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Here’s a question for neo-Darwinists: “If someone could prove to you that the Earth was ten or even one hundred times younger than the currently accepted figure of 4.54 billion years, would you give up your belief in evolution by natural selection? Or putting it another way, what’s the youngest age that you, as a Darwinian evolutionist, would accept for the age of the Earth? How low would you go?”
In my previous post, A hypothetical question for neo-Darwinists, on the age of the earth, I challenged neo-Darwinian evolutionists to provide an estimate (to the nearest order of magnitude) of how much time it should take for evolution by natural selection to generate complex life-forms like ourselves from the earliest life-forms. Not surprisingly, no Darwinist was brave enough to submit an estimate.
But let that pass. The question I have posed in today’s post is one that any Darwinist should be able to answer. No mathematical calculations are required; all I am asking evolutionists is what they would be prepared to believe. Here’s my challenge: think of a number that represents the minimum amount of time (in years) in which you’d be prepared to accept that life could have evolved from the earliest living thing to complex animals, including ourselves. Write that number down, and please, don’t read any further until you have done so.
The diversity of estimates for the age of the Earth in the 1920s
Now, I’d like readers to have a look at the following passage, from Chapter 2, section 2 of H. G. Wells’ Outline of History (Macmillan, New York, 1921; first edition, 1920). I should point out that Wells was a trained biologist and an ardent supporter of Darwinism, and that he claimed to have had a great deal of assistance from scientists, historians and other specialists in writing his Outline of History (not to mention his liberal use of a manuscript written in 1919 by a Canadian author named Florence Deeks):
Speculations about geological time vary enormously. Estimates of the age of the oldest rocks by geologists and astronomers starting from different standpoints have varied between 1,600,000,000, and 25,000,000. That the period of time has been vast, that it is to be counted by scores and possibly by hundreds of millions of years, is the utmost that can be said with certainty in the matter. It is, quite open to the reader to divide every number in the appended time diagram by ten or multiply it by two; no one can gainsay him. (1921, p. 10)
On page 11, Wells provides two time-scales: one based on a high estimate of 800 million years for the age of the Earth, with life originating 600 million years ago, and the Cenozoic era, or “age of the mammals,” some 40 million years ago, and the other based on a low estimate of 80 million years with life originating 60 million years ago, and with the age of the mammals commencing just 4 million years ago. Think about that: just 60 million years to get “from goo to you,” and a mere 4 million years to get “from shrew to you.” (Although the first mammals appeared in the late Triassic, modern placental mammals are currently believed to have evolved from shrew-like creatures which appeared shortly after the extinction of the dinosaurs, which marks the beginning of the Cenozoic era.) However, if Wells had drawn a time-scale for a 25,000,000-year chronology, which, in his own words, “no one can gainsay” – at least, not in 1921, when he wrote his book – then life would have evolved over a period of less than 20 million years, and the “age of the mammals” would have commenced a mere 1.25 million years ago. I hope my readers will agree that even in Darwin’s day, the absurdity of supposing that evolution could have taken place over such a short timescale would have been readily apparent.
Bear in mind, please, that there is a 64-fold disparity between the highest and the lowest estimates of the age of the Earth, as quoted by H. G. Wells. And bear in mind also that the Scopes trial was held in 1925, just a few years after the publication of Well’s Outline of History.
The scientific consensus regarding the age of the Earth in the nineteenth century
In my previous post, I narrated the story of how William Thomson, the most highly esteemed physicist of his day, who was later made Lord Kelvin, estimated the age of the Earth at 100 million years or so – a number that caused Darwin and his disciples to suffer a great deal of discomfiture, as they realized that there was no way to fit the entire course of life’s evolution into such a short period. Luckily for them, they were subsequently given some extra breathing space by geologists. Wikipedia takes up the story in its article on the age of the earth. To begin with, it describes how well-supported Lord Kelvin’s estimate was, in the nineteenth century. Indeed, Darwin’s own son, the astronomer George H. Darwin, came up with estimates which supported Kelvin’s figure:
In 1862, the physicist William Thomson published calculations that fixed the age of Earth at between 20 million and 400 million years. He assumed that Earth had formed as a completely molten object, and determined the amount of time it would take for the near-surface to cool to its present temperature. His calculations did not account for heat produced via radioactive decay (a process then unknown to science) or convection inside the Earth, which allows more heat to escape from the interior to warm rocks near the surface…
The physicist Hermann von Helmholtz (in 1856) and astronomer Simon Newcomb (in 1892) contributed their own calculations of 22 and 18 million years respectively to the debate: they independently calculated the amount of time it would take for the Sun to condense down to its current diameter and brightness from the nebula of gas and dust from which it was born. Their values were consistent with Thomson’s calculations. However, they assumed that the Sun was only glowing from the heat of its gravitational contraction. The process of solar nuclear fusion was not yet known to science.
Other scientists backed up Thomson’s figures as well. Charles Darwin’s son, the astronomer George H. Darwin, proposed that Earth and Moon had broken apart in their early days when they were both molten. He calculated the amount of time it would have taken for tidal friction to give Earth its current 24-hour day. His value of 56 million years added additional evidence that Thomson was on the right track.
The last estimate Thomson gave, in 1897, was: “that it was more than 20 and less than 40 million years old, and probably much nearer 20 than 40”.
Radioactivity to the rescue?
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The lead isotope isochron that Clair Patterson used to determine the age of the solar system and Earth (Patterson, C., 1956, Age of meteorites and the earth, Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 10: 230-237). Image courtesy of jmpalin and Wikipedia.
The discovery of radioactivity overturned these estimates, but it took a few decades for the science of radiometric dating to become established and to win scientific acceptance, thanks in no small measure to the indefatigable efforts of the geologist Arthur Holmes (pictured at top, courtesy of Wikipedia):
In 1896, A. Henri Becquerel discovered radioactivity. In 1898, Marie and Pierre Curie discovered the radioactive elements polonium and radium. In 1903 Pierre Curie and his associate Albert Laborde announced that radium produces enough heat to melt its own weight in ice in less than an hour.
