Does evolutionary theory provide any useful scientific benefit?

Faith & Science Conversation
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Tertius, you have not replied to dcscccc in a meaningful way. You imply things about character, knowledge, experience, etc. but have in all of that managed to obfuscate the fact that you have not dealt with his simple question. A simple reply would be that Peterson did not mean what he said, or that he retracted his statement, or that in fact the perceived tree has changed. But you avoided all of these options. This is not a debate about how people can use fancier words or insulting techniques or rhetoric to score points. It’s about being sincere about answering sincere questions. Don’t you think it would be fair to ask the questions only after you have answered his?

“I’ve looked at thousands of microRNA genes, and I can’t find a single example that would support the traditional tree "- (Peterson)

so its actually a contradiction to the known tree. the tree has been changed. in other words: evolution predict tree a (base on genomic and morphological data, and is well accepted by the palaeontological community), and then we find a tree b. so how it make the evolution stronger? (dcscccc)

Why is evolution supported more strongly now that the predicted genomic and morphological tree is contradicted by the micro-RNA tree? That’s how I understand his question.

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My vision-assistance beta software is conflicting with my auto-reply FAQ database so the following response to @johnZ contains redundant text as a result. (I’ve dealt with the “Peterson’s discovery” denialist argument so many times that it has its own standard replies and suggested URLs in my system at BSF.) My apologies but I’m rushed for time and can’t reboot and delete caches in order to re-edit this reply to remove redundancies:

I’ve been through this popular Peterson “factoid” exchange before on multiple forums. You and I both know that if I simply give the answer and some helpful URLs that neither you nor @Dcscccc will learn anything from my investing the effort by going over a very old argument. (Denialists have posted it hither and yon ever since Peterson was triumphantly cited on EvolutionNews several years ago.) The answer will be ignored and the bogus argument that Peterson’s research allegedly demolished a pillar of The Theory of Evolution will continue to infect countless forums.

[ [FOOTNOTE: I’ve been investigating evolution denialism from an academic vantage point for several years [and on a personal basis for a lifetime because of my background as a Young Earth Creationist speaker/debate] because I had originally planned to publish a history and analysis of the movement and its tactics with emphasis on the shallow slogans and memes which various origins industry entrepreneurs brought to what started out much more seriously. But now it’s a lower priority because I got a contract with a university press for a bulky reference volume which will probably consume much of my time for the next 4+ years. So at this point I’ve amassed a huge compilation of raw data, somewhat classified by argument but not yet systematically and rigorously organized with histories of how each “factoid” got started and spun. So I thank Dcscccc for reminding me of this popular denialist argument which I had failed to include in my project outline and prospectus. ] ]

@johnZ, you are welcomed to address the questions I asked @dcscccc (Or are questions only allowed in one direction? I told him that I’d answer his questions if he answered mine.)

Little will be learned if I simply answer the lame argument without walking you through what you and Dscccc should have taken the time …

(1) to read much more carefully,
(2) to check the peer-reviewed literature to see if the evidence and claim were convincing to the specialists from the relevant fields of the academy, and …
(3) to see how often and by whom his research has been cited and how they referred to it, and
(4) to figure out the answer on your own.
(5) and to think through the implications of those answers for The Theory of Evolution.

We see this unfortunate pattern on forums all over the Internet. Denialists toss a poorly considered set of factoids into the pile and demand that others sort through them to see if there’s anything of value. Then someone tediously walks them through the science and explains to them what they didn’t bother to investigate–and the answer is ignored. Rinse. Repeat. It gets tiresome very quickly. Copy-and-pastes from YECist and IDer websites will only teach the reader pseudo-science. Denialists won’t learn anything from the process because they will ignore the rebuttals from those who understand the science (and the relevant scriptures. Legitimate Biblical studies scholarship from the academy works the same way.)

So I repeat for JohnZ: I will indeed address the specifics of his imagined gotcha link–but first I want you to think in a straight line. Be patient. We will get there. I wrote the questions in reply to Dscccc so he would learn from them.

===> I’ll even throw in another big hint to get you started: Have Kevin Peterson’s “discoveries” led to “re-writing the evolution textbooks”? Why/why-not?

A HINT FOR THE HINT: Have you ever noticed how often you see science news items saying: “Everything we thought we knew about ____ was wrong!” and “Because of _____, we must rewrite the textbooks.”

