Zombie Science: Icons of Evolution Revisited - Author's Introduction

Zombie Science: Icons of Evolution Revisited - Author's Introduction Acknowledgement I am solely responsible for the contents of this book, but I would like to thank Laszlo Bencze for suggesting the title of the book. I appreciate the years of support and encouragement I received from my wife Lucy and my children, from Kathy and Philip and Kathy Johnson, and from my colleagues at the Discovery Institute, including Bruce A. Chapman, George Steve Meyer and George Westermeyer. I am also particularly grateful for the comments I received on the manuscript from Paul Nelson, Richard Sternberg, David Berlinski, Amanda Witt and Jonathan and Amanda Witt. For making embarrassingly explicit or unwittingly funny statements, I would like to thank (in alphabetical order) David Barash, Jerry Coyne, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and W. Ford Doolittle. W. Ford Doolittle, Niles Eldredge, Douglas Futuyma, Karl Giberson, Dan Graur, Richard Lewontin, and Geoffrey Miller Miller, Kenneth R. Miller, Randy Olson, Kevin Padian, Massimo Pigliucci, Donald Prothero, and Eugene Scott And Michael Shermer. I also gratefully appreciate the help from many students whose names must remain anonymous lest the Guardians of Scientific Consensus destroy their very promising career paths. Jonathan Wells Seattle 2017 Who let the zombies out? Zombies are the dead that move, and in scientific terms, theories or perceptions are dead when they don’t match the evidence. In 2000, I wrote about ten images – ten “evolution icons” – that don’t match the evidence, so they’re experimentally dead. But instead of being buried, they’re still with us, chasing us in our classrooms and chasing our children. They’re part of what I call zombie science. Eggs in their faces. I love eating eggs for breakfast. In fact, I’ve been eating eggs for years, and I know I’m not supposed to, because some scientists in the U.S. government have said it’s bad for me. According to the American Heart Association (AHA) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), science has proven that eggs – especially egg yolks – contain a lot of cholesterol and are therefore bad for my heart. But I love them, and my heart works well, so I eat them anyway. It all began in the 1950s, when John Gofman and his colleagues concluded that the risk of heart disease could be reduced by reducing dietary fat intake.[1] Another scientist, Ancel Keys, also came to the same conclusion. However, in 1961, a committee of the American Heart Association, of which Ansel Case was a member, suggested that we should reduce the consumption of meat, eggs, and dairy products to reduce the risk of heart disease.[5] In 1977, a Senate committee endorsed the recommendations of the Society's committee[6] and in 1992, the USDA published its famous food pyramid, which had carbohydrates drawn at its base to indicate that it should be the largest ingredient in our food, and eggs at the point below its head.[8] I eat eggs anyway. But imagine how relieved I was in February 2015 when the US government announced the end of its long war against eggs, declaring that “excessive cholesterol intake is not a concern.”9 Although heart disease is linked to the levels of different types of cholesterol in our bodies, there is no clear correlation between cholesterol levels and what we eat. But science says... Yes, and now "science says" something else. What can we infer from that? Obviously, we can’t trust what the science says, and the government’s praise for something isn’t supposed to give us confidence in something. In fact, they told us a lot of things that are not true in the language of "science." The misguided war on eggs was relatively a nice example of that. Eggs were not declared unconstitutional, and the people who eat them were not ridiculed in public, nor were they fired from their jobs. But the phrase "science says" is not always that nice. Warning: This book is politically unacceptable, and may be dangerous. If you are seen reading it on campus, you may be putting your job at risk. So you probably want to hide it by way of a different cover. The last supplement shows you how to make a plain sheet of paper. How do we know if one of the things we hear “science says” is true or not? In the end, you’ll have to realize the truth yourself. That doesn’t mean that there is no objective truth and that everything is subjective. When it comes to science, you’ll be told one thing from our very rich and powerful scientific and educational institutions, as well as from the mainstream media that act as their mouthpieces. But you’re probably learning something else entirely if you look at the evidence itself; that’s the objective truth. Before we move forward, let’s look at some of the ways people use the word “science.” What is science? On the one hand, science is the process of seeking the truth by formulating hypotheses and testing them against the evidence. If we repeatedly test the hypothesis and find it in agreement with the evidence, we may temporarily tend to regard it as fact. If we find it repeatedly in disagreement with the evidence, we should