, why does the Pope accept evolution? Is he deluded?

Silly question, MF - because SN knows better of course, even if he never makes much sense.

To JGC #7:

“Got nothing, huh See?”

Whoa, dude. What’s your problem? You dis’ing me?
Me, the birdman, who wouldn’t hurt a bird?

And speaking of me not hurting a bird,
I heard YOU would be OK with killing something even if you thought it COULD be a human dude!
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2015/07/27/when-the-antiabortion-move…

Dude, that is cold.

I saw this debate when it was first televised, on a black-and-white TV with a UHF antenna (to tune to PBS which carried "Firing Line"). It was clear that Dr. Miller's side had mountains of evidence, and the other side had philosophical hand-waving.

Dr. Miller has continued on with many more peer-reviewed, published papers since that time, continuing to advance human knowledge. The mountain has gotten larger, the gaps for hand-waving smaller.

If it wants to survive much longer, in my opinion the Christian Church should convene another biblical council and rewrite the bible. There was no Adam and Eve, no Noah and the Flood, no Exodus. The anti-evolutionists point to doubts and debates among experts as evidence that evolution is wrong. There is roughly 1000 times as much doubt among historical and scientific experts over biblical stories, backed up by hard evidence, and the fact that most school-children can see that the stories don't make sense (either historically, scientifically, or morally). Focus on the moral principles of the New Testament which inspire people like Dr. Miller, and get rid of the tall tales. (This idea is of course not original with me, having already been attempted by Thomas Jefferson.)

The evidence says that there was no biblical exodus of the jews from Egypt. No jews, no need for a savior.

The evidence says that there was no world wide Noahic flood.

There is no evidence for an initiating human Adam and Eve ur-couple.

All genetic evidence points to common descent from shared ancestors.

By modus tollens, the above undermines the historical and scientific reliability of the bible.

A naive question by me:
"Why would all the scientists of the world get together and conspiratorially teach evolution as fact when they know creationism is true?"

Creationist reply:

"Well young man, they all got together not because they love nature and learning about it, they got into science because they hate god and his believers and will stop at nothing to get you to believe the Satanic lie of evolution."

Whoa, dude. What’s your problem? You dis’ing me?

Oh, look who's never been within shouting distance of an urban black neighborhood. It must be some sort of special feeling to fail at everything.

This is as good a debate on evo/creo as one is likely to come across – and the creos/IDiots sure take a beating. I revisited the whole thing, prompted by Jason’s highlighting of one particular exchange, and believe me, it’s all worth watching. U tube divides it up into 8 parts, all of which follow sequentially. The whole thing is well worth watching. Not only does Berlinski take a huge hit from Miller, he also gets both barrels straight between the eyes from Eugenie towards the end. I have to admit that I’m left wondering how such a good proponent of the scientific method as Miller can then go on to profess the RC faith, but that’s another discussion. For all his compromising, and the inevitable cognitive dissonance that this must cause him, he is nevertheless devastating on his subject.
Behe, Johnson and (especially) the very weak Buckley come across badly. Berlinski is another matter. How Miller and Scott resisted the temptation to punch him on the nose I do not know, but the fact that they did indeed avoid the almost irresistible temptation to resort (at least) to the “ad hominem” even verbally (never mind physically) speaks volumes for their patience. Berlinski’s pomposity, his mighty arrogance, his supercilious adoption of a “holier than thou” attitude, are insufferable – and all coupled with the most empty of rhetorical devices, the like of which permeate all he says. He has absolutely no contribution to make. His concentration on the supposed lack of a mechanism for Darwinian evolution, which is not even correct anyway, and his refusal to realise how well his supposed objections have actually been answered by Ken and Eugenie is infuriating. However, even worse, is his failure to realise that a correct series of observations with respect to the fact of evolution, must stand in their own right – even if there were an absence of such a mechanism. We do not know the mechanism by which the force of gravity is exerted – Newton and Einstein both notwithstanding – a fact which gives us no justification whatsoever for denying the existence of gravity, whose effects we can all observe only too easily. Berlinski – a lousy philosopher, a poor mathematician, a scientist not at all, and an utter failure as a thinker. He seems to consider himself a sceptic, without realising that true scepticism requires more than the production of a simple argument from personal incredulity. He seems to reject creo, and ID, and evolution, and pretty much anything else. I don’t necessarily demand that he either come up with a new idea, or support any of the aforementioned, or indeed come up with an alternative. But it’s simply not good enough to reject empirical evidence for transitional forms (or whatever else) and then just stand unmoved when the evidence for such is laid right in front of his (unfortunately unpunched) nose. What a poor excuse for an intellect.