I shouldn’t have to state the obvious but I’m not paid to post here and I will answer the question in my own way at my own pace. In the meantime, have you considered investigating the issue for yourself online so that you will know the answer which any scientist in the relevant fields would tell you if you asked them? (Surely a discovery of this alleged importance would be big news and draw opinions from peers.) Or do you think this argument based on the 2012 article is particularly clever or novel? Do you think this argument is not just another dime-a-dozen evolution-denial tactic that we’ve seen on origins forums countless times? I want the denialists here to understand that the response/answer I will post to this tiresome argument also addresses many other grandiose claims made on EvolutionNews which denialists swallow hook, line, and sinker without serious thought or investigation. Anyone with a basic knowledge of science shouldn’t need for me to explain the answer–but I will do so anyway. Before I do, you can at least try to work through the argument on your own. I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt because it’s not a hard one.

[By the way, if anyone wants to engage the question and the Peterson article with me, it needs to be today. I’m heading to South Africa tomorrow for a lecture series and then some translator consultations in several semi-remote areas… and I have no idea whether/when/how I will have Internet access.]

[Worth mentioning: I use vision-assistance software that is still in beta. Sometimes it has caching problems and especially if I’m interrupted by several phone calls, my posts may accumulate redundant thoughts because I can’t always check through the entire document without a lot of juggling. When I do copy-and-paste from my automated response database, it sometimes produces multiple entries answering a question in more than one way. Of course, years in the classroom also prompts me to intentionally restate important concepts in multiple ways to make sure the student/reader grasps the meaning. Restatement aids retention.]

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You have given a lengthy wordy answer, assuming you need to teach rather than simply to respond. The following quote from you:

I’ll even throw in another big hint to get you started: Have Kevin Peterson’s “discoveries” led to “re-writing the evolution textbooks”? Why/why-not?

My question to you: how long did it take before biology textbooks in highschools stopped promoting the false Haeckel diagrams, after they were discovered to be false?

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hi prof tertius. im join john question. lets do this simple. what will disprove the evolution theory from phylogenetic prespective? even if peterson was right- they will just change the current tree. but will not say that the evolution have been falsified. so i realy want a prediction that we can test if the evolution is true or not.

thanks.

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So instead of you addressing the issues you are going to change subjects. OK.

SUMMARY for anybody who doesn’t want to bother reading my dissecting JohnZ’s latest attempt at denying The Theory of Evolution by the tired ol’ “Haeckel’s Drawings Argument”, here’s all you need to know: High-school biology textbooks haven’t used Haeckel’s drawings for years. Instead, they now use far more precise photographs [to use the simplest term] of embryos of various species so that students can see the embryological evidence for evolution. The same morphological phylogenetic trees evident among adults of the species can also be seen among the embryos during development. It is not a hard concept to grasp but John was hoping that repeating the hype about conspiracy theories could somehow create doubt among the gullible.

Now, for those who want more details:

I can personally attest that even university-level textbooks often show sloppy work on the part of publishers–even to “botch” what the author has worked hard to produce: the best possible textbook. And if they can save a buck by re-using old public domain material instead of the newest type of illustration, or, better yet, a color photograph, some will resort to that. Of course, at the high school level some publishers try to say as little about evolution as possible because if Texas or California textbook commissions dislike the evolution material, the textbook is sunk. So denialist propaganda and activism does pose a major threat to science education in this country. This is also yet another example of how denialist “arguments from desperation” tend to sabotage their positions.

@JohnZ, that ancient argument you resurrected is almost as embarrassing for you as your “shells on mountain tops tells us Noah’s Flood was global” argument. If you ever mention it around any scientist from a relevant field, it will tell them that you’ve swallowed all of the silliness of professional origins industry entrepreneurs.

Tell me, have you ever tried to find the answer using Google? Do you truly believe it is some sort of “smoking gun” by which you are going to debunk The Theory of Evolution?

I will return before I fly out in order to answer the Kevin Peterson argument–even though you keep changing topics. (Have you made any sort of effort to educate yourself beyond copying those silly Creation.com complaints about science textbooks? By the way, I think the BSF Facebook page has my article on the Haeckel diagram game. I’d love to hear your explanation of why you think high school biology textbooks determine whether or not The Theory of Evolution is solid science. Yet, I’ve come to realize that you’d just jump topics again. My comment to DSccc about the importance of thinking in a straight line and staying focused probably needs to be repeated.)

