The sociologist Rodney Stark, writing for the American Enterprise Institute (why? I have no idea), has given us a delightfully ridiculous little article called Fact, Fable and Darwin. Now ordinarily I take articles like this and rip them apart claim for claim, but I wanna try something different this time. I want to throw this one open to my readers to discover and point out to others all of the misrepresentations, distortions and outright falsehoods it contains. And believe me, they are vast in number. Indeed, the fact the article was written by an otherwise reputable scholar (writing far outside his field, of course) is nothing short of astonishing. If this was turned in as a paper in pretty much any biology course this side of the ICR Graduate School, it would be given a failing grade in a millisecond, and not because of the grand Darwinian conspiracy that Stark so casually invokes but because it's so badly written and reasoned that it deserves such a grade. The nonsense starts from the very first paragraph, which claims,
There is no plausible scientific theory of the origin of species! Darwin himself was not sure he had produced one, and for many decades every competent evolutionary biologist has known that he did not.
Folks, when someone from one field begins an article by, in essence, claiming to be able to read minds and to have determined that "every competent" practitioner in another field secretly knows that everything taught in that field is false despite the fact that they spend their entire lives doing research in that field and teaching in it, you can be pretty sure that what follows is going to be some major league mental flatulence. This is especially true when the person writing can't get even the most basic facts right in the field he is writing on. For example, he says,
Within each genus (mammals, reptiles, etc.) are species (dogs, horses, elephants, etc.) and within each species are many specific varieties, or breeds (Great Dane, Poodle, Beagle, etc.).
Bzzzt. Thank you for playing, we have some lovely parting gifts for you. Every 1st year biology student knows the basic taxonomic categories in the right order - kingdom, phylum, subphylum, class, order, family, genus, species, subspecies. Calling mammals and reptiles examples of a genus isn't even close; both are classes, a full 3 taxonomic levels higher than genus. Each contains over two dozens orders, many dozen families and probably hundreds of genera. Elephants alone are an entire family, with two genera within it, and horses are not a species but multiple species in the Equus genus.
I leave it to my readers to have a little fun with this and point out the rest of the numerous distortions and falsehoods contained in this article.
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While acknowledging that "the extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record" is a major embarrassment for Darwinism, Stephen Jay Gould confided that this has been held as a "trade secret of paleontology" and acknowledged that the evolutionary diagrams "that adorn our textbooks" are based on "inference...not the evidence of fossils."
this one's probably not worth points, since you've covered it so thoroughly
For example, dogs can be bred to be only so big and no bigger, let alone be selectively bred until they are cats.
and
Hence, new species originate very slowly, one tiny change after another, and eventually this can result in lemurs changing to humans via many intervening species.
I'm sure he'll do this again, but I'm at least sort of pleased that he at least uses a primate other than chimps to suggest the "absurdity" of people sharing common ancestors with any primate.
ok, I have to stop now, but:
For generations, Darwinians have regaled their students with the story of the monkey and the typewriter, noting that given an infinite period of time, the monkey sooner or later is bound to produce Macbeth purely by chance, the moral being that infinite time can perform miracles.
Where is this man hiding these legions of "Darwinians?" Darwinia?
ok, no more howlers from me, but I have to say Ed, in general, I prefer reading the creationist work of the junk science variety more than the he said/she said "even evolutionists secretly doubt Darwin" variety.
I'm going to have to scrub my brain. Speaking for myself, this little gem was the highlight of the piece, if only to bring up my favorite example:
"But the boundaries between species are distinct and firm--one species does not simply trail off into another by degrees."
And to Stark I say: "Behold! I give you Ring Species!.
Not that he'd care. It's a rare creationist who lets facts get in his way. Too harmful for the ole' theology.
I write as neither a creationist nor a Darwinist, but as one who knows what is probably the most disreputable scientific secret of the past century:
Well it didn't take long to spot a flaw. In fact it was the very first fucking sentence. He 1) is obviously a creationist
2) doesn't 'know' shit
3)Is dead wrong
Does it strike anyone as mere coincidence that this knucklehead teaches at Baylor?
