Laryngeal Nerve in Giraffes

In the past couple of weeks, I received two requests to address Richard Dawkins' claim that the recurrent laryngeal nerve in the modern giraffe provides proof of evolution. To hear and see this claim, go to this YouTube video. The heart of Dawkins' argument is that the unnecessary length of the giraffe's recurrent laryngeal nerve is an example of an imperfection that is the sort of historical accident that one would expect if there is no intelligent Designer. Here's my response...

Since I don't know you, I can't simply respond to Dawkins' claim without first making sure that you understand the larger picture, which is the bankruptcy of Dawkins' overall view, neo-Darwinian evolution (NDE).

Twenty years from now, no one will seriously be defending the form of evolution in which Dawkins believes. His critics, whether theists or fellow-evolutionists, rightly accuse him of living still in the 19th century. Stephen Jay Gould (the leading paleontologist of the last several decades) said that "neo-Darwinism, as a theoretical paradigm, is effectively dead." Geneticist James Shapiro (like Gould, committed to some form of evolution) last year told a packed auditorium in Chicago that "Richard Dawkins is a man who lives in fantasy."

And the reason Dawkins' pet theory is dead is because there is no evidence supporting it. The fossil record was contrary to Darwin's theory when he proposed it, and years of looking for his predicted transitional intermediates have only made the situation worse (for evolution). The apparent heirarchical look of living things remains intact, despite efforts to turn it into a continuous tree. Every life form that has ever lived appeared in the fossil record fully formed, fully functional, and fully adapted to its time on earth and its role in the ecology into which it was created. Every life form has remained unchanged throughout its tenure in earth's history. The only ancestors of Dawkins' modern giraffe for which there is any evidence are modern parent giraffes.

The only other evidential argument for evolution--similarity among living things--suffers from a number of problems. For one thing, similarity among living things is equally well (or better) explained by the view that there is a single Creator (one who repeatedly uses efficient designs rather than make each living thing according to entirely new plans and with entirely different materials). Thus the evolutionist argument is viciously circular: its starting point--that similarity only arises from common ancestry--is the claim that is at issue, and cannot be assumed in order to prove itself.

There are numerous other modern discoveries that make evolution surpassingly implausible, but which are completely ignored by Dawkins. These include the discovery that the universe did indeed have a recent beginning (13.7 b.y., whereas Darwinism assumed an eternal universe, such that natural selection had a nearly infinite amount of time at its disposal), the vast complexity of even the simplest living cell (greatly increasing the gap between non-living chemistry and first life), the information content of DNA, the fine-tuning of the universe for life on this one planet, etc, etc.

It is therefore in the face of overwhelming contrary evidence that Dawkins offers the 'proof' of evolution in the form of the laryngeal nerve of the giraffe. Really?! Really?!?

This is an example of a class of arguments for evolution that involve identifying seemingly 'bad,' imperfect, or suboptimal designs. This line of reasoning is unconvincing--or even downright refuted--for several reasons.

1) It assumes a God-like understanding of the anatomy in question, an understanding that neither Dawkins nor anyone else possesses. Further research is likely to discover good reasons that the nerve in question does not take a more direct route between the brain and the larynx.

2) In all of the more well-known examples, this form of argumentation has indeed been seen to involve ignorance. For a long time, it was the inverted retina (in the human eye) that was lauded by evolutionists as poorly designed, until further research discovered the elegance of it. ("Oops, let's not use that example any more! Let's try the length of the giraffe's laryngeal nerve.")

3) There will never be empirical proof that such a design does not serve an elegant (albeit yet undiscovered) purpose. That is, this argument can never be more than a "seems-to-me" sort of argument. Good science is generally thought to be more rigorous and empirical than this.

4) Even if it could be proved that such a thing constituted a bad design, it is a non-sequitur to conclude that there was no design involved. There was a period during which the Ford Pinto had a rear-end fuel tank problem, which led to numerous explosions, lawsuits, and recalls. But no one concluded as a result that the Pinto arose naturally. The premise of poor design does not yield the conclusion of no design.

[As an aside, it is the obviously fallacious reasoning so frequently employed by Dawkins (as in this case) that causes even atheist philosophers to be embarrassed by him, his books, and his public appearances.]

