In2-MeC

Helsinki, Finland
4 November 2004

Icons of Evolution

A book published in 2000, Icons of Evolution--Science or Myth by Jonathan Wells is bashed by Wired (Oct. 2004, pg. 203) with these words:

Icons attempts to discredit commonly used examples of evolution, like Darwin's finches and peppered moths. Writing in Nature, evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne called Icons stealth creationism that "strives to debunk Darwinism using the familiar rhetoric of biblical creationists, including scientific quotations out of context, incomplete summaries of research, and muddled arguments. "

About the "familiar rhetoric of biblical creationists," that phrase is an example of the pejorative labeling that evolutionists use on most anyone who speaks up to say Darwinism is wrong. I looked from cover to cover in Wells' book for a quotation from the Bible. Didn't find one. I checked the index. No entry for "Holy Bible". I looked in the concluding chapter for an argument in favor of God creating life. Nada. What are we to understand from this? In the Darwinian taxonomy of ideology, either you are with evolution or you are not, and if you are not, you must be a preacher of biblical rhetoric.

The complaint about "scientific quotations out of context" is repeatedly groaned by Darwinists against the IDM. They are deeply offended that this rascally movement of non-Darwinists dares to publish quotations from sincere believers in evolution who are troubled by gaps in the theory. For an example of what I mean, let's consider something from pages 321-2 of The Design Revolution by William Dembski. While putting forward an idea of what he would like to see in a school biology textbook, Dembski comments:

Note that such a text would provide a fair and detailed treatment of Darwinian evolution. In fact, it would tell students more about Darwinian evolution than Darwinists typically want them to hear, notably about the theory's problems and weaknesses. (And we don't even need to cite ourselves here. Critics within evolutionary biology's own ranks, like the late Stephen Jay Gould and now Lynn Margulis with her theory of symbiogenesis, have saved us the trouble).

This sort of teasing reference to prominent evolutionists who have admitted in print that there are holes in their favorite theory just riles Darwinists no end with righteous indignation. They protest that the proper arena for discussion of the problems and weaknesses of evolution is inside the fold of believers in evolution. Outside that fold, those who talk of holes in evolution are creationists (or, if they don't overtly bring God into the picture, then they are stealth creationists). From the Darwinist, materialist standpoint, a creationist cannot be a real scientist, even if, like Jonathan Wells, he holds a PhD in biology.

Next Wells stands accused in Wired of presenting muddled thinking in Icons of Evolution. Seems to me that the clearest examples of muddled thinking in his book are to be found in the evolutionists that he writes about. On pages 130-1 Wells relates what happened in the world of Darwinian academia after a team of molecular biologists extracted a DNA sample from the fossil bones of a Triceratops, a huge lumbering dinosaur with three horns jutting out of a bony face shield. A week later the magazine Science announced that the Triceratops DNA was most similar to bird DNA. Now, there is a "sect" of evolutionists called the cladists who are trying to prove that birds evolved from dinosaurs--and in fact that birds are dinosaurs. The cladists are opposed by ornithologists--that is, biologists who specialize in the study of birds. So the announcement in Science that Triceratops had bird DNA brought ecstasy to the cladist camp. But that's not the end of the story. Trouble quickly brewed up out of that DNA sample, spoiling the cladists' party. First, according to paleontology, there are two main branches in the dinosaur family. Cladistic theory maintains that birds evolved from only one of these branches; alas, Triceratops is classed in the other. Next, it was admitted that the DNA sample allegedly from Triceratops was 100% turkey DNA! Which is utterly ridiculous and forces us to ask just whose thinking is muddled. As cladistic evolutionists ran for cover from the fallout of this monumental faux pas, they lamely pleaded that while the DNA sample was being taken, one of the scientists may have been eating a turkey sandwich.

At a Symposium on Dinosaur Bird Evolution held at Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in 2000, a cladist named Kevin Padian, who happens to be president of the National Center for Science Education, brazenly attacked the ornithological, birds-are-not-dinosaurs camp with a windy blast of rhetoric so empty of logic that, with a few word changes, it would typify the sort of argument evolutionists make against the IDM.

On page 133 of Icons, Wells (who personally attended the symposium) lists the key elements of Padian's attack on the ornithologists. I'm rendering his list into my own words for the sake of readers who are not comfortable with English scientific jargon:

1) Padian charged that those who criticize the theory that birds evolved from dinosaurs have failed to propose an alternative hypothesis that can be tested by evidence.

2) After saying they had no alternative hypothesis at all, Padian then told the symposium that critics of the dino-to-bird theory base their hypothesis on evidence that they have interpreted in a biased way.

3) Next Padian asserted that while science is not democratic, the majority of the scientific community rejects the method of the critics, no matter what evidence they put forward.

