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TechnoratiMonkeying about with evolution
Why do some people of faith distrust evolutionists? The reasons can be found in the notorious Scopes Monkey Trial.
I sometimes wonder goes through the mind of an American child faced with an afternoon of science classes. Does the prospect of an evolution discussion create a simmering sense of expectation, a trembling hope that something special is about to happen? Does the explosiveness of the topic and its contested history charge the classroom with electric excitement?
I doubt it. But there is no shortage of angst amongst American adults over just what goes on in those generally soporific science classes. Right now, 83 years on from the Scopes trial, the air is heavy in sleepy Louisiana, where the state legislature has ratified a bill to: "allow and assist teachers, principals, and other school administrators to create and foster an environment... that promotes critical thinking skills, logical analysis, and open and objective discussion of scientific theories being studied, including, but not limited to, evolution, the origins of life, global warming, and human cloning…"
The most important point here, according to the widely-read magazine New Scientist, is that teachers in Louisiana can present topics related to evolution as scientifically questionable. Exasperated editors of science journals continue to fret over the fact that 45 percent of Americans ascribe to Young Earth Creationism, that is, that the Bible account of creation should be taken literally and that the intervening millennia could be counted on one’s fingers.
Are these evolutionary recusants merely religious fanatics either unwilling or unable to follow a relatively simple train of evidence? Perhaps some of them are. But the history of the popular debate on evolution demands a more nuanced consideration. The Scopes Monkey Trial is a case in point. This has become a touchstone for debate over evolution in the US ever since 1925. John Scopes was a teacher in Tennessee who defied a state law which banned evolution in the classroom. He was found guilty in a trial which riveted America and was even made into a classic film, Inherit the Wind.
At the centre of the controversy was the 1914 textbook which Scopes used, Civic Biology. The case for the prosecution was derided at the time (and ever since) as “theological bilge” from backwoods buffoons, partly because the defense team succeeded in turning the event into a trial of the historical and scientific value of the Bible. Time magazine described it as "the fantastic cross between a circus and a holy war". But what about the book itself? Everyone remembers the "degraded nonsense which country preachers are ramming and hammering into yokel skulls" (to quote the dyspeptic H.L. Mencken), but what about Civic Biology? What were its views on evolution? From a contemporary perspective, they, too, were bilge. Take for instance the author’s comments on race:
At the present time there exist upon the earth five races or varieties of man, each very different from the other in instincts, social customs, and, to an extent, in structure. These are the Ethiopian or negro type, originating in Africa; the Malay or brown race, from the islands of the Pacific; the American Indian; the Mongolian or yellow race, including the natives of China, Japan, and the Eskimos; and finally, the highest type of all, the Caucasians, represented by the civilized white inhabitants of Europe and America.
The author offers forceful recommendations regarding the problem of criminality:
Studies have been made on a number of different families in this country, in which mental and moral defects were present in one or both of the original parents. The "Jukes" family is a notorious example…. In seventy-five years the progeny of the original generation has cost the state of New York over a million and a quarter of dollars… If such people were lower animals; we would probably kill them off to prevent them from spreading. Humanity will not allow this, but we do have the remedy of separating the sexes in asylums or other places and in various ways preventing intermarriage and the possibilities of perpetuating such a low and degenerate race.
He is clear on the limits of reproductive choice:
When people marry there are certain things that the individual as well as the race should demand. The most important of these is freedom from germ diseases which might be handed down to the offspring. Tuberculosis, that dread white plague which is still responsible for almost one seventh of all deaths, epilepsy, and feeble-mindedness are handicaps which it is not only unfair but criminal to hand down to posterity. The science of being well born is called eugenics.
And he makes quite explicit the link between his views and those of evolutionary science:
If the stock of domesticated animals can be improved, it is not unfair to ask if the health and vigor of the future generations of men and women on the earth might not be improved by applying to them the laws of selection. This improvement of the future race has a number of factors in which we as individuals may play a part.
Objections, anyone?
One reason for the failure of evolution education at the popular level is that both sides have depicted evolution as inextricably linked to scientific materialism (clearly false), and one side of the debate has taken ethical anti-humanism to follow from scientific materialism (quite a sound conclusion). Scientific materialism may have expunged the eugenics movement from its pamphlets and websites, but it advocates eugenics under a new names like abortion, sex selection, genetic screening, and euthanasia. Note that both incarnations of the eugenics movement lay claim to a paradoxical ideal of compassion: we must be anti-human for the sake of humanity.
