The Science of Evolution: Anti-Evolution Creationism: An Assault on All of Science, In the Name of God
Revolutionary Worker #1222, December 14, 2003, posted at rwor.org
As has been examined at some length in the last installment in this series, the basic methods which the IDCs (Intelligent Design Creationists) use to investigate the world and try to get at the truth of things are actually quite wrong and unscientific. For instance, whenever they run into a complex process which science can't yet fully explain or understand, they immediately jump to the conclusion (no doubt based on their preconceived religious assumptions) that some kind of conscious intelligence "designed" at least those aspects of life's features or processes which we can't yet fully explain. And they stick to this completely unscientific reasoning and approach despite the fact that a great deal of accumulated scientific evidence about the actual workings of natural processes (including known evolutionary processes) provide ample reason to expect that still incomplete human knowledge about natural processes and mechanisms will keep growing into more complete knowledge of those same processes. But it is important to realize that actual scientific understanding (and advances made on the basis of that understanding) will continue to expand only if we continue to apply systematic methods of materialist scientific analysis to the exploration of the natural world and refuse to get diverted or paralyzed by side-trips into imagined supernatural worlds as a supposed alternative basis for understanding the workings and features of this natural world.
In many ways the Intelligent Design Creationists are really not all that different from the traditional Biblical literalist "scientific Creationists" who claim to find "evidence" of God and divine creation in every supposed "gap" in the fossil record (or gap in human knowledge more generally) and who are prone to switching their attention to some other alleged "gaps" as soon as science can finally account for something which had not previously been known or understood. There's no end to that game, and these are not the methods through which genuine scientific understanding actually advances.
One difference between the new breed of IDCs and the more traditional "scientific Creationists" of the last few decades is that, while they believe in Noah's Ark and all the rest, the Biblical literalist Creationists who call themselves "scientific Creationists" do not generally argue that the well-tested methods of secular "naturalistic science" need to be overthrown: they have convinced themselves (and attempt to convince others) that the traditional methods of modern naturalistic science can be used to make the case for divine creation. They have, of course, failed in their attempts to do this, and it has been repeatedly shown that they get a lot of their facts wrong and that they don't seem to grasp some basic points of scientific methodology (for instance, when they incorrectly argue that Darwinian evolution violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics, or that any remaining gaps in the fossil record somehow "prove" that species cannot have evolved one from the other). But they generally haven't gone so far as to call for standard "naturalistic science" to be overthrown and replaced with a god-driven "theistic science."1
So in that sense at least some of the Intelligent Design Creationists are even more extreme than many of the typical Biblical literalists in their anti-science views! Even though they may come off as more generally mild-mannered and speak in more reasonable-sounding academic tones, the Intelligent Design Creationists aligned with the likes of Philip Johnson or the Seattle-based Discovery Institute are strikingly "radical" (in a reactionary direction) in their attempts to undermine science and broadly impose upon society what can only be described as a religious outlook and doctrine.
The IDCs share with all other creationists the essential belief that science--the scientific investigation of natural processes and mechanisms which involve no supernatural powers--is "not sufficient" to explain all the features of life or how they came to be the way they are. But, in addition to this, some of the IDCs actually want to change the whole way science is done . They want modern science to incorporate the existence of God (or at least the possibility of the existence of God) into its basic tool kit. This is why they argue for "theistic science" (which means god-based science). They actually believe science would be better done that way, whereas the vast majority of scientists are convinced that if theistic beliefs and principles became part of the day-to-day operations of science, science itself would go down the tubes--as indeed it would. So here, in broadly sketched outline, we see two opposing camps lining up in what is already becoming a key battle in the "culture wars"--two very opposing outlooks and methods for how to both understand, and seek to transform, existing material reality. Only one of these basic methods and approaches (the methods of "naturalistic" science, also known as "materialist" science) expresses real confidence in humanity's ability to increasingly understand and ever more consciously transform reality on its own, without recourse to an imagined supernatural world. The other approach (undertaking so-called "theistic science") would from the start define limits beyond which human scientific investigation could not proceed, and would ultimately surrender human initiative to understand (and transform) material reality and instead wait (and wait) for divine revelation.