retract it or reject it because it is wrong. We call this process empirical science. On the other hand, people see science as the recent advances in medicine and technology that have influenced our lives. These advances originated from human creativity and design, but their practical applications involve testing them against the evidence to see if they will work. So, advances in medicine and technology have an experimental as well as a creative aspect. Let’s call that technological science. Third, science refers to a scientific institution, which consists of people trained and staffed to conduct research in various fields. Let’s call this institutional science, or just science. The majority of this group’s opinions are sometimes referred to as “scientific consensus,” which is sometimes expressed as “all scientists agree...” (although some of them usually don’t agree), or “science says...” In 1500, the scientific consensus that the Sun revolves around the Earth, a view demolished by Nicholas Copernicus and Galileo Galilei, was established. In 1750, the consensus was that certain organisms (such as worms) arise through self-generation, a view demolished by Francesco Reddy and Louis Pasteur. Fourthly, some people define science as the process of providing natural explanations for everything, i.e., the explanation of all phenomena in terms of physical objects and the physical forces that exist between them. This is sometimes called the "naturalistic methodology", the idea that science is limited to physical explanations, because the repetition of experiments can only take place on physical objects and physical forces. In principle, the naturalistic methodology is not a claim about reality, but a restriction of the method. It does not negate the existence of non-physical fields. But in practice, many scientists assume that if they do research long enough, they will find a physical explanation for anything they examine. This assumption that there are physical explanations for everything is not just a matter of method, but the equivalent of a materialist philosophy that holds that material things and physical forces are the only truths. (11) Mind, free will, spirit, and God are illusions. Intelligent design, the idea that some properties of the world are the product of intelligent reason and not undirected natural processes, is also an illusion. Not all scientists today are materialists, and indeed modern science was started primarily by Christian[*] European believers in God. However, science today is governed by materialist philosophy. Priority is given to presenting and defending materialistic explanations rather than following evidence to where it leads. This materialist philosophy that masquerades as empirical science, I call it zombie science. I don't call scientists (or any other real people) zombies. But when people insist on defending physical explanations after they've been shown to be inconsistent with evidence, and are therefore experimentally dead, they're practicing zombie science. We find the most striking exposition of zombie science in evolutionary biology. What is "evolution"? Evolution is another term that can mean many things: simple change over time, the history of the universe, the advancement of technology, the growth of culture, or the fact that many of the plants and animals that live today are different from those that lived in the past. Evolution can also mean small changes within an existing species from generation to generation. There is abundant evidence for these changes, which is evident in our families. People have also been observing these changes in other species for thousands of years; certainly since the domestication of plants and animals. So evolution in this sense is also indisputable. In 1859, Charles Darwin suggested that small differences in the existing species are retained or discarded through natural selection (survival of the fittest), and by giving them sufficient time that process creates a new species, organs, and bodily blueprints. Darwin felt that differences and selection are not directed, and therefore the results of evolution are left to the work of what he called chance. Evolution as a physical science Darwin described his most famous book (The Origin of Species) as "one lengthy argument".14 It was essentially an argument against creationism through design, and took the following form: The facts of biology are "unexplainable through creationism" but plausible in his theory of regression and modification.15 Since the fourth edition of his book Darwin has gone even further, arguing that the idea that living organisms were created according to a plan "is not a scientific explanation".16 We can say that design has been formally excluded from the hall. One reason for this is that Darwin could not provide evidence for natural selection, only "one or two imaginary examples."