Materialists have claimed the discovery that man is 60 percent fruit fly, genetically speaking, is the basis for a radical new equality. What it really means, working from their philosophy, is the foundation for a radical new inequality. Souls are always equal, but genes are never. If the foundation for our deepest understanding of the human person is genetics, then the conclusions of Civic Biology, and the most radical of modern sociobiologists, are valid. And as long as evolutionary theory carries the baggage of a materialistic worldview imposed by its chief proponents, it will be opposed by many on the grounds of humanistic intuition independent of theological concerns.
Phil Elias studies Medicine at the University of New South Wales in Sydney.
David, I wasn’t directing “my fear to be alone” speculation at you. Instead I was addressing a common confusion between improbable (low probability) and impossible (that cannot happen) situations. One answer from scientific community to the accusation that the biological evolution from simple forms appears improbable is to show it more probable. But that’s not really necessary since the theory isn’t disproved by that critic, so why the effort? The only difference between the two scenarios (low and more probability) is that in the second, there is chances that the next living world may be near us, while in the first, we might well be the only one in the all universe. To live and accept the first scenario is to think us utterly alone,… unacceptable for many. And that might explain the effort in addressing the critic.
If you inspired me to follow this direction is because the spiritual and religious “worlds” are too, human answers to the loneliness problem. They are also supernatural solutions, which turns them in “Deus ex-machine” solutions improper for science, and so my remark. You didn’t explain at the time why did you think random mutations inadequate (it’s only because of aesthetics’s reasons?), but out of respect for your intuition, I recalled others who think the same, although in a different language. What I find amusing in the connection is that math sometimes offers exquisite and unexpected solutions to some of its problems. Like God’s message hidden in a universal constant, in the Carl Sagan novel “Contact”, maybe your “will to life” is codified in the math of the equations “ruling” life.
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João Pedro Afonso, personal musings about what might be going on are different from presenting a scientific theory. If I speculate about an underlying will to life in the Universe, it is just that, speculation. The “Deus-ex-machina” here, the improbable plot twist, is Genesis in the Bible. Having said that, random selection may be true, or it may be only partly true. It is,after all, just a working hypothesis. admittedly, the members of a species who are most suited to deal with a specific crises will survive and, it can be assumed, pass on their special qualities to their offspring. But it doesn’t seem like enough. And worse, to my mind, it lacks elegance.
Darwinists argue against any inheritance of acquired characteristics with an almost religious intensity. Why the fervor to defend a working hypothesis? It would seem more sensible to say that Evolution is a fact and here is how we think it came about. The Darwinists close their minds to any other possibility but random selection alone.
Fear of being alone is not a factor for me. I’m an old, war-weary Existentialist. I know I’m alone. This late in life I wouldn’t have it any other way. The attempt to escape from that reality has caused many of the problems in the world. The fact of conscious existence, though, is a great mystery. I’m sure it can’t be solved, but I believe we can go a lot farther toward understanding it than I would have thought possible when I was younger.
David, what strikes me most in your thoughts is its remarkable resemblance with some discussions I’ve been reading which can be resumed in the following question: is the accepted random mechanisms fast enough to justify the suspected natural history?
Of course, no one is talking about a will to evolve… that’s the same as to introduce a “Deus-ex-machina” and it’s not how the game is played. Instead, people are looking for attractor mechanisms, to pathways that would accelerate and correct evolution along certain ways, non-genetic evolution, changeable gene expression mechanisms, non-geographical species differentiation mechanisms, sharing information mechanisms, and other ideas alike. I’m not attached to any dogma, and every new idea is welcome. Life is complex and deserves the effort of a rich set of ideas to understand it. But at the same time, I wonder if behind the will to explore these ideas are not the same kind of dissatisfaction you revealed yourself. Nothing to be criticized here: it is from this kind of mood that new ideas are borne, and we need them. But pure luck isn’t still ruled out nor it is a dead end, and the positive outcome of a possible but improbable event is not disproof of it. The fact that we exist is not disproof of an improbable evolution… it would be only if it was an impossible evolution. So, this urge to increase the odds must be looked somewhere else. Fear of be alone, maybe?
Jim, I think it is pointless to me to forward more arguments to you if I presented you 1, 2,… 8 arguments, you choose only 3 and asks if it is all. That’s not honest. If you see evolution happening at human time scales, if you understand roughly how that happens and why, and you also discover world wide evidence that life in the past was different, what can you conclude? What you’ll believe that happened?
And don’t be so hasty to dismiss small scale verifiable evolution. Pick a multi-resistant infection and see if you don’t care, knowing that some years ago, the some disease would have probably treated in a much more sure way. Understanding Evolution is crucial if you want to avoid pitfalls in the future.