4) Padian concluded that criticisms of the dino-to-bird theory ceased to be science 10 years ago. Therefore in fact the controversy is dead.

Wells writes that Padian's argument reminds him of an old lawyer's joke: Jones sues Smith for borrowing his kettle and returning it with a crack in the side. Smith's lawyer defends his client with this 4-part argument (which at the logical level is structured much as Padian's 4-part argument was).

1) Smith never borrowed the kettle.

2. When Smith returned the kettle, it wasn't cracked.

3) The kettle was already cracked when Smith borrowed it.

4) There is no kettle.

Yes, this is muddled thinking! But the muddle is in Padian's brain, not Wells'.

Finally, Wells is accused of putting forward incomplete summaries of research. But this anecdote he offers on page 58 of Icons of Evolution seems to me to really point out whose research is incomplete--due to being blindsided by a theory that doesn't work, namely Darwin's theory of evolution.

In 1999, a Chinese paleontologist who is an acknowledged expert on Cambrian fossils visited the United States to lecture on several university campuses. I attended one lecture in which he pointed out that the "top-down" pattern of the Cambrian explosion contradicts Darwin's theory of evolution. Afterwards, scientists in the audience asked him many questions about specific fossils, but they completely avoided the topic of Darwinian evolution. When our Chinese visitor later asked me why, I told him that perhaps they were just being polite to their visitor, because criticizing Darwinism is unpopular with American scientists. At that he laughed, and said: "In China we can criticize Darwin, but not the government; in America you can criticize the government, but not Darwin. "

"Icons attempts to discredit commonly used examples of evolution, like Darwin's finches and peppered moths," grumbles Wired. Well, is the book successful in that attempt? I think so, seeing that author Wells is a qualified biologist who marshalls numerous quotations from acknowledged experts (who are mostly evolutionists themselves) to prove that indeed, the icons of evolution are false idols.

He starts with the 1953 experiment of Stanley Miller. While school textbooks still to this day cite this experiment as demonstrating that the chemical building blocks of life could readily have been generated in an ancient sea electrified by lightning, at the level of professional science, it is completely discredited.

Darwin's tree of life--the bottom-up branch-out of increasingly complex life-forms from primitive roots--doesn't fit the facts. (See footnote at the bottom of this page. )

The recapitulation of species ancestry in the human child's body as it takes shape in the mother's womb--evolving in nine months from protoplasm to fish, amphibian, mammal and then human--is shown to be utter bunk. Not just wrong, but a plain fraud. Yet bogus drawings from the 1800s of the embryo passing through evolutionary stages of development are still to be found in recent school textbooks.

Archaeopteryx, the strange winged, feathered, toothed skeleton hailed in Darwin's day as the first fulfillment of his hope that missing links between species would be discovered in the fossil record, is dismissed by today's science as mostly likely not an ancestor of modern birds. Yet school texts continue to present it as the link between two species, reptiles and birds.

The industrial melanism of the peppered moth, a subject not new to In2-MeC, is given a full treatment in Chapter 7 of Icons. A twisted tale of fudged data, staged photos of dead moths glued to tree trunks--where in nature they do not alight--and a grudging admission by leading biologists, long delayed by doctrinal intransigence, that the evolving peppered moth is a peppered myth.

About Darwin's Galapagos finches, whose varied beak sizes were hailed as proof of adaptive evolution, The Wall Street Journal is quoted as stating:

When our leading scientists have to resort to the sort of distortion that would land a stock promoter in jail, you know they are in trouble. "

Four-winged fruit flies as the proof of Darwinian genetics; branching evolutionary lines of prehistoric, miniature horses; and the ultimate icon, the transition from ape to human, are similarly examined in the light of Wells' reasoned scrutiny and found to be hopeful monsters of the Darwinian imagination. Wonderous beasts of myth--like the sphinx, a human-lion-bird; like the mutant one-eyed cyclops; like the half-man, half-goat satyr. I must correct myself: the superhuman Kinnaras and Kimpurusas, whose bodies exhibit the combined features of different species, are not myths. Exactly as these icons of Darwinism that Wells exposes are not science.
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The "top-down" pattern refers to the dispersion of the explosion of life in that epoch. According to Darwinian theory, life should "explode" from bottom-up; that is, simpler forms of life are to appear first, at the bottom of the explosion. From these primitive living entities more complex forms of life should evolve, spreading out upward in different branches. However, paleontological evidence shows the opposite. The Cambrian explosion began above with more advanced forms of life, and spread downward in branches of less advanced forms. In this "top-down pattern a symmetry can be seen with the Bhagavatam description of creation. It starts with Brahma, the most advanced jiva, and spreads from him downward throughout the universe.

"The Cambrian explosion" refers to the sudden appearance of many species within a relatively short time during the Cambrian epoch of prehistory, estimated to have been from 600 to 500 million years ago.

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