We were jolted to wakefulness by the blaring sirens and flashing lights of our Retard-o-tron™. The blinking letters on the wall said WorldNetDaily. As you know, WorldNetDaily (WND) is the flamingly creationist, absolutely execrable, moronic, and incurably crazed journalistic organ that believes in and enthusiastically promotes every conspiracy theory that ever existed.
So we visited the WND website and were directed to yet another new video by the brilliant and articulate leader of David Rives Ministries. The last time we brought you a David Rives video was WorldNetDaily: Rev. Rives Debunks Lucy.
The new video can be seen here: ’100s of esteemed biologists’ lied about evolution. It sounds like the rev caught us in some gigantic fraud. But has he done that, or are his pants on fire again?
The Rev seems to be cavorting through the whole répertoire of creationism. Now he tells his flock about another creationist favorite — the embryo drawings by Ernst Haeckel, which were intended to illustrate Haeckel’s theory of recapitulation, also known as his biogenetic law. According to Wikipedia, that is:
a disproven biological hypothesis that in developing from embryo to adult, animals go through stages resembling or representing successive stages in the evolution of their remote ancestors.
TalkOrigins discusses Haeckel’s drawings in their Index to Creationist Claims. The specific claim addressed is: “Haeckel faked his pictures of embryos to make them look more alike than they are.” TalkOrigins says:
Haeckel’s pictures are irrelevant to the question of whether the embryos are similar. What matters are the embryos themselves. Within a group, early embryos do show many similarities. For example, all vertebrates develop a notochord, body segments, pharyngeal gill pouches, and a post-anal tail. These fundamental similarities indicate a common evolutionary history. … The embryos also show some differences, which Haeckel glossed over. … When Haeckel’s inaccuracies were exposed, authors started using corrected versions.
They address the issue of gill slits in human embryos in a separate article, which says:
The pharyngeal pouches that appear in embryos technically are not gill slits, but that is irrelevant. The reason they are evidence for evolution is that the same structure, whatever you call it, appears in all vertebrate embryos.
As for Haeckel’s so-called biogenetic law that every embryo goes through all the stages of its evolution, it was an interesting idea that hasn’t worked out — but it was never part of Darwin’s theory.
Rev Rives’ video suggests that Haeckel confessed in some way and admitted to being one of “hundreds of fellow-culprits, among them many of the most trusted observers and most esteemed biologists.” Wow — that sounds serious! What a conspiracy!
But it’s quote-mined, and it may not have ever been said in any form. There’s another TalkOrigins article on the subject of that quote, which you can read here. Search for the word “culprits” and you’ll find it. There was no such “confession.”
Now that you have some background, click over to WND and take a look at Rev Rives’ video. It’s only two minutes long.
Copyright © 2012. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.
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There’s actually a whopping lie in this video —- the inference that what Haeckel’s “fraud” was was the “addition” of gill slits.
Who questioned Haekel’s drawings? Astute creationists? No…. it was other scientists. Science self-corrects.
You can even read the caption of the textbook illustration that appears behind Rives at around 2:12:
What does Rives say while the illustration is shown behind him? “Over 130 years after the time Haekel’s work began to come into question, school textbooks still use his drawings based on falsified illustrations.” He is saying this while the drawing behind him is (a) not Haekel’s, and (b) points out in it’s caption that Haekel’s version was not accurate.
So… who is the real liar in this video?
You have to look at Rives intended audience, which is young people. The old people in the town near me don’t care anything about science – they are all up in arms because the city may allow trans-gender citizens to choose the “wrong” bathroom door. (How would those old farts handle unisex facilities on airplanes? Probably most of them use Depends anyway and don’t even think about that.)
What David Rives and Georgia Purdom, who was the subject of a SC post Tuesday, have in common is that each has made “science” videos for the Creationist Home School Channel.