The last statement should have been enough to justify teaching evolution in schools, but about this, I’ll refrain to comment. It’s yours public schools, not mine. But one thing I know about schools: it takes years to have a proper education, sometimes more than we have to spent. It is impossible to give the whole picture at once, to cover all ideas at the same time, and sometimes they need each other to support themselves. But you need to start somewhere. If your public school system covers enough years, I’m sure you’ll find evolution is not beyond critic. But you need to reach that stage where the criticism is useful and can be understand, as was pointed by Maria de Bellard.
(once again, sorry if I confounded you with John)
Random mutation seems inadequate, by itself, to explain evolution. Their must also be a will to life, a will to complexity. Perhaps an ability to inherit acquired characteristics. Maybe a life force that could be described as spiritual. The fact of evolution is pretty much certain. The how and why of it are certainly in question.
This is why I asked for evolution supporters to define evolution. If all they mean is that there is variation within particular species with regard to size, color, or drug resistance, and that environmental factors will favor certain members of the species, then who cares? On the other hand, if evolution means that (given enough time) bacteria can change into a moth or a bird or a biologist, then talking about modest changes in the size of bird beaks or the color of moth wings is not terribly relevant, much less persuasive. Is that really all the evidence you have for a theory that is supposed to be beyond criticism in our public schools?
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Oops!… I appear to have answered to Jim, thinking on John… my apologies for the confusion.
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A last remark, my first statements about Evolution put it in field of scientific theories. We can experiment and test it. But the arguments with fossil hints are Natural history, they don’t prove Evolution, but use it has a core idea to explain how natural history might have occurred. Theories like the big-bang or the life origin from a single cell are more historical than scientific theories, because we weren’t there. We are trying to build a coherent picture of what perhaps happened face to what we know today, that’s all.
Sorry, If I couldn’t describe a more compelling picture of the evidences… I’m going to my summer holidays today, and didn’t have time to write more (nor will for a while).
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And why I say that? Take a look at the way how Bacterias are gaining resistance to antibiotics? Or insects to insecticides? In the species with rapid life cycles, evolution is painfully evident… at least, if understand as describing the fact that populations of living beings change with time, eventually irreversibly. You have the experiences with moths (several), you even have motorized populations of birds that in some generations (few years) have changed size to face abrupt changes in their environment. On a larger time scale you have all the population of domestic animals, gaining different shapes and forms from wild species. In this case, we were the ones provoking the evolution, and sometimes there are historical human appointments registering that. We can even discuss if a chihuaha is not already a different species of dog from a San-Bernard… they can interbreed, but so, can also the several species of South-American camalideos, and they are classified in different generas :-)
On a bigger time scale, you have the fossil hints that life was different from now, in times that was. Most of those hints builds a coherent picture, a puzzle in continuous fulfilling. There are gaps and problems, but thats the reason we called it a puzzle, isn’t. Some of the reason why this makes sense, is precisely that isn’t perfect… as we should expect. About the compelling value of imperfect evidence, you should read the Panda’s thumb, from Stephen Jay Gould. Here you have an animal that have a thumb build from bone, improper for a real thumb. The Giant Panda use it but it could have use it much better if it were a real opposed thumb.
And on a molecular scale, you have molecular biology, with our comprehension how things might change and why change. You have even things like molecular clocks (based on mitochondria mutations rate) that are coherent with the idea that species diverged in the past, and even present numbers to discuss.
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Evolution suffered the same harsh process selection I hinted above. Worst even more, because many people didn’t like it for of religious reasons, and oppose it specially for that. Are you conscious that a lot of people connected to the Evolution idea was religious people, trying to find signs of the creation in natural world? Darwin was going to be a theologian, and many of his teachers of natural sciences were priests or alike… it stands for reason to look for this signs, and if they changed their opinions was because what they found in the world would made more sense in the light of the Evolution idea. They were courageous, and didn’t even had the comprehension we have now of the mechanisms of change.
I cannot advise you now about good books. Many of what I read assumes Evolution as a fact and doesn’t try to defend it. I didn’t read it, but I would risk to advise you the Darwin’s Origin of Species… here is a book written in an epoch were the cultural environment was much more hostile to the idea. Darwin took many years collecting his arguments and only because it was warned that Wallace had concluded the same thing and was going to present it, did he took the lead. Stephen Jay Gould is also fabulous but perhaps a less gentle experience to ones who doesn’t believe in evolution. A lot of his essays are about deconstruction of myths and historical processes about the History of the Evolution idea.
Anyway, far from me to be hidden behind books. A core point in your reasoning is that people might be lying. If that’s so, is the most amazing and biggest conspiracy ever made. That’s ridiculous. Evolution is an interpretation that comes naturally from observation of the world. Anyone might look at the clues and see if there is lies at work… for a conspiracy, it would be an amazing stupid one.