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By the way, for those who actually want to learn about the issue know that virtually all of the standard denialist arguments are easily to debunk through various website catalogs of denialist arguments. For example, you can find most of the classics on TalkOrigins and here’s one on the Haeckel diagrams argument. (I considered asking John to explain why the irritatingly slow public school textbook publishers who wince at the expense of hassling with updating their illustrations but he just copies the arguments. When I ask him questions to get him to explain them, he changes topics.)

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB701.html

Of course, the rationale behind the tactic of bringing up irrelevant high school textbooks is to try and reinforce the “worldwide evolutionist conspiracy” story. We all know that high school textbook publishers are at the very heart of that conspiracy and they have colluded with evil forces to sneak something over on you. Really, @johnZ? Is that the level of your “game” here? The tactic didn’t work for Jonathan Wells. And it is certainly not going to get you anywhere with anybody but the science-illiterate. Every high school biology textbook could be hopelessly out of date and that wouldn’t make the slightest difference to the mountains of evidence for The Theory of Evolution. (And yes, embryo development continues to be yet another type of evidence for Common Descent.) I doubt that John could even explain why he thinks Haeckel’s drawings matter to that topic. He probably will refuse to educate himself on the drawings even enough to discover that today’s textbooks show the evolutionary evidence clearly visible in today’s *high-quality photographs" of embryos!

Indeed, John has lots of company in terms of those who have tried to fool the science-iliterate public by spinning stories about Haeckel’s drawings. Here’s an example where the NCSE explains how the Texas textbook science denialists tried to employ John’s tactic in order to reject biology textbooks in Texas schools. As with John, the denialists didn’t understand the issue and so it backfired on them:

Perhaps John will argue that the photographs of embryos still somehow deceive and must represent another global conspiracy. Give it a try, John.

John, I’m not going to continue to play one-at-a-time tutor to each of these lame arguments from Creation.com and Answers in Genesis. You can look them up yourself at actual science websites if you don’t understand them. For that matter, many of these issues are explained at this Biologos website!

I’m usually quite willing to help people with genuine questions. But when someone is simply pushing the pseudo-science of denialism, I don’t have the time and energy to spoon-feed the answers one at a time.

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I promised @dcscccc and @johnZ that I’d address the EvolutionNews “gotcha” attempt about the Kevin Peterson news story in Nature. This post delivers on that promise. This is my last post on this latest episode of denialism.

Evolution-deniers, you can’t try and proofread and criticize a differential calculus book when you haven’t yet figured out basic algebra…which you are refusing to learn. I can’t even get you to stay focused and sit still until we address a topic. Sorry, this is the last time I’m taking the time to tutor you–though I’m only going to take enough time to help other readers to place the article in proper perspective. I’m leaving for overseas in a matter of hours.

You got very excited by the following news story because denialist websites convinced you and their faithful followers that it somehow debunked The Theory of Evolution:

http://www.nature.com/news/phylogeny-rewriting-evolution-1.10885

Did you bother to read it through and actually try to understand what it says? I see no evidence of that. The hyperbole and errors on the part of the journalist is much less important (and less reliable) than the actual science which is actually buried under the fluff, if you know what to look for.

Also, do you understand what parts of the periodical, NATURE, are peer-reviewed? Do you know how to find out? Unfortunately for your claims, the answer is no. News features are not peer-reviewed scholarship. They mostly just pass along what the journalist gleaned from interviewing scientists. Lots of “big talk” and exaggerations in science news features never pan out. Indeed, in this one, it’s been three years now and the hyperbole hasn’t panned out yet.

