Keep Evolution Out of Schools

Look, like everyone else I have no trouble dismissing creationists as bat-shit crazy religious fundamentalists who wouldn't know a scientific fact if the ghost of Richard Feynman bit them on the backside. No trouble at all, and I am always happy to join in a little gentle poking of a stick through the bars on the megachurch windows and stirring things up a bit. But while that gives me a nice warm glow of mental superiority to go with my first cup of morning coffee, it really avoids the question of how the creationist/ID crowd find it so easy to convince these simple people that up is down, night is day.

And I guess the answer, reluctantly (as I drink my second cup of morning coffee), is that it is the fault of most of us who write about Darwinism. The mistake, the original sin, is that we have talked about species evolving when we have talked about evolution. An easy mistake to make, and you can see why we made it, but it has proved fatal.

As soon as you understand this you understand why the babble of creationists, as apparently as mindless as "speaking in tongues", is actually based on a fundamental educational failure, and a consequent fundamental misunderstanding.

The two commonest glossolallies are "where are the transitional fossils?" and "if humans evolved from apes why are apes still around?" They don't ask these questions merely to annoy (although it is a bonus), but because they genuinely think these are points to be considered. And the fact that they can ask such questions, 150 years after "The Origin of Species", 150 years of tens of thousands of biologists and paleontologists, and geologists, and chemists, and botanists studying every aspect of evolutionary theory, and after being schooled in scientifically advanced western countries, is a sign of our collective failure.

All of us, creationists and rational people alike, understand how the first organism evolved out of the primordial soup by a process of natural selection gradually producing a bundle of self-reproducing chemicals, no argument there. And it is a sign of Darwin's genius that he understood a process that could lead from inorganic chemicals to organic life forms without any need for an imaginary friend to send a lightning bolt from out-stretched finger. But it is what we say about what happens next that has left us still having to debate Robert Chambers one and a half centuries after his theories should have been buried without a vestige remaining.

If these people who start creation museums (yet another oxymoron) had as much intelligence as a neanderthal they would ask not why apes are still with us but why, if all life on Earth evolved from the very first bacterium swimming in the primordial ooze, do we still have bacteria today?

In a sense "natural selection" is the least important of Darwin's ideas. Oh sure, it's not bad, but it's so obvious that I don't know why I didn't think of it. But the far more vital part of evolutionary theory (or "Darwinism", as the evangelicals call it, if any creationists are still reading) is the idea of allopatric speciation. Never heard of it? No, and that is the problem.

Allopatric speciation is simply this - if one part of a species becomes separated by a geographic barrier (a mountain range forms, sea level rises, a desert comes into being, a river changes course, a landslide falls, a continent moves, a glacier extends), and stays separate long enough, then its members will no longer be able to breed with the other part of the population and it will therefore have become a different species.

Doesn't matter why it becomes different - just an accumulation of mutations might do the trick, hell Lamarckism would do the trick. But in fact Darwin had this one pegged - natural selection, acting on variation within the two populations, causes them to diverge. And the more different to the original environment is the place in which the second population lives, the more adaptation will occur, and the more the second species will differ from the first. And, in turn, as further changes in the land occur, these two species can in turn split, and so ad infinitum.

So this is the answer to the questions that so furrow the low brows of our primitive fundamentalist cousins. Both the original species and the separated species can (and often do) go on surviving side by side. The "human" population somehow got separated from the "chimpanzee" population, one took the high road and one took the low, but both made it all the way to 2009. Sometimes though, one or more of the subsequent species become extinct for all sorts of reasons, and if their fossils don't survive we may never know of their loss.

And astute readers (the creationists have all turned off the lights and left the building now) will have seen that this pattern of speciation makes the concept of "missing links" meaningless. You could, with a time machine, trace back through every chimpanzee generation to the chimpanzees of, say, 5 million years ago. And you could do the same with human generations. And replaying the process backwards you would see these two populations become gradually identical and then merge into one (and further back you would see that population merge with the orangutan one, and so on). There would be no gaps, no missing links, no opportunity for missing links. Play it back the two populations become one, play it forward they become two, play it as many times as you like, Sam, and the process of speciation remains the same.

And the process happens no matter how different or similar the resulting species are. Chimpanzees might well have become more bipedal more naked apes, humans might well have remained as hairier less bipedal ones. The reasons they, we, look like we do now is bound up in the climatic and geographic fluctuations of long ago Africa.