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John, when I implied that you cannot judge scientific truths if you were outside science, I was not trying to exclude you. What I was saying was that to judge them, you have to act as a scientist, to adhere to the scientific ways. It was an invitation to enter, not a trespassing warning. Scientific Truths from my point of view, are not our common Truth concept. Truth is a word we reserve to facts/statements which will be always true, that will never change. But Scientific Truths are transitory by nature, are statements which we accept as true until be disproved. It’s funny that you referred to the gravity law as the solid mark to which you want to raise Evolution: Newton’s Gravity Law is known to be “false”, perhaps for a century or more. Simple facts like Mercury’s Perihelion Precession disproved it, and once the general Relativity theory explained those better, it substituted the first as the “true” Gravity theory. Newton’s Gravity Law is still a valid scientific truth… as long we delimit its region of use, where it still works well.
And that’s why it is meaningless to oppose scientific truths outside science… science is not gentle with its ideas, doesn’t offer them as the absolute truth, it tries them, test them and look for proving them wrong. The purpose is to build strong concepts able to stand the test of the time, and for that, there is standards to obey. You are welcome to propose your own validity tests, but expect the same intense scrutiny too, as you must respect the same standards (or else no one will trust you to fight established ideas)… and that means to be inside science, not outside.
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I am no scientist, so (as João says) I cannot be so sure that the defenders of evolution are lying. But based on the quality of their work I have my suspicions. Here is a modest suggestion: would João (or any other committed evolutionists) care to commit themselves to a comprehensive definition of “evolution”, and endorse a book that in their opinion presents the case for the theory of evolution with sufficient persuasive force to warrant claims that it stands on a scientific footing comparable to the Law of Gravity? Give us the best that your discipline has to offer, so that we can fairly judge its worth.
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John, seeing how did you talk in your first intervention, I imagined you to be an unorthodox scientist censored by the scientific system. It would have be hard to argue with you if you were moved by resentment. I cannot endorse fully our scientific system because I know it to be not perfect, having its rotten apples, rings, frauds and syndicates… its a human institution after all. But these is acknowledged as defects to avoid, not as virtues. Science is perhaps the only human institution which has a truly world wide jury to check their findings: what it does is too much important to be left to wishful thinking or lesser effort. No untruth or fraud is left untouched for long… because it deals with repeatable phenomena, and any one can check the claims if they want it…
But later you said you were outside science. In that case, how can you be so sure their participants are lying? If you are outside it, how can you contest the scientific truths… unless you are contesting science itself and its methods? It’s because others you trust said so? You wrote that science “seems increasingly be driven by ideology” (by the way, what is “pc”?). Care to explain why do you think that? Wouldn’t happened by any chance and honesty that it’s yours ideologies that has been challenged by science “findings”?
John, what you said can be said about any corpus of knowledge holders in any theme: face to challenges, some may resort to improper defenses. What do you think did happened when the evolution proponents start to defended their views? Do you think that to draw a Darwin face in a monkey body is a proper argument?
And this happens by the same reason I presented before (written even before I read your text): Because it is hard to hold all the facts which sustain conclusions, many will learn only “abstracts” of them on trust. And being humans beings what they are, some of those will be tempted to bluff their answers when challenged on their validity, even shut-up improperly their challengers. Others will believe themselves too old to learn anew, and will resist any possibility of a change. But to exist people like that is only a human thing, it is neither a disproof of what they believe nor it is exclusive of evolution defenders. In fact, just for teasing, if I had to defend positions based on a book which cannot be changed, I suspect that a much bigger percentage of my co-defenders would be like that.
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Hi João Pedro Afonso - Can you really say that evolution(ism) has always (or even generally) been defended and promoted with complete honesty and objectivity, never ever descending to: fudging the facts, presenting ideology not science, presenting only affirmative evidence, using bluster and “rigteous indignation” rather than evidence and reason, avoiding fair debate/argument with reasonable sceptics, presenting “evidence” not quite fairly, using political/judicial chicanry, using professional politicking to silence sceptics ... If your answer is “Yes”, then I’m sorry but it is yourself that is deceived. You say “science is building in a way that should exclude subjective judgments” - I’d like to think that is true. Sadly, to most of us outside science, science seems increasingly to be driven (or even determined) by ideology, (ie. it’s all “pc") -eg. the origin and nature of climate change, the origin and nature of homosexuality, or the origin and nature of life itself; once, science delivered objective knowledge/information, and was seen to be objective; sadly, those days are over. Poor science!
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