Why Evolution is True

[ALien]

As an astronomer, my familiarity with the details of biological evolution are about on par with that of an interested layman (though being trained scientifically helps with that understanding, adding insight to the process of the scientific endeavor). I’m familiar with the concepts of descent with modification, genetic mutations, natural pressures for adaptations, and the like. I’m less familiar with other aspects, like allele frequencies, how specifically pressures can change adaptations, and what transitional fossils are in the record, but I can probably hold my own against your run-of-the-mill creationist.

That’s why I loved the book Why Evolution is True by biologist Jerry Coyne. This is a clear, easy-to-understand work that shows you — with no compromising and no backing down — that evolution has occurred, the evidence is overwhelming, and that no other explanation for what we see around us makes sense.

He goes through many, many arguments about this: how we do see adaptation to changing environments, how the DNA records support the change in the genome of life with time and environment, how fossils support evolutionary change.

Moreover, he shows that the scientific theory of evolution by natural (and in some cases, sexual) selection makes clear predictions which are borne out by observations. And on top of that he shows why these conclusions make no sense at all if you think there is some Creator that made us the way we are out of thin air (or dust, I suppose).

I was particularly struck by the concept of geographic isolation and how that affects evolution (perhaps because I spent more than a week last year touring the Galapagos Islands). Species isolated on islands adapt genetically and morphologically (or vice-versa) to the environment, and you can see how there are changes in those species as they radiate out to other nearby islands. We only see species on those islands that come from nearby land masses, as you’d expect from natural methods of dispersion over long time periods (but not what you’d expect for a Creator to simply pop life into existence). And all of this fits in with what geologists see by way of plate tectonics and continental drift.

Creationists love to try to pick apart evolution, looking at minor details in isolation and saying it doesn’t make sense. But they’re wrong: evolution is a beautiful tapestry, a complex fabric of countless threads woven together into a grand picture of life on Earth. And it all holds together.

I strongly recommend this book to anyone with even a passing interest in evolution, or the manufactured controversy of creationism. Coyne’s work is complete and convincing, slamming the door firmly closed on young-Earth creationism. If you have to deal with creationists in your life, this book is something you should keep very handy.

Bonus: my friend Joel Parker interviewed Coyne on his radio show How on Earth (you can get the MP3 through this direct link), and another friend D. J. Grothe interviewed Coyne on his podcast Point of Inquiry.

And I’ll leave you with this, Coyne’s perfect summation of the situation (from pages 222-223 of the book):

Every day, hundreds of observations and experiments pour into the hopper of the scientific literature… and every fact that has something to do with evolution confirms its truth. Every fossil that we find, every DNA molecule that we sequence, every organ system that we dissect supports the idea that species evolved from common ancestors. Despite innumerable possible explanations that could prove evolution untrue, we don’t have a single one. We don’t find mammals in Precambrian rocks, humans in the same layers as dinosaurs, or any other fossils out of evolutionary order. DNA sequencing supports the evolutionary relationships of species originally deduced from the fossil record. And, as natural selection predicts, we find no species with adaptations that benefit only a different species. We do find dead genes and vestigial organs, incomprehensible under the idea of special creation. Despite a million chances to be wrong, evolution always comes up right. That is as close as we can get to a scientific fact.

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[Truthed]

I smell a debate

[Mingus]

The point of the matter I believe ought to be debated isn't really the biological aspect, it's actually physics. At the quantum level, consciousness can affect the outcome of everything. Scientists have to contend with the theological idea that there may be God in that instance, while theologians would need to contend with the idea that God plays dice, since quantum mechanics is based on probabilities.

[kidflash2008]

Originally Posted by Truthed

I smell a debate

So here it comes!

While microevolution has been shown to be true with some species, the proof is not there for a large species actually evolving into another. There are some big questions that have yet to be answered. 600 million years ago, the Earth had nothing but tiny celled creatures, then there was a huge explosion into rather large and complex creatures. How and why did the creatures evolve so quickly, and where are the transformation fossils?

The Leakys' have a fossil of human footprints that are a few million years old. The prints are made by a human foot at a time when all the hominids had monkey feet. Who made those footprints? Are modern humans much older than previously thought?

There are many questions that evolution alone cannot answer.

[c4pt0r]

maybe a mans curiosity on the "missing link" got him to "evolve" to such a state where he transcended the fabric of time and went to "see for him self"

maybe..

[SmokingMan]

You have to respect Jerry Allen Coyne's education, but if he's so sure of himself, why has he dedicated so much of his life to debating creationism. Serious scientists are busy trying to learn more in their research and furthering science. They're not interested in things they don't believe in. That goes for creationists as well. There are a lot of scientists and creationists who would rather argue over things that have no relevance to the work they're getting paid for though. That last paragraph there shows a person who is probably a better salesman than a biologist. The idea that all the fossils we find prove evolution is a pretty big stretch. Any biologist who knows the fossil record can testify that it is full of questions, even hoaxes produced by people motivated by the demand for evidence of evolution once the theory surfaced. I don't believe that intelligent design should be taught as a science, and as a biologist I do subscribe to certain aspects of the theory of evolution, but I would only be hurting myself as a scientist to conclude for myself that the theory as a whole was a closed case. There are too many wholes. Creationists nitpick at little details because often they have very valid points.

"Altruism is a special difficulty, which at first appeared to me insuperable, and actually fatal to my whole theory." -Charles Darwin, Origin of Species

Altruism is a very small aspect of the theory, dealing with a certain kind of
symbiosis; the fact that some individuals within populations of species will sacrifice themselves for the benefit of other individuals in their social groups. This is a problem because keeping in mind selection and fitness, this behavior should be weeded out. This is backwards of Darwin's theory, which explains his dilemma. There have since been some possible explanations, but nothing significantly air-tight. There still is no solid answer to this problem which Darwin called fatal to his whole theory.