Might as well tackle one item of academic criminality:
"The occurrence of genetic monstrosities by mutation...is well substantiated, but they are such evident freaks that these monsters can only be designated as 'hopeless.'"
One wonders at the focus on "genetic monstrosities," but the implication is nevertheless clear: mutation cannot produce new species. Stark, of course, ignores the perspicuous documentation of beneficial mutations -- most recently and publicly with the SARS virus (see, e.g., http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2148/4/21) -- and predictably lapses into discussions of dogs never having been observed changing into cats. Aside from the fact that evolution does not predict that one presently extant species will evolve into another presently extant species, the salient absence in Stark's article is any relevant discussion of the various species concepts utilized in biology.
An unsually distinct and modern case study is that of the HIV virus, of which there are two species: HIV-1 and HIV-2. While there are variants of HIV-1 that may produce hybrids, people infected with both HIV-1 and HIV-2 never produce hybrids. This is significant in terms of drug resistance, since a mutation for such resistence in HIV-1 would never enter HIV-2. Both species of HIV arose from a single common ancestor, traced through the buildup of errors through time (known as the "molecular clock"). The global outbreaks of HIV-1 and HIV-2 are traceable to the 1940's, and genetic reconstruction suggests that both began from a single virus particle.
I realized upon re-reading my last post that I left out the words "The available evidence suggests that" in front of this sentence: "Both species of HIV arose from a single common ancestor..."
For example: http://www.aegis.com/news/lt/2000/LT000201.html
Does it strike anyone as mere coincidence that this knucklehead teaches at Baylor?
In case there's any doubt about the author's "unbiased" approach to the subject, have a look at his CV:
http://www.baylor.edu/sociology/index.php?id=17661
I write as neither a creationist nor as a Darwinist...
The first claim is clearly false; the second is clearly true.
Can I play? Quotes are from the first paragraph of Stark's article.
Contrary to others, I think Stark should be allowed to place himself into a third category. Unfortunately, the category he has chosen for himself goes by the epithet of "ignoramus".
Perhaps there is no "grand unified theory" of speciation, but there are many theories of speciation as a process. And there is even data to help us choose among the many theories, with several observed cases of speciation and many more reported cases of incipient speciation. Mayr's theory of peripatric speciation is probably one of the most data-driven theories around; Stark doesn't bother to tell us why it isn't "plausible". Perhaps things Stark hasn't bothered to learn about are never "plausible".
Competent evolutionary biologists know that it is unlikely that natural selection is the primary cause of species divergence. Competent evolutionary biologists (heck, even well-read laymen) know this means that Darwin was mistaken in that point, not that he didn't produce a theory of speciation. Simply because a theory is found to be wrong doesn't mean that it isn't a theory anymore. Most of the cases of observed speciation that we know about have non-selective causes behind them, things like allo- and auto-polyploidy, fusion of chromosomes, and the founder effect. Some of these produce immediate complete or partial reproductive isolation, and adaptive divergence may follow. But one does not come away from Stark's essay any the wiser concerning these things. In fact, Stark's essay puts me in mind of the pronouncement from the movie, Billy Madison: "Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it."
With sweeping claims of this sort, I prefer to have at least a couple of checkable citations in hand. Stark provides none. I don't recall this phrasing in the transcript of the Scopes trial, which I have examined closely. I don't recall this phrasing in the transcripts of the plaintiffs in the McLean v. Arkansas case. This leads me to question whether such instances actually exist. As for proven beyond "any possible doubt", the ID advocates are exploring whole new reaches of "possible" -- but highly improbable -- doubt.
Reputable biologists include Ernst Mayr, who identified at least five separate theories explicated in the pages of Darwin's Origin of Species. (See One Long Argument or this page for the list.) Mayr concluded that Darwin's theories as he summarized them had all survived the scrutiny of science over the intervening years.
I'm not a scientist, but here are my favorite errors from the article, mostly drawn from the areas of logic and things that the author should have known already about academic culture:
Dawkins... asserts that no one except true believers in evolution can be allowed into the discussion, which also must be held in secret.