5) At the outset, Dawkins begins with an statement that is oxymoronic. He says that evolution "would expect" or "would predict" such an arrangement. This involves a problematic mixing of tenses. Now if evolutionists had at a certain time predicted the discovery of such an arrangement, and that prediction was subsequently borne out, then there might be some scientific validity to such a claim. But that, of course, is not what happened. No, however Dawkins may try to spin it, he is not here documenting the predictive success of his theory but rather claiming after the fact (of discovery) that it was the sort of thing that evolution... what? "could have predicted?" "should have predicted?" "might have, but just never got around to predicting?" I trust you see the problem.

6) Again assuming for the sake of argument that the laryngeal nerve in the giraffe is either a poor design or even undesigned, the argument for evolution (and against a Creator) depends upon our believing that there is NO design in the universe. That is, if Dawkins is right, then not only the giraffe's laryngeal nerve but the giraffe, and not only that but all living things, life itself, Earth, the solar system, the universe, everything is undesigned. Indeed, on Dawkins' worldview, even the Ford Pinto was not truly designed because the engineers working on it were merely carrying out the completely deterministic programming of their evolutionarily-derived brains. And it is at this point that Dawkins' beliefs require far more faith than the contrary belief--the default belief of nearly everyone throughout Western history--that things appear so exquisitely designed because they are in fact designed. It is at this point that Dawkins' worldview is most readily seen as that of the Fool of Psalm 14:1.

I know that Dawkins' 'arguments' can seem well-packaged and present a superficial challenge when first encountered. But neither this nor any other of his alledged evidences for evolution can withstand even a little bit of serious scrutiny.

The Goodness of God

It seems as though everywhere I turn, I find people either arguing against the existence of an all-loving God or trying to defend the goodness of God in bizarre ways. Darwin's theory was esentially a theodicy, an attempt to distance God the Creator from those things in nature that Darwin saw as bad or evil. Modern atheists likewise use bad theological arguments--appeals to 'bad design' or to suffering and death in nature--in attempts to deny the existence of the God of the Bible. Some Christian evolutionists (like Kenneth Miller and Francis Ayala) believe that by postulating God as having designed the evolutionary process--but then allowing it to work without His subsequent intervention--they are absolving God of having created things like parasitism and predatory behavior, and of creatures whose design they consider suboptimal. On the other end of the spectrum, many young-earth creationists deny the vast majority of scientific findings because they, too, cannot reconcile millions of years of animal death and suffering with an all-loving God.

Recently, the issue came up as a discussion thread on a list of which I'm a member. And this is a group of science-minded Christian apologists, men and women who recognize that the Earth and universe are billions of years old and who also largely or entirely reject macroevolutionary theory, recognizing it as based not on evidence but upon philosophical preference. Even some of these (otherwise clear-thinking) folks seem to feel the need to defend God from responsibility for creating 'bad' things.

It began, apparently, with a YouTube video arguing against the existence of a good God, in which the the author appealed to one of the Intelligent Design camp's main evidences for a Designer:

If God created the bacterial flagellum then he cannot be a good God. Why? The flagellum of many types of bacteria allows them to wreak havoc upon the human body. These bacteria cause, among other things, typhoid, cholera, and stomach cancer.

In response to this argument, my apologist friends offered a number of good scientific points in rebuttal. These included the facts that...

Microbes, including bacteria, play and have played key roles in the ecosystem. Given the physics of this creation, it required billions of years of bacterial activity to transform the Earth's atmosphere and oceans to make human life possible, as well as to convert toxic metals into ore deposits that are accessible and useful to humans.

Bacteria play key roles in maintaining human health. As just one example, it is now known that lack of exposure to certain microbes early in life may lead to an increased risk of both autoimmune disorders and cardiovascular disease.

Pathogenic bacteria comprise an extremely small percentage of all known species, the vast majority of which are beneficial or necessary.

Some of the human pathogenic microbes have resulted from host-jumping (e.g., HIV) or from micro-evolutionary changes.

But it seems to me that all of this misses a more important point, which is that the argument itself fails. That is, the argument does not establish a logical link between the existence of disease-causing bacteria and the existence of an all-loving God. Indeed, it seems that the person making this argument has to first assume God-like knowledge of the entire issue, and can thus assert the missing premise, that "there is no possible reason for an all-loving Creator to have included pathogenic bacteria in His creation."

