From: colby@bu-bio.bu.edu (Chris Colby)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Ideology and Indoctrination
Date: 26 Jan 93 03:38:22 GMT
Organization: animal -- coelomate -- deuterostome

In article <1k0tpu$5mp@agate.berkeley.edu> philjohn@garnet.berkeley.edu (Phillip Johnson) writes:
>Chris Colby complains that Darwin on Trial reports that
>biologists have been hiding things from the public.   Why not,
>when leading figures have admitted as much on behalf of their
>profession? 

Uh Phil, if they admitted it it's not really a secret now is it?

>It is not I but Stephen Jay Gould who described the
>prevalence of stasis and sudden appearance in the fossil record
>as the "trade secret" of paleontology.

Gould frequently writes stuff portraying himself as the wonder
scientist and everyone else as a bumbling moron -- it sells a lot
of books for him. This quote was likely followed by "Lucky me and
ol' Niles were around to set all the other idiots in our field
straight. Gee, I'm swell." 

Take a look at G.G. Simpson's 1944 book "Tempo and Mode in Evolution" 
and see if long periods without evolutionary change were a "trade 
secret" or if they were always acknowledged. Or see his "Rates of 
Evolution" chapter in his 1949 book "The Meaning of Evolution" for
a shorter version aimed primarily at a popular audience. (Hint: releasing
information in books aimed at the lay audience is a lousy way to keep
a trade secret.)

>An excellent example is the standard Darwinist delusion that the
>peppered moth example illustrates "evolution" in any non-trivial
>sense.

The moth example is, by definition, evolution. There are few
studies that document it in as clear cut a manner as Kettlewell's
work. You don't understand evolution.

>That this unremarkable instance of population shifts has
>anything to do with the great creative process that produced
>moths and trees and scientific observers in the first place is so
>absurd to any unprejudiced mind that my lecture audiences
>consistently laugh when I explain it to them.

Please explain how natural selection is a creative process. Selection
is differential reproductive success of classes of pre-existing
genetic variants. This (often, but not always) results in a change 
in frequency of genetic variants in a population. Where is the creativity?
You don't understand natural selection.

>That isn't even reasonable by the standards of Darwinist
>literature, where the creative power of natural selection is
>often extolled hyperbolically.

A lot of nonsense gets spouted in the name of evolutionary theory.
This does not change the fact that there is good science
in the modern synthesis; it just proves that people can write anything,
no matter how ill-informed, about evolution and it will sell. 
_Darwin on Trial_ is a good example of this.

>I recognize that this frank talk will cause offense.  My purpose
>is not to insult anyone, however, but to free minds.  Many of you
>have been indoctrinated not to question assumptions that are
>based on ideology rather than evidence.  You can be free of that
>indoctrination if you wish to be.

Gee, can I? Thanks Phil.. you're swell. How about demonstrating
that a mechanism needs to be creative in order to be the
primary agent of macroevolutionary change? (Hint: How are
you defining creative and what evidence would discriminate between
the patterns of biological traits produced by creative and 
non-creative processes?) 

P.S .If you are ready to discuss things based on evidence, not ideo-
logy, you could perhaps comment on my recent post giving a brief
explanation of the major lines of evidence for common descent. Are
these things not evidence for the claims of evolutionary biology?
Do you think all species share a common ancestor?

>Phillip E. Johnson
>  School of Law, University of California, Berkeley CA 94720

Chris Colby 	---	 email: colby@bu-bio.bu.edu	---
"'My boy,' he said, 'you are descended from a long line of determined,
resourceful, microscopic tadpoles--champions every one.'"
 	--Kurt Vonnegut from "Galapagos"