They are very talented presenters who can reach a vulnerable young audience far better than Ray “Banana Man” Comfort or Bryan “Snake Eyes” Fischer could ever dream. Pat Robertson’s audience doesn’t even ask questions beyond what’s on the lunch menu at the Senior Center.
Although Rives and Purdom are wrong about their “science” they present it with sincerity shaped by their faith when they speak. Rives for example, is an amateur astronomer who sells a range of astronomy books on his web site. Many are genuine science books, but Rives takes the moral care to tag them: IMPORTANT NOTICE: SECULAR ASTRONOMY in red so the customers know before they buy.
Purdom has a genuine PhD in molecular genetics, but is a young earth creationist has chosen a career at AIG.
My suspicion is that the people who have given Rives and Purdom their platforms at the WND and AFA are cynically employing them as “useful idiots” who have no appreciation that they are educating a generation of kids which will see no problem establishing a theocratic government that dictates “science”, along with anything else it wants to dictate.
All of this seems, to me, to be of a piece with a religious fundamentalist mindset that is unable to see life through any lens but their own. So they insist on limiting things they don’t understand within the confines of things they do. Since they see life in normative terms, it’s inconceivable to them that evolution does not act on those terms. Since religion is a simple answer, any answer that is not simple is rejected as “elitist” and “wicked secularism.” And since religion is based on unchanging (and unchangeable) dogma, the self-correction feature of science is a weakness to be attacked, not a strength to build on; and any acknowledged mistakes made by science are “gotcha!” moments for them. They can’t argue against a different and alien perspective unless they can level the playing field by making it the same as theirs, one they can understand. And they want to keep children childish by passing on to them these infantile notions in school.
/rant
@ceteris:
Easy, ceteris, easy. Just because you’re frustrated doesn’t make it right to group all old people into your “old farts” category. Only some of them are “old farts”.
@aturingtest: +1.
I turned 55 this past Monday. I don’t know if that makes me an official “old fart” or not, but the free coffee at McDonald’s, and other discounts, at least ease the pain. A little.
/ot
aturingtest says:
You’ll know by the junk mail you receive.
@aturingtest: I haven’t turned 50 yet, and I already received my complimentary ID card from AARP. Don’t know if that counts as “junk mail”, but my wife thought it was hilarious!
Oh, and (belated) happy birthday!
Gary: Are you also getting all those hearing aid junk mails? The post cards that offer a free hearing test? My wife and I are the same age, but she doesn’t get any, and yes, she thinks that’s hilarious.
So now, whenever she nags about some onerous chore, I simply reply, “Eh? What did you say? Speak up, woman! How do you expect me to hear you when you keep mumbling like that?”
She doesn’t kid me so much anymore. Maybe it also has to do with the fact she’s actually two months older than I am. She still bristles about the young clerk at the BMV who, without asking, changed her hair color when renewing her license from “BLN” to “GRA”. I was only able to laugh about that for two months. The same clerk, again without asking, changed mine from “BRN” to “GON”.
To get back on topic, what’s the evolutionary point of aging? The average life expectancy has been extended by modern medicine, better nutrition, etc., and more people are able to live to 100, but that’s still about the limit, as it has been for centuries.
In other words, we seem to be genetically programmed to get not much past 100 no matter what we do. Why? There must be some evolutionary advantage to the species, but what?
Gary: Thanks for the HB. I started getting all those AARP things when I turned 50, too. My wife thought it was funny at the time also, but lately she’s been pushing me to look into what they offer, such as life insurance (should I be worried about that?) She’s 8 years younger than me, so…her time is coming.
RetiredSciGuy: “The same clerk, again without asking, changed mine from “BRN” to “GON”.”
I have to admit- I got a laugh out of that.
SC: I’m sorry this thing got so far off-topic, but you gotta admit- with Rives, there’s just not much THERE there to discuss.
RetiredSciGuy said:
No need. I already have a very mild case of tinnitus. Already been to the hearing doctor. Rather young guy who did a great job of answering my million questions.