So if I was writing biology text books for use in Texas or Kentucky or Missouri schools I think I would join their education authorities in demanding that the word evolution not be mentioned. Instead I would put all of my effort into explaining speciation. Show how that original bacterium could become 2, 4, 8, 20, 30, 60 ... species. Could become, even after losing tens of thousands of species along the way, the tens of thousands of species, including humans, chimps, and bacteria, we see today. Explain about the movements of continents, and climate change, and its effects on both the origin and demise of species. You will find they will know about climate change in the past as a result of another misinformation campaign, but it will come in useful here.

And by teaching, over and over, the mind numbingly obvious process of speciation you will cut off the oxygen from the creationists who want to keep children ignorant of the origins of the astonishingly diverse plants and animals we see today. Give them the sense of grandeur in this view of life on this planet.


The Watermelon Blog, as those adapted to it know, has a certain grandeur all of its own.

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Comments

[Dave24]

Removing "evolution" from schools, though partly tongue-in-cheek, is absurd -- because while speciation may better undermine creationist viewpoints, theists will still find a way to find fault with that as well. Besides, evolution is still true -- so it should remain.

It's like giving in to Republican demands or the calls of Glenn Beck. Appeasement will never happen: they will simply continue to chip away more and more. Taste blood and grow more hungry.

Redefining curriculum is itself a defeat because it would be *perceived* as such. Creationists don't understand how science works: that it's a self-correcting system based on confidence, not conviction, and that the level of confidence is tied to verifiable evidence -- not wacky dreams that someone had one night, then professing transparent faith.

Accommodationism of any sort is simply unacceptable. And evolution, the beautiful concept and word, should stay in our classrooms precisely because it's true.

[David Horton - Huffpost Blogger]

Thanks Dave - I usually get accused of being too unkind to the nest of vipers that is creationis­ts/evangel­icals/shoc­k jocks, so being accused of appeasement is a refreshing change. But just between you and me, this was an attempt by me to attack the crazies from the rear while Dawkins and Myers keep attacking from the front. You start accepting the innocent sounding speciation because it is so blindingly obviously true, and before you know where you are you are accepting the whole box and dice and flagellum, and saluting chimps as long lost cousins. So, if they think I am appeasing then all I can say is I have a very nice horse, made in Troy, that I can sell you, special discount offer, only used once.

[Dave24]

Pardon me, I didn't mean to sound accusatory (though I think I did). I'm onboard with what you're saying, and certainly it's a strategy that could prove more effective. But the mere thought of such future misperceptions turns my stomach. I'm sure you know the feeling.

[JohnFromCensornati]

mbaty said: "in fact, consciousness may very well have created matter and physicality, not the other way around."

In fact, there's nothing factual about that statement. Human beings may very well have imagined creators, not the other way around. In fact, it's seems quite likely.

[elmerfude]

I think mbaty is on to something. Matter and consciousness may be much more closely related than we think. The scientific "facts" and certainties of today become the obsolete paradigms of the future. Consciousness does not necessarily imply an anthropomorphic creator. But I certainly don't think that creationism or intelligent design should be taught in science class even though there is quite a lot of evidence that not much science is being taught in science class in any event. Explaining speciation or sexual selection or natural selection or phenotypic plasticity or radiometric dating or mutation or genetics in science class isn't going to do a thing to deter the creationists or intelligent designers. Most of them home school anyway. I do think if we did a decent job of teaching science and offering a good education, a course in mythology or at least the basic humanities should be included.

[djarm67]

To mbaty,

Modern abiogenesis hypotheses do not postulate that DNA was a result of random probability. In terms of your suggestion that the definition of the scientific method should be relaxed to enable the inclusion of what are currently psuedo-science, this would have far reaching consequences. Children could be taught astrology alongside astronomy, alchemy with chemistry, physics could be balanced by witchcraft and of course Intelligent Design Creationism could be taught in biology.

The scientific method is bound by the process of methodological naturalism. Violate this and it simply isn't science.

DJ

[radmul]

Appeasement rarely works in real life. The folks that want "god did it" stamped on every forehead will still want to teach ID.

