The next three questions are up today. I must admit, I've been enjoying doing the necessary research to fill the gaps of my own knowledge in order to answer the questions, research, I might add, that any creationist could do if they actually wanted answers to the questions rather than just public relations point-scoring by asking so-called "unanswerable questions." Regardless, here we go again;
Q6: Living things look like they were designed, so how do evolutionists know that they were not designed?
Ah, one of my favorites, the argument from design, often masked in the "irreducible complexity" of Intelligent Design such as Q5 represents. Living things give the illusion of design, they are not designed, and in many cases this so-called design seems quite faulty. Species evolve over time through natural selection, their "fitness" as a species consisting of being adapted to their environment. Natural selection produces organisms that are adapted to their environment; if they aren't adapted to their environment, or the environment changes faster than they can, they die out. Thus the appearance of design is an illusion, merely the end product of endless generations of natural selection. In fact, we would expect better design in many organisms if species were designed, and many aspects of living beings today make no sense if they were products of design. Why is the panda's thumb merely an extension of an arm-bone rather than a true thumb? Evolution explains this, but when an intelligent designer is invoked, it makes no sense to think that this being would give the appearance of evolution rather than just creating a panda with a real thumb. In the same vein, why are there vestigial features in nature, such as the vestigial hip and leg bones of whales. Evolution explains this, but it seems odd that any designer would choose to put such a useless feature like leg bones in a whale with no use for them. If one is interested in looking deeper into this topic, Jerry Coyne's Why Evolution is True has a discussion of vestigial features in chapter three, and Richard Dawkins has an entire book, Climbing Mount Improbable, devoted to explaining how small changes over long time spans add up to the illusion of design in nature.
I can't move on to the next one without mentioning the extra question embedded in Q6: Why should science be restricted to naturalistic causes rather than logical ones? Because science is about the natural world, the observable world--in essence, the real world that we all inhabit, even those who deny it. To say that naturalism takes precedence over logic is an insult to science as it implies that creationism is in any way logical. It isn't logical at all--but it is quite laughable!
Q7: How did multi-cellular life originate?
Funny that this should be a question when only yesterday New Scientist published the results of a lab test in which single-celled yeast made the leap to a multi-cellular organism within a short number of generations. This is what creationists always complain about, that evolution isn't observable under laboratory conditions. Well, here it is. Let the creationist denial-machine deal with this one; I'm looking forward to see their waffling about why this isn't actually evolution in action. Regardless, here is solid, empirical evidence (with more work soon to follow) that shows that not only is it possible for organisms to make this leap but even easy. Further, it seems likely, given the fact that the mitochondria were once free bacteria, that Lynn Margulis' theory of symbiosis is correct in this instance, that the first complex cells arose through cooperation between different single-celled organisms. Next question, please.
Q8: How did sex originate?
There is no question that the original forms of life, bacteria, reproduced and continue to reproduce asexually. Certainly, as the pamphlet points out, there are numerous disadvantages to sexual reproduction, not the least of which is fewer offspring by half. However, there are certainly advantages to sexual reproduction that outweigh its disadvantages. If an organism that reproduces asexually develops bad mutations, it passes them on exactly, with no chance of alleviation through genetic mixing. Sexual reproduction is a genetic lottery, however, and even if one parent has a disadvantageous mutation it won't necessarily be passed on. Given the fact that there are organisms that reproduce both asexually and sexually, sometimes having sex only infrequently, it's not hard to see the evolutionary bridge between asexually reproducing organisms and sexually reproducing ones. We move in time from organisms that never have sex to ones that sometimes have sex to ones that only reproduce sexually with many organisms that have sex frequently. The question also wonders how both male and female reproductive organisms came into being at the same time. This is another common creationist misconception, that parts of a system have to emerge fully-formed in a single generation when this just isn't so. They evolve together in a kind of evolutionary dance, and the bridge mentioned before, organisms that reproduce sexually only infrequently would be the place that the sex organs we see in current life forms evolved.
I suspect that the last answer won't satisfy the creationists at all, because it speaks of possibility and potentials rather than absolute certainty, but science isn't in the business of granting absolute certainty. We may never know for certain how sex evolved, but the hypothesis listed above seems a very likely, and possible, scenario. I'm fine with a level of uncertainty, because science thrives on uncertainty no matter what creationists think; questions and areas of uncertainty are the very places science wants to go, in order to find answers. After all, there is little benefit to being absolutely certain (creationists take note) if you are absolutely wrong (literal Adam and Eve, literal Noah's Flood--creationists are absolutely certain about this, but they are absolutely wrong). I see the next question involves transitional fossils, one of my favorite areas in the evolution-creationism "controversy". I'll look forward to answering more of the Fifteen Questions tomorrow.
