Evolution: Study shows why rapid development not likely an advantage, study shows

Spotted salamander, Camazine

Recent studies of evolution, such as Lenski's, have focused on bacteria because they replicate quickly. These findings offer insight into at least one reason why quick development would not benefit most life forms, suggesting time constraints on how rapid evolution could be.

"Faster Early Development Might Have Its Costs, Study in Salamanders Suggests"(ScienceDaily, Jan. 25, 2011), researchers found recently:

Fast development is often perceived as an advantage, as it enables better harmony with one's environment and readiness to cope with the challenges that it poses. However, research conducted at the University of Haifa, Israel, and University of California, Santa Cruz, and published in the scientific journal PLoS ONE, found that the acceleration of developmental rate incurs potentially lethal physiological costs for the developing individual. "Our findings are consistent with research findings on other animals and call for further research on rates of development in humans," said Asaf Sadeh who led the study.

[ ... ]

... accelerated development carries costs: larvae that developed more quickly suffered greater rates of mortality. Larvae that falsely perceived the pond environment as long-lasting, and thus started life with a slow developmental rate, but then realized their misperception and compensated with significant acceleration, suffered the greatest rates of mortality. The physiological mechanisms underlying these costs are unknown, but are thought to involve both cellular causes such as oxidative damage from increased metabolic rates, and tissue-level causes such as overexploitation of undifferentiated stem cells or disrupted balance between the differentiation and growth of different tissues in the body. These physiological costs may also lead to increased vulnerability to environmental stresses other than drying, such as heat, disease and parasites, and might result in death.

It almost sounds as though they should be talking about "pysychological" development, but how the salamander "knows" all this is a puzzle for another day.

New book does not use Darwin as light source for universe ...

It's only 78 pages. The only thing that concerns me is that so few career Darwinists have brayed against it. Maybe they got the guy confused with Stephen Hawking. Lots of people have, if you google his name.

At Amazon:

Do we understand how evolution works? In this book Steven Hawkins outlines various possible mechanisms of biological evolution - the Neo-Darwinian Modern Synthesis, Symbiogenesis and Developmental Systems Theory. He contrasts and compares these various theories and proposes a view of evolution in which all three mechanisms have a role to play. In this schema 'natural selection' only has a minor role to play in biological evolution. In the final chapter Hawkins considers non-biological evolution and is drawn to conclude that we are unable to understand the fundamental nature of both non-biological evolution and biological evolution.


From the Publisher


"the interpretations surrounding the brute fact of evolution remain contentious, controversial, fractious, and acrimonious." Simon Conway Morris


"if selection could be somehow dispensed with, so that all variants survived and multiplied, the higher forms would nevertheless have arisen." H. J. Muller


"most evolutionary novelty arose and still arises directly from symbiosis." Lynn Margulis


"The universe, non-biological evolution and biological evolution are all fundamentally mysterious to us, and will remain so in the future." Steven Hawkins


In this timely work Steven Hawkins considers our current state of knowledge of the mechanisms which underpin the evolutionary process. If you currently believe that you have a good understanding of how evolution works then there is a good chance that this book will change your beliefs. After reviewing the current dominant views of how evolution works, Hawkins outlines his own favoured view according to which natural selection is not the main mechanism of speciation. However, Hawkins finally concludes that the view of evolution that one has is a sign not of how evolution actually works, but of how one conceives of oneself and of how one conceives of the universe around one.

That last sentence shuldbe enough to sink Darwinism.

Birds squawk louder to be heard over traffic- evolution in action!

"Hipster bird species evolving to tune out urban sounds", according to Wendy Zuckerman (New Scientist 07 January 2011):

Call them the urban new breed. We know birds raise their voices to make themselves heard in the noisy big city, but for the first time there is evidence that they may even be evolving as a result of city living.

"Urban birds might be becoming genetically distinct, which is the first step towards becoming a new 'urban' species," says Dominique Potvin of the University of Melbourne, Australia.

Apparently, urban birds sing more loudly to attract mates, and are assumed to be evolving as a result: "The city is pushing these birds to evolve."

Is it? Another scientist, Hans Slabbekoorn, suggest that it is possible that the birds "might be just calling louder under noisier conditions."

A friend has suggested moving the urban birds to a rural setting and seeing what happens.

Study of birds adapting to urban life is most interesting, but in most cases calling minor changes "evolution" seems a stretch to me. They are probably better seen as the way a hardy species avoids extinction or extirpation via minor, reversible adjustments.