Philosophically, the big showdown with the IDCs boils down to how you understand first of all what "truth" is , and second of all what are the best means (" methods ") for uncovering truth. Something can be said to be "true" if it closely corresponds to the way something really is in actual material reality--the "real world" of nature and society--independently of subjective human opinions or interpretations. You might personally be firmly convinced that a pink elephant is standing in the middle of the street, but that doesn't necessarily make it true; and whether it is true or not is subject to objective verification. How can we actually tell whether something is really true? By applying the methods of science--a systematic process for uncovering the features and workings of real material objects and processes. It is in this way that we make real concrete scientific discoveries about all sorts of things that were not previously known (finding a new cure or treatment for a disease, for instance) and it is in this way that we develop human knowledge and understanding literally on a daily basis. But consistently applying the methods of science requires a number of things:
First of all you have start off by recognizing that there actually is a real, tangible, material world. You just can't test, verify, or in any way interact with, something that is not part of actual material reality (even if you think it might somehow exist "outside" of detectable material reality, in some kind of unknown and unknowable super-natural realm). If an objective external material reality didn't really exist outside of ourselves, we'd never be able to affect or change reality in any way--and we'd be in big trouble! But objective material reality really does exist, and we know for a fact this is so because we can bounce off of it in various ways and then observe the resulting ripples and transformations that occur as a result of our initiatives.
If a rotten tomato existed only in your imagination, it wouldn't splatter all over the place when you drop it on the floor. So "material reality" is not some kind of subjective dream or illusion which exists only in the imagination of human beings where it might be subject to limitless redefinitions or reinterpretations. This may seem obvious to most people, but it is not uncommon to still hear some people say that "we can't really be sure objective material reality really exists." Such people often agonize that maybe "reality" is "only an idea" in the mind of people (or in the mind of someone or something) and so maybe we should just accept that reality "is" whatever individual human beings at any given point think it is. In philosophical terms this way of looking at things is called subjective idealism.2
Of course, many people will point out that the conditions of life and the social position and relationships of individuals and larger social groupings inevitably color their perceptions of how reality really "is." And this is true. Any individual, and any social grouping, can fall into making subjective interpretations of what is supposedly "true" that don't at all correspond to actual material reality (in other words, people can be wrong!). And it is also very true, as many of the "postmodernist deconstructionists" have argued, that people who occupy positions of power and influence in society generally have a disproportionate opportunity to impose on the broader public what their particular subjective perceptions and interpretations of reality are at any given time, and that they will tend to give disproportionate emphasis to those perceptions and interpretations of reality that happen to be most in line with their own particular concerns and objectives (whether they do so consciously or not).
But the fact that people are capable of being "subjective" and distorting truth doesn't mean that truth--that which actually corresponds to objective material reality--doesn't exist. The philosophical idealists and relativists don't believe we can ever really be sure of the truth of anything, arguing that the best we can do is perceive a distorted reflection of reality in our own minds, if it even exists at all. But concrete proof is all around us that material reality exists "objectively," which means that it exists independently of human beings or their imaginative subjective conceptions (and distortions) of it. When we interact with outside reality, things happen and things change, and we are ourselves affected and changed in the process. How could any of this take place if material "reality" were just a figment of our imaginations?3
The very fact that reality can be transformed, as well as the particular ways in which it can be transformed, will reveal it to be what it is. For instance, Lenin reflected on the fact that the red dye alizarin had recently been extracted from coal tar for the first time, and he pointed out that the components of alizarin already existed and were present in coal tar even when people didn't (yet) know anything about this; furthermore, it was the process of people actively engaging and transforming reality (in this case distilling the coal tar) that made this previously unknown reality come to light.
That's the thing about objective reality--it doesn't disappear just because some individuals choose not to believe in it. And you can "make it come to light" and actually see "what's there" by actively interacting with it, manipulating it in various ways to make its properties come to the fore. This is what scientists (including evolutionary biologists) actually do when they collect obser- vational data and conduct scientific experiments. When they have a theory about what something might be like in the real world, they make predictions about what they would expect to find in the real world (and also about what they would expect to not find) if in fact their theory is correct. And then they go out in the world and actively interact with reality (conducting various kinds of investigations or experiments) and discover whether or not their original predictions hold up. This is how all scientific knowledge is ultimately extended and developed (in both the natural and social sciences)--in the crucible of scientific practice , which tests and verifies whether the material world and its workings actually do, or do not, conform and correspond to the predictions we make about it. So it's not like there's nothing we can ever do to get at the truth of things!
The challenge we face is not so much to ascertain that material reality exists, but to figure out, and consistently apply, methods of scientific investigation which can best minimize our subjective distortions, and systematically uncover what's actually real.
By contrast, the methods and outlook of the Intelligent Design Creationists would, if allowed to prevail, seriously undermine or even demolish the most basic scientific methodology. By proclaiming the existence of a supernatural power or influence (an "intelligent designer" which supposedly exists outside of detectable material reality and which is not itself part of "matter") the IDCs are, first of all, like all other Creationists, condemning us to a perpetual state of ignorance by telling us that there is a whole other sphere of non-material reality out there that supposedly influences everything about our lives but that we will never be able to learn about through the standard methods of science, since (by definition) such a supernatural power would exist outside the reach of natural science (which can only explore and investigate tangible material objects and processes). And of course this would also mean that we could never really be sure of anything , since the measly explorations of material reality we can conduct with the materialist methods of natural science would, according to this view, be "missing" that whole other crucial non-material dimension of things. If that were true, we'd essentially have to call into question and even reject everything we've ever learned and achieved through science because, after all, how accurate could any of it be if all along we've supposedly been missing such a big part of the picture, and since the methods of science cannot, by definition, be used to explore and investigate anything that is not part of tangible material reality. If what the IDCs are saying were true, wouldn't modern science be essentially useless? Think about it.
Essentially that is the logical extension of the kind of thinking that is promoted by Intelligent Design's leading theoretician, the Berkeley law professor Philip Johnson. He is basically arguing that the standard methods of science (so-called "naturalistic science") are no good and should be abandoned altogether! What should we replace them with? A new kind of "theistic science" which would build into the methods science uses to investigate things the core assumption that a supernatural "designer" exists, or at the very least the assumption that such a supernatural power could exist and influence natural processes and all of life.
But that's not science, it's religion. And it's religion aimed at undermining science.
We can't learn about reality only by thinking about it (though thinking about it is one important part of the process!). The way scientists can learn about things (and ultimately verify whether a particular idea about reality is true or not) is to actively interact with aspects of real, tangible, reality--poking it and probing it in various ways, so to speak. And you just can't do that with something the Creationists assume exists but which by their own definition has no tangible material presence. So what Johnson is really calling for is throwing all of science as we know it out the window and replacing it altogether with blind religious faith .
Of course some of the "Intelligent Design" types don't go quite this far: some of them (like the biochemist Michael Behe) speak of a "personal God," don't think of themselves as seeking to overthrow the basic methods of science, and are content to proclaim that they've simply found concrete tangible "evidence" of the existence and influence of an intelligent designer in the features of living organisms. As we have seen previously in this series, Behe claims that the very complexity of some biochemical reactions that occur in living cells is itself convincing "evidence" that an intelligent designer must have been involved at some point in shaping and directing the development of life. Since he's pointing to an actual material aspect of reality, which can actually be detected with standard materialist scientific methods (the real biochemical reactions he is discussing) you might at first think that maybe at least a few of those IDCs are managing to stick to the basic methods and principles of science. But that's not in fact the case.
Just look at what an IDC like Michael Behe is proposing: He points to some real biochemical reactions which everyone can agree are actually "complex." So far so good. But then he says he sees "evidence" of "intelligent design." Where? Well, he basically says, the complexity itself constitutes the evidence (because he can't figure out quite how evolution could have produced such complex chemical reactions--so therefore god must have done it). But is he talking about actual scientific evidence about a "designer," the kind of evidence that comes from applying the standard methods of science to "poke and probe," test and verify whether an idea about the world is correct or not? No, of course not. He's not at all talking about that kind of "evidence." So basically what he is calling "evidence" is just an idea --an idea in his own mind about what something he is actually observing (natural complexity) supposedly represents (the influence of an "intelligent designer"). Yet there's no way science could actually concretely test and verify Behe's idea that an intelligent designer actually "designed" that complexity (even Behe would likely agree that is impossible). But if that's the case, he can't legitimately say that he's found any kind of "scientific evidence" of design; he's just coming up with an untested--and untestable--idea, and he's doing so on the basis not of science but of religious belief.
And Behe and all the other Intelligent Design Creationists also violate one of the basic principles of science in essentially declaring some parts of reality off-limits to scientific exploration and understanding. They make the fundamental error of thinking that "something we don't yet fully understand" is actually "something we'll never be able to understand." Once again they "find god" in one or another "gap" in human understanding.
Michael Behe, for instance, doesn't understand how the natural processes of evolution could have brought into being some complex chemical reactions all on their own (in large part because he doesn't really understand how evolution actually works). But because he personally doesn't understand it, and also because the general scientific understanding of all the steps involved in the evolution of some of these biochemical processes is in fact not yet complete, he automatically assumes that all this must somehow be the work of God and that we'll never be able to fully understand how it all came into being. Once again, this is religion, not science. And it is religious faith being used against science as it objectively discourages the use of systematic scientific methods for making further discoveries (including about evolutionary mechanisms involved in producing biochemical complexity) and deepening our understanding of actual reality.
Mao Tsetung used to like to say that "to know the taste of a pear you have to bite into it." In other words, it's not enough to have "beliefs," "convictions" or even "expectations" about the way reality is (or the way it has been, or might become). If you want to get to an understanding of the way something really is (or the way it has been, or the way it might become) you can't just do it by staring at your belly button: you have to actively and systematically investigate it; you have to poke and probe reality in various ways. You can form some theoretical idea in your mind about the way reality might actually be (and again, doing this is actually an important part of the process) but then you also have to go out and actively and repeatedly test and verify that theory. And the way you do that is to systematically investigate reality by first of all bringing to bear previously accumulated and previously verified human knowledge (such as the whole body of accumulated scientific understanding known as the theory of evolution)which can help better illuminate and clarify a new problem or question; and then you make verifiable predictions about what you should (and also what you shouldn't) be able to find in the world if your particular idea (or theory) about a piece of reality is correct and actually corresponds to the way something really is.
In other words, you don't have to "start from scratch" every time you approach a new problem, as if nothing in nature or society had ever been previously proven to be true!But, since all matter is always in motion (continually changing) you can't get to know it by making predictions from the sidelines--you have to grab a hold of it while it's passing by, so to speak, and consciously act on it ("bite into the pear") to see what happens and then learn from that .
Active and well-thought-out human investigation and experimentation (whether in relation to the organization of the world of nature or human society) is a process which can and will itself change some of the features of reality (you are going to affect it, like it or not), but repeatedly examining whether or not these changes seem to be taking place in line with predicted expectations is one of the best ways to learn and confirm more about the actual truth of something.
Do you see how damaging it would be to the advance of science and human knowledge about the actual material world more generally if the Creationists, including the "intelligent design" types who call for the replacement of "naturalistic science" with a "theistic science," had their way and were allowed to dictate the practice and the teaching of science?
Is so-called "irreducible complexity" legitimate observational data? Does it really exist? Describing something as "irreducibly complex" (as Intelligent Design Creationists like Michael Behe do) rests on an important underlying assumption--that if something is pretty complicated and we can't yet work out all the steps that went into bringing it into being, then the only other possibility is that "god made it." That's a ridiculous assumption: many of the things ancient people would have considered to be totally unimaginable and too complex to ever come into being without the intervention of supernatural spirits (an epileptic seizure, for instance) were eventually discovered to be natural processes that were not so mysterious after all. The kinds of natural features that Intelligent Design Creationists like Michael Behe think of as being too complex to have been generated by natural evolution certainly don't appear that way to most evolutionary biologists.
When Intelligent Design Creationists say they "can't imagine" complex biological systems (including multi-step series of chemical reactions that take place inside of cells) evolving without an intelligent conscious designer somehow being involved, what they are really saying is that, much like their more traditional Biblical literalist brethren, they don't really believe there are any "intermediates" in the history of biological evolution. I don't know how many times science has to prove them wrong before they will give up this stubborn line of reasoning (probably never). When Creationists "couldn't imagine" that streamlined whales swimming in the seas could be the evolutionary descendants of much earlier mammals that walked on land, evolutionists set out before them a very extensive chronological series of fossils which clearly linked a pig-like four-legged mammal ancestor species (that walked on land millions of years ago) to their modern-day whale descendants through a long series of different (but clearly related) intermediate species. This long fossil sequence of ancestor and descendant species, spread out over millions of years, shows a step-by-step reduction of the leg bones and their modification into fins, as well as some other modifications consistent with adaptation to a marine environment.
When the creationists "couldn't imagine" that modern-day humans are descended from a tree-dwelling ape ancestor line that also happens to be an ancestor of modern-day chimpanzees, evolutionists once again spread out before them in chronological order a mind-boggling array of dozens of different species of fossil hominids which are in various ways clearly "intermediate" between the older lines of ancestral apes and today's single modern human species. Not surprisingly, the oldest fossils in the time-sequence of the various upright-walking species have more features in common with the older ape lines, and the more recent fossils in the time-sequence have many features that are much more like those of modern humans.
While such fossil sequences are never "complete," there is absolutely no doubt that the fossil record contains tons of examples of "evolutionary intermediates" in all sorts of animal and plant lines. The Creationists must be literally blinded by their faith if they can't see it!
But the Creationists, including the Intelligent Design types, aren't just blind to the many intermediate forms that are clearly present in the fossilized remains of pre-existing plants and animals. They also don't understand what goes into the evolutionary modification of function . In this they are just like some of the old critics of evolution in Darwin's time who had trouble conceiving that, for instance, the wing of a bird, supposedly "so perfectly adapted to flight," could have evolved out of the arm bones of some pre-existing ancestor species which did not fly. Of course, in Darwin's day Creationists at least had the excuse that the sciences of molecular genetics and of developmental biology didn't even exist yet. But today's Intelligent Design Creationists have no such excuse--today there is a much greater basis to understand just how such evolutionary modifications can and do take place. For instance, we now know that it takes very little genetic and developmental modification to go from a pre-existing vertebrate arm bone to a wing, or even to a fin for that matter.
The combination of molecular genetics and developmental biology has shown us that very small genetic mutations can at times have large effects on bodily forms and functions. Sometimes all it seems to take is for a genetic mutation to cause a slight slowing down or speeding up of the rate of development of particular structures, or even of whole organisms. And, as we have seen, sometimes an important new structure has evolved out of some pre-existing structure which used to serve a completely different function in an ancestor species. A well-known example of that is the Panda's "thumb," which it uses to grasp and hold things like the bamboo it eats. It looks and functions very much like a thumb, but on closer examination it turns out not to be a finger bone at all but a modification of a wrist bone. Evolution is full of such examples of pre-existing structures present in ancestor species being transformed (through relatively minor genetic modification) into new structures capable of entirely new functions in a descendant line.
Some (though not all) evolutionary modifications produce new adaptations , as living populations evolve in continual back-and-forth interaction with their physical and biotic environment--the physical climate, landscapes, and so on, as well as the other living ("biotic") plants and animals which are present in the same area. It is in this way, for example, that, over evolutionary time, some plant species have evolved in seemingly finely tuned tandem with some of the animal species (insects, birds, bats) that pollinate them. Some plant species produce flowers that are near perfect "fits" for the tongues of the insects or the beaks of the birds that pollinate them, or have evolved the ability to synchronize their flowering schedules (all individual plants in local populations of such a species flower at the same time), which serves as a mass signaling to pollinators and increases successful pollinations. Similarly, we know of many examples of species of plants or animals that have evolved in tandem (co- evolved) with species that eat them. There is concrete evidence, including in living populations, that prey species tend to evolve improved defenses in relation to their predators and that predator species tend to evolve more efficient predation strategies and mechanisms in relation to their prey. In fact, these kinds of continual back-and-forth relations between species are a driving force of evolutionary change, resulting in many specific adaptations.
It is also clear that evolutionary changes which emerge in plant or animal lines are not always specifically adaptive when they first appear. For example, new features that emerge can sometimes spread widely throughout populations and over the generations not because they themselves are being directly favored by natural selection but simply because they are genetically "linked" to some other feature which is providing organisms with a reproductive edge and is therefore being spread by natural selection. But even such seemingly "neutral" changes contribute to a living population's overall inheritable genetic variation and can serve as the raw material for some additional genetic modifications at some point further down the line. Some previously non-functional features can become functional in descendant species, and vice versa.
It is important to remember a point that was stressed many times in this series: at any given point, biological evolution can only work with the raw material (the genetic variation) that was already present in the immediately preceding generation, and nothing else.On the basis of this pre-existing genetic variation, evolution can generate some brand new features (and sometimes these novel features are even significant enough to initiate the spinning off of a whole new species , as was discussed earlier in this series). But the fact that evolution can only work with whatever genetic variation happened to be present in the immediately preceding generations also imposes significant limits on what can be evolutionarily derived from preceding generations at any given time (in other words, the options for evolutionary modification at any given point are not limitless). Intelligent Design Creationists don't seem to understand many of the basic principles of how evolution actually works, including out of what pre-existing basis genuine evolutionary novelties (brand new features) can actually emerge, while at the same time being significantly limited and constrained by past historical development.
Again, it is a well-established scientific fact that evolution has repeatedly brought forth all sorts of novel features--including some that are quite complex and dramatically different than what existed in some earlier ancestor lines--through a combination of random genetic modifications coupled with extremely non- random processes (in particular natural selection) which tend to "sort out" these modifications over the generations and in relation to particular environments.
It makes absolutely no sense to speak of some kind of absolute "irreducible complexity" (at the biochemical or any other level), divorced from a discussion of what existed previously--the natural variation which was already present in ancestor lines. Part of why the IDCs can't seem to comprehend this is that they are apparently working with the underlying assumption that there has to be some specified (and perfected) purpose to every single aspect of form and function in the natural world. But evolutionary modification occurs through many chance reshufflings of genetic material which are in no way tied to any specific purpose or any particular direction. And even natural selection has never been a "perfecting" mechanism. As complex and marvelous as they are, the mammalian eye or the wings of birds are not absolutely perfectly suited to their respective functions. And they did not evolve--nor were they designed--"for" their specific functions.
It just so happened that in populations of genetically varied individuals living in light-filled environments, individuals with improved light reception and an improved ability to discriminate shapes would almost certainly have an enormous reproductive advantage over individuals with more limited sight; so any new genetic features (arising through chance mutations and recombinations) which happened to improve sight (in whatever fashion or to whatever degree) would tend to spread over the generations. Wings were not designed "for" flight either: randomly occurring modifications of vertebrate forelimbs could (and did) lead to a number of different functions other than flying, including swimming (fins), digging (scoop-like appendages of moles), or climbing and swooping (as in "flying" squirrels, whose arm webbing allows them to climb tree trunks and soar between trees, although not truly fly). On the other hand, any genetic modifications which happened to produce features which allowed individuals to more fully "fly" and therefore to function a good part of the time in zones previously unoccupied by any other species (the sky) would almost certainly have given those individuals quite a reproductive edge, and allowed the innovation of true flight to spread and diversify quite rapidly once it had emerged (as in fact it did). But this still doesn't mean flight was "bound to" evolve: it's just that when this capacity did evolve, it would likely have given individuals enough of a reproductive edge as to be preserved, consolidated and spread by natural selection.
The Intelligent Design biochemist Michael Behe actually admits that he can imagine how the basic structure of a mammalian eye might have evolved in stages from some more primitive pre-existing structures (such as simple light-sensitive eye spots and the like); but what he can't get his mind around is how something as complex as vision itself could have come about in this way. He is referring to the complex integration of a number of different biochemical processes which have to operate in concert to enable a mammalian eye to actually see. And that's where he draws the line and says that these molecular processes have so many different components that he just can't see how they could have evolved. He says at least at the molecular level such things seem genuinely "irreducibly" complex and that therefore this in itself is evidence of design. But, as we have seen, all sorts of biological systems are complex (meaning that they are made up of many interlocking components) and complexity exists at every level, from the molecular, to the cellular, to the level of organs, whole individuals, whole populations, whole ecosystems. Just because something is complex does not mean it cannot have been derived from some simpler pre-existing structures, or even been co-opted in whole or in part from a pre-existing structure or structures which had very different functions.
And it is also important to remember: that there is generally a lot of redundancy (multiple copies of things) in living biological systems; that it is whole populations (made up of genetically diverse reproducing individuals) which evolve, and then only over multiple generations; that natural selection repeatedly "sorts out" the many different individuals who actively interact with their outside environment (as some of them are able to contribute more descendants to the next generations than others); but that it is the entire genotype of reproducing individuals (the totality of their genetic make-up, as opposed to just one or another gene or gene cluster) that is subject to that sorting out selection process.
One implication of this is that lots of different mutations and genetic recombinations can emerge and get passed on from generation to generation even if they don't have any particularly notable effects on the reproductive capacity of individuals at the time. Intelligent Design Creationists act as if most significant genetic modifications (occurring through mutations and the like) would necessarily tend to harmfully disrupt the bodies and the functioning of individuals in which these modifications appear, and that this would generally result in any such modifications getting eliminated from the gene pool as organisms got sick or died. But this is not in fact the case: in part because there is so much redundancy in natural systems (including at lower levels of organization, such as the biochemical molecular level) there is no reason to suppose that the basic components of many highly integrated biological systems (including those of complex biochemical reactions) could not have evolved in a series of somewhat distinct evolutionary steps (rather than necessarily all at once) without all hell breaking loose.
Another thing many of the Intelligent Design Creationists don't seem to understand is that evolution is not just a randomly occurring "chance" process. They always say things like "such and such very complex structure or function could not possibly have arisen by chance, so therefore it must have been designed."
Once again they are revealing some gross misconceptions about how evolution really works. Nobody ever said evolution is an entirely "chance" or random process! In fact it is not , as just about any student in an introductory biology course should be able to tell you! First of all, the appearance of any new features, at whatever level of organization (from the molecular to the ecological) is necessarily severely limited and constrained by the properties of whatever it is that they are evolving out of. Once again (you can never say this enough!) evolution can only work with the material at hand in immediately preceding generations; it can't come up with just any old thing any old time. Second of all, and most important to understand for the purposes of this discussion, natural selection itself (a central and crucial mechanism of evolutionary change) is the opposite of a chance process.
The very real "chance" part of the evolutionary process has to do with the frequent occurrence of unpredictable genetic "copying errors" (mutations) and the kind of relatively random reshufflings of genes that occur when individuals (especially sexually reproducing individuals) reproduce.4
So "chance" is clearly an important component of evolutionary change. But on the other hand, in any living population of plants or animals, natural selection continually acts to "sort out" different genotypes from one generation to the next, tending to differentially spread those genetic profiles which happen to produce features giving organisms a reproductive edge. That natural "sorting out" part of the evolutionary process is not consciously guided or directed by any conscious force--it happens all on its own. But it is obviously not a random or chance process, for the simple reason that some genotypes will fare better than others (producing particular features which enable some individuals to contribute more descendants to future generations) but only in relation to the particularities of the environment they happen to be interacting with at any given time . A new feature which happens to provide individuals with a reproductive advantage in one environmental context might have zero effect on reproductive potential (or even put the individuals having these features at a reproductive disadvantage) in a different environment. A new feature is never "bound to" emerge; a living population evolves along lines which are channeled and restricted by past modifications but it is nevertheless never "bound to" evolve in any one specific direction or towards any pre- set purpose. But while any new feature may well have initially emerged through just random or chance natural processes (such as a genetic mutation), what ultimately happens to that new feature--and in particular whether or not it ends up spreading to greater and greater numbers of individuals over the generations through natural selection--very much depends on the specific environmental context. Therefore this part of the natural evolutionary process cannot be described as a "chance" event.
So when they keep harping that "all this" (evolution in general, or the evolution of complex systems in particular) could never have happened "just by chance," the IDCs, just like all the more traditional Creationists, reveal that they don't even understand the basics of how biological evolution actually works, even when they happen to hold a degree in biochemistry! (See the box "Do Lottery Winners Win by Design" in our next issue.)
Methodologically, many of the IDCs seem to me to be very
stiff and actually unable to really and fully appreciate the
genuine complexity and diversity of life, including the extent
to which there is a lot of "slop" and redundancy in natural
systems which "allows" for a certain amount of departure from
established norms without entire systems collapsing as a
result. Aside from the fairly obvious fact that they are
working back from wanting to make room for the
assumption that god exists, it seems to me that part of
the IDCs' methodological problem is that they look at complex
processes in a very narrow and reductionist manner which
artificially divorces what is happening at one level from what
may be simultaneously happening at another level. For instance,
Michael Behe, as a specialist in biochemistry, focuses in on
something like the complex machinery of protein synthesis
taking place inside a cell, and argues that even a very slight
modification in this molecular apparatus can totally disrupt
the synthesis of a particular necessary protein. He then
deduces from this that a particular pathway of protein
synthesis could never have evolved out of different
pre-existing molecular processes (and therefore concludes that
it must have been designed whole by a conscious intelligence).
It is simply inconceivable to him that such an evolutionary
step could have been taken without the process of protein
synthesis breaking down totally (and therefore killing cells
and organisms, etc). But ironically, as a biochemist, he really
should be more taking into account the developing understanding
that there are many redundant or duplicate processes (of
such things as protein synthesis) going on at any one time in a
living cell. So it is actually entirely conceivable for a
genetic modification to occur in one such process
(sometimes resulting in the appearance of some new functional
capacity) without completely disrupting or losing a prior
function.
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NOTES:
1"Theism" refers to the belief that God or other supernatural powers exist. It is the opposite of "atheism" which holds that God or other supernatural powers don't exist, other than in the minds and ideas of human beings.
2 Such idealism stands in stark contrast to the materialist outlook, which recognizes the existence of matter independently of anyone's mind or ideas; and idealism is most fundamentally and consistently opposed by the outlook and methods of dialectical and historical materialism, which is a scientific outlook and method which can be used to explore, interact with, and transform things and processes in the real (material) world, both in human society and in the whole broader world of nature. It does so on the basis of systematic investigations of whatever particular historical pathways and processes have brought some aspect of reality into being, and of the dynamic interplay of contradictory (or "dialectical") elements which exist in any thing or process, and which at any given time both characterize that thing or process and also spur and channel its ongoing change and development. From Marx to Mao and right through to today, many "scientific socialists" (communists) have sought to consciously and systematically apply this scientific method to gain a better, more comprehensive and systematic understanding of the differing forms of human social organization throughout history, how society changes over time, and the role of conscious human initiative in effecting these societal changes. But materialist methods which are both historical and dialectical are not just the province of social revolutionaries and are not applicable only to human society and its historical development; such methods can (and should) illuminate all areas of human investigation and experience. In fact, the method of dialectical and historical materialism is just as applicable to the natural sciences as to the social sciences. While most working scientists today would not acknowledge this, either because of a lack of familiarity with some of the terms involved (dialectics in particular) and/or prejudice against dialectical and historical materialism's Marxist-communist connotations, it is objectively the case that what most groundbreaking scientists actually do--the way they pose questions, structure research projects and analyze data--especially in the historical sciences (such as evolutionary biology, paleontology, anthropology, astronomy, etc.), reflects, of necessity, important aspects of dialectical and historical materialism, even though most scientists today apply this somewhat unconsciously, and not consistently and systematically, and in general think of what they are doing as simply applying "the modern scientific method."
3 Towards the end of the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th--times when there was something of a "crisis in physics" which had some features in common with the philosophical and scientific confusions of today--Lenin (particularly in his major philosophical work, Materialism and Empirio-Criticism ), building among other things on what Engels had set forth in Anti-Duhring , polemicized against the paralyzing relativism and subjective idealism which was fashionable in some intellectual circles. Both of these works still contain much food for thought on the subject. One of the points made is that, despite human subjective distortions and overlays, we can confirm that objective material reality really does exist (and also uncover its true characteristics) through the process of actively engaging and consciously interacting with reality, and in so doing transforming it.
4 And even these occurrences are ultimately only relatively "random" since there are, after all, certain limits and restrictions on precisely what "random" genetic changes can occur at any given time, due to some restrictions imposed by the properties of the genetic material that happens to be available for modification; but from the perspective of whole reproductive individuals and whole populations of reproductive individuals, such genetic mutations or the effects of assorted genetic recombinations can legitimately be described as random or as non-directed "chance" events.