Didn’t think evolution had a “point”. I think the idea of a “point” gets into the whole metaphysical and, yes, perhaps the religion debate. I just think evolution has not gotten around to making us live hundreds of years yet. Personally, I’m just fine with that. As the comedian Rick Reynolds once said, “It gives my life scope.” I know I have about this much time to spend, so I better make the best of it.
RetiredSciGuy: “In other words, we seem to be genetically programmed to get not much past 100 no matter what we do. Why? There must be some evolutionary advantage to the species, but what?”
I have to agree with Gary here. You’re asking a “why” question about a mechanism that has no “why” point. Aging and death are just the results of a process based on physical constraints that limit the process, but don’t define it in normative terms; and even extending life spans to twice or three times the present range wouldn’t exclude aging. Extended life spans without aging or death as the final result gets into, as Gary said, metaphysical and religious areas (immortality)that are ideals rather than realities. And “genetically programmed,” for any particular result, risks getting into areas that ID embraces as their foundations- again, defining in normative terms physical action.
I apologize for my presumption (and cop to a certain amount of Dunning-Kruger effect) in seeming to lecture in an area that I, with no appreciable scientific knowledge or training (as opposed to yours), really have no business in. It’s really just my way of expanding, for myself, on some thoughts which had their origin in a recent post by Gabriel Hanna, which linked to his debate with Klinghoffer- it’s part of my learning process (not that everybody here hasn’t been a part of that process). So, you see, in this case, it’s really all Gabe’s fault. I feel better already.
Gary: “Didn’t think evolution had a “point”.I think the idea of a “point” gets into the whole metaphysical and, yes, perhaps the religion debate.”
I agree. It was a poor choice of words on my part. The discussion that I had hoped to get going is better expressed in my last paragraph above, to wit:
“… we seem to be genetically programmed to get not much past 100 no matter what we do. Why? There must be some evolutionary advantage to the species, but what?”
I haven’t researched this, so there might be much in the field that I’m unaware of. Any ideas? I mean, it would seem that we as a species would greatly benefit from living longer (and being reproductive longer). Of course, that would slow down the rate of evolutionary change, but what advantage does a rapid rate of evolutionary change confer upon the individual?
aturingtest said:
If I had had a mouthful of Mt Dew, it would have been sprayed all over my keyboard and monitor from that comment!
RetiredSciGuy said:
I imagine (since I’ve done zero research) that there must be an offshoot of evolutionary biology that studies the question of, “Why do we age?” Is death just the limits of aging? I’ll stop here. I’m so out of my depth that anything else I say will be beyond ignorant.
To Gary, aturingtest, and all others:
When I used the word “why?” above, I didn’t mean it in the metaphysical sense. Again, my poor choice of words. I mean it from a strictly evolutionary sense — what evolutionary survival value does it confer upon the individual or the species as a whole?
What is the evolutionary value in aging? What is the value to the species of our individual lifespans being limited to little more than 100 years, no matter how careful we are with our lifestyle choices?
Yes, more people are living to 100+ today than ever before, but there were always some who got that old, but no one lives to be 130, say. Since maximum life expectancy has not changed over many, many generations, our aging must be genetic, which means it must be evolutionarily determined, which in turn would imply an advantage to the species as a whole, because dying is never an advantage to the individual.
The only thing I can think of is that the less time between generations, the more rapid the possible rate of evolutionary change, which would make it possible for a species to evolutionarily adapt to changing environmental conditions. But how does a lifespan limit come about through evolutionary means?
Gary said, “I’m so out of my depth that anything else I say will be beyond ignorant.”
Well, me too, but that doesn’t stop me. Let’s just make this a brainstorming session to see what kind of ideas we can come up with. Or perhaps someone’s curiosity will be piqued who knows where to find any pertinent research.
It seems we take aging and lifespan limits for granted. But there has to be an evolutionary reason.
RetiredSciGuy asks: “But how does a lifespan limit come about through evolutionary means?”
Good question. I can think of some disadvantages to the species if nothing ever died — like over-crowding, lack of food, etc. But there’s obviously no survival advantage to an individual who dies.
Gary: “If I had had a mouthful of Mt Dew, it would have been sprayed all over my keyboard and monitor from that comment!”
But, I wasn’t joking! (Yes, I was)
I think I’ll stop here, too, and listen and (hopefully) learn. I really wanted to say “normative” and stuff like that some more, but I’m gonna resist the pull of Dunning-Kruger, and let those who might have the real answers teach me.
The Curmudgeon said: “But there’s obviously no survival advantage to an individual who dies.”
That may be my all-time greatest sentence.
SC says: “That may be my all-time greatest sentence.”
I don’t know about that one, but the one before it was pretty good- made sense to me.
The Curmudgeon said: “But there’s obviously no survival advantage to an individual who dies.”
Yeah, I was thinking almost the exact same words myself when I was writing one of the posts above.
RetiredSciGuy said:
A quick search of the intertubez gave me an article from The NYU Langone Internal Medicine Blog. Long story short (if I’m reading it right) is this: We don’t know. Perhaps we should take this brainstorming session into a secluded hidey-hole. If the DI or AiG gets wind of it, they’ll jump up and down claiming that, since we don’t know, the answer MUST be that death is merely the result of The Fall.
SC said:
Not to the individual, perhaps. But as you pointed out, there is an advantage to the species. The NYU article, however, doesn’t give much credence to the idea that the big reason we die is to protect the species. They state (again, if I’m reading this right) evolution works more on the individual and not the group level.
I’m an electrical engineer. I can tell you all about computer networking and all things radio-frequency (RF). I used to have a certification as an EMT. But beyond the basics, I have no idea on why we might die. I could “pull a creationist” and spout stuff I don’t understand, but I won’t.
As long as we live long enough to reproduce, eventual death is no impediment to a species. There really doesn’t have to be a positive reason for death. Lots of things that we’ve inherited from our long-ago ancestors just came along for the ride. If such features don’t interfere with species survival they may persist, even with no apparent purpose. Death may be one of those things.
I think Richard Dawkins would resoundly slap all of you.
Firstly, SC is spot on, the fact that we age and that aging may be genetic does not mean that there is a survival value in aging. Aging is not necessarily the result of optimizing anything. I think a plausible explanation is this: anything that is likely to kill you has to impact your ability to reproduce in order to be acted on by evolution. The younger you are when a genetic defect kills you, the higher the pressure to eliminate that defect. When humans are in their fifties they’ve had children already if they are ever going to. Aging might be the combined effects of genetic problems that take so long to show any effects that they hardly affect one’s reproduction.
Secondly, “good of the species” is not the basis of natural selection.
Gabriel Hanna said:
I doubt it. The little I know of Dawkins suggests to me that he would only invoke The Holy Slap if he discovered we were having such a discussion and we believed a concrete answer was “Oogity boogity”.
From The Blind Watchmaker:
“…the caricature of a Darwinian is thought to believe that the body is infinitely malleable clay, ready to be shaped by all-powerful
selection into any form that selection might favour. It is important to
understand the difference between the real-life Darwinian and the
caricature. We shall do so in terms of a particular example, the
difference between the flight techniques of bats and of angels.
Angels are always portrayed as having wings sprouting from their
backs, leaving their arms unencumbered by feathers. Bats, on the other
hand, along with birds and pterodactyls, have no independent arms.
Their ancestral arms have become incorporated into wings, and cannot’
be used, or can only be used very clumsily, for other purposes such as
picking up food. We shall now listen in on a conversation between a
real-life Darwinian and an extreme caricature of a Darwinian.
Real-life: I wonder why bats didn’t evolve wings like angels. You’d
think that they could use a free pair of arms. Mice use their
arms all the time for picking up food and nibbling it, and bats
look terribly clumsy on the ground without arms. I suppose
one answer might be that mutation never provided the
necessary variation. There just never were any mutant
ancestral bats that had wing buds sticking out of the middle of
their backs.
Caricature: Nonsense. Selection is everything. If bats haven’t got wings
like angels, this can only mean that selection didn’t favour
wings like angels. There certainly were mutant bats with
wing buds sticking out of the middle of their backs, but
selection just didn’t favour them.
Real-life: Well, I quite agree that selection might not have favoured
them if they had sprouted. For one thing they would have
increased the weight of the whole animal, and surplus weight
is a luxury no aircraft can afford. But surely you don’t think
that, whatever selection might in principle favour, mutation
will always come up with the necessary variation?
Caricature: Certainly I do. Selection is everything. Mutation is random.
Real-life: Well yes, mutation is random, but this only means that it
can’t see into the future and plan what would be good for the
animal. It doesn’t mean that absolutely anything is possible.
Why do you think that no animal breathes fire out of its
nostrils like a dragon, for instance? Wouldn’t it be useful for
catching and cooking prey?
Caricature: That’s easy. Selection is everything. Animals don’t breathe
fire, because it wouldn’t pay them to do so. Fire-breathing
mutants were eliminated by natural selection, perhaps
because making fire was too costly in energy.”
Humans do not stay forever young, but that doesn’t mean that aging is adaptive.
Advantages of a long lifespan:
1) Possibility of having more offspring. More of the individual’s genes get into future generations. One could make a strong case for this being the primary driving force behind life.
2) For species such as humans, an individual can be around to help its offspring succeed. Again, insuring that more of its genes get into the future.
3) For species such as humans with higher cognitive ability (other primates, whales, dolphins), the longer an individual lives, the more it can learn, which could speed advances that can aid the entire species.
Disadvantages of a long lifespan:
1) Overpopulation. In wildlife, this can have disastrous consequences. In humans, it can lead to wars over resources, rapid spread of epidemic disease, famine, and all manor of ills.
2) Species with very long lifespans, such as tortoises, tend to have very low reproductive rates, thus impeding evolutionary adaptation to rapidly changing environmental conditions.
3) The longer an individual lives and is able to reproduce, the greater the chance of inbreeding.
I need to do other things just now. Can anyone add to these lists?
RetiredSciGuy said:
Does cognition throw the whole naturalistic concept of evolution out of whack? Because since we have self-awareness, abstract reasoning, and all of those things that make us “human”, we’re not really tied as directly to evolution. Therefore, I don’t see how we can use modern humans to measure how or why evolution would have put time limits on our lives. For example, as I understand it, during the Palaeolithic era, people were considered “old” if they reached the age of 30. In the short amount of time since (tens of thousands of years), is it possible that we evolved to a naturally longer lifespan? Or are our longer lives more due to the fact that we’ve removed many of the impediments to a long life (war, disease, famine, better diet) due to our cognitive abilities?
Beyond that comment, I don’t have anything to add to your list. But I have to say this is an interesting line of inquiry to run down.
Gary says, “during the Palaeolithic era, people were considered “old” if they reached the age of 30.”
We have to be careful not to confuse “average life expectancy” with “maximum age attainable”. Of course, we have no records of actual lifespans during paleolithic times, but we do have some indications maximum attainable lifespan for a few lucky individuals before modern medicine was about 100, even though average life expectancy was much lower than it is today.
Maximum attainable lifespan today is still right around 100 (give or take). It seems this would imply a genetic basis for aging. Of course, modern medicine along with improved diet and lifestyle are helping more of us attain the century mark, which raises average life expectancy. The point I’m trying to make is that although “average life expectancy” improved greatly during the 20th century, “maximum age attainable” has improved very little if at all.