I’d be interested to see what happens to the Toronto area Canada geese who no longer migrate and spend the winter gobbling lawns. In a century, will they otherwise differ significantly from their virtuous rural cousins?

Canada geese in pond near Ottawa, Wikimedia Cmmons

Journal reference: Proceedings of the Royal Society B, DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2010.2296

Speaking engagement: God, Evolution, and Catholics, and zinger sauce on the side

Okay, pass on the zinger sauce. There’s no insurance against head explosions.

I will be speaking at the God and Evolution event at Biola University in Los Angeles, October 16, 2010, on “Catholics and Evolution”, from 10:50 – 11:15 am. They want $25 but the event lasts from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m, seems to include lunch, and a free copy of the book in which I have a chapter, God and Evolution.

Here are the details:

God And Evolution:

Protestants, Catholics, and Jews Explore Darwin's Challenge to Faith
with Marvin Olasky, Ph.D., Jonathan Wells, Ph.D., Ph.D., Jay Richards, Ph.D., Denyse O'Leary, John West, Ph.D., David Klinghoffer, Casey Luskin, J.D., Craig J. Hazen, Ph.D., John Bloom, Ph.D., Ph.D.

Click Here for more details & to RSVP now!

Can you believe in God and evolution at the same time? What is "theistic" evolution, and how consistent is it with traditional theism? What challenges does Darwin's theory pose for Protestants, Catholics, and Jews? Is it "anti-science" to question Darwinian theory? Explore these questions and more at this upcoming conference at Biola University.

Sponsored by the Discovery Institute and Biola's Master of Arts in Science and Religion.

Basically, I will be talking about current misrepresentations of Catholic teachings on evolution, enthusiastically promoted by Darwinists to create unwitting support for materialist atheism. My focus will be the great turn-of-the-twentieth century Catholic writers, who had the scam figured out, but were not able to stem the tide of accommodation to fashionable materialism. Anyway, I’d love to meet you if you can come.

Can evolution explain religion?

Here's my MercatorNet column (10 December 2009),

Evolutionary psychologists offer two contradictory explanations for the existence of religion. They can't both be right, but they can both be wrong.

In a recent issue of the leading journal Science , Elizabeth Culotta offers a variety of speculations in an article titled "On the Origin of Religion." Explaining religion without God is quite the growth industry these days among evolutionary psychologists. Some argue that religion exists because it increases evolutionary fitness (survival of the fittest). Others argue that it makes no difference to fitness. It is merely a glitch in our thinking that doesn't kill us off.

They can't both be right, but they could both be wrong. Let's see.

For the rest, go here.

Coffee! Evolution - Sometimes you just don't know what or who to believe.

A reader sends me this oldie but goodie:

In "Can evolution make things less complicated? Scientists suggest cell origins involved a forward-and-backward process" Becky Ham for MSNBC.com explained (May 18, 2006 - a century ago in these times) that

... the data suggest that eukaryote cells with all their bells and whistles are probably as ancient as bacteria and archaea, and may have even appeared first, with bacteria and archaea appearing later as stripped-down versions of eukaryotes, according to David Penny, a molecular biologist at Massey University in New Zealand.

Penny, who worked on the research with Chuck Kurland of Sweden's Lund University and Massey University's L.J. Collins, acknowledged that the results might come as a surprise.

“We do think there is a tendency to look at evolution as progressive,” he said. “We prefer to think of evolution as backwards, sideways, and occasionally forward.”

Don't try this stuff on a traffic cop, if you are in a collision.

It's all different when we are in real time and who is right is a serious question.

Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy:

Sightings: Atheists and theistic evolutionists sip spring water on a panel together, and ...

I am so glad that Lawrence M. Krauss, cosmologist and director of the Origins Initiative at Arizona State University, exists, so we don't have to invent him.

He and I turned out to share a taste for talking about religion and about journalism, which I discovered during his evening address at the Canadian Science Writers' convention in Sudbury in May. Most recently, in "God and Science don't mix" for the Wall Street Journal (June 26, 2009), he advanced the view that "A scientist can be a believer. But professionally, at least, he can't act like one." Nonetheless, he insists,

... while scientific rationality does not require atheism, it is by no means irrational to use it as the basis for arguing against the existence of God, and thus to conclude that claimed miracles like the virgin birth are incompatible with our scientific understanding of nature.

However, I bet he doesn't have nearly the same sympathy for using facts of science to demonstrate the existence of God, as astronomer Hugh Ross does. A man of science cannot afford to be that broad-minded, after all, ... but I digress.

