As I've previously noted, one of the fundamental flaws in the attacks on evolution and cosmology made by the Christadelphian website Life's Big Questions is the confused understanding of fact and theory in science. Given its inaccurate attack on Big Bang cosmology, it is hardly surprising that its attack on evolutionary biology likewise completely misses its target. As none of its attacks on evolution are new, I will not address them in detail, but refer to previous articles where I address the same special creationist claims about evolution. Where I will direct the majority of my time is in a particularly bad case of quote mining, where LBQ take out of context a quotation from a popular book by geneticist Steve Jones, where a comment about the fossil record is distorted by omission of an opening sentence and the immediately following paragraphs. Either the people behind LBQ have deliberately omitted these sentences and paragraphs, or they have copied - without attempting to verify the reference - an attack from another creationist website. Both alternatives reflect poorly on LBQ, and given that this is an apologetics website, such a blatant example of quote mining is hardly going to make the scientifically literate reader warm to our community.
The 'fact and theory' approach taken by LBQ falls apart badly when they discuss evolution. As I've said repeatedly, evolution as fact refers to common descent and large-scale evolutionary change, and they have not been controversial for well over a century as many biologists have pointed out. [1] Evolution as theory refers to the theoretical mechanism advanced to explain the fact of common descent, and while the currently accepted theory of evolution - like any scientific theory - can be falsified, this would not make the fact of common descent [2] go away.
Like any scientific theory, the modern theory of evolution is not perfect, but it has considerable predictive and explanatory power over disciplines as disparate as palaeontology [3] and molecular genetics. Evolution would predict that animals that have either lost tooth enamel or teeth altogether would retain degenerate protein coding genes. This prediction was verified in a 2009 study that found:
LBQ quote mines Steven Jones
Darwin has been repeatedly quote mined by special creationists for two reasons. The first is the mistaken belief that scientific truth is based on authority, and that by undermining Darwin, one refutes evolution. [6] The second is that Darwin's rhetorical style of posing a challenging question, then answering it allows special creationists to quote Darwin out of context by quoting only his question, omitting Darwin's answer, and then dishonestly claiming that Darwin held grave doubts about his theory.
In 1999, geneticist Steve Jones wrote Almost Like a Whale: The 'Origin of Species' Updated that used the basic structure of Darwin's book but with 20th century evidence. As he too used Darwin's rhetorical trick, and that has allowed LBQ to quote mine Jones in a particularly egregious and shameful manner. LBQ asserts:
However, if you take the time to look up the quote, you will find two glaring omissions. The first is that LBQ omitted the opening sentence of the paragraph, in which Jones provides an executive summary of the answer:
Like any scientific theory, the modern theory of evolution is not perfect, but it has considerable predictive and explanatory power over disciplines as disparate as palaeontology [3] and molecular genetics. Evolution would predict that animals that have either lost tooth enamel or teeth altogether would retain degenerate protein coding genes. This prediction was verified in a 2009 study that found:
Enamel is the hardest substance in the vertebrate body. One of the key proteins involved in enamel formation is enamelin. Most placental mammals have teeth that are capped with enamel, but there are also lineages without teeth (anteaters, pangolins, baleen whales) or with enamelless teeth (armadillos, sloths, aardvarks, pygmy and dwarf sperm whales). All toothless and enamelless mammals are descended from ancestral forms that possessed teeth with enamel. Given this ancestry, we predicted that mammalian species without teeth or with teeth that lack enamel would have copies of the gene that codes for the enamelin protein, but that the enamelin gene in these species would contain mutations that render it a nonfunctional pseudogene. To test this hypothesis, we sequenced most of the protein-coding region of the enamelin gene in all groups of placental mammals that lack teeth or have enamelless teeth. In every case, we discovered mutations in the enamelin gene that disrupt the proper reading frame that codes for the enamelin protein. Our results link evolutionary change at the molecular level to morphological change in the fossil record and also provide evidence for the enormous predictive power of Charles Darwin's theory of descent with modification. [4] Emphasis mineFar from being a theory in crisis, evolution is very much alive and well, and the LBQ attack on evolution betrays specific ignorance both of the difference between evolution as fact and evolution as theory, and the considerable evidence for common descent in areas such as biogeography, palaeontology, developmental biology, and comparative genomics. As I have commented on the specific allegations made in the LBQ article many times, to avoid repetition, I will refer the reader to previous articles in which these special creationist allegations are refuted. [5]
LBQ quote mines Steven Jones
Darwin has been repeatedly quote mined by special creationists for two reasons. The first is the mistaken belief that scientific truth is based on authority, and that by undermining Darwin, one refutes evolution. [6] The second is that Darwin's rhetorical style of posing a challenging question, then answering it allows special creationists to quote Darwin out of context by quoting only his question, omitting Darwin's answer, and then dishonestly claiming that Darwin held grave doubts about his theory.
