Friday, December 22, 2006 | Science : Evolution and Biology | print version

The Only One in Step

by Richard Dawkins

I can't find the original volume so I may have got the exact words wrong, but I recall one of those marvellous old Punch cartoons in which every last detail is painstakingly explained. A devoted mother is looking proudly on at a military parade as her son's platoon marches past: "There's my boy, he's the only one in step!" On The Guardian letters page of December 19th 2006, I initiated an exchange about Professor Andrew McIntosh of Leeds university, who has publicly stated that he believes the world is only 6,000 years old, and publicly stated that the theory of evolution violates the second law of thermodynamics. Both these beliefs place McIntosh out of step with his scientific colleagues, not just his platoon but the entire regiment – to paraphrase Evelyn Waugh, the whole ruddy division. Amazingly, McIntosh is Professor of Thermodynamics at Leeds, and, equally amazingly, a letter supporting him has now appeared from Professor Stuart Burgess, Head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Bristol University . Other letters to the Editor indicate that a distressing number of otherwise knowledgeable and intelligent people have little conception of the enormity of what is being said.

Science doesn't work by vote and it doesn't work by authority. It is possible that Burgess and McIntosh really are the only ones in step, and the whole scientific establishment is flat wrong. Indeed, I shall bias my discussion in their favour by continuing to use that word 'establishment' with all its pejorative overtones of fuddyduddy, stick-in-the-muddy authoritarianism. I like mavericks. I like free spirits who buck the trend and strike out on their own. They are not usually right, but on the rare occasions when they are, they are very right indeed: importantly so, and all power to them. Maybe Burgess and McIntosh are right and all the rest of us – biologists, geologists, archeologists, historians, chemists, physicists, cosmologists and, yes, thermodynamicists and respectable theologians, the vast majority of Nobel Prizewinners, Fellows of the Royal Society and of the National Academies of the world – are wrong. Not just slightly wrong but catastrophically, appallingly, devastatingly wrong. It is possible, and I am going to follow that possibility through to its logical conclusion. I shall not here defend the views held by the scientific establishment. I am among those who have done that elsewhere, in many books. My purpose in this article is only to convey the full magnitude of the error into which, if Burgess and McIntosh are right, the scientific establishment has fallen.

First, the age of the Earth. McIntosh thinks, on bliblical authority alone, that it is less than 10,000 years. We establishment fuddyduddies think, using mutually corroborating evidence from many sources including several different radioactive isotopes in the rocks, that it is about 4.6 billion years. I shall not say here why I think we are right and McIntosh wrong. Instead, I shall simply calculate the magnitude of the difference between the two estimates. We of the 'establishment' think the Earth is 460,000 times older than McIntosh's estimate. It is as though McIntosh estimated the height of a man as 6 feet and then accused the rest of us of believing that the same man was 460,000 times as tall, or 521 miles. Or, looking the other way, it is as though McIntosh looked at the establishment geographers' measurement of the distance from New York to San Francisco and claimed that the true distance from sea to shining sea was 460,000 times smaller, namely about ten yards. Maybe McIntosh is right and all the rest of us wrong. All I have done here is calculate how spectacularly wrong we would be, if McIntosh is right.

Turning now to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, this is a topic on which Andrew McIntosh, as Professor of Thermodynamics at Leeds, might be thought to speak with special authority. He is backed up by Stuart Burgess, Head of Bristol's Department of Mechanical Engineering, which is another subject in which thermodynamics is paramount and central. Both these men have stated their authoritative opinion that the theory of evolution violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Nothing violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The great astrophyisicist Sir Arthur Eddington put it with memorable irony. "If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell's equations – then so much the worse for Maxwell's equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation – well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation." It is not for nothing that C P Snow used familiarity with the Second Law as his litmus test of scientific literacy.