I’ve written about Peterson’s work in the past but I like Dr. Robert Asher’s critique more. So I’ve included a link below. Please read it carefully. “How Hyperbole Poisons Everything” is a great title. Dr. Asher captured the humor of the situation as well as the sobering problem and he’s speaking as a member of the academy who is fed up with this sort of bologna journalism that fails in its responsibility to the public:

In recent years I’ve had opportunities to learn much from Dr. Christine Janis, Professor of Paleontology and Vertebrate Anatomy at Brown University. She specializes in vertebrate evolution (especially Cenozoic mammals), craniodental functional morphology, and mammalian systematics. Many students will recognize her name on an important textbook. She’s often invited me to join her in various online debates when Genesis hermeneutics and Biblical linguistics issues arise. In interacting with her, I’ve learned a great deal from her command of the vast published literature relevant to evolution and in understanding cladistics and comparative anatomy. Here’s some of what she had to say about the typically clueless hype of Casey Luskin & Co. when EvolutionNews tried to make hay and quote-mine the Kevin Peterson news story in Nature:

“…[Besides], even if the mammalian tree got completely rewritten (which it has been before!) how does this disprove evolution? As Asher point out, it’s not as if the rodents got classified with the sharks. There have never been any transfer of species between marsupials and placentals, and each placental order (e.g., Primates, Carnivora, Rodentia) has remained of constant composition. [My emphasis.] Even though a kinkajou (a relative of the raccoon) looks a bit like a little monkey, nobody has ever claimed it belongs in the order Primates rather than Carnivora. It does surprise me what people imagine “disproves evolution” (like Stephen Meyer’s riff about the molecular phylogenetics of bats [order Chiroptera] yielding a different story than the morphology).”

“Placental mammals have been notoriously difficult to understand phylogenetically at the ordinal level ----- they had an extremely rapid radiation at the start of the Cenozoic, following dinosaur extinction, so much potential molecular information was compressed and overwritten.”

Dr. Janis also echoed much of what Dr. Asher wrote in frustration in his article which I linked above. And when I asked her about one of Peterson’s citations in the news feature, she remembered the peer-reviewed journal article and pointed out: “…it’s about mRNAs in metazoan phylogeny, not mammals.” I’ve always been fascinated at how someone within the the relevant fields of the academy can effortlessly dissect a journalist’s text sentence by sentence and cite journal articles which push aside the fluff and spin. They rebuke those outside of academia who think they can cherry-pick only what appears to support their pseudo-science propaganda and ignore the 99.9% of the evidence and the journal articles which clearly tell us how evolution works. Unprofessional efforts by journalists to somehow support a misleading headline is serious enough, but for Casey Luskin & Co. at EvolutionNews to amplify and exploit the hyperbole to appeal to their donors ignores the scripture warning to those who teach: they will be judged by a higher standard.

Now, if you resort to the ridiculous last Argument from Desperation I sometimes get, “those two critiques of Peterson’s work are not peer-reviewed”, I will revive my suspicions that you two are pranking me. [Yes, I’ve actually dealt with non-satirical people on forums who’ve said things exactly that inane.] I hope I don’t have to explain that if someone would actually be serious when saying that, it would qualify them for the first Dunning-Kruger internship.

I’m wasting no more of my time on those who are simply looking for excuses and escape routes for denying science. You have to want to learn. Those are my last answers to your questions on these topics.

Lastly, some questions for you both (and any other denialists who read this.)

  1. Did you at all consider that science journalists often exaggerate and hype and sometimes even skew their report?

  2. Did you wonder why the grandiose claims of the news feature have never been published in a peer-reviewed journal?

  3. Did you notice that in the news story it quoted a major authority on phylogenetics who said "I don’t give it any serious consideration.”? Or did you simply write him off as part of the “world-wide evolution conspiracy”?

  4. Did you consider learning enough about the topic so that you wouldn’t post comments here that made no sense?

  5. Did you ever pause to consider that Peterson’s research provides more undeniable evidence for The Theory of Evolution?

You both have much in common with Casey Luskin on these topics: that is, you have no idea how little sense you are making.

If you were sincerely wanting to learn about phylogenetic tree and how molecular data from genomic comparisons has confirmed previously published phylogenetic trees as far back as Darwin in his prime, I’d consider posting additional URLs and some commentary to help you along. But we all know that you are both looking ways to obfuscate and deny science, not learn it. So I’m leaving you to the “professionals” who are glad to help you deny The Theory of Evolution any way they can–and are delighted to make it their full-time profession and cash cow.

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  1. Did you at all consider that science journalists often exaggerate and hype and sometimes even skew their report?

Yes.

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Sorry. I fail to see the logic of that…uh…unusual statement. Could you please explain your thought processes on that? I want to understand your point but I can’t see it.