What is really going on here is captured in a passage by C.S. Lewis in his essay "God in the Dock"...

The ancient man approached God (or even the gods) as the accused person approaches his judge. For the modern man the roles are reversed. He is the judge: God is in the dock. He is quite a kindly judge: if God should have a reasonable defence for being the god who permits war, poverty, and disease, he is ready to listen to it. The trial may even end in God's acquittal. But the important thing is that Man is on the Bench and God in the Dock.

To put it a slightly different way, the God who has revealed Himself in the Judeo-Christian Scriptures (and in His creation) is far bigger than our petty likes and dislikes. He declares Himself to be the Creator of all things, and unapologetically claims responsibility for predatory behavior in the animal kingdom (as in Ps. 104:21, 27-30; Job 38:39-41; 39:26-30) and for diseases, famines, and calamities (e.g., Is. 45:7).

The existence of the all-powerful, all-loving God of Christianity is supported by overwhelming evidence wherever we look, and that God calls us to seek a deeper understanding of Him and His ways. But complete understanding by our finite, contingent minds of His infinite, necessary one is not to be expected (Is. 55:8-9). It is human pride that seeks to reverse the roles and make the infinite Creator of the universe answerable to the relatively ignorant rantings of the dependent creature. Those rantings seem reasonable only to those who begin by denying or remaining largely ignorant of most of what Scripture and the creation reveal about the nature and majesty of God.

Abusing Amazon

(Happy New Year to all of my readers, and I trust that one of your resolutions for 2008 is to read more.)

In yesterday's post, I shared my review of Dembski and Wells' new book, The Design of Life: Discovering Signs of Intelligence in Biological Systems. That review enjoyed a brief stay on Amazon's review pages for this book, but you can't find it there now. And here's why...

As most of you know, Amazon publishes reviews of the books available through them. They also have in place a system whereby readers of those reviews can vote on whether or not each review was helpful. Apparently, that voting then determines the order of appearance--and even whether or not a review continues to appear there at all.

Soon after The Design of Life came out, there were about a dozen reviews that appeared there (mine included). All were 5-star reviews, and each was thoughtful, well-written, and informative. Each interacted in a meaningful way with the content of the book (as is required by Amazon's rules governing this review process), and it was clear that each of the authors had read the book in question.

Well, this was too much for the fundamentalist Darwinists. Once they realized what was happening, they began a sabotage campaign, flooding the review page with negative (1-star) reviews and voting down the 5-star reviews and up the 1-star reviews. It wasn't long before few of those thoughtful reviews by people who had actually read the book remained, and the review page displayed mostly 1-star reviews like the following (by E. Duran of San Jose, CA)...

I just finished reading this book without vomiting. I had to go back and read Darwin’s “Origin of Species” again to remove the bad taste out of my mouth.

Helpful and informative, right? That's the entire review, just as it appeared. And yet at one point (on 20 December 2007), 44 of 50 people had found this review helpful. As a result, some of the reviews by those of us who actually read the book were bumped from the list of those available.

As you might guess, other 1-star reviews trotted out ad hominem attacks, called the book fallacious without being able to identify any specific fallacies, and generally failed to interact with any of the actual content of the book. For anyone following this process on Amazon, it was yet another example of the vast differences (in intellectual integrity, among other things) between those seeking truth on these scientific issues (of the origins of life and of information in biological systems) and the idealogues who somehow feel called to defend Darwinism at all costs.

Such desperate tactics by Darwinists (which are not, of course, limited to the Amazon review process) represent one of the (apparently necessary) stages in a major paradigm shift as predicted by philosophers of science. At the highest levels, neo-Darwinism is being seen for the bankrupt system it really is, and many can't stand the idea of allowing God back into the debate.

Design of Life (Book Rec)

The Design of Life is a book whose time has come, and a book for the times in which we live. Two historical factors make it so.

We live in a time when scientific knowledge is exploding. Entire new disciplines (like molecular biochemistry and genomics) have arisen in our lifetimes, and major paradigm shifts have occurred in other disciplines (cosmology, geology, physics, to name a few). The resulting knowledge has ramifications for our understanding of life on Earth, and particularly its origins.