Like, in every single peer-reviewed public journal about biology? Is that what he calls secret?
As Darwin acknowledged, breeding experiments reveal clear limits to selective breeding beyond which no additional changes can be produced.
This cites Darwin out of context. Darwin noted that additional changes had never been produced, but then postulated that precisely these sorts of changes could indeed be produced, if the experiment were given sufficient time. In other words, the above argument faults Darwin--for making Darwin's own argument! (It's like the inverse of a tautology!)
organisms respond to their environmental circumstances by slowly changing (evolving) in the direction of traits beneficial to survival
This isn't what Darwin said at all. He said that organisms did NOT respond to the environment--It was Lamarck who believed that. Instead, Darwin held that they changed at random, and some of those changes proved more beneficial for survival.
Today, the fossil record is enormous compared to what it was in Darwin's day, but the facts are unchanged. The links are still missing
This is true but trivial, as many of the gaps have been partially filled. Further, there will always be gaps here and there, because it is unreasonable to expect that every transitional form--read, every last generation--will have left its mark in the fossil record. It won't, and there will always be missing links.
But this is not how a scientific theory ought to be evaluated. Instead, we ought to ask about Darwinism's testable claims, about its ability to predict new areas of research and new data that have yet to emerge. And here, Darwinism from the very outset made one of the most stunning predictions of all time...
The gene!
That's right--Darwin supposed that his theory was doomed unless there were some distinct yet mutable unit that transmitted information from one generation to the next. Sure enough, Mendel was toiling away at roughly the same time... and coming to the conclusion that Darwin had predicted.
The word miracle crops up again and again in mathematical assessments of the possibility that even very simple biochemical chains, let alone living organisms, can mutate into being by a process of random trial and error.
No citation. And what's worse, simple biochemical mutations are observed all the time.
Darwin is treated as a secular saint in the popular media
Perhaps. But in the scientific media, his theories had to earn such lofty praise.
the theory of evolution is regarded as the invincible challenge to all religious claims
By whom? The passive voice is unbecoming a good journalist--and in this case, it borders on the fraudulent. My understanding is that only fundamentalists view Darwin as a serious challenge to their religious beliefs.
It was not as if they merely were asked to accept that life had evolved--many theologians had long taken that for granted. What the Darwinians demanded was that religionists agree to the untrue and unscientific claim that Darwin had proved that God played no role in the process.
Hold on, my head's spinning. First you spend the larger part of your article asserting that life has not evolved--And then you say that the clergy, whom you seem to champion, have accepted evolution since the mid nineteenth century, and as a matter of course? I'm confused.
[Huxley vs. Wilberforce]
Eh. I couldn't care less. Huxley was only a mediocre defender of Darwin to begin with. What's more, the assertion that humans evolved from monkeys is false, even according to strict Darwinian theory: Monkeys and humans have both evolved from a common ancestor, one who was neither monkey nor human. Shame on Huxley for failing to notice this--if indeed the failure was his.
I'd think the reason that someone associated with AEI would be writing a piece on creationism is because creationists are frequently associated with an overall political agenda which is very much in line with the neoconservative political agenda, and AEI is a necon think tank. Heck, even the grandaddy of all neoconservative publications, Commentary, has published two or three antievolution articles over the last five or ten years. It seems strange on the surface for political advocacy groups to be getting involved in what appears to be a scientific issue, but if you take the time to consider creationism as a political agenda and not a scientific one (and it's not hard to make the argument that this is what it is), it makes a lot more sense.
Actually, his sociology is pretty crap as well. I'm not surprised he's writing for American Enterprise: he came up wth an axiomatic "supply-side" theory of religion that argues that the glories of the free market also help spread religion. The whole thing was completely pulled apart by British sociologist Steve Bruce.
"For generations, Darwinians have regaled their students with the story of the monkey and the typewriter, noting that given an infinite period of time, the monkey sooner or later is bound to produce Macbeth purely by chance, the moral being that infinite time can perform miracles."