Geologists quickly realized that the discovery of radioactivity upset the assumptions on which most calculations of the age of Earth were based. These calculations assumed that Earth and Sun had formed at some time in the past and had been steadily cooling since that time. Radioactivity provided a process that generated heat. George Darwin and John Joly were the first to point this out, also in 1903…
The pioneers of radioactivity were chemist Bertram B. Boltwood and the energetic [Ernest] Rutherford… Boltwood did the legwork, and by the end of 1905 had provided dates for 26 separate rock samples, ranging from 92 to 570 million years. He did not publish these results, which was fortunate because they were flawed by measurement errors and poor estimates of the half-life of radium. Boltwood refined his work and finally published the results in 1907… His studies were flawed by the fact that the decay series of thorium was not understood, which led to incorrect results for samples that contained both uranium and thorium…
Although Boltwood published his paper in a prominent geological journal, the geological community had little interest in radioactivity. Boltwood gave up work on radiometric dating and went on to investigate other decay series. Rutherford remained mildly curious about the issue of the age of Earth but did little work on it.
Robert Strutt tinkered with Rutherford’s helium method until 1910 and then ceased. However, Strutt’s student Arthur Holmes became interested in radiometric dating and continued to work on it after everyone else had given up. Holmes focused on lead dating, because he regarded the helium method as unpromising. He performed measurements on rock samples and concluded in 1911 that the oldest (a sample from Ceylon) was about 1.6 billion years old. These calculations were not particularly trustworthy. For example, he assumed that the samples had contained only uranium and no lead when they were formed.
More important research was published in 1913. It showed that elements generally exist in multiple variants with different masses, or “isotopes”. In the 1930s, isotopes would be shown to have nuclei with differing numbers of the neutral particles known as “neutrons”. In that same year, other research was published establishing the rules for radioactive decay, allowing more precise identification of decay series.
Many geologists felt these new discoveries made radiometric dating so complicated as to be worthless. Holmes felt that they gave him tools to improve his techniques, and he plodded ahead with his research, publishing before and after the First World War. His work was generally ignored until the 1920s…
Holmes’s persistence finally began to pay off in 1921, when the speakers at the yearly meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science came to a rough consensus that Earth was a few billion years old, and that radiometric dating was credible. Holmes published The Age of the Earth, an Introduction to Geological Ideas in 1927 in which he presented a range of 1.6 to 3.0 billion years. No great push to embrace radiometric dating followed, however, and the die-hards in the geological community stubbornly resisted. They had never cared for attempts by physicists to intrude in their domain, and had successfully ignored them so far. The growing weight of evidence finally tilted the balance in 1931, when the National Research Council of the US National Academy of Sciences decided to resolve the question of the age of Earth by appointing a committee to investigate. Holmes, being one of the few people on Earth who was trained in radiometric dating techniques, was a committee member, and in fact wrote most of the final report.
The report concluded that radioactive dating was the only reliable means of pinning down geological time scales. Questions of bias were deflected by the great and exacting detail of the report. It described the methods used, the care with which measurements were made, and their error bars and limitations…
An age of 4.55 ± 0.07 billion years, very close to today’s accepted age, was determined by C.C. Patterson using uranium-lead isotope dating (specifically lead-lead dating) on several meteorites including the Canyon Diablo meteorite and published in 1956.
To sum up: the scientific consensus regarding the reliability of radiometric dating is barely eighty years old. Neo-Darwinian evolutionists would presumably concede that their theory requires billions of years for it to work. By their own admission, then, there must have been reasonable doubt about the validity of Darwin’s theory of evolution – or, indeed, any other theory which postulated that life had evolved as a result of an unguided process – until as recently as eighty years ago.
Feet to the fire: five questions for neo-Darwinists
I’d like to finish off with five challenging questions for neo-Darwinian evolutionists, and I’d like some honest answers, please:
(1) In view of the fact that the best science of the day supported an estimate of the age of the Earth of no more than 100 million years, which was far too short a time-frame for Darwinian evolution to generate complex animals from the first living cell, will you concede that until 1903 (when geologists realized that these scientific estimates were flawed), Darwin’s theory of evolution could at best have been regarded as a highly speculative hypothesis, which a prudent scientist would have probably rejected?
(2) In view of the fact that radiometric dating did not win general scientific acceptance until 1931, will you also concede that between 1903 and 1931, a prudent scientist would have been perfectly justified in withholding his or her assent to Darwin’s theory of evolution, and in continuing to entertain the hypothesis that (at least some) life-forms had been designed by an intelligent being?
(3) In view of the fact that the Scopes trial was held in 1925, will you concede that the reporters at the 1925 Scopes trial, most of whom displayed a consistent bias against fundamentalism in their news stories, were guilty of a rush to judgement in their public endorsement of evolution?
(4) In view of the fact that Professor Gregory Chaitin, a world-famous mathematician and computer scientist, conceded in his talk, Life as Evolving Software, given on 2 May 2011, that according to current toy models of Darwinian evolution, the evolution of complex life-forms from the simplest living cell should take not billions of years but quintillions of years (as I described in my previous post and at greater length in my earlier post, At last, a Darwinist mathematician tells the truth about evolution, will you concede that it is reasonable for modern-day Intelligent Design theorists to doubt the Darwinian theory of evolution and to entertain the hypothesis that life was designed by an intelligent being?
(5) In view of the fact that the world-renowned evolutionary biologist, Dr. Eugene Koonin, has estimated in his peer-reviewed paper, The Cosmological Model of Eternal Inflation and the Transition from Chance to Biological Evolution in the History of Life, (Biology Direct 2 (2007): 15, doi:10.1186/1745-6150-2-15) that the probability of even a simple life-form evolving in a region the size of the observable universe, within the time available, is less than 10-1,018, in 1 in 1 followed by 1,018 zeroes, and in view of the fact that the multiverse is a highly speculative hypothesis for which no experimental evidence exists, will you concede that the Darwinian theory of evolution must also revert to the status of a highly speculative hypothesis, until solid scientific evidence of the existence of the multiverse is forthcoming?
That concludes my questions for today.
I’m not a neo-Darwinist. But I’ll comment anyway.
This is far too hypothetical.
Evolution is supported by a mountain of evidence. Much of that evidence also counts as support for the age of the earth. Nobody could prove the earth to be much younger, without first countering that evidence.
How can we answer your question without knowing which evidence for evolution has been countered, and how? Science isn’t a game of playing logic with propositions. It’s a practice of dealing with real evidence and often digging for more evidence.
I’ll look at some of your other 5 questions in separate comments.
The question does not make sense.
If you want to reason based on what people of Darwin’s time knew about the age of the earth, then your reasoning also has to incorporate what they reasonably believed about the complexity of life. And, as best I can tell, they thought single celled life was far simpler than we now know it to be.
That seems another odd question. I first heard of evolution at around age 15, while still in high school. I didn’t full embrace evolution until almost 10 years later, when I read Watson’s book “The Double Helix”.
A scientist is always justified in witholding assent from an idea for which he/she has not personally seen sufficient evidence to be convinced. And, until origin of life questions are completely settled, it is reasonable to at least consider the possibility that life forms were designed. That it is reasonable to consider as a possibility does not make it science.
Neil @3:
Well said.
Presumably, one supposes, because “science” in your book cannot have anything to say about whether something was designed, but must instead assume that everything occurred as a result of purely natural and material causes?
vjtorley:
Why should we think this?
True, the evolutionary story is that it takes “a long time,” but the number has never been pinned down in any detail as part of the theory. And as far as our perception of time is concerned, “a long time” need not be billions of years; millions will do quite nicely, thank you very much.
To be sure, numerous skeptics have argued against various timeframes as being too short to produce the required biological effects, but those nagging doubts never seem to inform the larger evolutionary mindset. The theory has always been characterized by an attitude of “however long it takes, there was sufficient time,” and “however much time we have, we’ll take.”
This is the way it must be, ironically, because no-one has even a modest understanding about what would be required to transition from first life to where we are today. As a result, it is quite impossible for the evolutionist to say how long it should have taken.*
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* Incidentally, in a particularly perverse twist of logic, this inability to know exactly what is involved in getting from A to B is the hook Elizabeth Liddle hangs her hat on when she claims we can’t know that the probabilities stack up against the evolutionary storyline. In a stubborn intellectual “throw up our hands” approach, she then claims that because we don’t know all of the probabilities with precision, that we therefore can’t draw any meaningful conclusion even regarding what we do know — either forgetting or conveniently failing to mention to the susceptible listener that the probabilities we do know of are quite enough to make the naturalistic storyline laughable and that any additional factors would just make the situation worse.
Making the Earth younger just means Natural Selection did it a lot faster. Simple. Could be 2 billion years, could be 2 million years. Doesn’t matter. Back the Darwinian mystics into a corner on time and you will see rapid body-plan generation / “hopeful monster”-type theories resurfacing in order to save the Evolution religion.
lifepsy:
Exactly.
Indeed, it was the failure of the paleontological record to behave properly and follow Darwin’s “innumerable slight successive” changes, that prompted Gould & Co. to propose punctuated equilibrium. Yes, that rhetorical stroke of genius which essentially adopted as its doctrine the idea that evolution happens too fast and too remotely for it to be detected. It is always happening just out of reach of our ability to observe. That’s why there is a dearth of observational evidence — indeed, that lack of evidence is just what our theory predicts! Brilliant!
More recently, hox genes (among other things) have been proposed as a possible mechanism to make massive changes in very brief periods of time.
Then there are the silly statements made from time to time arising out of the Galapagos finches and how speedy their evolution is. Gushing accounts of “we could have a whole new species in less than 100 years!” and the like. Time simply isn’t a problem.
And just for fun, let us not forget the preposterous stuff Nick was pushing for a while (“life is a kinetic state”), which argued that all these molecular machines and organisms in life are actually probable, rather than improbable. Probabilities? We don’t need to calculate no stinkin’ probabilities. Our theory [through a rhetorical sleight of hand, the careful reader might notice] shows that complex living systems are the most probable state. Just start with a bunch of chemicals and it’s all downhill. Why those chemicals in the soup are practically dying to turn into something more wondrous and complex!
Neil @ 3
Then by your reasoning, you must agree that all the scientists in the present day that are Darwin dissenters are fully justified to dissent. Afterall, they are not convinced there is any sufficiency in the evidence, and even argue it refutes Darwinism – notwithstanding your personal opinion on the evidence.
Eric
There is no such implication from what I wrote. All I said that was being a possibility does not make it science. Investigating that possibility could be science. But it would be the investigation, not the possibility, that would be science.
I think I have been clear in earlier posts, that I am not committed to materialism or to naturalism. I am committed to the importance of evidence and investigation. As to what constitutes adequate evidence and adequate investigation, I’ll judge that after the fact. It’s not up to me to place limits on how a researcher does his work. It is up to me to decide, after the fact, whether I am persuaded by the evidence provided.
One of the problems posed by ID, is that we do not have clear agreement on what constitutes intelligence, and on what constitutes design. While it might be unreasonable to insist on clear definitions prior to the completion of a research program, it is essential to have clear definitions by before evaluating the claimed conclusions of such research.
Neil @ 2
Even more time wouldn’t help in the first place. I think it was pretty clear that they knew time was a least a must have ingredient. All you have to do is ask why Lord Kelvin’s earth ages were so problematic – as the OP identified.
Even so, Darwin tacitly recognized the complexity challenges:
“Organs of extreme perfection and complication. To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree.” – Darwin
http://www.literature.org/auth.....er-06.html
JGuy:
No, that’s wrong. It is not up to me to know the motives or the background knowledge of those dissenters, so it is not up to me to reach a conclusion on the degree to which they are justified.
Neil @ 1
You should answer the question still. He suggested a proof, versus an interpretation of evidence. Left unanswered, your comment could read like this:
If the age of the earth were sufficiently proven to me to be 100,000 years old, I’d still believe my [fallible] interpretation of the “mountain of evidence”.
But out of curiosity. What part of the so called ‘mountain of evidence’ (a very Dawkins-like exaggeration) for Darwinism argues persuasively for a old earth?