The Second Law states that, in a closed system without external energy fed in from outside, entropy always increases. Entropy is often said to mean disorder, but in some ways the word 'mixed-upness' (Willard Gibbs's coining) fits better. A familiar metaphor is that of a library. If the readers in a library always leave books lying around on the tables, or shove them back on the shelves at random, the library will become increasingly disordered. To remain in a state of order, it needs an energetic librarian, constantly working to put books back on their proper shelves, and constantly checking the shelves for misplaced volumes. It is not that libraries have a magnetic attraction or an urgent drive towards a particular goal state called disorder. It is simply that the number of states of a library that we would call disordered is much greater than the tiny minority of states that we would recognize as ordered. There are many more ways of being disordered than of being ordered. No work needs to be done to drive a library toward one of the many states that we call disordered. It will just happen, willy nilly, unless energetic work is done to prevent the otherwise inevitable slide downhill into disorder.

The Second Law recognizes a similar downhill slide towards disorder in any closed system such as the universe, which lacks a source of externally supplied energy. In a local region with externally supplied energy, on the other hand, we may see what look like reversals, but the stress must be on 'local' and 'externally supplied'. Life on Earth may evolve towards greater complexity and increased order, but this is only possible because of a massive transfusion of energy from the sun. To return to the library analogy, natural selection, the nonrandom survival of successful genes in gene pools, could be called the librarian of life. And the energy to power it comes ultimately from the sun. The overall trend of the thermodynamic river is still downhill. But a small tithe of the sun's energy is trapped by plants and used to power a trickle in the reverse direction. This reverse trickle is to be found not only in evolution but in the physiology of every individual organism, and in many chemical reactions. It is like a ram pump, which uses the energy of a flowing river to pump a small quantity of the water uphill.

Once again, it is not my purpose here to argue for the validity of the Second Law. It is undisputed. Nor is it my purpose to defend evolution against the charge of violating it. My purpose is again to convey the sheer magnitude of the error that Burgess and McIntosh are attributing to their hugely more numerous 'establishment' colleagues, who accept evolution and supply cogent arguments against the suggestion that it violates the Second Law. As with the age of the Earth, this is not some minor, recondite dispute among scientists. It is a monumental disagreement. One side or the other has got to be wrong, and not just slightly wrong but catastrophically, ignominiously, disastrously wrong. Evolutionists are accused of believing in a theory that violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics. If Burgess and McIntosh are right, almost all the scientists in the world should, in Eddington's words, 'collapse in deepest humiliation.' If they are right, evolution has to be ruled out, not because of some evidential problems or deficiencies as is common in science, but for a much more radical reason. Evolution, on their view, is completely and utterly ruled out for the same kind of reason as a patent inspector will reject a design for a perpetual motion machine without even looking at it. We earlier saw that McIntosh is, in effect, accusing the scientific establishment of believing that a man is 521 miles tall. Now we see that he also accuses us of believing something as absurd as that a river will run uphill. Maybe he is right on both counts, but the sheer magnitude of the error attributed to the rest of us should at least give him pause. When I say it is not a minor mistake we scientists are accused of, I am giving a whole new depth of meaning to the word understatement.

Richard Dawkins FRS is the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University. His books include The Selfish Gene, The Blind Watchmaker, Climbing Mount Improbable, The Ancestor's Tale and, most recently, The God Delusion.

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251. Comment #40245 by Bonzai on May 14, 2007 at 2:30 am

Comment #38387 by RandyStimpson:

>>The second flaw is that the argument is restricted to thermodynamic entropy. Entropy also applies to information, and while the sun adds energy to earth it doesn't add information. DNA contains information. Is there anyone besides OUMedStudent who would dispute that?
<<

It is actually the other way around. The sun doesn't add net energy to earth once an equilibrium is reach,--"global warming" is a move towards a higher temperature equlibrium because of the changing composition of the atmosphere,--but it removes entropy from earth. If there is a net gain in energy from the sun earth would heat up steadily and we would have been cooked.

When solar radiation reaches the earth it is reflected back into space. These two processes balance out each other energywise to achieve an equilibrium.

But there is a net loss of entropy in this exchange.

Solar energy arrives on earth in the form of short wavelength radiation. When the earth reflects this energy back it is converted to long wavelength radiation.

Quantum mechanically short wave corresponds to more energetic photons while long wave radiation is comprised of less energetic ones.