[elmerfude]

It doesn't help matters when some of the more "fundamentalist" atheists who happen to be evolutionary scientists and former scientific advisors to presidents states on the blogosphere that evolution is a completely random process. This plays right into the hands of the creationists who like to fault evolution as being completely random and due to chance. I may not be an evolutionary scientist but I am aware of several of the processes of evolution including natural selection, sexual selection, genetic drift and phenotypic plasticity. This last one has me baffled since environmental conditions can turn on or off the same set of genes to get different results without mutation entering in as far as I can tell. Maybe you can enlighten me on this point. The point is while the raw materials that evolution works on may by random mutation present new material variations, the actual selective processes of evolution are anything but random. It all leads to fitness between the species and the environment. I also think sometimes the evolutionist overplay their hands with claims of survival of the fittest and nature raw in tooth and claw without explaining the concepts of symbiosis and other cooperative processes at work in nature. Add this to the fact that enormous strides have been made in the discovery of new fossils including many so called missing links.

[GrandpaLeaman]

Arr, we believes mightily in the intelligent designs of the Flying Spaghetti Monster me bucko, may his noodliness be blessed.

The Noodles
The Sauce
And The Holy Meatballs
RAmen

[mbaty]

Another Creation vs. Evolution intellectual exercise, albeit with some good points. Speciation does occur, but the correct answer lies somewhere between Evolution and Creationism. And wouldn't it be correct to say that Evolution is a Very Intelligent design? It's a fairly smart idea to build the capacity to evolve into the DNA, but DNA is far too complex to be created out of random probability. Quantum physics shows us that the observer changes the observed, that things can be in different places at the same time, and that the universe is symettrical and mathmatically ingenious at the tiniest levels. Flowers grow based upon the Fibbunacci sequence. Look at a snail shell. It's mathmatically perfect. Listen to music, and then look at how the ratios of sound frequencies are geometrical.
I'm not arguing for a belief in the tyrant god of the Old Testament, but rather for science to open to the possibility that consciousness is just as important as matter, and that, in fact, consciousness may very well have created matter and physicality, not the other way around.

[HeevenSteven]

"wouldn't it be correct to say that Evolution is a Very Intelligent design?"

YES!! But without the premeditation or intent.. Those things aren't necessary to explain evolution.

[JohnFromCensornati]

Doesn't the word "design" imply intent? I don't think it's a design at all. It's a process.

[freelunch]

And without the designer, the intelligence and the design.

[HeevenSteven]

"Listen to music, and then look at how the ratios of sound frequencies are geometrical. "

You see, math, geometry etc all began with human observation. It all began with humans using a particular language to describe truisms of nature. Nature doesn't conform to our observations, it's the other way 'round. Got it?

[David Horton - Huffpost Blogger]

There is no "answer [that] lies somewhere between Evolution and Creationism" (http://www.blognow.com.au/mrpickwick/98868/Geology_Palinology.html). Or do you also believe that truth lies somewhere between astrology and astronomy, or alchemy and chemistry, or the four "humours" and modern medicine? Creationism isn't some new alternative theory, it is the ancient dregs of a primitive idea before modern biology and geology started work on the origin of species and the age of the Earth. There is no body of unexplained facts that "intelligent design" needs to address, evolutionary theory is all encompassing.

[elmerfude]

What? Intelligent design may be nonsense but it is equally absurd to say that evolutionary theory is "all encompassing." It is always dangerous to assert any scientific paradigm as being final or all encompassing because the next paradigm shift may make such assertions to look ridiculous. I never will forget being in a geology lab one day as the prof ranted and raved about the nonsense of plate tectonics and continental drift. About that time we had an earthquake and the lab started rocking and rolling. One of the profs nonexistent plates had just shifted. There are plenty of phenomena within the artistic, poetic, spiritual realms that are not within reach of scientific understanding at this time and may never be. There are a number of types of human intelligences. So called "primitive dregs" within the realm of mythos are beautiful poetically even if inconsistent with modern biology. There are four creation stories in the Bible alone and some of them are quite beautiful. Ovid's Metamorphosis and other great works of literature have their own truth.

[freelunch]

There is no evidence for any design, intelligent or not in organisms. The capacity to evolve wasn't built into DNA, it was a bug in replication. Assertions about 'far too complex' show a lack of understanding based on faulty assumptions. Quantum physics has nothing to do with this. Mathematics is a tool for describing, not a controlling event. There's no evidence that consciousness is anything but the result of biochemical actions in the brain. Mysticism is bunk.

[Vxx]

Like it, adding the ideas to my arsenal for the next debate. :)