Speaking for myself, I never heard this meme used as anything but a fanciful illustration of the law of large numbers (even something very unlikely will happen if tried a gazillion gazillion times) until a couple of years ago. Apparently some creationist picked up the meme, mutated it slightly to change the attribution from math to evolution and it's been reproducing merrily ever since.
The Wikipedia attributes the typewriter-monkey illustration to Thomas Huxley in 1860, but this seems very unlikely since the first commercial typewriter was the Sholes and Glidden Type-Writer which came out in 1873. (Does anybody have access to the Oxford English Dictionary to see when "typewriter" or some variant was first used?) The first successful typewriter was the Remington No. 2, which came out in 1878 and took a decade to become widely successful.
Googling for "huxley monkeys typewriter" shows that Answers in Genesis was pushing the Huxley story in 1990-1991 in an article in "Creation Ex Nihilo" by Russell Grigg. AIG claims that Huxley used it in a debate with Bishop Wilberforce at a British Association meeting in 1860.
Apologetics press has a 2003 article by Brad Harrub, Ph.D. that says the Huxley attribution is probably legend, citing the gap between 1860 and the invention of the first commercial typewriter. He goes on to say, "These facts, however, have done little to stem the parade of this account by evolutionists as they strive to defend their beloved theory. But the parade may be over, as evolutionists scramble to hide this analogy, and search for a better one to take its place."
At , Laurence D Smart B.Sc.Agr., Dip.Ed., Grad.Dip.Ed, retails the Huxley myth, using the delightfully named "W. Gitt" as a source, but Gitt's article only dates to 1997. He also claims Julian Huxley used the analogy, but his source is Donald Sunderland. He attributes a version of the story to Stephen Hawking in 1988 and also states, "When all these outlandish statements were made "'... no evolutionary scientist or mathematician who knew better raised a single objection.' (5) So as a result, these statements have convinced many people that 5 billion years is enough time for life to evolve on Earth." Reference (5) is Sunderland again. I'd suggest the real reason no scientist or mathematician ever objected is because nobody tied the theory to evolution until some creationist got hold of it and mutated the meme.
Jim Reeds has a page on the monkey-typewriter meme at which contains many delightful examples, including ones from Dilbert, "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" and several clever examples referencing the internet. ("We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true." Robert Wilensky, 1966) The earliest reference Reeds finds to typewriters and monkeys is by Emile Borel in 1913 (in French) and the earliest English example he can find is by Arthur Eddington in 1929. No Huxley.
In a reply to a message from Wesley Elsberry at , Stan Zygmunt attributes the story to James Jeans in 1930 and says that "Jeans attributed the quote to Huxley", but Zygmunt hasn't seen the Jeans book and got the attribution from a physics text book by "Kittel and Kroemer".
And my backup just finished, so that's as far as I'm going with this topic.
I see that a bunch of URLs got lost from my article above. Googling for huxley monkeys typewriter will turn up all of the articles I quoted from on the first page.
One more note: The Online Etymology Dictionary at http://www.etymonline.com/t8etym.htm says, "The verb meaning "to write with a typewriter" is from 1888. Typewriter is from 1875; typist is from 1843."
djmullen: If the wikipedia article states that and you feel it's unlikely, edit the article to suggest that it is so. Improve the knowledge :) However, reading it I would suggest that it says "was inspired by" so the implication wasn't necessarily that Huxley mentioned typewriters, so as a result is quite possible.
It appears that Stark is not immune to still other creationist tactics, namely misquoting and mis-citing. See this posting on Infidels.
http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?p=1762813#post1762813
RBH
Poking around Google, it seems his work on how cults evolve is actually quite interesting. However he seems to be one of those people whom, because he understands one particular area quite well, goes off and makes completely wacko statements about other areas, based on nothing but his own preconceptions.
Am also not at all sure he hasn't made a strawman argument in Why Gods Should Matter in Social Science. The Chronicle of Higher Education (The Chronicle Review section) (June 6, 2003) 49:39:B7-9.
Have to go find Steve Bruce's critique of his 'supply-side' paper, which in and of itself sounds like a highly dubious piece of work (pandering to likely patrons at all?).