But now, here's something really interesting: Krauss relates that he was on a "Science, Faith, Religion" panel at the World Science Festival in New York City ( June 13, 2009). As an atheist, he was paired with philosopher Colin McGinn. On the other side were "devoutly Catholic" biologist Ken Miller and Vatican astronomer Brother Guy Consolmagno, with ABC's Bill Blakemore moderating. Krauss raised the question of the virgin birth of Jesus. He recalls,

When I confronted my two Catholic colleagues on the panel with the apparent miracle of the virgin birth and asked how they could reconcile this with basic biology, I was ultimately told that perhaps this biblical claim merely meant to emphasize what an important event the birth was. Neither came to the explicit defense of what is undeniably one of the central tenets of Catholic theology.

That's interesting. Because I was myself given to understand through discreet private sources that both men were devout Catholics.

Personally, I don't see the virgin birth of Jesus as much of an issue for science because it is regarded in the Christian tradition as an explicit act of God, apart from the ordinary workings of nature. So there is nothing to study and never will be.

Now, if you know for sure that there is no God, you know it didn't happen. If you know there is a God but are quite certain that he "wouldn't do things that way," you also know it didn't happen - though you are on less firm ground, more or less inventing your own modernist version of Christianity.

Dr. Krauss posts at Uncommon Descent now and then, and perhaps Ken Miller and Guy Consolmagno might also sign in and clarify their views. The latter two are, after all, important theistic evolutionists. With the appointment of near-theistic evolutionist Francis Collins, with his unusual views on the uniqueness of human life, to head of NIH, it might be a good idea to see how closely these guys map the mind space of the people they hope will listen to them.

Note: Over at Uncommon Descent, nullasalus warns that, based on an attendee's account, Krauss may have been trying to set the other panellists up, asking for a "naturalistic" account of the virgin birth, which is explicitly not available. As I say here, I hope they clarified that matter.

Darwinism and academic culture: Darwinism under siege from mainstream proponents of alternative paths of evolution

In a most interesting - and for New Scientist, a surprisingly sensible - overview, Bob Holmes reports on approaches to evolution that do not invoke Richard Dawins's famous "selfish gene" ("The selfless gene: Rethinking Dawkins's doctrine," 09 March 2009 ): These include species selection, group selection, ecosystem selection, and microcosms. Save this one to get up to speed on why many doubt Darwin - and Dawkins:

the consensus is that evolution never favours what might be called "selfless" genes - that is, adaptations that benefit a group of organisms or the species as a whole. An example would be a gene that restricts how many offspring a predator has, to avoid wiping out its prey. Such a gene should always lose out to selfish genes that maximise reproduction, the thinking goes, even if reproducing without restraint threatens the survival of the whole species.

Increasingly, though, this consensus is being challenged, and on several fronts. The least controversial of these is the notion that entire species themselves can have traits that, over geological time, make them more likely than others to escape extinction and branch off new daughter species. This can lead to evolutionary change that could not be predicted from individual adaptations alone.

[ ... ]

If ecosystem-level selection is the norm, it could prompt a major shake-up in our view of the microbial world and, by extension, the macroscopic world, too. "It's only in the last 5 or 10 years that people realised that the majority of bacteria live in multispecies collectives," says Penn. "Bacteria are driving the basic processes of the biosphere, so if their evolution is in this higher-level context, it's going to be very different to the way we've thought about it previously, and their responses to climate change could be very different than we would expect from thinking about them individually."

It is still too early to know whether group, species and ecosystem-level selection are major evolutionary forces or merely minor curiosities - baroque ornaments on the central edifice of individual or gene-level selection. But the dominance of the "selfish gene" in evolutionary thought is facing its strongest challenge in many years.

"[T]he dominance of the "selfish gene" in evolutionary thought is facing its strongest challenge in many years"? Remember that when someone tells you that there is absolutely no controversy over evolution. There is a huge and growing controversy, as Holmes's article makes clear, about mechanisms of evolution, with textbook Darwinism under siege from many quarters. This is a must-read if you want to understand why there is a controversy over Darwinism. Little evidence supports it and the body of evidence against it is growing all the time.

Darwinism vs. design: More from the "intricate structures can all just sort of happen" files

Here:

By comparing the timing of retinal cell proliferation in the two species, the researchers found evidence that an extended period of progenitor cell proliferation in the owl monkey gave rise to an increased number of rod and other associated cells that make its eyes adept at night vision; the eyes also evolved to be large, with bigger light-gathering and light-sensing structures needed for nocturnal sight.