If we are seriously more interested in the truth rather than in proving a theory, we will nit-pick and attempt to falsify. This is what strengthens science. This is science at work.

The theory of evolution went through an evolution of its own. Darwin was even moreso a better salesman than a biologist. He was a poor student, but one of his professors noticed his interest in animals and suggested that he intern on the H.M.S. Beagle voyage. Furthermore, no one really knew about genetics back then except for Gregor Mendel. After the theories came out, Darwinians and Mendelians couldn't agree on anything and were always butting heads. Eventually there was a broad-based effort to to make Mendelian genetics work with natural selection, which we refer to today as Modern Synthesis. Evolution went from being defined as "descent with modification" to "changes in allele frequencies." While descent with modification implies common ancestry, evolution on a macro level, changes in allele frequencies is something much more on a micro level. That is to say that if my family is all brown-eyed, and I marry a blue eyed woman and have a kid with blue eyes, there is now a fraction of my family that is blue-eyed. The way that evolution is defined today, technically that is evolution. So, yes, evolution does occur. Evolution biologists assume that these small scale changes are what leads to the large scale changes. It appears to be the best explanation we can come up with today given our current level of intellectual growth.

Today if you take a college level evolution coarse, you will be learning about 80% genetics on an extremely micro level - only that which can be observed and tested. The closer you get to macroevolution the less of a science you have to work with, teach or learn.

Now, a little off topic, but think about this:
I just finished working on a project dealing with monitering the interactions between northern spotted owls and barred owls in the Pacific northwest. The spotted owl is listed as threatened under the endangered species act, and the barred owl is a larger, more aggresive invading species that has made its way into the spotted owl's geographic range. We have some evidence that barred owls may be killing spotted owls in agressive territorial disputes, which is why we're doing this. The barred and spotted owl are similar in morphology and are in the same genus. If there were no conservation effort, and the barred owl out-competed the spotted owl to extinction, in the future the fossil record in this area would show one owl, and then suddenly, a similar larger species with the first species ceasing to exist. It would seem that the smaller and more specialized spotted owl evolved by selection into the larger and more versatile barred owl. But that's not what scientists will say in the future because we are observing and recording these events. I just spent close to 80 hours creating a data spreadsheet. The difference is in the past we weren't there to observe and record, so to us the fossil record looks like what it looks like. This is the law of succession. Species in a certain geographic area share similarities to species in the fossil record for that area. This is a huge piece of evidence for evolution. But you have to make a choice here. Because todays species share similarities to the species that used to live where they live now, do we just assume they evolved? Using Okham's razor (most simple explaination is usually the right one) I would say that the explanation that can be observed and studied today is the most simple explanation. If we know that it occurs because we can observe it in action, why think it happened another way? This is no rare and isolated case, this happens all the time in all places.

Ya know what cranks my gears? It seems like everyone has everything backwards. Conservation is linked with evolution, actually it's part of the study of evolution. But if evolution is fact, and man is truely just an intellectually evolved primate, then man's environmental footprint is natural, and every species that man drives to extinction...that's just evolution! So where is the solid argument for conservation? Likewise, creationists seem to have an attitude that God is going to take care of things before we can render the planet unsustainable and conservation is more of a waste of time. But if man is created by God, then like the Bible says, man has the responsibility to care over the earth and its creatures. Peculiar.

Well, my next job is in the Dakotas, this time studying a whole lot of different species of birds. Maybe when I get back in a few months, if I've had any funny new epiphanies, I'll log on and share.

[c4pt0r]

while you bicker over something as trivial as this. god vs evolution.

think about this..

who funds your research? follow the links and you will end at big oil

now think about this

most of the 'lower' species don't dare to act against us for fear of death.

and the only thing evolving to attempt to keep our population down are viruses like the common cold and other 'humans' who thirst for 'your' blood

now lets think about some eastern religions that believe in re incarnation

you begin your trip as something very small...like lets say a.. virus and you end at something very big ... like.. lets say a human.

not consider my 'god given name'

ilya

now read it backwards

it sounds something like eye L eye

or maybe

eye lie

or maybe i'm just an owl

o.o

O.o o.O

now give a hoot and don't pollute

here is an experiment for 'you'

put a gun in your mouth

say ' i believe '

and pull the trigger.



if that made you sad, i am sorry

here is a joke

10101010110201020102010101020102010201010101020101 010102

who let those 2s in??!!

this club is for tens!!

here is another

on a scale of 0.01 through 9.99 find balance!!

(thats zero point zero repeating one trough nine point nine repeating)

i don't have that dash thing over the numbers on this keyboard, but i'm learning just like you

[SmokingMan]

WOW!! Ok, so whoever that was, try to reply while you're not hammered, stoned, tripping, smacked up, coked up, also make sure, if you're supposed to be on medication, that you've taken it and waited a while for the meds to kick in. I really have no idea what you're trying to get across. If you can't make a point, don't try to make it.

[kidflash2008]

Michael Cremo gets a lot of flak from critics because of his Eastern Religious beliefs. The critics still have not answered some of the fundamental questions in his book "Forbidden Archeology". The evidence of the footprints that are a few million years old are owned by the Leaky family. They are human feet, when all hominids had monkey feet at the time.
There are many questions out there on evolution that need to be answered. Microevolution is a fact, however, macroevolution still needs the smoking gun to prove it.

[kyoojona]

The major problem and cause for all this confusion as to whether we were created or we evolved is simply IGNORANCE.

Creation is how we came about
Evolution is what we do now that we are here.

Inasmuch as the problem is simple, so is the solution.. JUST SEEK KNOWLEDGE...not just knowledge of the things we see happening but also knowledge of what we don't see which causes what we see to take place.