In 1999, geneticist Steve Jones wrote Almost Like a Whale: The 'Origin of Species' Updated that used the basic structure of Darwin's book but with 20th century evidence. As he too used Darwin's rhetorical trick, and that has allowed LBQ to quote mine Jones in a particularly egregious and shameful manner. LBQ asserts:
This lack of transitional fossils was acknowledged by Professor Steve Jones of University College, London, when he published an updated version of Darwin's Origin of Species in 1999. This is what he wrote:
The fossil record - in defiance of Darwin's whole idea of gradual change - often makes great leaps from one form to the next. Far from the display of intermediates to be expected from slow advance through natural selection many species appear without warning, persist in fixed form and disappear, leaving no descendants. Geology assuredly does not reveal any finely graduated organic chain, and this is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against the theory of evolution.So we can see that the fossils give us an important fact. That is that the fossil record does not contain the partly developed animals that the theory of evolution predicts. (Emphasis in the original)
Death, decay, and dissolution all help to solve its greatest puzzle. The fossil record - in defiance of Darwin's whole idea of gradual change - often makes great leaps from one form to the next. Far from the display of intermediates to be expected from slow advance through natural selection many species appear without warning, persist in fixed form and disappear, leaving no descendants. Geology assuredly does not reveal any finely graduated organic chain, and this is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against the theory of evolution. [7] (Emphasis mine)If this omission was not damning enough, LBQ fails to quote the following paragraphs in which Jones answers the rhetorical objection on which he ended the first paragraph
The unexpected chronicle of ancient life is not proof that the idea of slow change is of its nature flawed. Much of the reason lies in the record itself. Few bones rest in peace and most of those who die decay almost at one. Even the few that are preserved are soon washed away. As a result, great periods leave no token and dramatic events stay unrecorded. The archive of the roocks is a series of snapshots, taken at long intervals with a badly focused camera. [8] (Emphasis mine)
A few paragraphs further, one sees how Jones, having explained why the fossil record is fragmentary, points out that in some areas, it provides remarkable insights into evolutionary history
This dismal picture has a few exceptions. Geologists have unearthed whole pages of the past. Everyone knows about the dinosaurs of the American West and the fossil bird Archaeopteryx, in which even the details of feathers are retained. Two kinds of elephants exist today, but a hundred and sixty-five species of their extinct relatives are preserved, many as complete skeletons, to make a seamless set of links between past and present. The remains of our own ancestors - unknown at the time of The Origin - are firm proof we descend from apes. Any of those bones is conclusive evidence of evolution and is in itself enough to demolish the creationist case. [9] (Emphasis mine)
This degree of deception in quoting is staggering. Either LBQ has deliberately quoted Jones out of context by omitting the opening sentence of the paragraph they quoted, and failing to quote the paragraph immediately following in which Jones answers the rhetorical objection or LBQ has simply copied blindly another special creationst source without bothering to verify that their source had quoted Jones correctly. Neither option reflects well on LBQ.
An online search for the abbreviated Jones quotation shows that they were not the only special creationists to misquote him. The UK-based YEC propaganda organisation misleadingly named Truth in Science quote mines Jones in exactly the same way by omitting the opening sentence and subsequent paragraph
But when, 140 years later, Prof. Steve Jones of University College London published an updated version of Darwin’s Origin of Species in 1999, the fossil record still posed the same problem.