"The beauty of the evolutionary mechanism we have identified is that it enables the eye to almost toggle back and forth between a nocturnal and a diurnal structure," said neurobiologist Michael Dyer of St. Jude's hospital. "It is an elegant system that gives the eye a lot of flexibility in terms of specialization."

Once the need was identified, everything just fell into place via natural selection acting on random mutation - even if the intricate machinery did not exist at the time. Uh, right, prof.

Intelligent design and high culture: Mike Behe is not a creationist, but who cares?

Lehigh University biochemist Michael Behe, author of Edge of Evolution, a powerful challenge to essentially magical claims for what Darwinian evolution can do, protests - in his usual pacific way - the ridiculous claims that it can produce vast amounts of intricate machinery in a short period of time.

Of course, the American Scientific Affiliation list (= God dunit - hallelujah! - but we would never know, from the world we live in) has a huge investment in misrepresenting him.

A key issue is whether he is a creationist - that is, does he think that specific divine acts of creation are necessary?

Recently, he wrote me to say,

I tried to make my views as clear as possible in my books, and I even have a section in Chapter 10 of Edge of Evolution entitled "No Interference" where I say ID is compatible with absolutely no "intervention" (although, of course, in reality there may have been intervention -- who knows?).

Here's the money quote:

"But the assumption that design unavoidably requires “interference” rests mostly on a lack of imagination. There’s no reason that the extended fine-tuning view I am presenting here necessarily requires active meddling with nature anymore than the fine tuning of theistic evolution does. One can think the universe is finely tuned to any degree and still conceive that “the universe [originated] by a single creative act” and underwent “its natural development by laws implanted in it”. One simply has to envision that the agent who caused the universe was able to specify from the start not only laws, but much more." (p. 231)

[Some tenured nobody] apparently has not read my stuff too closely.

Oh, I wouldn't worry about that, Mike. Don't count on any of those people reading your stuff too closely. I remember the ridicule they heaped on you when that very fine book first came out.

It was Jackal City's night out.

Here is my view, for what it is worth: The ASA list types think they can front God to people who really should believe in materialism - as Darwin - in reality - did, from his early adulthood, and not as a result of his science research.

[I will post on that topic soon].

So the ASA types would give us the right to believe in God - on their terms. (= cringing in front of glamourous atheists, and so forth ... )

But suppose we just kick them all upside the full moon, and believe the evidence instead?

If there's a down side, it must be when they land. And that down side is for them, not us.

Indeed, that is the change that is taking place right now. So hang in.

Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy:

Live bearing fish: No Darwinian story of evolutionary transformation

From David Tyler's recent post on live bearing fish:

Evolutionists are very reluctant to acknowledge when their predictions are falsified. Instead, they have cultivated the ability to say the new finds have broadened their thinking and that it places their understanding "on a much firmer footing". Indeed, the new finds "may prove to have far-reaching implications for our understanding of early vertebrate evolution". The reality is that these new finds do not confirm evolutionary predictions. Instead, there are now modified evolutionary predictions (as yet untested) that attempt to accommodate the data within an evolutionary framework. This is the well-documented behaviour of Kuhnian "normal" science.

I am reminded of a conversation with a friend of mine whose PhD was in fish development. He came to the conclusion that fish do not provide a Darwinian story of evolutionary transformation. These recent finds seem to confirm his assessment.

By "Kuhnian 'normal' science", Tyler means continuing to front a theory that does nt really work any more because it is the only existing theory.

Go here for more.

From the "Stuff you can't afford to know if you want a job teaching science" files

University of Bristol (England) bacteriologist Alan H. Linton went looking for evidence of the origin of species and concluded in 2001: "None exists in the literature claiming that one species has been shown to evolve into another. Bacteria, the simplest form of independent life, are ideal for this kind of study, with generation times of twenty to thirty minutes, and populations achieved after eighteen hours. But throughout 150 years of the science of bacteriology, there is no evidence that one species of bacteria has changed into another... Since there is no evidence for species changes between the simplest forms of unicellular life, it is not surprising that there is no evidence for evolution from prokaryotic [e.g., bacterial] to eukaryotic [e.g., plant and animal] cells, let alone throughout the whole array of higher multicellular organisms."

- Alan Linton, "Scant Search for the Maker," The Times Higher Education Supplement (April 20, 2001), Book Section, p. 29.

Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy:

Darwinism: Latest installment of the Darwin legend

Australia's Hiram Caton writes to say,

Hello Denyse!