Neail @ 11
“A scientist is always justified in witholding assent from an idea for which he/she has not personally seen sufficient evidence to be convinced.” – Neil Rickert
Ok, agree, you can’t say for all by your reasoning. Because there are all those scientist that might simple throw a dart at the board and pick to dissent or not to dissent.
But, by and large, those that have publicly dissented have expressed how the evidence is insufficient by their reckoning. Many have went further to express that ID is the best explanation. Given that they are expressing themselves honestly, by your reasoning, they are justified.
vjt,
I would separate this,
from this,
JGuy:
You are still asking me to buy a pig in a poke.
JGuy:
Right. People often disagree. I don’t have a problem with that.
But that means very little.
By itself, ID doesn’t explain anything. It is somebody’s belief, but that does not make it an explanation. It’s not even a description. It’s just a label that some people find congenial.
For myself, I happen to think that evolutionary processes and biological developmental processes are intelligent and what they do can be considered design. Does that explain anything that wasn’t already explained?
Neil,
Right. Evolution trumps all other evidence. But no one will say, according to the evidence from evolution, what the age of the earth should be. If the “mountain of evidence” was worth a dime, you could give an estimate for the age of the earth. But you cannot; and that is an admission that no one knows a clear mechanism for, or has a clear understanding of, how evolution is supposed to really work and proceed.
Anything that pretends to science had better play serious “games” using logic with propositions.
But if you are just wishing to admit that evolution isn’t logical, welcome to the club.
And this seems to contradict the first quote above. Namely, you suggest that evolution trumps all and should be used to evaluate the age of the earth. But, you seem concerned enough about Dr. Torley’s implication that evolutionists never really cared about evidence that countered their idea, i.e., there isn’t enough time, to defend those long ago as believing the accepted age of the earth was consistent with their idea.
You are just inventing a load of nonsense, and then falsely asserting that I believe it.
I would because such timing is so dramatically different than what population genetics and molecular clocks give for the timing for evolution via natural selection. I don’t know where I’d draw the line, but it would seem that the time available couldn’t be much different than what we think it is now.
It did cause some consternation for Darwin, but he was in the small minority. Wallace, Huxley, and most other Darwinists seemed fine with Kelvin’s estimate. And why shouldn’t they have been? It’s not as if they had knowledge of DNA and mutation rates on which to estimate the rate of evolution. So on what grounds would anyone argue that it isn’t enough time? As Gould wrote, “During most of Kelvin’s forty-year campaign, he usually cited a figure of 100 million years for the earth’s age – plenty of time, as it turned out, to satisfy nearly all geologists and biologists.” (The Flamingo’s Smile, pg 131)
As Huxley stated: “Biology takes her time from geology. The only reason we have for believing in the slow rate of the change in living forms is the fact that they persist through a series of deposits which geology informs us have taken a long while to make. If the geological clock is wrong all the naturalist will have to do is to modify his notions of the rapidity of change accordingly.” This is the position that I believe made the most sense at the time.
Actually, it is an explanation. Maybe you don’t get all the details, but in a broad sense, it explains cause. Someone saying that intelligent engineers are the best explanation for the cause of the information used in building my car is an actual explanation for the information origin. We already know intelligent agents design and create. I don’t need to know the engineers names, the tools they used, etc.. for it to explain the origin of the information in a broad sense.
Also, that’s quite backwards, because this is exactly what Darwinism boils down to, just a belief! …constructed of just-so stories…. It’s faithful use these stories to “explain” everything, and their opposites. When any kind of idea can be used to do that, it quite literally explains nothing.
You can think the process of supposed evolution are intelligent and design, but they (NS & RM) clearly are not.
And it’s always odd that Darwinist recognize design, but choose to call it something like “apparent design” or the product of “intelligent processes”. Why the words “design” or “intelligent”? Is there no other words you can use? There’s a reason evolutionist & folks like Dawkins think “design” etc.. it’s obviously intelligently designed.
Best explanation for the cause of design: actual intelligence… obviously.
I see trial and error, which is testing with feedback.
ID folks here are getting closer to the whole equation of how without the geology EVOLUTION fails to prove its case.
Or does it?
If the geology is wrong does this nullify the biological evidence for evolution?
What percentage?
Is evolution founded on biology or geology or what?
Without the geology is there evidence for evolution?
Has using fossils been a illegal thing for a biological theory if the standard is a a scientific one?
If evolution is right as rain then failure in geology should not be relevant or possible anyways since the time is needed!
I said: “Namely, you suggest that evolution trumps all and should be used to evaluate the age of the earth.”
You replied:
You can say it’s nonsense, but only by being overly pedantic in your reading. You said that evolution could be used to assess the age of the earth.
You, at the very least, indicate that you believe evolutionary theory can set a lower bound for the age of the earth. Why didn’t you reply with an estimated age, then, in the other thread?
But on the whole, you appear to confirm what Dr. Torley is getting at; even if there isn’t enough time, no one will give up on Neo-Darwinian evolution: Nothing will be allowed to contradict it.
Hi everyone,
I’d like to respond to goodusername’s comments. First, Goodusername contends that in Darwin’s day, Kelvin’s calculation of 100 million years as the maximum possible age for the Earth didn’t cause much consternation for evolutionists, and that only Darwin was bothered by Kelvin’s estimate.
I’d like to begin by quoting Darwin’s biographer, Janet Browne, who chronicles Darwin’s discomfiture with Kelvin’s figure for the maximum possible age of the Earth:
Goodusername quotes from Stephen Jay Gould’s book, The Flamingo’s Smile, to the effect that 100 million years was “plenty of time … to satisfy nearly all geologists and biologists.” Goodusername adds that “Wallace, Huxley, and most other Darwinists seemed fine with Kelvin’s estimate.”
What Goodusename omits to mention is that Darwin had several critics who attacked his Origin of Species, precisely on the grounds that it didn’t allow enough time for the evolution of life on Earth. Kelvin wasn’t the only one. The physicist, engineer and inventor Fleeming Jenkin wrote a trenchantly critical review of the Origin in 1867:
Another critic who used Kelvin’s chronology to attack Darwin was St. George Mivart, who realized that if the time available for evolution were greatly reduced, Darwin’s theory would be fatally undermined, as he would have to invoke intelligently guided evolution to account for rapid transitions in the fossil record.
Goodusername quotes Huxley as saying: “If the geological clock is wrong all the naturalist will have to do is to modify his notions of the rapidity of change accordingly.” But Huxley’s theory of evolution was not the same as Darwin’s: Huxley believed felt that evolution could be either gradual or saltatory. In his review of the Origin, he wrote that
Goodusername also cites Wallace as an example of an evolutionist who was unperturbed by Kelvin’s estimate for the age of the Earth, but scholarship has established that Wallace was hardly a Darwinist: he believed that the origin of life, the first appearance of animal consciousness and the emergence of man had all been intelligently guided and planned events. No wonder he was unperturbed. He could afford to be.
Finally, Goodusername suggests that an estimate of 100 million years would have made sense in the 19th century, as scientists knew much less then about the complexity of life. That’s true, but simple observation could have easily convinced them, had they thought about it, that 100 million years would not have been sufficient for “goo to you” evolution (from the simplest cell to complex animals). Here’s why. Back in the 19th century, they would have been familiar with several thousand species of animals. They would also have realized that these species did not vary over a timescale of, say, 500 years. If species were evolving all the time, then they would have expected to see a new one arise, once in a while. The fact that they hadn’t seen any would have suggested that the lifetime of a species would be on the order of say, 1 million years. They must have also realized that more than 100 steps were required to get from a bacterium to a human being. Hence they must have realized that 100 million years were not enough.
Brent:
That seems to be a failure in reading comprehension.
No Way Younger Earth would mean the earth and all planets formed quicker and they were nearer to each other, so the Sun would have been nearer to Earth than it is now. Consequently, the level of ionization in Earth’s preliminary atmosphere would be very high. As in case of Titan (moon of Saturn) , the carbon monoxide, Nitrogen and Methane will help in formation of amino acid. These will fall to Earth. Due to lesser distance of Earth from sun, the density of amino acid falling per square area will be higher. In essence the number and density of amino acid reaching Earth will be high so the probability of amino acid combining to form functional protein will be higher. Due to the semi-solid curst, the amino acids and proteins so formed will shift across landscape with varying temperature. It is known that temperature too affects protein fold. A combination of varying temperature, high amino acid density ( and hence higher functional protein probability) will invariably lead to beneficial protein folds. We will get new structure and slowly but surely, as the universe expands and the Sun moves away, we eventually get a single cell organism from which all life will evolve. The shorter time period also assures that deleterious mutations do not reach dangerous levels during Macro evolution. The shorter the Earth life, higher the success probability of species evolving.
May be ‘Darwinists’ should join the YEC group.
Neil,
It seems that it would be good, then, to explain what the person with better reading comprehension was supposed to take from your words:
I am in the mood to answer these – although I am not quite sure why you consider them challenging.
No. Unproven, but not highly speculative. There was compelling evidence for it but also major unsolved problems – the age of the earth being one, the need for a particulate as opposed to blended inheritance mechanism being another. This would give it the status of say string theory at the moment. Not accepted – but not rejected.
No. During that period Mendel’s work became known and the neo-Darwinians synthesis was being developed; essentially one of the major problems, the particular inheritance mechanism, was solved. This was major evidence for Darwin’s theory and a reasonable attitude would be to accept the theory as highly likely and the age of the earth as an unsolved problem within that theory. It would be a very eccentric scientist who hypothesised that life forms had been designed by an intelligent being given the complete absence of evidence.
I don’t know the specifics of what they reported but I think it was to do with Common Descent not random variation and this was overwhelming established.
I haven’t read all this stuff but it is unreasonably to doubt such a well established theory on the basis of one theoretical calculation. It is equally daft to entertain the hypothesis that life was designed by an intelligent being whether you doubt Darwinian evolution or not. It is a separate hypothesis with no evidence.
No – for several reasons. The Darwinian theory of evolution is not a theory of the origin of life. Koonin’s calculation is just one controversial calculation among many with wildly differing results all highly theoretical. Koonin was only estimating for the observable universe we have no idea how big the unobservable universe is.
He is saying that evidence that supports evolution also supports the consensus estimate for the age of the earth. You misinterpreted him as saying that evolution supports the consensus estimate for the age of the earth. That was incorrect; “E supports both A and B” is not equivalent to “A supports B.”
If “Darwin’s Bulldog” and Darwinism’s co-founder don’t count as Darwinists, I’m not sure who, besides Darwin, does. 🙂
If by “evolving all the time” you mean constant morphological change, even Darwin didn’t believe that. As Darwin wrote in Origin: “Many species once formed never undergo any further change… and the periods, during which species have undergone modification, though long as measured by years, have probably been short in comparison with the periods during which they retain the same form.”
So, yes, in stable conditions a species can be likewise very stable with no noticeable change taking place. But Darwin believed that pretty substantial change had taken place via artificial selection in very short periods of time, with new varieties arising in mere centuries, even decades, that are arguably new species. And Darwin saw that new species seem to arise very quickly in nature under certain conditions, such as on young islands.
So it would hardly make sense to try to use the stable periods of a species as a kind of clock to measure how long it would take, in general, to get from a bacterium to a human being.
Actually, Darwin would probably agree that, yes, there are lineages from the early earth – bacteria – that have developed very slowly (if at all) for many millions of years as you described – that’s why there’s still bacteria.
Neil @9:
Thank you for the clarification and please accept my apologies if my question sounded accusatory. I’m struggling a bit to understand the distinction you are drawing. If I hear you correctly, you are saying two things: (i) the endeavor of investigating whether something was designed could be science; but (ii) the actual historical fact of something being designed is not science? I guess I’m not clear on the distinction you are drawing.
Well said.
I hear your point about wanting more precise definitions of words like “intelligence” and “design.” However, I can’t help but feeling like perhaps this is an example of selectively-applied skepticism. For instance, we can think of many concepts in biology that are incompletely defined, or poorly defined, or where definitions are open to dispute. Evolutionary theory even more so. And yet, that does not necessarily mean that those areas aren’t science.
Furthermore, there are other fields that use the concepts of intelligence and design quite fruitfully, notwithstanding that we don’t have a precise definition of the terms. The failure to have a precise definition may indeed prevent some people from getting on board with the particular evidence presented, but it doesn’t mean we aren’t dealing with science.
Brent:
I would hope that they would take me to have said just what I said.
In particular, I would hope that they would not make a clearly fallacious inference from what I said, and then claim that I had asserted the conclusion of that clearly fallacious inference.
goodusername @30:
Right, because evolution happens slowly, except when it happens quickly. 🙂
But what we do know, is that it always seems to happen just out of reach of our observations. That was the brilliance of Gould’s punctuated equilibrium: of course you don’t observe evolution actually happening — that is just what our theory predicts!
Eric:
We were not discussing any actual historical fact. We were discussing the possibility that something might eventually turn out to be historical fact.
There’s a difference between using poorly defined concepts (which we all do), and making poorly defined concepts the centerpiece of what is claimed to be a scientific theory. My objection is to the latter.
By comparison, I also object to the assertion in epistemology, that knowledge = justified true belief. That attempts to define knowledge in terms of three hopelessly vague concepts.
Likewise, I have long thought that what AI people call “intelligence” is not even close to what we ordinarily mean by intelligence.
ID proponents won’t define their terms. Yet they arbitrarily reject that evolution is itself a system of intelligent design. That’s the problem we have here.
No, I don’t think this is selective skepticism.
Eric:
Evolution is mostly about setting up unfalsifiable, models and rescue devices, and then claiming them to be scientific because the unfalsifiability is “predicted”.
Neil,
No. You said:
Very clear.
Seems clear: that evidence for evolution also counts as support for the age of the earth. I.E., for example, we know the earth must be old because evolution is thought to happen slowly.
If your goal is to assess the veracity of a hypothesis it does little good to say the hypothesis, if true, tells us one thing that then is supposed to verify the hypothesis. Here you either have independent evidence for the old age of the earth, consistent with evolution, or you are going in circles. You wedded evolutionary theorizing with the age of the earth, but there should be no reason to. I don’t see what evidence there is supposed to be that just happens to independently give evidence to both. Perhaps there is, but I doubt it; and even if there is, you needn’t have worded your post as you did.
Well, if I’m right, it is going to be hard to counter circular evidence if someone is determined to accept it.
Brent:
This is getting silly.
I see a glass of water on that table.
That counts as evidence that the table exists. It also counts as evidence that the glass exists.
Nevertheless, I cannot conclude that the existence of the table is evidence for the glass, nor can I conclude that the existence of the glass is evidence for the table.
Geologists use fossil evidence as part of how the estimate ages. Biologists use fossil evidence as supporting evolution.
It does not follow that the age of the earth is evidence for evolution. And it does not follow that evolution by itself determines the age of the earth.
If there’s a hypothetical case for the earth being younger than we believe, then that hypothetical case must say a lot about the fossil evidence. Don’t ask me to make conclusions about the implications for evolution, without telling me what that hypothetical case says about the fossil evidence.
Most of these questions form exhibit 134,123 in the case against using “Darwinism” to describe all of evolutionary biology.
The apparently young age of earth was one of the reasons for the so called “Eclipse of Darwinism” at the turn of the 20th century (a realtively minor one, it turns out). But it was Darwin’s theory of evolution that had troubles with a young earth – the evidence for the fact of evolution (common descent) is so strong that it hasn’t been seriously questioned since Darwin’s generation.
Your first 3 questions force a false dichotomy between a particular theory of evolution and the fact evolution has happened. Gregory Chaitin’s calculation dosn’t bear much resemblence to biology as it happens and Koonin’s calculation are about the origin of life and (like all such calculations)rife with questionable assumptions.
wd400
Maybe ‘common descent’, the idea that all life evolved from a common ancestor, should be finally be ‘seriously questioned’?
Nor does the experimental evidence suggest that such a transition from single cell aggregates to multicellular organisms is possible. To highlight the monumental problem that Darwinian processes face in going from a single cell to a multicellular creature, it is found that,,
And yet, Dr. Behe, on the important Table 7.1 on page 143 of Edge Of Evolution, finds that a typical cell might have some 10,000 protein-binding sites. Whereas a conservative estimate for protein-protein binding sites in a multicellular creature is,,,
So taking into account that they only covered 2%, of the full protein-protein “interactome”, then that gives us a rough number, for different protein-protein interactions, of 310,000. Thus, from my very rough ‘back of the envelope’ calculations, we find that this is at least 30 times higher than Dr. Behe’s estimate of 10,000 different protein-protein binding sites for a typical single cell (Page 143; Edge of Evolution; Behe). Therefore, at least at first glance from my rough calculations, it certainly appears to be a impossible step that evolution cannot make, by purely unguided processes, to go from a single cell to a multi-cellular creature. Experimental work agrees with this conclusion:
Moreover, the fossil record does not support common descent from a single cell organism:
Also see Meyer’s NY Times bestselling book: “Darwin’s Doubt”
Hi Mark Frank,
Thank you for your comments. I was struck by your remarks on the status of Darwin’s theory of evolution prior to 1903:
What would you describe as the most compelling evidence for Darwinism, prior to 1903? And why would you describe the two difficulties you raised as mere “unsolved problems” rather than evidence against Darwin’s theory at that time? (I’m reminded of Cardinal Newman’s saying that ten thousand difficulties do not make a doubt. It’s funny to see evolutionists employing similar distinctions!)
When was the last year scientists were permitted to openly discuss the prospect of Common Descent being false without inspiring a witch-hunt?
Neil,
Which means that the two being found together is irrelevant, as you, yourself, continue and say . . .
So neither is evidence of, or supporting evidence of, the other. So why, before, did you act as if you were saying something special in saying that the two independent facts were found together? You admit neither supports the other.
Which is just stating boldly (and contradictorily) what you, a short time ago, ridiculed me for saying: that evolutionary hypothesizing believes evolution took a long time, and therefore finding fossils in the dirt is supposed evidence of how old the dirt is. You apparently want to suggest that geologists could date fossils without assumptions, like that evolutionary theory was true and the fossils must be old. To use fossils as evidence for age, there must be independent evidence of the age of the fossils. This supposed independence, however, leans on the idea that evolution, and the time needed to accomplish it, are true.
But, if you wish to say that the evidence for the age of the fossils is truly independent, then whence the idea that that independent evidence being found together is in any way significant? As per your own analogy, the evidence of the table is just that you see a table like structure, and the evidence for the glass is just that you see a glass like structure. That they are found together is of no relevance.
Now, you may want to throw up your hands at this point and say it’s pointless to try to reason with me, but that would be wrong, I think. Why? Because, in the context of what Dr. Torley is talking about, the whole point isn’t, simply, old or young, but rather, old enough, or, too young. And he then goes on to suggest that, indeed, there have been times in the past, and again presently, that it appears the time available for evolution is not adequate.
The independent verification of the age of the earth, then, is the only important factor. And, if it is, what is, again, the supposed significance that the same evidence for evolution is also evidence for the age of the earth? The only logical reason I can come up with is that you want to suggest that evidence for the age of the earth is bound up in the fossil evidence because evolutionary time scales are necessarily true because evolution is true.
You’ve now allowed yourself some wiggle room. Interesting.
Either the case for the age of the earth being adequate for evolutionary time scales is strong or it is not. If the question on the table is, “Can we believe in Neo-Darwinian evolution based on evidence of the age of the earth?”, you cannot say that Neo-Darwinian evolution is true and so the required time must be available. If the theory is questionable at all (which is the real point), then you cannot refer to its veracity to confirm that which it is itself in need of gaining credence from.
Neil @34:
Bear with me a moment, because I’m trying to understand your point here.
Let’s assume a historical fact occurred — say, a novel widget came into existence. Then let’s assume we don’t presently know whether the widget was designed or came about through purely natural processes. Theory A suggests the widget was designed. Theory B suggests the widget came about through purely natural processes.
I understand you to say that the process of investigating Theory A and the process of investigating Theory B are both science. I’m with you there.
However, you then seem to be saying that the possibility the widget came about by design is not science? If so, that presumably means that the possibility the widget came about through purely natural processes is also not science?
Presumably one goal of science is to investigate and learn about the world — how things came about, why they are the way they area, how they work, etc.
So I’m not sure what it means to say that the “possibility” of something isn’t science.
Let’s take a concrete example. An object, the Moon, exists. The process of investigating its origin can be considered science, I presume we agree. If there are various possibilities about its origin, the process of investigating those possibilities is therefore science. What does it mean to say that the possibilities themselves aren’t science? Are we simply saying that the existence of the Moon itself isn’t science or that the historical fact of the Moon’s existence isn’t science?
Brent:
As far as I know, geologists were actually using fossil evidence to date rocks prior to Darwin proposing his theory of evolution. The way geologists used that evidence did not depend on assumptions about evolution.
They correlate the kind of fossils with the age as determined by other indicators. From that, they show that the kind of fossil is a good measure of age. And then they use that measure in other places where the fossils are the only indicators.
Eric:
I’m not sure of the point there. All confirmed cases of intelligent design used natural processes. Even the Biblical account of man being from from dust of the ground seems to suggest natural processes (plus guidance).
The possibilities are speculative hypotheses, awaiting supporting evidence.
Neil:
Apologies for the mispost.
Neil:
I’m not trying to get into esoteric discussions of natural vs. supernatural or something like that or whether purposeful design can be considered a “natural” process. I’m just using the terms in the ordinary way they are typically used and understood. Regardless, my question was simply intended to help me ascertain if you were drawing a distinction between design and non-design hypotheses in terms of their being “science,” which you addressed with your next comment, so I think I’m there.
OK, so hypotheses themselves aren’t “science,” but they inform the scientific investigation. As long as we’re putting all hypotheses on equal footing, I suppose that is one possible way to look at it, (although the effort to formulate a hypothesis is generally considered a part of the “scientific method”). Anyway, I appreciate the clarification. I thought from your initial comment perhaps you were making a substantive distinction between design and non-design, but I see you are just making a semantic distinction between a hypothesis and the scientific endeavor of investigating the hypothesis.
—–
Incidentally, in your view would you say that at some point a hypothesis becomes science? In other words, at what point does a “speculative hypothesis awaiting supporting evidence” become part of science? At the point where it is considered a “fact,” based on some kind of consensus, or does it never actually become science (science being just the investigative process)?
Thanks,
VJ #40
As presented by Darwin and Wallace – all the evidence for Common Descent (which I believe you accept), artificial selection, and simple observation of apparently random variation in reproduction.
It is a matter of degree. They were obviously major concerns but neither the age of the earth or the nature of inheritance was firmly fixed. They were big enough concerns to effectively put Darwin’s theories on hold until the neo-Darwinian synthesis came along.
Eric:
Precisely. That applies to ID, and it also applies to string theory.
It’s hard to say what that means. Some people seem to think that a scientific theory is a well supported hypothesis. But I don’t agree with that. A well supported hypothesis might develop into a theory, but that involves lots of change from the original hypothesis. And some hypotheses do well on tests but become little more than a footnote in history.
Hi wd400 and Mark Frank,
Thank you for your comments. Evidence for common descent, taken by itself, is not evidence for evolution, if by “evolution” you mean a natural process through which all living things arose from a common ancestral stock, as a result of laws of Nature which are still in operation today, and without the need for any additional intelligent guidance. [On this definition, the extent of God’s involvement in evolution, if any, is limited to His establishing the laws of Nature when creating the universe.] Common descent (which I also accept) is thus a necessary but not a sufficient condition for evolution.
I should mention that according to Peter J. Bowler’s book, The eclipse of Darwinism: anti-Darwinian evolution theories in the decades around 1900 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983), “Kelvin himself favored some form of theistic evolution in which divine guidance speeded up the process.” (p. 24) Would either of you call Kelvin an evolutionist? Just curious.