Q6: Living things look like they were designed, so how do evolutionists know that they were not designed?
Ah, one of my favorites, the argument from design, often masked in the "irreducible complexity" of Intelligent Design such as Q5 represents. Living things give the illusion of design, they are not designed, and in many cases this so-called design seems quite faulty. Species evolve over time through natural selection, their "fitness" as a species consisting of being adapted to their environment. Natural selection produces organisms that are adapted to their environment; if they aren't adapted to their environment, or the environment changes faster than they can, they die out. Thus the appearance of design is an illusion, merely the end product of endless generations of natural selection. In fact, we would expect better design in many organisms if species were designed, and many aspects of living beings today make no sense if they were products of design. Why is the panda's thumb merely an extension of an arm-bone rather than a true thumb? Evolution explains this, but when an intelligent designer is invoked, it makes no sense to think that this being would give the appearance of evolution rather than just creating a panda with a real thumb. In the same vein, why are there vestigial features in nature, such as the vestigial hip and leg bones of whales. Evolution explains this, but it seems odd that any designer would choose to put such a useless feature like leg bones in a whale with no use for them. If one is interested in looking deeper into this topic, Jerry Coyne's Why Evolution is True has a discussion of vestigial features in chapter three, and Richard Dawkins has an entire book, Climbing Mount Improbable, devoted to explaining how small changes over long time spans add up to the illusion of design in nature.
I can't move on to the next one without mentioning the extra question embedded in Q6: Why should science be restricted to naturalistic causes rather than logical ones? Because science is about the natural world, the observable world--in essence, the real world that we all inhabit, even those who deny it. To say that naturalism takes precedence over logic is an insult to science as it implies that creationism is in any way logical. It isn't logical at all--but it is quite laughable!
Q7: How did multi-cellular life originate?
Funny that this should be a question when only yesterday New Scientist published the results of a lab test in which single-celled yeast made the leap to a multi-cellular organism within a short number of generations. This is what creationists always complain about, that evolution isn't observable under laboratory conditions. Well, here it is. Let the creationist denial-machine deal with this one; I'm looking forward to see their waffling about why this isn't actually evolution in action. Regardless, here is solid, empirical evidence (with more work soon to follow) that shows that not only is it possible for organisms to make this leap but even easy. Further, it seems likely, given the fact that the mitochondria were once free bacteria, that Lynn Margulis' theory of symbiosis is correct in this instance, that the first complex cells arose through cooperation between different single-celled organisms. Next question, please.
Q8: How did sex originate?
There is no question that the original forms of life, bacteria, reproduced and continue to reproduce asexually. Certainly, as the pamphlet points out, there are numerous disadvantages to sexual reproduction, not the least of which is fewer offspring by half. However, there are certainly advantages to sexual reproduction that outweigh its disadvantages. If an organism that reproduces asexually develops bad mutations, it passes them on exactly, with no chance of alleviation through genetic mixing. Sexual reproduction is a genetic lottery, however, and even if one parent has a disadvantageous mutation it won't necessarily be passed on. Given the fact that there are organisms that reproduce both asexually and sexually, sometimes having sex only infrequently, it's not hard to see the evolutionary bridge between asexually reproducing organisms and sexually reproducing ones. We move in time from organisms that never have sex to ones that sometimes have sex to ones that only reproduce sexually with many organisms that have sex frequently. The question also wonders how both male and female reproductive organisms came into being at the same time. This is another common creationist misconception, that parts of a system have to emerge fully-formed in a single generation when this just isn't so. They evolve together in a kind of evolutionary dance, and the bridge mentioned before, organisms that reproduce sexually only infrequently would be the place that the sex organs we see in current life forms evolved.
I suspect that the last answer won't satisfy the creationists at all, because it speaks of possibility and potentials rather than absolute certainty, but science isn't in the business of granting absolute certainty. We may never know for certain how sex evolved, but the hypothesis listed above seems a very likely, and possible, scenario. I'm fine with a level of uncertainty, because science thrives on uncertainty no matter what creationists think; questions and areas of uncertainty are the very places science wants to go, in order to find answers. After all, there is little benefit to being absolutely certain (creationists take note) if you are absolutely wrong (literal Adam and Eve, literal Noah's Flood--creationists are absolutely certain about this, but they are absolutely wrong). I see the next question involves transitional fossils, one of my favorite areas in the evolution-creationism "controversy". I'll look forward to answering more of the Fifteen Questions tomorrow.
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