I'm sending you this latest version of my synopsis of the Darwin Legend. There are two new entries since our last contact--Darwin's Biggest Fib, and Charles Darwin, Abraham Lincoln and Race. The fib is his claim, in the 6th ed of Origin, to have been the first to have argued the case for evolution. The other article draws attention to belief in the superiority of the Caucasian race espoused by Darwin and Lincoln. Darwin also believed that the lower races were on the path to extinction. Any comments will be appreciated.Cheers! - Hiram Caton

Synopsis of the Legend

++Belief that the Origin was a 'revolutionary' scientific breakthrough conflicts with the fact that public opinion was at the time saturated by the evolution idea. It was so widespread that in 1860 the showman P T Barnum put on display a freak, Zip the Pinhead, alleged to be the 'missing link' between apes and humans. In the Historical Sketch preface to the Origin, Darwin acknowledged 34 prior evolutionists.

[When I was in school 45 years ago, we learned that Evolution was a big, general idea in mid-nineteenth century Britain. It wasn't until I had to listen to wearisome rants by new atheists and Darwin lobbyists seeking funds that I discovered that Darwin had invented the idea.]

++The natural selection principle was not Darwin's world-changing discovery. It was first stated in 1831 by Patrick Matthew and was independently discovered in 1836 by Darwin's colleague, Edward Blyth. Herbert Spencer came close to a formulation in 1852, and Alfred Russel Wallace formulated it in 1858. Aware that natural selection did not explain racial variation, Darwin devised sexual selection as a supplementary principle.

[And we know where that led. To all kinds of silliness, actually. = "You cheatie on your sweetie because of your 'selfish genes'" - classic, stupid Valentines Day story]

++The Origin did not found modern biology. By 1850 it was a thriving cluster of cell biology sciences whose leaders were Matthias Schleiden, Theodor Schwann, Louis Pasteur, Rudolph Vircow, and Robert Koch. Darwin, a naturalist, was not involved in this research mode. His unfamiliarity with cell biology is manifest in his Pangenesis theory of the basis of organisms. Conversely, evolution did not become a parameter of experimental biology until August Weismann set out his germ plasm theory of inheritance in 1884.

++The Origin did not instigate a 'revolutionary' disruption of science from religious belief. That antagonism became a major cultural force thanks to the French Revolution. Utilitarianism, positivism, and socialism were the main drivers. By the 1830s these secularists began to add evolution to their rebuttals of religious beliefs. By 1860 this position was widespread throughout Europe and Latin America. Conversely, numerous scientists and clergy believed in the compatibility of science and religious faith, including the discoverer of the first quantitative biological laws, Gregor Mendel.

[Well, Mendel was a monk, right? I suppose he must have thought that the laws of inheritance were compatible with being a good Catholic ... otherwise .. ?]

++The Origin did not set out a single paleontological sequence of evolved species. Reason: methods for empirical analysis of fossil evidence were meager, a predicament that remained until the 1890s. The discovery of the Burgess Shale fossil deposit in 1909 could have supported a blossom of paleontology, yet that did not happen for another half century. The rudimentary level of human paleontology is expressed in the acceptance, in 1912, of the Piltdown Man as a genuine fossil. The hoax was not exposed until 1953.

[Hiram, I have always wondered about the fact that the Piltdown hoax took so long to be exposed, because a smart high school student could have exposed it. I casnnot believe that many people did not know. A sociologist might be able to explain why it was so important to keep the fraud going. Steve Fuller? ]

++Although Darwin opposed slavery from an early age, he did not believe in racial equality. In the Descent of Man and in correspondence, he arranged humanity in a hierarchy, with Caucasians at the top, and he believed that the extinction of 'lower races' was on course and would continue. This widely-shared view was integral to Euro-American imperial domination. Abraham Lincoln is among the anti-slavery proponents who so believed. Post-Civil War America imposed segregation on the freed blacks and Amerindians, while imperial powers treated colonial subjects in that vast empire as inferiors.

++The only application of evolutionary theory with practical effect was eugenics, devised by Darwin's cousin, Francis Galton. Three of his sons were dedicated to the cause, and one, Leonard, was the long-term President of the Eugenics Society who claimed to advance his father's views. He was also patron of a key figure in the creation of neo-darwinism, R A Fisher, who also supported eugenics.