The fossil record - in defiance of Darwin's whole idea of gradual change - often makes great leaps from one form to the next. Far from the display of intermediates to be expected from slow advance through natural selection many species appear without warning, persist in fixed form and disappear, leaving no descendants. Geology assuredly does not reveal any finely graduated organic chain, and this is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against the theory of evolution.” (Almost Like a Whale, p. 252)
As the odds of both LBQ and TiS purely by chance omitting the starting sentence of Jones' paragraph and the following paragraph to make exactly the same anti-evolutionary point are fairly low, given that LBQ and TiS are both UK based, the odds are that LBQ has simply uncritically copied the TiS quote mine without bothering to verify the reference.
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| Figure 1. Original Steven Jones quotation in context |
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| Figure 2. The Life's Big Questions selective quotation of Jones |
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| Figure 3. The Truth in Science selective quotation of Jones |
As I said earlier however, neither option reflects well on LBQ at all. Deliberate misquotation is morally dishonest behaviour. Uncritically copying another person's selectively quoted excerpt is a fundamental failure in research skills, and merely emphasises the damning lack of basic research competence behind the entire LBQ section on science. Given that LBQ is ostensibly an apologetic project, blunders of this magnitude undermine the credibility of the entire website. A scientifically literate reader noting the scope and magnitude of the errors in LBQ's science subsection would be justified in questioning whether the entire website is as lacking in credibility.
Concluded
Concluded
References
1. "Each of thousands of peer-reviewed articles published every year in
scientific journals provides further confirmation [of common descent] (though, as Futuyma (1998)
notes, “no biologist today would think of publishing a paper on ‘new
evidence for evolution’ ... it simply hasn’t been an issue in scientific
circles for more than a century”). Conversely, no reliable observation
has ever been found to contradict the general notion of common descent." Gregory T.R. "Evolution as Fact, Theory, and Path" Evo Edu Outreach (2008) 1:46-52
2. Theobald, Douglas L. "29+ Evidences for Macroevolution: The Scientific Case for Common Descent." The Talk.Origins Archive. Vers. 2.89. 2012. Web. 12 Mar. 2012 <http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/>
3.
4. Meredith, R.W., Gatesy, J., Murphy, W.J., Ryder, O.A., and Springer, M.S. Molecular Decay of the Tooth Gene Enamelin (ENAM) Mirrors the Loss of Enamel in the Fossil Record of Placental Mammals. PLoS Genetics (2009) 5(9): e1000634.
5. The evidence for evolution with specific focus on comparative genomics and palaeontology can be found here. The 20 part series critiquing John Collyer's "20 Scientific Facts Seldom Taught to Students" also touches on specific allegations raised in the series. Finally, Ryan Gregory's excellent "Evolution as Fact, Theory, and Path" provides an excellent overview on basic scientific epistemology with specific focus on evolutionary examples. (See Reference 1)
6. This make as much sense as trying to refute general relativity by quoting classical physicists from the mid-19th century. Evolutionary biology has progressed considerably since Darwin's day.
7. Jones S Almost Like a Whale - The 'Origin of Species' Updated (2000: Random House) p 252
8. ibid, p 252-253
9. ibid, p 253
10. Truth in Science is a UK-based creationist organisation which "promote[s] the idea that there is scientific controversy about the validity of Darwinian evolution, a view rejected by the UK's Royal Society and virtually every Academy of Science around the world." Its board of directors, council of reference, and scientific advisory panel is replete with engineers and theologians, but devoid of any scientists whose area of expertise directly related to evolutionary biology and related fields. Its lack of credibility to comment on evolution is painfully apparent.
10. Truth in Science is a UK-based creationist organisation which "promote[s] the idea that there is scientific controversy about the validity of Darwinian evolution, a view rejected by the UK's Royal Society and virtually every Academy of Science around the world." Its board of directors, council of reference, and scientific advisory panel is replete with engineers and theologians, but devoid of any scientists whose area of expertise directly related to evolutionary biology and related fields. Its lack of credibility to comment on evolution is painfully apparent.