[17] Contrary to the title of his famous book, he failed to explain the genesis of species. Historian Neal C. Gillespie writes that "Darwin is sometimes said to have been around the scientific world of evolution when he showed them the process by which it occurs. But it was difficult reservations about natural selection among Darwin’s contemporaries, and widespread rejection of it from the 1890s to the 1930s; this was probably a very modest view of the matter. This explains why we hear so little about the co-discoverer of natural selection, Alfred Russell Wallace. Although the two theories were first published publicly the same day in 1858, Wallace was skeptical that the changes were undirected, and that the concept of survival of the fittest could explain things like "the brain, the speech organs, the hand, and the external shape of man." Darwin was horrified by this idea. As historian Michael Flannery explains, Wallace's idea challenged Darwin's entire framework, "a framework that served not only as a support for material metaphysics, but in fact was presented as an effective formal program of action." The "Darwinian Revolution" was a triumph of materialist philosophy.[21] However, Darwin's theory of biology did not become famous until the 1930s, when it intruded on a gene theory that was supported by much better empirical evidence (see Chapter IV). The combination of the two became known as "modern synthesis" or "modern Darwinism". Big Evolution and Small Evolution In the 1930s, the Darwinian biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky used the term "small evolution" to refer to the emergence of new species, organs, and body plans. He wrote: "There is no way to understand the mechanisms of small evolutionary changes, which need time on the geological scale, except through a full understanding of the small evolutionary processes observed in the human life cycle." But Darwin did not write a book entitled How Species Change Through Time. What he wrote was simply “Establishment of Species by Natural Selection.” Although he did not use Dobpansky’s words (because they appeared later), his theory was that if we give small evolution enough time, it will be called big evolution. Just playing with words, instead of finding evidence of the "equivalence" between the two that Dubanski had hoped for. This confusion is unfortunate, but it is common. The scientific consensus also agrees with Darwin in insisting that evolution is undirected, although his supporters may become dodgy at this point when it suits their rhetorical purposes of persuading people. In these pages I would like to remove confusion as much as possible, but I would also like to avoid heavy language, so I will use the word "evolution" throughout the book to refer to "great undirected evolution," unless I state otherwise. Nothing in biology. In 1973, Dobpansky wrote an article entitled "Nothing in biology is understood except in the light of evolution."[23] By evolution, Dobpansky meant modern Darwinian evolution. His statement became a guiding principle in the lives of many biologists. Those who believe Dubiansky’s statement insist that they do so because of the evidence, but what we will show below will show that this is not the case.24 One does not have to believe in materialism in order to believe in evolution, but evolution is a materialist story. Evolution Icons According to the current scientific consensus, there is "overwhelming evidence" for the validity of evolution. Evidence is usually presented through images, from which many have been used and gained the status of "icons". In 2000, I wrote a book analysing ten of them.25 The Yuri-Miller experiment: A 1953 experiment that supposedly showed how the chemical building blocks of life could have formed spontaneously in Earth's early history. Darwin's Tree of Life: A diagram of a branching tree used to explain the concept of regression with modification to all living beings of common ancestors. Similarities in the limbs of vertebrates: Similarities in the bones of the limbs are used as evidence that vertebrates (animals with spines) all descended from a common ancestor. Embryo structure: Similarities drawings of early embryos used as evidence that all vertebrates (including humans) evolved from fish-like animals. Archaeopteryx: A bird fossil with teeth in its mouth and claws in its wings, often invoked as the missing link between ancient reptiles and modern birds. English dotted moths: images of moths lying on tree stems, presumably providing evidence of evolution by natural selection. Darwin's sparrows: Thirteen species of birds on the Galapagos Islands that serve as evidence of the genesis of species by natural selection. Four-winged fruit flies: fruit flies that have two additional pairs of wings and that supposedly provide evidence that DNA mutations provide the raw raw material for large evolution. Horse fossils: fossils once used to show that evolution is going in a straight line and once again used to show the opposite. The Great Icon: Monkey-like creature drawings that gradually evolve into humans, which are used to show that we are just animals produced by natural causes that have no end. All of these "evolution icons" skew the evidence, and as we'll see, many biologists have known for decades. So by 2000, the icons should have been removed from biology textbooks. But they were, and still are, used to convince students that evolution is real. Chapter 2 looks at the icons at the heart of evolutionary theory; Darwin's Tree of Life, and also examines how evolution has corrupted the concept of structural similarity. Chapter 3 summarizes why the other eight icons died in 2000, and documents how they are still used today. From chapter 4 through 8, I present six additional icons of evolution that, like the ten mentioned above, continue to be used to mislead and indoctrinate people into evolution. But, as I will also explain, there is a ray of hope. [*] The author refers, of course, to Newton, Kepler, Galileo, and others, but there is no doubt that there is historical disagreement between Muslims and Christians about when scientific practice came about. Whether they are Muslim or Christian, this does not invalidate the claim that they are believers in God and reject materialist philosophy. (1) John W. Gofman and Frank Lindgren, “The role of lipids and lipoproteins in atherosclerosis,” Science 111 (1950): 166–171. doi:10.1126/science.111.2877.166. PMID:15403115. (2) Ancel Keys, “Atherosclerosis: A problem in newer public health,” Journal of Mount Sinai Hospital, New York 20 (1953): 118–139. PMID:13085148. (3) Jacob Yerushalmy and Herman E. Hilleboe, “Fat in the diet and mortality from heart disease; a methodologic note,” New York State Journal of Medicine 57 (1957): 2343–2354. PMID:13441073. (4) David Kritchevsky, “History of recommendations to the public about dietary fat.” Journal of Nutrition 128 Supplement (1998): 449S–452S. PMID:9478046. (5) Irvine H. Page, Edgar V. Allen, Francis L. Chamberlain, Ancel Keys, Jeremiah Stamler, and Fredrick J. Stare, “Dietary fat and its relation to heart attacks and strokes,” Circulation 23 (1961): 133–136. doi:10.1161/01.CIR.23.1.133. (6) U. S. Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs, Dietary Goals for the United States (2nd edition; Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1977). http://zerodisease.com/archive/Dietary_Goals_For_The_United_States.pdf. (7) U.S. Department of Agriculture, The Food Guide Pyramid (Washington, DC: Human Nutrition Information Service, Home and Garden Bulletin No. 252, 1992). http://www.cnpp.usda.gov/sites/default/files/archived_projects/FGPPamphlet.pdf. (8) U.S. Department of Agriculture, USDA’s Food Guide: Background and Development (Washington, DC: Human Nutrition Information Service, 1993). http://www.cnpp.usda.gov/sites/default/files/archived_projects/FGPBackgroundAndDevelopment.pdf. (9) U.S. Department of Agriculture, Scientific Report of the 2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (February, 2015): 17. http://www.health.gov/dietaryguidelines/2015-scientific-report/PDFs/Scientific-Report-of-the-2015-Dietary-Guidelines-Advisory-Committee.pdf. (10) Anahad O’Connor, “Nutrition panel calls for less sugar and eases cholesterol and fat restrictions,” The New York Times (February 19, 2015). http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/02/19/nutrition-panel-calls-for-less-sugar-and-eases-cholesterol-and-fat-restrictions/. (11) Alvin Plantinga, “Methodological Naturalism?” Origins & Design 18:1 (1997). http://www.leaderu.com/orgs/arn/od-esign/od181/methnat181.htm. (12) Alvin Plantinga, “Methodological Naturalism? Part 2,” Origins & Design 18:2 (1997). http://www.arn.org/docs/odesign/od182/methnat182.htm. (13) Francis Darwin, ed., The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Including an Autobiographical Chapter (London: John Murray, 1887), I:309. http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?itemID=F1452.1&viewtype=text&pageseq=327. (14) Charles R. Darwin, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, 1st ed. (London: John Murray, 1859), 459. (15) Ibid., 372. (16) Charles R. Darwin, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, 4th ed. (London: John Murray, 1866), 513. (17) Darwin, Origin of Species (1859), 90. (18) Neal C. Gillespie, Charles Darwin and the Problem of Creation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), 147. (19) Alfred Russel Wallace, “Sir Charles Lyell on geological climates and the origin of species,” Quarterly Review 126 (April 1869): 359–394, 391 and 394. http://people.wku.edu/charles.smith/wallace/S146.htm. (20) Michael A. Flannery, Alfred Russel Wallace: A Rediscovered Life (Seattle, WA: Discovery Institute Press, 2011), 67. (21) Jonathan Wells, “Darwin’s straw god argument,” Discovery Institute (2008). http://www.discovery.org/a/8101. (22) Theodosius Dobzhansky, Genetics and the Origin of Species (New York: Columbia University Press, 1937), 12. (23) Theodosius Dobzhansky, “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution,” American Biology Teacher 35 (1973): 125–129. doi:10.2307/4444260. (24) Stephen Dilley, “Nothing in biology makes sense except in light of theology?” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 44 (2013): 774–786. doi:10.1016/j.shpsc.2013.06.006. (25) Jonathan Wells, Icons of Evolution: Science or Myth? (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 2000). - Dr. Jonathan Wells. — Source: Brahin Center website - Published on 2019-01-18 (archived at the Internet Archive) https://braheen.com/publications/intros/العلم-الزومبي-أيقونات-التطور-من-جديد-مقدمة-المؤلف