[indispensable reading follows:]

Charles Robert Darwin www.darwin-legend.org
a.. The Darwin Legend
b.. Getting Our History Right - Six Errors about Darwin and His Influence
c.. The Origin of the Origin of Species: Revolution or More of the Same?
d.. Darwin's Illness
e.. The Syllabus of Errors
f.. Darwin's Cathedral
g.. Three Minilegends
h.. Charles Darwin, Abraham Lincoln and Race
i.. Darwin's Biggest Fib
j.. Soren Lovtrup's Rebuttal of Darwinism
k.. Review of Carroll's On the Origin of Species
l.. Review of Mayr's One Long Argument
m.. Review of Dempster's study of Patrick Matthew

[Well, thanks, Hiram! I don't expect to see this on typical school curricula, which are still fronting Darwin legends and vilifying anyone who doubts them.

But, you know, there are always people who actually want to know what really happened. And, in the end, they are the people who matter.

Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy:

Mailbox: A reader writes from an island in Mediterranean to ask,

Don't you think Evolution excludes God from being the Creator? How can you support it them being a Catholic?

After I got over raging at that guy for living in a place that is actually warm and sunny (how dare he?), I replied:

Friend, thank you for writing, and apologies for any delay in getting back to you.

Essentially, I think God can create however he wants.

He can use direct creation and various types of evolution, including Darwin’s natural selection. Or other methods beyond my ability to imagine.

He’s God. and I’m not. So I don’t worry about whether God can do something, but rather whether evidence suggests that he has.

Indeed, for certain purposes – weeding out losers, for example – natural selection is doubtless an important mechanism.

I use it myself sometimes when I garden. I often just scatter flower seed broadcast - knowing that the losers will die, and the survivors will not need interventions that I can’t afford and don’t have time for.

Where I differ with the exponents of “Evolution” is:

1. I am not an atheist or a “liberal” Christian.

2. Therefore I do not need to prove that there is no design in the universe or life forms.

3. Therefore, I can acknowledge that design is evident in the universe and in life forms.

4. Therefore, I do not need to pretend that my method for weeding out loser plants in my garden actually creates any new information. All it does is distinguish between good and bad examples of the information that already existed.

5. I think that once we get things like that straight, we will be on the verge of another science revolution. But as along as we are stuck with no-design nonsense, we will be stuck with stupid projects about stuff we know that ain’t so.

I do hope this is a help.

Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy:

From the "More stuff we know that ain't so" files: Nobelist Tinbergen

From Nature:

Classic behavioural studies flawed:

Nobel prizewinner took short cuts to show that the way gulls feed is instinctive.

John Whitfield

One of the most famous experiments in biology isn't the solid piece of work it's usually portrayed as, say Dutch researchers who have replicated the study. Instead, it's more like an anecdote that became slightly more legendary each time its author retold the story.

The work in question was done in 1947 by the Dutch researcher Niko Tinbergen on the begging behaviour of herring-gull chicks. At the time, the dominant idea in animal behaviour was that learning was all-important. Tinbergen argued that animals come into the world with instincts already adapted to their environments.

Adult gulls have a red spot on their lower bill. Tinbergen, who shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1973, presented wild chicks with model birds bearing spots and measured how much they pecked at the model.

The story that made it into the textbooks is that chicks have a powerful innate tendency to peck at red dots, which has evolved as a way of getting their parents to feed them. The original paper, however, shows that Tinbergen found that chicks actually pecked more at a black dot than a red one.

In a follow-up paper written in 1949, Tinbergen concluded that this strange finding resulted from a mistake in his methods. He had tested red, black, blue, white and yellow spots, but he presented the 'natural' red spot much more often than any other. The chicks, he decided, became habituated to the red spot and stopped pecking at it.

Of course, Tinbergen has his defenders:

"Tinbergen shouldn't be castigated for this," agrees Rebecca Kilner, who studies bird behaviour at the University of Cambridge in the UK and was not involved in the new study.

"Tinbergen is an iconic character in the history of animal behaviour research," she adds. "He pioneered the use of simple but ingenious field experiments, and these experiments are a classic example of that approach."

Other researchers think that ten Cate's study risks sullying Tinbergen's legacy. "It's not fair to Tinbergen — any paper from 50 years ago wouldn't pass modern standards," says Johan Bolhuis, a researcher in animal behaviour at the University of Utrecht and editor of a book on Tinbergen. "If we applied the same standards to Darwin's work, we'd say what a terrible experimenter he was."

"It'd be easy to be nasty — if you wanted to be negative and critical, you could do a fair amount of damage to Tinbergen's reputation," agrees ecologist Hans Kruuk, Tinbergen's biographer and former student. "He'd often simplify and gloss over complications: if these publications appeared now, they'd get hammered, but the ideas are lovely."

Yeah, like Darwinism. Lovely for certain people ...

If the day ever comes that I get to the bottom of all the stuff we know that ain't so, I could start learning some real science at last. But, from what I can tell at present, that'll be the day ...