This means the outgoing photons are less energetic than the incoming ones. Since the earth doesn't have net energy gain or loss, the incoming and the outgoing radiation must have the same total energy, thus there has to be more photons in the reflected radiation than in the incoming radiation in order to make up for the difference in photonic energy.

The entropy of a system is proportional to the logarithm of the number of states acessible to the system. Intuitively orderliness constraints the possibilities that the system can be put together, therefore a more messy,--higher entropy,--system can exist in more ways. So more accessible states means higher entropy.

A larger number of photons can be put into a larger number of states simply because there are more ways to arrange a larger number of objects. Hence more photons corresponds to higher entropy. As a result, the incoming solar radiation has less entropy than the outgoing, reflected radiation from earth. So there is a net loss of entropy from earth as a result of this process! The sun essentially acts as a dump for entropy (or, equivalently, a source of negative entropy)

You can find a beautiful exposition of the second law is in Roger Penrose's "shadow of the mind" or "the road to reality".

Other Comments by Bonzai

252. Comment #47435 by RandyStimpson on June 4, 2007 at 1:50 pm

Comment #40245 by Bonzai

>>A larger number of photons can be put into a larger number of states simply because there are more ways to arrange a larger number of objects. Hence more photons corresponds to higher entropy. As a result, the incoming solar radiation has less entropy than the outgoing, reflected radiation from earth. So there is a net loss of entropy from earth as a result of this process! The sun essentially acts as a dump for entropy (or, equivalently, a source of negative entropy)
<<

It's my understanding that S = k ln(1/p) applies to objects of matter -- not photons.

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253. Comment #57871 by Your_Noodly_Master on July 21, 2007 at 6:34 pm

Forgive me if someone has already addressed this; there are very many posts here. Dawkins is obviously bending over backwards to make sure no one interprets him as saying that consensus in the scientific community is proof of correctness, but isn't this still a form of the Appeal to Authority fallacy? Perhaps I've missed the point, but I can't see what intention this article has besides influencing a reader to believe in evolution by virtue of other people that believe in it.

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254. Comment #57873 by Shuggy on July 21, 2007 at 6:59 pm

... isn't this still a form of the Appeal to Authority fallacy? Perhaps I've missed the point, but I can't see what intention this article has besides influencing a reader to believe in evolution by virtue of other people that believe in it.

You could take it that way, but try this: extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence, and he is demonstrating just how extraordinary this claim is, compared to the mainstream view.

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255. Comment #58340 by Your_Noodly_Master on July 24, 2007 at 2:28 pm

I believe the argument would would be more persuasive if it were based on the biological and geological evidence, lack of conflicting evidence, and how extraordinary the creationists' claims are compared to said evidence, rather than just to what mainstream scientists believe. I realize that one defines the other, but the creationists obviously do not. Someone who believes science is a dogma or belief system would regard this article more as peer pressure than anything else.

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256. Comment #141632 by jwilts on March 11, 2008 at 1:43 am

Professor Andy McIntosh "proves" that vaccination cannot work and that rain is impossible:

Last week I went to a presentation given by Professor Andy McIntosh to the Edinburgh Creation Group.

Andy is an engaging and charismatic speaker and very likeable. It's almost easy to forgive him for being so profoundly wrong....but only almost :-) We saw a Science Professor at a British University using his position of responsibility and authority to claim that science supported his creationist stance where, in effect, he claims:

1) Rain is impossible. ( Expressed as :"Just adding energy to a lump of matter cannot turn it into a machine".)
2) Information cannot be added to DNA
3) Therefore Evolution is impossible.

I thought it polite to wait and give the other people in the audience a chance to ask questions but nobody did in the first 15mS so I slowly raised my hand. I complemented Andy on the entertainment value of his talk adding that I had "A million questions". The chairman looked relieved when I said that I would ask just two of them.

Q1) If information cannot be added to DNA then how does our immune system deliver immunity from disease following vaccination?

Q2) The Earth is a lump of matter and energy is added from the sun. This seems to result in a "machine" that waters my lawn.
Why do you claim that such a machine is impossible?

Prof Andy listened carefully to my questions without any noticible body language. He then started waffling and repeated some of his previous claims. I kept interrupting to bring him back to my questions. He had spent over an hour talking about biochemistry from his platform as a Professor at Leeds University. He finally realised that his waffles were not going to answer my question so he explained that he "wasn't an expert in this area" and asked me to explain how the immune response to infection worked.

This I duly delivered.

Andy's response to this was amusing. There was some evidence that he had never been asked this question before and he waffled around looking for an angle. He then got some support from a biologist in the audience who explained about the gene-recombination phase of antibody maturation. I agreed with that but explained that this was followed by the Hypermutation phase wherein random mutations to DNA are naturally selected to enhance the binding affinity . The resulting "information enhanced" DNA is retained for use on future occasions should the antigen re-appear. Without this addition and retention of information enhanced DNA, our immune response to infection would be far less effective and our vaccines would fail to protect us from disease.

Andy seemed not to be following this and he tried "Junk DNA" saying that scientists had got it wrong because it wasn't "Junk" after all and it could "Learn". I pointed out that "learning" involves the acquisition and storage of information - the very process that he was claiming was impossible because of thermodynamic considerstions. So he changed tack. He tried to argue that the immune response only worked because it is an "existing machine". I agreed with that pointing out that machines can arise naturally. Andy insisted that they cannot because they are prohibited by the laws of Thermodynamics - his specialist subject.

I then reminded him of my second question about the lawn watering machine explaining that when the sun heats the earth it operates in a thermodynamic cycle and that makes it a machine. If naturally arising machines are impossible then rain is also impossible. At that, Andy's eyes exhibited a slight glassiness as he searched for a new waffle angle. This seemed to indicate a sudden realisation of an interesting consequence of his claim that he hadn't paid sufficient attention to.

I foud it rather surprising to have to explain "rain" to a Professor of Thermodynamics from Leeds University.

However, having established that machines like the Earth's thermodynamic cycle can arise naturally and that information can indeed be added to DNA as part of the human immune system's response to infection, I set out to challenge Andy's position on the possibilities that lay between these to extremes. The regime that is the province of the theory of biological evolution. Andy changed the subject and started talking about electronics and poor old Payley's watch and the significance of free energy states to life and the inability of non-living matter to make use of that.

My response was that computers and watches do not meet Darwin's pre-conditions for evolution to occur. Andy signalled that he wasn't at all sure what Darwin's pre-conditions were and argued strongly that they shouldn't be brought into his purely thermodynamic argument. I pointed out that it would be very difficult to discuss Darwinian evolution if we excluded the principles of Darwinian evolution, as encapsulated in the three pre-conditions, from the conversations. Andy conceded that was so and asked me to explain what the pre-conditions were. This I duly did:

1) Descent - Parents have offspring
2) Heritable random variation
3) Cumulative natural Selection.

"Ah!" exclaimed Andy, "You have got to be very careful when you bring things like that into the argument". I said "OK let's do it carefully" pointing out that the pre-conditions do not violate any of the laws of Thermodynamics and that computers and watches didn't get pregnant and give birth to babies of their own knid. . Andy then insisted that they did violate thermodynamic laws and indicated that he promotes the classical misconception about thermodynamics and "Order". Thankfully, the Americian association of Chemistry Teachers is running a concerted internet campaign to get this sorted out. King Tut's tomb lay exactly as it was left for 4000 years until Carter opened it. That was because it was in thermodynamic equlibrium with its surrounding. There was no "natural tendency towards disorder" that notion is a pernicious fallacy.

How is it possible that a Professor of Thermodynamics doesn't know that?

Why did I have to explain how the "birds and the bees" differ from watches and computers?

How is it possible that a University Professor uses his position of authority and responsibility to promote gross misrepresentations of his own specialist area and many other important areas of well established scientific knowledge?

This is not about religious belief or faith. It is about science and the "science" that Professor McIntosh preaches at these meeting is patently, obviously and disastrously in error.

Is Leeds University aware of how badly this reflects on their "Centre of Excellence"?

Other Comments by jwilts

257. Comment #141635 by epeeist on March 11, 2008 at 1:51 am

Comment #141632 by jwilts

Professor Andy McIntosh "proves" that vaccination cannot work and that rain is impossible:

Hearty round of applause.

Can I congratulate you on your tactics, keeping on topic and not letting him escape into other matters.

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258. Comment #141642 by scottishgeologist on March 11, 2008 at 2:26 am

jwilts

Splendid piece of work there. A good example of someone who really knows their stuff challenging and pressing home the point. I have a mental picture of Andy looking around with that "help me someone " look on his face!

This Edinburgh Creation Group intrigues me. Edinburgh of all places, the birthplace of the Enlightenment, the Athens of the North....

Their web site contains some fascinating info:

http://edinburghcreationgroup.org/

Unders ECG News, we read:

"The Easter Story
08:58pm UTC, 9 Mar 2008
On Tuesday evening Paul James-Griffiths a former lecturer in ancient history will present a lecture on the Easter story 7:30pm Baccleuch Free Church"

Note the venue.

And how about this cracker further down the list:

"The Evolution Crisis
10:45pm UTC, 28 Feb 2008
The short book The Evolution Crisis is now online as a web book. This book tells the stories of five Atheist scientists who became Christians and Creationists.

One story well worth reading is that of Oxford Professor Arthur E. Wilder-Smith. He debated Dawkins in the Oxford Union Debate in 1986. Evolution won, but Dawkins refused to debate a Creationist ever again because the margin was much narrower than he expected (different reports put it as 115-198 and 150-198). Dawkins now only picks fights he knows he can win. This year he will debate with the former Bishop of Edinburgh, who even before the debate is not sure if God exists."

In that section of text on the original site there is a link:

http://www.tonguesrevisited.com/oxford_union_debate.htm

Note the name of the domain "tonguesrevisited.com" That, IMO, says it all. Yet these people want to be taken seriously. Tongues, FFS?

[sigh, rolls eyes.....]

SG

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259. Comment #141656 by jwilts on March 11, 2008 at 3:11 am

Hi SG,

"I have a mental picture of Andy looking around with that "help me someone " look on his face! "

Yes, he did just that :-)

"This Edinburgh Creation Group intrigues me. Edinburgh of all places, the birthplace of the Enlightenment, the Athens of the North.... "

The Creationists seem to be making a concerted effort in Edinburgh at the moment. Famous speakers and meetings ever Tuseday night in a church next to the University.

I also had an encounter with famous Australian Creationist John MacKay.

http://www.amen.org.uk/cr/who/index.htm

Like Andy, John is a very entertaining speaker - not right - but very entertaining. He mounted a concerted attack on Darwin ( The ad hominem fallacy) and his theory (misrepresentation of science).

Part of his presentation was concerned with the high level of correlation between Human DNA and Chimp DNA. He was ridiculing the way in which the alledged level of commonality reported by scientists has come down from 98% to 95%. He then went on to show (at some length) that small changes in coded information can result in large changes in the meaning of the information. He showed numerous examples of English sentences in which small changes in letter order or single character substitutions can completely change the message. Sometimes hilariously.

This seemed to be a concerted attempt to "muddy the water" regarding our genetic relationship with our nearest relative and imply that evolutionists were trying to argue that that small numerical differences in DNA comparisons didn't really matter. The point is that the 90% commonality is powerful evidence of common ancestry. John didn't mention that so I pointed it out.

I also said that development biologists now understand in considerable detail how genetic information is used as organisms develop and they would agree that very small changes can have a dramatic effect. I then added an example of my own that didn't involve any letter re-ordering or substutions. It involves only the addition of a space. I said:

"Genesis isn't the answer - Genes is."

At that the audidence laughed and John's body language signalled a level of discomfort.

It was great fun and very rewarding to be able to stop a very acomplished nonsense spouting Creationist in his tracks by beating him at his own silly word game.

I strongly recommend the process. :-)

jwilts

P.S. I feel a T-Shirt design coming on :-)

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260. Comment #141719 by scottishgeologist on March 11, 2008 at 6:19 am

jwilts

Thats very interesting. What I find amazing is the venue for these ECG meetings - Buccleuch Free Church - the minister there is Alex Macdonald who is very much a David Robertson fan. There is virtually NO reference at all on Buccleuch's website to these events, despite the fact that this is supposedly a "bible based" evangelical, anti-atheism group at work here

The only reference I could find is on their online calendar where there are a couple of references to ECM for the times specified

I wonder if they are actually embarassed by it?