Here’s another amusing exchange between opposing sides of the evolution debate. Once again, the entertainment is provided by the evo side:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fjhh27sN6Pk&app=desktop

I am astonished that, of all the creo/evo interviews that are available across the net, SN should choose to draw our attention to this particular one. This “discussion” took place on a whackjob minority fundie satellite TV channel (called “Revelation TV”), here in the UK, about 2 or 3 years ago. The interviewee will need no introduction to regular readers of this blog. The interviewer is one Howard Conder, the founder and head of Rev TV. Conder rabidly promotes creationism in its most loony and extreme manifestations, and several of his presenters are at, or even below if you can believe it, the Hovind level – most notably a Dr Richard Kent (google him – it’s truly jaw dropping), and one Grady McMurtry, also a pseudo-scientist, and an American import (thanks for that you guys) to whom I have drawn attention on a previous post. Also worth googling.

Again, the interview in question is available on the net, and is worth watching in its entirety:-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kk1RnwbFIps

-rather than just seeing SN’s selected highlight (suitably adorned with the classic out-of-context Darwin quote, so beloved of creos everywhere, a series of loony sub-titles, and a silly little ditty of a pastiche at the end).

Conder is a man of limited intelligence, and absolutely no scientific understanding whatsoever. The gulf between him and Dawkins is so huge as to be unbridgeable, and it’s simply impossible for Dawkins to correct all the mass of misunderstandings and major category errors, with which Conder comes out on a regular basis, in anything like the time available. Questions have been asked as to why Dawkins would have agreed to give such an interview, given his well-publicised aversion to debating creationists, but I understand that he did only agree to do this on the basis that the interview should be broadcast live, presumably in order to bypass the well known creationist capacity for suitably dishonest editing after the event. As a result we don’t have to rely on SN for the reference; we can actually go to the whole thing un-cut, as indicated above.

So, back to SN’s odd choice of material. Given that:-

a) this interview shows creationist thinking at pretty much its very worst (as does Jason’s headline example), and the edited version that SN chooses has had grafted onto it the most dishonest eye design quote (without, of course, the all too essential context with which Darwin followed up), which Dawkins actually spends the majority of this clip debunking, and

b) that Conder is a fundie protestant with anti- RC views almost as vehement as his anti-science position.

Why would SN, of all people , encourage us to watch a video clip which so effectively denigrates his own position, as expounded on multiple previous occasions on this blog?

Answers on a postcard please.

"Conder is a man of limited intelligence, and absolutely no scientific understanding whatsoever"

Sounds like a clone of sn.

When I was a grad student at the University of Illinois-Chicago I was a teaching assistant for the "Evolution" class a couple of semesters and I used to show parts of this debate to the students for two reasons: 1) for the information it contained and 2) for the kickass performance by Ken Miller.

http://news.sciencemag.org/europe/2015/08/qa-how-franco-dictatorship-de…

Franco's coup that led to the Spanish Civil War killed 500,000 and he killed almost that many purges. And guess what he banned books on evolution - correlation or causation?

In that clip, Miller was wrong about the number of genes. 100,000 would have been a high-end estimate at the time, with the low end below 20,000. We have the genomes now, and 20,000 is much closer to the truth.

He is absolutely correct that the number of gene changes between two mammals could be much less than that, since many genes are for "housekeeping" - basic cellular functions that are nearly the same in all species.