Let’s substitute “the Germ Theory of Disease” for the Theory of Evolution in your thinking here and see what we get:

“the answer is very simple- even if the Germ Theory of Disease is false, scientists will still continue to make medicine and so on. so Germ Theory doesn’t give us any useful scientific benefit. its actually an intelligent design.”

Does that help set the stage for additional explanation? (Am I the only one baffled here in this particular regard?)

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what is the conection here? do you claim that we cant make medicine without the believe in evolution? why not?

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I don’t think Molinist is talking about belief in something. You were saying “if evolution is false”, meaning not-true … You were not saying, “if we don’t / do believe in evolution…”. Why are you switching a truth claim, “if something is false” for a belief claim, “if we believe something is false”…?

We don’t need Germ Theory to do medicine. Neither, for a very, very long time need to adopt the Heliocentric model to make predictions about the stars… The Polemaic and Tychonian models worked quite well. But in the end Copernican’s and Kepler’s model proved to make more accurate predictions.

It’s the same claim that “creationists can’t be good scientists”. Of course they can do good science … The guy that invented the MRI was a Young Earth Creationist. But it’s a very different statement to say, “creationists can’t be good scientists,” to saying, “creation science isn’t good science.” No bearing on the person, but the ideas.

-Tim

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You’re right, Eddie. I made a slip-up. Thanks for the correction.

I believe the bulk of my argument is that saying we don’t “need” a hypothesis, does not mean that the hypothesis isn’t true. Didn’t the atheist, David Hume, once say, when asked about God, “I have no need of that hypothesis?” … Simply because one doesn’t feel the “need” for an hypothesis, doesn’t equate to the hypothesis being untrue. I don’t “need” to know the science of light waves that get fragmented through the atmosphere to say, “That’s a beautiful sunset.” … Does that make sense?

Perhaps one should say that if “evolution isn’t true then such ‘n’ such shouldn’t be possible, or an alternative explanation is needed.”

-Tim

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How do you know this? Wouldn’t evolutionary theory be part of some medical courses, such as A&P? And what about antibiotic resistance? Don’t medical and veterinary professionals study that in pharmacology?

This link about antibiotic resistance is from Tufts

btw, some anti-vax nuts like to claim that doctors don’t study immunity at any depth.

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of course it is. Evolution is part of every class.

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I find the question “Does evolutionary theory provide any useful scientific benefit?” rather bizarre. I can’t help but wondering if the wording truly reflects the questioner’s meaning.

After all, “Does THEORY X provide any useful scientific benefit?” would strike me just as strangely, assuming that “Theory X” stands for any valid scientific theory. Why? Because EVERY legitimate scientific theory provides a useful scientific benefit by definition because scientific theories provide explanations for the data we observe and collect. Scientific explanations are always useful because they help us to better understand the universe we live in.

Now if someone believes that explanations are not useful (regardless of whether or not they also immediately lead to better health or a labor-saving invention or whatever), then there is probably not much that I can say to convince them that valid explanations are useful and beneficial. I consider knowing and understanding to be a state superior to not knowing and not understanding. Yet I suppose the old saying, “Ignorance is bliss” became a popular saying because some people would disagree with me about the advantages of knowing and understanding.

That said, considering how the Theory of Evolution is the very foundation of all of biology and NOT understanding evolution would be akin to operating with one hand tied behind one’s back—or perhaps even both hands and both feet tied behind one’s back. Yes, one could still live and breath under such conditions, but I would NOT want to remain ignorant of what is probably the best attested and qualitatively and quantitatively abundantly/massively evidenced theory in all of science!

One could probably make a good living as a professional chemist without knowing of the existence of electrons—but why would one want to work under such a massive disadvantage? One could deal in valences and chemical reactions without understanding the role electrons play in such contexts but one would experience many disadvantages when trying to expand the boundaries of the science by means of new discoveries.

At some point, isn’t it time to stop letting one’s philosophical or theological personal presuppositions blind one to the massive piles of evidence and what one observes throughout the biospheres? How many deniers of evolution have no religious or philosophical reasons (rather than solely scientific reasons) for doing so? Not many. And that should tell us something.

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Common on, you can’t even get through High school biology without evolution. How are you going to advanced classes like genetics without it. Modern medicine is impossible without an understanding of evolution. Would you really go to Ben Carson for neurosurgery?