After all, the likes of David Robertson have dismissed YEC types in no uncertain terms. Of course David Robertson and Alex Macdonald are part of the group trying to re-invent the Free Church so that it is the hip and trendy, happenin' sort of place - you know "Calvinism is cool", "Joy of Calvinism", "engagement with pomo society" and "contextualisation of the gospel"

I am sorry, but these guys cant have it both ways - if they are enabling the likes of these YEC types, then they are guilty by association

It puts them right into the fundy camp. And no amount of trendy spin will hide that fact

Also interesting is that the venue for these ECG talks is right close to David Hume Tower of Edinburgh University!!!

:-))

SG

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261. Comment #141982 by jwilts on March 11, 2008 at 1:55 pm

Hi SG,

On Tuesday evening Paul James-Griffiths a former lecturer in ancient history will present a lecture on the Easter story 7:30pm Baccleuch Free Church

On the Day before Andy McIntosh's talk, Paul published an article in the Edinburgh University Student newspaper. This prompted me to post a "complaint" on the Creation Group website. One of the students I met at Andy's talk responded so I sent him this response to Paul's article:

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

PAUL: Is Darwin's Theory of Evolution Unfounded?

PAUL: There is .a lot of confusion over this subject.

There is indeed.

PAUL: I would like to make it clear that all the Creationists I know accept natural selection and adaptation as scientific facts (microevolution)

Professor McIntosh demonstrated inconsistency on this matter. On the one hand he claims to accept that natural selection ( he didn't mention "adaptation" ) and microevolution occur and then also claims ( as do many other creationists) that information cannot be added to DNA. If a breeding population is in anyway adapted to the environment in which it reproduces reproducers then, by definition, there must be some "historically informed" heritable information that passes from generation to generation (Usually via DNA). It follows that, if "micro evolution" is accepted then the prospect of information being added to DNA must also be accepted.

So how can the acceptance that some natural selection and adaptation occurs be compatible with the claim that information cannot be added to DNA?

PAUL: however, many reject the idea that variation within each kind of creature is sufficient to suggest the common descent of all kinds of creatures from a single celled organism (macroevolution).

Many creationists do indeed do that. What they don't do is identify any mechanisms that would stop common descent from occuring and explain the origin of the mountains of evidence for it. In particular, the vast amounts of evidence that is now available from DNA sequencing. Nearly all life on this planet uses the same genetic code. Billions of different codes are possible and the simple fact that only one is in use is powerful evidence for common descent. We share over 90% of our DNA with Chimps and the "Tree of life" seen in DNA is strongly correlates with that inferred from other studies (morphology, the fossil record, systemics etc).

Then there's the Retroviral Insertions:

http://www.emotel.co.uk/punters/rvi/retroviralinsertions.htm

These are remnants of infection by retrovirses (They insert DNA manufactured from their RNA into the Host DNA) that have been inserted into the germline and passed on from generation to generation. The patterns we see in these insertions can be used to draw a "Tree of Life" and it confirms what we already know from other studies. Since the insertions are "infections", the "creator", if there was such a being, must have put them there to deliberately decieve us into accepting the evolutionary explanation of life.

So it is not the "variation within each kind of creature" that leads evolutionists to infer common descent, it is the vast amount of historical information that we now can decode from DNA.

PAUL: To go from one to the other is a huge leap of faith even at the molecular level; the evidence is simply not there.

No it is not a "huge leap of faith" it is really excellent science but that's not what concerns me here. Irrespective of what conclusion can be drawin from the evidence, creatioists seriously misrpresent evolutionary science when they make claims that "the evidence is simply not there". That is a gross misrepresentation of the facts and that concerns me greatly. There's mountains of evidence and thousands of carefully considered papers and books about it.

There are several problems with the evolutionary idea of the origin of life and its development, which a growing number of agnostics also realise. Briefly summed here are a few of these problems:

PAUL: 1. The Law of Probability: even the probability of a single average globular protein appearing by chance is about 1 in 10^130. That is a figure larger than the
number of atoms in the history of the cosmos. And we have not even looked at the rest of the evolution package. More recently scientists have calculated the probability of the simplest genome emerging through random trials as 1 in 10^80,000. Mathematicians generally regard 1 in 10^45 as being the upper limit of sensible random processes.

This is just a re-run of Fred Hoyle's monumental misconception that he immortalised with his "Whirlwind in a Junkyard fallacy".

No evolutionary scientist has ever suggested that large proteins appeared on earth by the process of "chance" that leads to these numbers and anyone who says that they have is guilty of serious misrepresentation of someone else's very carefully considered and clearly explained views.

Proteins are chains of amino acid residues and 20 such residues are found to be involved.

This so called "Law of Probaility" simply supposes that each residue in the chain has a probability of 1 in 20 of being there ( What mathematicians call a "Rectangular Probability Distribution") and calculates the probability of the complete chain on that basis as 20^n where n is the length of the chain. That calculation is correct in that it follows from the premise that the residues are "equally likely" to occur at each position in a single chance assembly of the complete chain.

No evolutionary scientist has ever suggested that large proteins arose in that way. Consequently, once again, they are being seriously misrepresented.

As evidenced above, we are told that "all the Creationists I know accept natural selection and adaptation as scientific facts".

If that is so they why can't they see the monumental misconception in Hoyle's junkyard scenatio? Are we to conclude that the "versions" of natural selection and adaptation that creationists claim to accept are also gross misrepresentations of the real thing?

PAUL : 2. The Law of Biogenesis: nobody has ever contradicted this law and demonstrated that life can come from non-life.

No such law exists. Please explain what you mean by "life"? Is a molecule that can reproduce itself "life" in your scheme of things?

PAUL: Any successful attempts would involve intelligence.

Obviously an "attempt" would involve intelligence because only intelligences "attempt" to achieve a purpose. So that's not the point. The issue is "Can a self-replicating molecular complex" arise naturally? If it can then, evolution by cumulative natural selection can take it from there - from Proton's to Prime Ministers as Andy so succinctly said.

If creationists claim that self-replicating molecular complexes cannot arise naturally then how do they prove that?

Suppose that the probability of such an occurrence by chance was once-per-planet-Earth-per-100,000,000-years. Clearly, we would never expect to see such an event in a lab test tube. However, were we able to look, we would expect to see about 40 of them occur in the 4,000,000,000 years that the earth has been around in a suitable state. Because of the immense autocatalytic gain behind the opportunity available to the first replicator ( It would have the whole planet to itself) , a single occurence of such an event would be sufficient to initiate the evolution of life on this planet.

How can creationists possibly prove that scenario is impossible? How can they even argue that it is unlikely?

PAUL: 3. The Law of Thermodynamics: everything on the planet is subject to decay, which works in opposition to evolution.

There is a long standing ( It goes all the way back to Boltzman's use of "Order" as a technical term) misconception about this and I was astonished when I realised that a Professor of Thermodynamics at a British University actively promotes this fallacy. The American Society of Chemistry Teachers has mounted a concerted Internet campaign to get this clarified and modern text books are responding accordingly.

http://www.entropysite.com/

Further misconceptions arise due to Claude Shannon's use of the term "Entropy" in his seminal paper on Information theory. Scientists and engineers like myself who work in the field of thermodynamics and information theory are well aware that thermodynamic and information "Entropy" are quite different concepts that unfortunately share the same technical term. They also know that "Order" in popular culture quite mistakenly invokes pictures of untidy bedrooms and desks.

You don't have to take my word for this of course. Just check out via the above link Frank Lambert's internet campaign to get the confusion that is so disgracefully exploited by creationists sorted out.

PAUL:3. Even open systems only work if there is existing machinery in place, such as proteins that control cellular function.

Yes, I heard Professor Andy McIntosh attempting to prove that rain is impossible and I spoke to him at some length about that. The Earth is a naturally occuring thermodynamic machine and if, as the Professor claims, such machines are impossible them whence cometh the rain that waters my lawn?

PAUL: 4. Information: all known codes are evidence of an intelligence, this should, if we are unbiased, include the DNA.

I'm sorry but that is just nonsense. Tahe a look at a photograph of the other side of the moon that was never seen by humans until they were able to send spacecraft to photograph it.

Notice how the larger craters have smaller craters inside them. That is "coded information" from which we can deduce that meteorite bombardment took place and that the smaller impacts happened later in time than the larger ones. It is just nonsense to claim that such coded information requires intelligence. Once again, creationists seriously misrepresent a science. In this case the science of information theory.

PAUL: 5. Heredity: In every experiment thus far when we have tried to demonstrate macroevolution,whetherwithDrosophila, E.Coli, or anything else, we have always found a fixed boundary beyond which the road leads only to dead ends or the lethal degeneration of a species.

There is no such "fixed boundary". Scientists haven't been able to make a black hole in the lab or a galaxy or a gold mine. It is just nonsense to claim that because of this "failure" on the part of science such things cannot exist.

Once again, this statement demonstrates a gross misunderstanding of evolutionary science. The evidence for "macro-evolution" is monumental. Over 90% of our genetic material correlates with that of chimps. Everywhere we look in DNA we see the same story - evidence for common descent. There's mountains of the stuff and a formidable theory about it that delivers quite extraordinary explanatory power.

Creationists have the basic human right to believe whatever they wish to believe. However, they do not have the right to bear false witness against their neighbours in evolutionary science by misrepresenting the facts and the theory of evolution.

PAUL: 6. Stasis in the Fossil Record: 40-80% of living forms today are represented in the fossil record, despite being told in many text books that only about 0.1% are in this category. The rocks testify that no macro-evolutionary change has ever occurred. With the Cambrian Explosion complex fish, trilobites and other creatures appear suddenly without any precursors. Evidence of any transitional forms in the fossil record is highly contentious.

Stuart Ritchie's favourite counter to this kind of argument is the "FishoPod":

http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/467989/editorial_evidence_mounts_fishopod_discovery_bolsters_evolution_theory_by_filling/

As it says there, "Towering piles of evidence have been found to bolster the case for evolution".

Here's an item from those piles derived from DNA studies that depicts the "radiation of life" from the Cambrian Explosion. .

http://www.emotel.co.uk/evolution/DLL.htm

A proper understanding of this requires a firm grasp on some evolutionary principles that creationists, (and Paul's article) consistently demonstrate a failure to understand. The key elements here are the significance of Hox-gene clusters ( DLL is a Hox gene) and the evidence for gene duplication as a means of making what creationists refer to as "Macro-evolutionary transitions".

Even the humble but very important organism know as "Brewer's yeast" can be shown to have ungone a whole genome duplication event. Only a little thought is required to see how such events can dramatically increase the information capacity of DNA . In the face of such evidence claims like those presented by creationists look rather silly.

But much worse than that, those claims bear false witness against evolutionists and their science and that is a serious "sin" in both camps.

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262. Comment #147821 by jwilts on March 21, 2008 at 11:08 am

I note that the ECG website

http://edinburghcreationgroup.org/

continues to advertise Professor Andy McIntosh's claim that:

"Rain is impossible".

PROFESSOR McINTOSH: "My knowledge of thermodynamics has shown me that all mechanical systems (such as an engine or fridge or aeroplane etc.) require not only energy but ordered machinery in order to work. Thus simply adding energy to a lump of matter will not turn this into a machine which can do useful work."

The Earth is a "Lump of matter" to which energy is added in the form of radiation from the sun. Water evaporates from the oceans, and the wind blows the clouds over my garden where it is precipitated as rain which waters my lawns. Consequently, the Earth operates in a thermodynamic cycle and performs this very useful work.

Coincidentally, Professor Peter Atkins (Author of a book on the laws of thermodynamics called "Four Laws that drive the Universe") is presenting a talk at the Science Festival next Thursday ( 20:00 27th March Museum of Scotland).

I have asked the Edinburght Creation Group the following question:

If you or any of you colleagues can make any kind of a case that supports the notion that "Rain is impossible" we might have an opportunity to put that to Professor Atkins to see what he makes of it.

I await there response. :-)

jwilts

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