RetiredSciGuy, I think your lists of advantages and disadvantages can be summed up in an observation I read years ago; sorry I can’t remember where:
Without sex, death is unnecessary; without death, sex is unnecessary
As I understand things:
1. Selfish gene hypothesis: Without death there would be no continuation of life under varying conditions. The old would be competing with the young for food, but the old wouldn’t have the various mutations/gene reshufflings that would give them advantages in new conditions, hence the continued presence of the old would interfere with the success of the young, possibly limiting the success of the genetic lineages. So, lineages without natural death would tend to go extinct.
2. (not incompatible with 1). Death isn’t preprogrammed, but is a by-product of growth and selection for things that aid the young. Genes promoting growth can also promote cancer, etc., and there is some evidence in humans that genes that confer an advantage in youth are deleterious later on.
3. (not incompatible with 1 and 2). Sort of following on from 2, if the important issue is to produce enough offspring that survive to maturity, then once this has been accomplished there is no selective power for genes that maintain longer life. This explains why humans live so long relative to other mammals: we have a very long period of maturation, needing parental care. Thus parents need to survive for at least 12-15 years after the birth of their last young. This might also explain why female humans live longer than males, as grandmothers can contribute to the survival of their lineages (but grandfathers might be contributing to the survival of other men’s genes as they can’t be 100% sure of parentage).
AND FINALLY, GILL SLITS.
We all have one (well, 2 — one on each side), as adults. Our Eustachian tube plus middle ear cavity is derived from the first pharyngeal cleft, the same cleft that gives rise to the spiracle in many fishes (i.e. those that retain the spiracle). The spiracle is a serial homologue of the gills, and was probably a true gill slit in early, primitive vertebrates before the modification of the mandibular and hyoid pharyngeal arches ( jaws/jaw supports in jawed vertebrates [remaining as the middle ear bones and hyoid apparatus in us, incorporated into the braincase in living jawless vertebrates).
So, next time a creationist tells you of Haeckel’s lies you can legitimately stick your fingers in your ears and say “I can’t hear you”.
Christine Janis says: “the continued presence of the old would interfere with the success of the young”
You’ve inspired me to re-read King Lear.
@Retired Science Guy: Disadvantages of a long lifespan:
You’re 1) and 2) are disadvantages to a species but natural selection does not act on species, but on individuals. If a short life span benefits the species that doesn’t matter; if it carries an advantage any mutant individual who gets it can dominate the gene population in short order.
The problem with “good of the species” arguments is this. Think of the forest canopy. All the trees have to grow as tall as they can to compete with the others. “For the good of the forest” the tree canopy would only be about a foot high, wouldn’t it? This would save a lot of resources that could be devoted to other things. But if one tree grow taller than the others it gets an advantage at the expense of the others. All the others have to do the same to keep up. Consequently, all trees have to grow as tall as they possibly can, and they top out at the same place because at that point the disadvantages of being tall outweigh the advantages.
Another example. One bull walrus has a harem of what, 10, 20? But the sex ratio is still 50/50. “For the good the species” shouldn’t it be 90/10 in favor of females, since those surplus males just eat? But suppose that did happen, and a mutant femal produced all sons. She’d have a huge advantage for her genes, because all of her sons could sire hundreds or thousands of offspring. OF course they’d pass that advantage along and then soon we’d be at 50/50.
Natural selection can’t make our lifespans short to avoid overpopulation for this reason, because it has no foresight. If living longer carried an advantage individuals that had it would pass it on to their offspring, even if the species as a whole suffered.
Your number 3), avoiding inbreeding, isn’t a reason. Inbreeding actually benefits a species and does no harm to an individual’s fitness. Inbreeding speeds up natural selection by concentrating deleterious genes and quickly eliminating them, as well as concetrating beneficial ones in the same organism. Most people think of inbreeding as bad because we feel obligated to take care of sick people and we feel bad when our relatives die. But it’s not bad from the standpoint of an individual’s genes, hence it’s not something that can be selected against.
Christine Janis and Gabriel Hanna — Thank you both very much! It’s posts such as yours that keep me coming to the Curmudgeon’s blog. Always enlightening!