The other historical factor of note is this… Scientific understanding has progressed only as presently-held theories have been open to critique. That is, truly objective scientists welcome evidence contrary to a particular theory, since it leads to refining or discarding, to pursuing more promising lines of research. Today, despite a wealth of new, contrary evidence from a variety of disciplines, this basic scientific principle is ignored by many biologists. At stake in biology today are both academic freedom and scientific progress.

It is into this tense but exciting situation that Dembski and Wells speak with clarity, depth, and authority. In The Design of Life they do what defenders of neo-Darwinism have shown themselves unwilling to do—they interact with the evidence. In pulling together the latest information from a variety of relevant disciplines (genetics, genomics, origin-of-life research, paleontology, anatomy, morphology, embryology, molecular biology, and biochemistry), these articulate proponents of intelligent design theory have given us a thorough and balanced understanding of the complex issues surrounding the origins and diversity of life on Earth. Their argument engages the breadth and the best of what neo-Darwinism has to offer, and meets—indeed, overwhelms—each materialist objection in turn. For anyone interested in discovering the truth about the history of life, I cannot think of a better place to start than this book.

(To read the rest of my review, go here.)

Design in Human Backbones

Kudos to my friend Pete Chadwell for bringing to my attention this article from the Fox News web site. (I've inluded some of the comments Pete interjected)...

WASHINGTON — With all that growing weight up front, how is it that pregnant women don't lose their balance and topple over?

Scientists think they've found the answer: There are slight differences between women and men in one lower-back vertebra and a joint in the hip, which allow women to adjust their center of gravity.

This elegant evolutionary engineering is seen only in female humans and our immediate ancestors who walked on two feet, but not in chimps and apes, according to a study published in Thursday's journal Nature.

(Pete: Evolutionary "engineering"? ENGINEERING?)

"That's a big load that's pulling you forward," said Liza Shapiro, an anthropology professor at the University of Texas and the only one of the study's three authors who has actually been pregnant. "You experience discomfort. Maybe it would be a lot worse if the design changes were not there."

(Pete: Design changes? What does that mean? Since when can Darwinists help themselves to the word "design"? I thought that "design" was "unscientific!")

Harvard anthropology researcher Katherine Whitcomb found two physical differences in male and female backs that until now had gone unnoticed: One lower lumbar vertebra is wedged-shaped in women and more square in men, and a key hip joint is 14 percent larger in women than men when body size is taken into account.

The researchers did engineering tests that show how those slight changes allow women to carry the additional and growing load without toppling over — and typically without disabling back pain.

(Pete: Sounds like "reverse engineering" to me. And guess what… you can only "reverse engineer" something that was engineered in the first place.)

"When you think about it, women make it look so very damn easy," Whitcomb said. "They are experiencing a pretty impressive challenge. Evolution has tinkered ... to the point where they can deal with the challenge."

(Pete: So then there WAS a point in time where pregnant females did NOT 'deal with the challenge'? Does that mean that at one time they DID 'topple over'? How did Natural Selection preserve those generations whose pregnant females would topple over? Didn't that cause injury? Wouldn't they be more vulnerable to predators in that state? Wasn't it more difficult to survive without that ability?)

"It's absolutely beautiful," she said. "A little bit of tinkering can have a profound effect."

(Pete: Of course it's beautiful. But can a blind, purposeless process like evolution actually "tinker"? Doesn't "tinkering" imply intelligence?)

Walking on two feet separates humans from most other mammals. And while anthropologists still debate the evolutionary benefit of walking on two feet, there are notable costs, such as pain for pregnant females. Animals on all fours can better handle the extra belly weight.

The back changes appear to have evolved to overcome the cost of walking on two feet, said Harvard anthropology professor Daniel Lieberman.

(Pete: Either that or the human frame was designed that way from the get-go, with males and females having slight variations in structure to accommodate the different roles. Which do you think is more reasonable?)

I'm with Pete. And I suppose the even broader lesson here is this... If, in attempting to support a particular position, you frequently find yourself using terms that logically belong only to the opposite position, it's time to rethink your paradigm.

More Evo-Devo

In the last post, I explained that the evidence suggests that genetic programs do not control embryological development. That is, the relatively new field of evo-devo, whose raison d'etre was to salvage neo-Darwinism by identifying a genetic basis for major changes occurring early in development, has instead uncovered a good deal of evidence leading to an opposite conclusion.

Of course, neo-Darwinists are plenty adept at ignoring contrary evidence, and the idea that genetic programs control development--since it is a necessary corollary of neo-Darwinism--will not die easily. Nonetheless, here are the sorts of evidences that argue against genetic control of development (this list courtesy of Dembski and Wells from their latest book, The Design of Life)...

Placing foreign DNA into an egg does not change the species of the egg or embryo.

DNA mutations can interfere with development, but they never alter its endpoint.

Different cell types arise in the same animal even though all of them contain the same DNA.

Similar developmental genes are found in animals as different as worms, flies, and mammals.

Eggs contain several structures (such as microtubule arrays and membrane patterns) that are known to influence development independently of the DNA.

Good stuff! Unless, of course, you're more interested in defending neo-Darwinism than in discovering the truth about biological origins.

Problems for Evo-Devo

A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned the new book by William Dembski and Jonathan Wells, The Design of Life. Its subtitle is Discovering Signs of Intelligence in Biological Systems, and it is the clearest, most comprehensive book to date dealing with the evidences that make neo-Darwinian theory inadequate for explaining what we now know about living things.

What I want to share today comes from chapter 2, "Genetics and Macroevolution," and has to do with the relatively new field (in biology) known as "evo-devo."

For a long time now, neo-Darwinism has postulated that microevolutionary changes (small changes that occur within a species, like bacterial resistance to antibiotics and variation in the beak size of finches) somehow help to explain macroevolution (the origin of entirely new body plans, of new families and orders). In other words, macroevolution is (for them) a logical extrapolation of microevolution, and both must rely on the same mechanisms--natural selection acting on random gene mutations. The problem is that no evidence exists to suggest that macroevolution really can be accounted for by the steady accumulation of microevolutionary changes, and there is a great deal of evidence contrary to this traditional view.

Enter evolutionary developmental biology, evo-devo. Evo-devo merges the disciplines of evolutionary biology and developmental biology, the latter being the study of the development of an organism from embryo to adult. The idea is that perhaps it's not just any genes that account for changes among species but those particular genes that control development. If one of these genes is changed (early in the embryo), perhaps the change in the adult would be significant. According to Dembski and Wells,

The promise of evo-devo is that genetically-induced changes early in development, though small and easily attainable in themselves, might nonetheless lead to macroevolutionary changes. In this way evo-devo seeks to do an end-run around the more traditional neo-Darwinian approach... Evo-devo, by contrast, promises rapid evolutionary change at a small cost, namely, the cost of mutating a few key genes that control early development.

Thus, the existence of evo-devo as a field of research represents a tacit admission on the part of biologists that the traditional evolutionary explanation is inadequate. Unfortunately (for the materialist), so is evo-devo:

Yet, despite this initial promise, evo-devo is now in a state of crisis.... William Jeffrey, an evolutionary developmental biologist at the University of Maryland, concedes that evo-devo's attempt to understand how developmental genes induce macroevolutionary change is "at a dead end."

This section is well worth your read if you're at all interested, but here's the skinny... the mounting evidence from this field indicates that genetic programs do not control development (though they do play a role in development). And this presents a big problem for neo-Darwinism.

...if development is controlled by something other than genes, then evolution must be due to something other than genetic mutations and changes in gene frequencies. Consequently, if the notion that genetic programs control development is false, then so is neo-Darwinism. Neo-Darwinism logically entails the control of development by genetic programs.

The Design of Life

I can't tell you how excited I am about the upcoming release (next Monday, the 19th) of the newest book by Bill Dembski and Jonathan Wells. It's called The Design of Life, and is the most clear, comprehensive, and persuasive book to date defining and supporting intelligent design theory. About it, Michael Behe (author of Darwin's Black Box and The Edge of Evolution) has said,

When future historians list the books that toppled Darwin's theory, The Design of Life will be at the top.

I've had the opportunity to preview it, and am thrilled with every bit of it. Watch for a larger review of it here in the near future.