As you rightly point out, wd400, there were indeed alternative theories to Darwin’s, in the nineteenth century. Some evolutionists posited saltations; others invoked Lamarckian inheritance (a notion which Darwin himself felt obliged to appeal to, in later editions of his Origin of Species). However, the crucial problem with these exotic mechanisms, from a scientific standpoint, was that there was not a scintilla of experimental evidence for them, whereas the operation of natural selection could be readily observed by any naturalist. Thus alternative evolutionary theories to Darwin’s could only be described as speculative hypotheses at best.
You seem to believe that some “grand disjunction” of all the above naturalistic theories – either Darwin’s theory or saltationism or orthogenesis or Lamarckianism – would have made the theory of evolution, broadly defined, intellectually irresistible to any fair-minded person living after Darwin published his Origin of Species. But when I look at this “grand disjunction,” here is what I see: a theory [Darwinism] which relies on a known mechanism but which (on the evidence available at the time) seemed unlikely to be able to generate life in all its diversity within the maximum time allowable for the age of the Earth, plus several other theories for which there was zero experimental evidence at the time. Since each of the disjuncts was a speculative hypothesis in the year 1900, I can only conclude that the “grand disjunction” of all these theories was also a speculative hypothesis. (If A is speculative and B is speculative, then so is A-or-B.)
To be continued…
Hi wd400 and Mark Frank,
Mark Frank lists the following as compelling evidence for evolution: “all the evidence for Common Descent (which I believe you accept), artificial selection, and simple observation of apparently random variation in reproduction.” All well and good, but unless you can show that random variation is sufficient to account for the diversity of life-forms we see on Earth today – in other words, that macroevolution is but microevolution writ large – then you haven’t made a compelling case for evolution.
In response to my claim that even modern scientists (such as Professor Gregory Chaitin) admit that there doesn’t appear to be enough time for Darwinian evolution to generate the complex life-forms we see on Earth today from simple organisms, wd400 replies that “Gregory Chaitin’s calculation doesn’t bear much resemblance to biology as it actually happens.” True, but there is a very good reason for that. As Professor Chaitin himself argued, in his 2011 talk, Life As Evolving Software, some of which I transcribed here:
wd400 also contends that Dr. Eugene Koonin’s calculations regarding the origin of life are “rife with questionable assumptions.” I reproduced the text of Dr. Koonin’s core argument in my recent post, Hoyle’s fallacy? I think not. I invited readers to fault Koonin’s logic, if they could. Not a single scientist attempted to do so. The crucial sentence in Koonin’s argument reads as follows:
Although Dr. Koonin goes on to say that his model “is not supposed to be realistic by any account,” I think it is obvious from his paper that he intended to demonstrate that abiogenesis would not work without a multiverse to enlarge the possibility space. If you think his logic is flawed, then I’d like to hear why.
In short: neo-Darwinian evolution still appears to me to be a highly speculative hypothesis at best.
Neil @49:
And it also applies to abiogenesis, and common descent, and the idea that random mutations in DNA can lead to new types of organisms, and all the other hypotheses that come under the broad heading of “evolution.” Fair enough.
Agreed.
Common descent and random mutation leading to change are both observed as ongoing processes. The science is mostly about the ongoing processes.
There’s a lot about the history of life on earth, leading to current species, that has to count as hypothesis. But what is observed and studied as ongoing processes is surely science.
VJ
May I point out a straightforward fallacy in #50:
Mr. X lives 50 kms from his work. He has a car but there is also a convenient train and being a fit man he sometimes bicycles. On a specific day the theory that he came to work by train is speculative as are the theories that he came by car and by bicycle. But the theory he came by train or car or bicycle is well established.
Neil @53:
Apologies, I should have said “universal common descent” (or perhaps common descent across boundaries higher than, say, family). Common descent in the extremely limited sense that creatures come from their parents is of course observed. Common descent that goes much beyond that remains in the realm of speculation.
Sure, again if we are just talking about minor variations within species. What I referred to was “the idea that random mutations in DNA can lead to new types of organisms.” That remains firmly in the realm of speculation as well.
VJ #51
Assuming we are still talking about the status of Darwin’s theory prior to about 1930, then there was the evidence I pointed to and and a problem that according to the best current estimate of the age of the earth (which was far from proven itself) there wasn’t enough time. As I said this gave the Darwinian theory a respectable but not firmly established status. The fact that the earth turned out to be much older strikes me as a very strong vindication of Darwin’s theory. Think of it as a somewhat controversial prediction that came true. The same applies for a particulate mechanism of inheritance.
I will let wd400 respond to the stuff on Chaitin.
Are you saying not a single scientist responded to your OP? Why on earth would you think a single scientist even read it?
In any case Koonin’s stuff appears to be about the origin of life which is not the subject of neo-Darwinian evolution.
Hi Mark Frank,
Congratulations for finding an exception to my statement, “If A is speculative and B is speculative, then so is A-or-B.” However, I would say that the statement, “If A is a speculative mechanism and B is also, then A-or-B is as well” holds true.
I’m glad you’ve conceded that the case for evolution in the 19th century was not compelling, but merely “respectable.” In any case, I would still maintain that even in an age when people knew nothing about DNA, naturalists could have figured out from observations of species stability that the lifetime of a species was closer to 1 million than 100,000 years (actually it’s 5 million) and that the number of species “from goo to you” must have beenat least 1,000. Anything less than that, and you don’t have evolution anymore; what you have is magic.
Some of the people who read my posts (e.g.wd400) are biologists, by the way. Cheers.
Hi VJ
I wonder what you mean by a mechanism? Are petrol, diesel and LPG engines mechanisms? If so, given that a car passed this way it is speculation that its mechanism was a petrol engine or that it was a diesel engine or that it was an LPG engine. However, it is pretty certain that it was petrol, diesel, or LPG. I think you should gracefully admit your error here. It is obviously possible that there should be two or more speculative mechanisms for something but we should be pretty certain that it is one of them.
VJ
Maybe one or two scientists read your posts from time to time – but lets face it UD is not on the reading list of most practising scientists and most of those that do read it are banned or discouraged from commenting. Barry has decided that it should essentially be a forum for the ID community to debate among themselves – opponents are subject to unpredictable banishment and moderation. That’s fine. It is his forum and he has a perfect right to run it however he wishes. But you really want to challenge the scientific community you will need to post outside this gated community.