Many, many years ago, on this very blog, I had the distinct pleasure of outing Berlinski as someone whose PhD is in philosophy, not mathematics, when our distinguished host mistakenly identified him as a mathematician. We even got a talkback from Davie boy claiming that he had never misrepresented his background. AFAIK, Davie boy has never published a paper in a peer reviewed mathematics journal. As for misrepresenting himself as a mathematician, he has allowed other to do so, namely Norman Podhoretz, who was the publisher of Commentary Magazine and who published several articles by Davie boy on the subject of evolution in his magazine.

Thank you Colnago80 - Can I consider that my earlier assessment of Berlinski – "a lousy philosopher, a poor mathematician, a scientist not at all, and an utter failure as a thinker. He seems to consider himself a sceptic, without realising that true scepticism requires more than the production of a simple argument from personal incredulity" - is now vindicated by a historically accurate description of his actual background?

P.S - I note SN's silence since my last post. Could this possibly be a sign that he realises his tactical dishonesty (as opposed to the recalcitrant scientific/philosophical position he attempts to adopt) has been exposed?

To Phil B #22:

“P.S – I note SN’s silence since my last post. Could this possibly be a sign that he realises his tactical dishonesty (as opposed to the recalcitrant scientific/philosophical position he attempts to adopt) has been exposed?”

No. This would be a sign that, to borrow some of your words, Phil B is a man of limited intelligence, and limited scientific understanding. The gulf between Phil B and See Noevo is so huge as to be unbridgeable, and it’s nearly impossible for See Noevo to correct all the mass of misunderstandings and major category errors of Phil B.

Yeh, I suppose a long term silence was just too much to hope for. Still, I'm delighted you can confirm that there's a huge gulf between us - anything else would worry me. As for unbridgeable, or even correctable - well SN, that will depend on your own "intelligence, and limited scientific understanding" somehow being addressed. If dean is wrong, and you're not actually a Conder clone, then maybe there's still some hope - but I'm not holding my breath.

"it’s nearly impossible for See Noevo to correct all the mass of misunderstandings and major category errors ..."

The misunderstandings and category errors have all been yours sn. Your lack of education, refusal to read any of the literature, and selecting items that (you say) support your point of view but turn out to do exactly the opposite (when they are read) demonstrate that you not only lack the ability to carry on an educated conversation about science, you lack the willingness to put in the time to try.

Of course, if you look up Category Mistake on Wikipedia you will see Ryle's commentary on the "mind" as a thing which he used as an example of the term. The problem with SN and the other dualists is the inability to operationally define what they are talking about - if one keeps everything subjective, then there is no way to examine in detail. Creationists are the masters of never defining anything so it can be tested or if tested and shone false, then the definition used by the tester was the wrong one. It may be the way to do apologetics, but it is not the way to do science.

If the world was created by a supernatural power there is only so much and reasonably little that can be said to explain it. But there are on natural observation many things that align with the Bible records or say, a universal flood (that there's pretty reasonable evidence to show it).
If the world was created by extraordinarily natural processes can can always evolve things and create complexity out of chaos the evidence must be there. If the fossil record is all about gradual change it NEEDS to show this gradualism. If the biology of it, is predicated on the ability of a protein to innovate itself and acquire diverse functional roles etc and its evolution needs to be simultaneous (thousands of proteins evolving at the same rate, because systems based physiology do not allow for deviation without punishment in biology)..that needs to be demonstrated too. This in vitro protein innovation evidence (which is nodal to everything in evolution) is, however, complicated to be demonstrated at this point. In other words, it is not as simple to happen as previously thought (according to recent papers). The methodology is further complicated by lots of artificially manipulation of contrasts to induce change.

"a universal flood (that there’s pretty reasonable evidence to show it)."
Plus pretty conclusive evidence showing there wasn't. Like the pretty simple calculation that there is not enough water on the entire planet to cover its surface.

Actually, theres geological evidence which demonstrates a catastrophic global flood as described in Genesis can not have occurred at any time within the geologically recent past (i.e., the past 20 million years or so), such as the Green River and Lake Sugeitsu varve formations.