For one thing, you end up wondering how much real science there actually is ...

That's where high science feels different from engineering. Engineering, nada problem. The Last Spike. The CN Tower. Functional magnetic resonance imaging. Stuff either works or it doesn't.

But with high science, we can be arguing about the big bazooms theory of evolution - until the cows find their own way back to the barn - and have no sense that anything could possibly be amiss.

Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy:

Evolutionary psychology: Another reason to ignore it

In "Art, sex and Darwin in the spotlight" in the Otago Daily Times, New Zealand (February 21, 2009), we read that art is an instinct:

To take just a couple of examples - Why did people worldwide, when polled about their artistic preferences, seem drawn to realist paintings of a certain kind?

"What everybody wanted was the Pleistocene savanna landscape," Dutton explained at the AEI.

Nonsense: The grossly overrated Denis Dutton obviously doesn’t live in Canada.

Here, people go for vicious, toothed mountains and really, really deep, cold lakes.

Makes us feel right at home, which we are.

And I don't care whether Ape Man or Cave Dude would feel at home. This is OUR home and we like it here, even if they wouldn't.

Lots of people - especially new immigrants - have complained that my own province, Ontario, could use more vicious, toothed mountains. Aesthetically much nicer. I agree, but look - we got lots of water, okay. Lots. Come anyway.

I think that's Lake Louise, in Alberta, pictured above. I've seen people make coat buttons out of that photo. I would if I knew how.

Don't believe in God? Doubt Darwin anyway? No problem ... thank Richard Dawkins!

Discovery Institute (yes, yes, the evil Discos) writes to say,

Zogby Poll Shows Dramatic Jump in Number of Americans Who Favor Teaching Both Sides of Evolution

Surprisingly Strong Support Seen Among Democrats and Liberals

A new Zogby poll on the eve of Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday shows a dramatic rise in the number of Americans who agree that when biology teachers teach the scientific evidence for Darwin’s theory of evolution, they also should teach the scientific evidence against it. Surprisingly, the poll also shows overwhelming support among self-identified Democrats and liberals for academic freedom to discuss the “strengths and weaknesses” evolution.

Over 78% of likely voters agree with teaching both the evidence for and against Darwin’s theory, according to the new national poll.

“This represents a dramatic 9-point jump from 2006, when only 69% of respondents in a similar poll favored teaching both sides,” said Discovery Institute’s Dr. John West. “At the same time, the number of likely voters who support teaching only the evidence that favors evolution dropped 7 points from 21% in 2006 to 14.4% in 2009. More here.

Here's the whole gruesome poll.

I personally believe that the change in the numbers who say, "Aw, just teach it all," is due to the strident celebration of Darwin by materialist atheists. They need his theory to be true, despite evidence, and they are simply out of step with what most people think.

Oh yes, and dim Bible School profs who think we all need protection from the Darwinists. "No conflict between science and religion," says the prof.

Yeah sure, but what does the prof think science is, and what does he think religion is? Darwin thought that black people were closer to gorillas than white people are. Is that really science?

Also, the universe shows overwhelming evidence of intelligent design. Is that really religion?

I am tempted to get down on my knees and thank the "new atheist" movement, and especially, Richard Dawkins, for these results. Everyone now wants the window to be opened, to dissipate the foul air.

Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy:

Teaching evolution: A note from The Cranky Professor

Okay, back to our regularly scheduled programming.

(Note: If you are looking for Mark Steyn's testimony on the Ontario Human Rights Commission, go here.)

Philosophy prof Mark Mercer, aka The Cranky Professor, tells me that he published a piece in The Journal, the student newspaper at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax (Vol. 74, Issue 17, February 4, 2009), in which he notes,

What we want from biology class is that pupils gain a sound understanding of evolution by natural and sexual selection. We want them to understand how selective pressures cause traits to spread or fail to spread throughout a population of organisms and how these pressures can give rise to new species. That is, we want that they acquire the ability to encounter the natural world in the ways a contemporary biologist does.

What we ought not to want is that pupils believe that in fact species do evolve by means of natural and sexual selection. We ought to be completely indifferent as to whether they accept the theory as true. All we want, that is, is that they understand the theory and can apply it correctly to biological phenomena.

He compares it to a course in world religions

It is no part of such a class that pupils come to believe the core doctrines of the religions they study, or that they come to hold any religious beliefs at all. The class does what it should when pupils come to understand the various religions they study, and to understand the various psychological, sociological, or anthropological theories of them their teacher presents. To ask them to believe anything is to try to indoctrinate them into, or out of, religion. Likewise, to ask pupils in a biology class to believe anything they are taught is to indoctrinate them into science.

