Ammunition for Evolutionists

Hey guys,

Yes, I'm back. Sorry that I've been delinquent in my blogging duites. I won't let it happen again. And I will read the other blogs you guys have posted while I've been on sabbatical. They look really interesting.


Today, a student in our Comparative Animal Behavior class asked Todd and I if we had seen a film called "Icons of Evolution." The student (who is actually very bright) told us that she just viewed this documentary where scientists were discussing some of the problems with evolution by natural selection. Our first response was that she wasted her time with religious propaganda. She then told us that she's atheist and that the film made no mention of God or religion or even Intelligent Design. And she kept stressing the supposed scientific merit of the documentary. Of course, Todd and I didn't think that this film was a legitimate threat, but we promised the student that we would check it out.

Well, our suspicions were correct. The film, which was first a book by the same title, is the work of a creationist, Jonathan Wells. But this guy isn't you're ordinary creationist. He's got a PhD in biology and he's pretty cleaver because his book/film attacks evoluion from a (supposedly) scientific perspective. Check out some of the questions below. These are questions that Wells encourages people to ask their biology teachers, to stump them.

Q: ORIGIN OF LIFE. Why do textbooks claim that the 1953 Miller-Urey experiment shows how life's building blocks may have formed on the early Earth -- when conditions on the early Earth were probably nothing like those used in the experiment, and the origin of life remains a mystery?

Q: DARWIN'S TREE OF LIFE. Why don't textbooks discuss the "Cambrian explosion," in which all major animal groups appear together in the fossil record fully formed instead of branching from a common ancestor -- thus contradicting the evolutionary tree of life?

Q: HOMOLOGY. Why do textbooks define homology as similarity due to common ancestry, then claim that it is evidence for common ancestry -- a circular argument masquerading as scientific evidence?

Q: VERTEBRATE EMBRYOS. Why do textbooks use drawings of similarities in vertebrate embryos as evidence for their common ancestry -- even though biologists have known for over a century that vertebrate embryos are not most similar in their early stages, and the drawings are faked?

Q: ARCHAEOPTERYX. Why do textbooks portray this fossil as the missing link between dinosaurs and modern birds -- even though modern birds are probably not descended from it, and its supposed ancestors do not appear until millions of years after it?

Q: PEPPERED MOTHS. Why do textbooks use pictures of peppered moths camouflaged on tree trunks as evidence for natural selection -- when biologists have known since the 1980s that the moths don't normally rest on tree trunks, and all the pictures have been staged?

Of course, the three of us can give an answer to many of these questions, but image a high school biology teacher trying to respond to some of these! And as further proof that this tactic of scientifically debating evolutionary theory can be effective comes from the fact the bright student in our class was really interested in our responses to these questions.

So as the title of this blog suggests, I've got ammunition for my fellow evolutionists. This link (http://www.natcenscied.org/icons/), which is sponsored by the National Center for Science Education, provides answers to Wells's questions. Another really great resource Todd found is a review of Wells's book that appeared in Nature (http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/Coyne-IconsReview.htm). Read this, if you've got time.

So now you're armed.