It's an interesting comparison, but I am not sure I buy it. For one thing, science is supposed to be matters of fact, not opinion.

And time and time again, when Darwinian theories are tested, they flunk. As I wrote recently,

The history of life has not been the long, slow "survival of the fittest" transition that classical evolution theory requires. Life got started on Earth the planet cooled. All the basic divisions of animal life took shape rather suddenly in the Cambrian seas, about 550 million years ago. Later, there was, for example, the "Big Bang" of flowers and the Big Bang of birds, where many life forms appear quite suddenly.

Darwinism is not overwhelmingly demonstrated. It is underwhelmingly demonstrated but overwhelmingly believed.

It is overwhelmingly believed (and taught), not because of evidence - the evidence is against it, and that fact has been known for a very long time. Steve Gould called it the "trade secret of paleontology". But Darwinism is the only doctrine of evolution that supports materialist atheism, which is the actual religion of the Western elite today. Most of what is in textbooks now - like the examples above - is indoctrination.

One reason for the intelligent design controversy is that teachers are forbidden to supplement the indoctrination with any evidence against the dogma propounded.

Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy

Catholic Church and evolution: Exquisite pleasure in skinning a cat?

A friend wants me to post this excerpt from G. K. Chesterton on why Christians cannot "affirm evolution". Essentially they cannot do so because - in the context, it usually means affirming atheism and denying the real existence of the soul.

And here is the passage to which he draws my attention:

Modern masters of science are much impressed with the need of beginning all inquiry with a fact. The ancient masters of religion were quite equally impressed with that necessity. They began with the fact of sin-a fact as practical as potatoes. Whether or no man could be washed in miraculous waters, there was no doubt at any rate that he wanted washing. But certain religious leaders in London, not mere materialists, have begun in our day not to deny the highly disputable water, but to deny the indisputable dirt. Certain new theologians dispute original sin, which is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved. Some followers of the Reverend R.J.Campbell, in their almost too fastidious spirituality, admit divine sinlessness, which they cannot see even in their dreams. But they essentially deny human sin, which they can see in the street. The strongest saints and the strongest sceptics alike took positive evil as the starting-point of their argument. If it be true (as it certainly is) that a man can feel exquisite happiness in skinning a cat, then the religious philosopher can only draw one of two deductions. He must either deny the existence of God, as all atheists do; or he must deny the present union between God and man, as all Christians do. The new theologians seem to think it a highly rationalistic solution to deny the cat.

- G. K. Chesterton, "The Maniac" in Orthodoxy.

Of course, Chesterton, who died in 1936, did not live through the vast, modern attempts to deny the cat.

Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy:

Catholic Church and evolution: Do we belittle God by calling him an intelligent designer?

Recently, I did a TV show (more later) on the Catholic Church and the intelligent design controversy.

My interviewer asked me about Fr. George Coyne, the Vatican astronomer who has said that intelligent design reduces and belittles God’s power and might. Specifically, the interviewer asked me what I understood Fr. Coyne to mean.

Well, I have no idea, actually. This 2006 pronouncement is the usual squid ink sprayed by people with a vested interest in preventing others from understanding what is at stake in the intelligent design controversy.

Neither Scripture nor tradition offers us a reason to think that God feels belittled by being called a designer. No surprise there - designer is one of the roles of a creator.

Meanwhile, a friend writes to say that (Not for chance) almost all orthodox traditions enclose the symbolism of the Great Designer (or equivalent), applied to God.

For example, in Hinduism they call Him "Vishwakarma", the Great Carpenter.

In Masonry they call Him the "The Great Architect Of The Universe".

In Judaism "Binah", the third of the Sephirots (Kabbalah principles), is the designing Supreme Intelligence.

In Islam, among the 99 names of Allah, there are at least four or five names related to the symbolism of the designer.

In Buddhism the "Enlightenment" or "Awakening” is a spiritual state where one sees himself and all things as designs of the Supreme Bodhi (all-pervading Intelligence).

Last but not least, in Christianity (isn’t the tradition of Fr. George Coyne?) Jesus was - both symbolically and effectively - the "Son of the Carpenter".

Well yes, but could the "tradition of Fr. George Coyne" be getting a makeover? Relevant Christian doctrines are kicked into the attic of unsubstantiated "faith," while all searches for evidence remain in the secure realm of materialist atheism?

Then we suddenly discover that no reasonable person can credit key Catholic doctrines ...

Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy: