Creation/Evolution: Issue 33 Winter 1993

Creation/Evolution
Issue 33 Winter 1993

22
32
42
Articles
Our Last Debate: Our Very Last
William Ihwailes and Frank Awbrey
Creation's Incredible Witness, Duane T. Gish. Ph.D.
Karl D. Fezer
Henry Morris on Racism
Richard 'not!
Were There Birds Before Arciiaeopteryjif?
Thomas J. Wheder
Review Article: Darwin FVosecuted
Eugenie C. Scott
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ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED
About this issue . . .
C
ONFRONTING; CREATIONISM might be a title for this issue.
From time to time we publish manuscripts dealing with debates.
More often than covering debates themselves we try to provide solid
information of use to would-be debaters and anyone else interested.
For this issue, though, we concentrate more than usual on the debate
topic itself. An article by William Thwaites and Frank Awbrey
reports their view of a debate with ICR speakers last spring which
was heartily denounced in creationist publications. Critiques of pre-
vious debates and public talks followa long analysis of the tactics
of Duane Gish written by Karl Fezer and a piece on the ICR's founder,
Henry Morris, by Richard Trott which questions the creationist attack
on evolutionary theory as the major cause of racism and asks ques-
tions about structures built upon sand. (As editor, I should note that
Morris's supposedly Bible-based categories of three basic racial
groups are unknown to anthropology, biology and genetics.)
Since C-E debating is controversial, I asked a number of people
for short comments on their valueand received a lot of redundant
denunciation of the process from evolutionists and creationists alike;
both crowds agreed that the basic effect depended upon "show biz"
skills more than superiority of argument. Former editor Fred Edwords
wrote years ago that evolution should be defended in public debates
by skilled debaters, not skilled scientists, and that having the debate
focus on nonspecialists'skills rather than the efficacy of evolutionary
theory was an especially valuable tactic.
Finally we have a previously-advertised second half of a review of
Phillip Johnson's book Darwin on Trial (part I appeared in CIE 31).
Johnson's book and its argument against "philosophic naturalism"
has become a major creationist cause, succeeding the "equal time"
argument, at least for a while.
Outside the combatative zone, we also publish an article to update
readers on Archaeopteryx newsa favorite creationist topic.
John R. Cole
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% Creation/Evolution
Volume 13 No. 2 Winter 1993
Tlxe journal of evolution and science education
which explores aspects of evolution
and antievolutionism
Contents
Articles
1 Our Last Debate: Our Very Last
William Thwaites and Frank Awbrey
5 Creation's Incredible Witness. Duane T. Gish, Ph.D.
Karl D. Fezer
22 Henry Morris on Racism
Richard Trott
32 Were There Birds Before Archaeopteryx?
Thomas J. Wheeler
42 Review Article: Darwin Prosecuted
Eugenie C. Scott
Replies
48 Reply to Landau and Landau
David A. Bradbury
50 Comment on Zimmerman and Defining "Evolution"
Ronald H. Pine
Correspondence (Inside Back Cover)
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Creation/ Involution
13(1), Issue 33, Winter 1993
ISSN 0738-6001
1993 by the National Center for Science Education, Inc., a not-for-profit 501(c)(3)
organization under US law. Creation/Evolution is published by NCSE to promote the
understanding of evolutionary science.
Eugenie C. Scott, Publisher

P.O. Box 9477
Berkeley, CA 94709-0477
(510)526-1674
John R. Cole, Editor
c/o WRRC, Blaisdell House
University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 01003
Deborah Ross, Production Design
Cover: "Here's a portrait of the editor's great, great, great, great.. . grandfather.
Isn't he nice? You see, he comes from a race distinguished even in antiquity for its
sense of humor." Evolution, December 1927, p. 16.
Views expressed arc those of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of NCS0. ClE
is published twice yearly in conjunction with NCSE Reports, a quarterly newsletter.
Address editorial correspondence to the editor. Style guidelines are available from the editor or
publisher; 3 copies of unsolicited mss. are requested so that copies may be sent to referees, and
return postage should be included if return of the ms. is desired. Write the publisher about address
changes, missing issues, multiple issue or back issue purchases, reprint rights, etc.
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Our Last Debate:
Our Very Last
William Thwaites
Frank Awbrey
W
e are among a relatively small band of pioneers who first
figured out how to debate the creationists more or less
successfully. Our first debate was in 1977 with Duane Gish
and Henry Morris. Our technique was simple: We spent
several months in the library and looked up the reality of every creationist
argument we could lay our hands on. When this was finished, we made 2x2
transparencies for each argument: usually one showing the creationist claim,
one showing facts from the library, and a third giving the conclusion
regarding the validity of the creationist claim.
Back in the early days, we thought there might be some small chance that
a creationist would dig up a real biological paradox, one that would prove to
be an interesting brain-teaser for the scientific community. We hoped that
we could use the creationists to ferret out biological enigmas much as DEA
agents use dogs to seek out contraband.
So, in our first debate we played by creationist rules and were models of
professionalism and civility. We even went so far as to participate in their
charade and not mention that their view was religiously defined. While we
had discovered that every creationist claim so far could easily be disproved,
we still had hope that there was a genuine quandary in there somewhere. We
just hadn't found it yet. This hope, as small as it was, was enough to give a
modicum of legitimacy to the creationist claim that they were "only doing
science."
In the years that followed, we have tried to get as much mileage as possible
out of our library encampment. We helped launch the Creation/Evolution
periodical to serve as a handy reference for other debaters and high school
teachers confronted with creationist claims. We even started a genuine
"two-model" course here at SDSU where we invited creationist celebrities
to the classroom and then discussed their ideas at the next meeting. After a
Professors Thwaites and Awbrey teach in the Biology Department, San Diego State
University, California and are longtime C/E contributors.
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Our Last Debate
while, we became the world's foremost experts on Southern California
creationists.
But gradually and relentlessly, our disillusion with creationists grew
closer and closer to 100%. The creationists who came to our class would
pretend to be mainline scientists while they were with us. "Noah's Flood,
you ask? I didn't come here to lead a Sunday school class. I'm here to talk
about geology," one would say.
Often they would duck all questions relating to creationism by asserting,
"That's a question about Biblical Creationism. I'm here to discuss Scientific
Creationism." Sometimes students would even ask us if we thought a
particular guest was really a creationist. Clearly, it was time to start using
written and recorded creationist propaganda rather than live creationists.
In their books, tapes, and records creationists show their true colors. In
these media they are talking to the public. In their public statements the flood
was Noah's flood, the world is between 6 and 10 thousand years old,
radiometric dating is either a pack of lies or a pseudoscience based on wishful
thinking and faulty assumptions, and evolution is inspired by Satan and the
root cause of all social ills.
We have done more debates since the disillusionment became complete,
but the intervals between them have grown. This year was our last public
debate and here's why: The debates are creationist affairs. In 1993 one of our
biology students wanted to have a debate sponsored by the field biology club
in our department. The department said that it would save its meager
resources for real issues in biology rather than religious issues. We concur.
Then sponsorship fell to "Student Life," the on-campus branch of the
College Avenue Baptist Church. Student Life did a truly fine job of organ-
izing the debate. They thought of just about everything. One of us (Thwaites)
wishes he had had help like that when the AAAS Pacific Division meetings
were held here a few years ago!
But the debate was obviously a Baptist event from the word go. When
their planning was finished, they gave us an outline that included maps,
time-table, goals, etc. The debate would start at 6 pm, and there would be a
prayer (for us?) at 4 pm. The outline even listed what would make the debate
a "success." One criterion for success was the listing: "Unbiased/non-rclig-
ious."
We were being asked to participate in their charade again. Creationism is
religious and biased. After nearly 15 years of studying creationist claims,
we'd say that we are biased, too. How could we help but be biased? If we
tried to make creationism look like science, we would be guilty of gross
prevarication. A phone call to the College Avenue Baptists was in order.
"Oh no! We didn't mean it that way. We just wanted our people lo refrain
from waving their Bibles, and things like that, you know. You scientists arc
free to discuss whatever you think you have to." Well, she was so nice over
the phone. There went a good excuse to back out, but we still had the feeling
2 Creation/Evolution
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Our Last Debate
that our own Montezuma Hall was going to be College Avenue Baptist
properly the night of the debate.
The CABC outline also stated that the debate would not be a contest of
"wit or rhetoric," but that it would be a "profitable exchange of ideas for the
students." They had never checked with us on this item, either, but it wasn't
worth a call to the nice young lady. We simply gave our SDSU public
relations department a statement that said that we were "looking forward to
the wit and rhetoric engendered by these events."
Then there was the matter of tables in the lobby. That too was covered in
the CABC outline: one for ICR, two for refreshments (to be sold by CABC,
we think), one for a "booth" for unspecified purposes, and a "question and
answer" table for sorting written questions. Another call to the church was
called for. "Oh! Someone mentioned that you guys might want a table.
You've got it! Will one be enough?" the nice young lady said. And there
went another reason to back out. But now, more than before, we felt like
outsiders even in our own student center.
Suddenly April 29 was at hand. Just before the debate, a team of young
men were setting up a video projector in front of the carousel projector.
"Who's going to be using videos in the debate?" we asked. It turned out, the
organizers had a 5 minute video to "set the tone" for the debate. They
certainly hadn't told us about this. It didn't reflect our view that creauonism
is silly nonsensea "tone" we might have noted. No, it said that creationism
or evolution is the big decision of your life. It implied that the future of the
universe depends on your ability to make the right choice. Had we been told
that there would be a video shown before the debate, we could have made
one that compared the flat-earth debates of 19th century England with 20th
century debates on creationism in the US.
As expected, the audience was composed mostly of creationists. The
organizers spared us the trouble of signing attendance cards which were there
for some Sunday school class that was required to listen. They would sign
the cards. That was nice.
In the debate, when ICR's Duane Gish or Richard Lumsden would tell
a joke, Montezuma Hall would shake with laughter. When we would come
up with a clever line, a little knot of fellow faculty and graduate students
would laugh uproariously, while 95% of the audience would sit looking
perplexed.
The creationists could tear into the stupidity of evolutionists for swallow-
ing the Piltdown hoax, but we were engaging in ad hominem attacks if we
pointed out some humorous claim made by an identified creationist. That's
a major problem with the debate format. Swallowing the Piltdown hoax is
kind of a system-wide thing that all "evolutionists" supposedly did. On the
other hand, creationism is such a cottage industry that there is a tremendous
amount of variability in itenough to explain away any lapses. Thus, for
example, when Awbrey told the audience that faunal succession falsifies the
V o ] u m e ] 3 NQ 2
3
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Our Last Debate
most basic of creationist tenets, Gish was able to say that there are progressive
creationists who accept faunal succession just as we do.
So, in order to make a criticism stick, an evolutionist must go after specific
claims made by specific creationists. And if you happen to think the claim is
really funny, that's a vicious ad hominem attack according to almost every-
one in the audience.
On the plus side, though, there aren't many other opportunities to talk to
so many biblical literalists all at one time. Nevertheless, we both felt a little
used by the creationists. Debates are their game. They make up the rules. And
for the audience, it is mostly creationists who are sufficiently motivated to
sit on hard chairs for four and a half hours listening to such silliness.
So, when all was said and done, did we really gain anything? The answer
has to be "yes." We gained because we found out that this was going to be
our last public debate with creationists. And we might possibly have gained
a mind here and there before it was filled with creationist claptrap. Some
neutral students sometimes show up.
If you ever think you want to debate creationists on their terms, demand
a hefty honorarium and donate the proceeds to NCSE. Then there is sure to
be a gain. [An unsolicited noncommercial announcement!Ed.]
Debtes. 0.43; V26, 42; VU.38; XH.39;
XVH.2; XDC.48; XXV. 15; advisability,
Vffl.30-33, 42; XXIV.ll; Brown v.
Parrish (1985), XXII.1-5; D*vies and
Dewir v. Haldane, XXIV.15; Geisler
tnd Andenon v. Schtfersman and
Edwords (1983). XV.9; Gish v. J.
Albert (1977), mi l ; Gifh v. L Albert
(n.d.). XVm.29; Gish v. Awbrey (n.d),
XXDX5; Gish v. Brace (1982), VHL39;
Gish v. Doolittle (1982), VL49; VH.1-
13. 48; Gish v. Edwords (1982).
Vin.36-37; DC.8, 14; XV.9; Gish v.
Kitcher (1985), XVII.3-4; Gish v.
Miller (1982), Vffl.34-36; Gish v.
Park (1982). Vm.40; XVDX38; Gish v.
Patterson (1980). D14; IV.21: XVH.4;
Gish v. Schadewald (1980). DC. 13;
Gish v. Wolff and Murray (1982).
VIII.39-40; Gish and Boswell v.
Lemmon and Slebbins (1973), VI.30-
31; at Harvard by Asa Gray, L2; Huxley
v. Wilberforce (1860). VTfl.6; XXTI.5;
Kofahl tnd Segraves v. Edwords tnd
Awbrey (1980), L7; media coverage of.
Vm.34. 36; Morris v. Miller (1981).
Vm.33-34; DC. 14; Morris v. Nelson
(1981), Vin.33; Morris d Gish v.
Miller tnd Milne (1982). Vm.37-39;
Morris and Slusher v. Schwimmer and
Frazier (1981). XH.22: Slraton v.
Potter (1924). XVI.39; by students.
V.2S; Sunderland v. Edwords (1982).
DC.9. Also see under Tactics
Taconic mountains, 11.17
Tactics:
d hominem, VDX31
amicreationist, VI.47; debate. VBX30-
42; political, H.l-9; IV.23-27; V.31-
32, 43; XI138-41
creationist debate, III.4; VH.1-13;
Vrfl.30-42; X.18; XIV.27; XVH.I. 4;
XVTO.28-29. 30-32; XDC.48; XXH.l-
5; XXV.23. 36
creationist polemical. 1.4-9; VI.34-44;
VH.14, 21; VuX6: X.I; XII.2. 4;
XIII.52; XIV.19. 28-30; XVH.l;
XXV.15. 19; begging the question.
XVHUO. 32; equivocation, XVDX32;
fallacy of bifurcation. XIV.29-30;
misquotation and misrepresentation of
authority. D.4. 21-22, 40-43; VI.34-
44; VD.9: VIH.31, 39; IX.40. 43;
XIV.28; XVIH.6; XIX.21; XXII.S;
XXIV.16. 45; special pleading. K.40;
straw man. XVm30
Creation/Evolution
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Creation's
Incredible Witness:
Duane T. Gish, Ph.D.
Karl D. Fezer
D
uane T. Gish, Ph.D., is vice-president of the Institute for Crea-
tion Research, which bills him as "the world's leading creation-
ist debater." Much of his time is spent on the creationist lecture
circuit, where he draws large crowds. The crowds are even
larger when a "debate" is arranged with a member of the scientific or
professorial establishment.
By now Gish has participated in several hundred such "debates." They
are often initiated when a member of the local clergy, or a student, invites
a local professor or scientist to take part. Whether such participation is
advisable depends on various factors. This article documents one impor-
tant reason for refusing to participate: For an audience to be enlightened
by a debate, both debaters should be truthful. Gish disqualifies himself by
his indifference to truth and by his skill in giving fiction the appearance of
truth. A large book could be written documenting this accusation. I here
describe just two examples, in the hope that they will suffice to help
persons seeking debate engagements for Gish to understand why their
requests are being refused.
I was approached by Pastor Dennis Barnhart of Spring Hill Baptist Church
in South Charleston, West Virginia. He had been chief local organizer of
ICR's Back-to-Genesis Seminar in Charleston. Since my article highly
critical of ICR had been published in The Charleston Gazette nine days
before that event (see Fezer 1993), I felt an obligation to be willing to defend
my accusations in public. So I agreed to debate Gish, provided the debate
format would allow me to hold him accountable for things that he and others
at ICR had said and written. Pastor Barnhart agreed that this was a reasonable
condition, and all negotiations proceeded with him as intermediary. Essen-
tials of the negotiations are in writing.
Dr. Fezer is professor of biology at Concord College in Athens, West Virginia, a
former editor of NCSE Newsletter and a contributing editor to NCSE Reports.
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Creation's Incredible Witness
Gish, as usual, wanted long speeches by each debater; I wanted short and
specific challenges followed by the same kind of responses. We compro-
mised as follows: Each debater would have two 20-minute turns. After the
first intermission I would have time for at least four specific challenges up
to five minutes in length, and Gish would have up to five minutes to respond
to each. Then another forty minutes would be devoted to him challenging me
and to my responses. A question and answer period and closing remarks
would follow a second intermission. The entire program was to last nearly
four hours. (An audiotape of the entire debate, held at Concord College on
March 24, 1992, is available on loan from NCSE.)
Gish was told that each member of the audience would be handed a copy
of my Gazette article and, attached to it, a copy of NCSE's flier [Creation or
Evolution?], George Bakken's rebuttal of major creationist claims. I ex-
pressed the hope that Gish would respond to some of the challenges in my
article, and he was invited likewise to hand out free literature. He did bring
a number of ICR Acts & Facts and ICR Impact articles for free distribution.
I report here only on my first two challenges and Gish's responses to them.
First Challenge: On Whales
I said that both modern and fossil whales provide marvelous evidence that
they had four-legged, land-dwelling ancestors. I showed a picture of fossil
whale skulls, from 45 to 15 million years old, showing the nostrils in various
positions of retreat to their present position on the top of the head (Linehan
1979:517). I showed a picture of a baleen whale that, as an adult, has baleen
("whale-bone," used for filter feeding) suspended from the palate but, as a
fetus, has tooth buds in their usual location that are reabsorbed before birth.
Why?, I asked. It also has fur which is reabsorbed before birth. Why?
Likewise hind leg buds. It has hip bones but no hips. Occasionally a whale
has rudimentary hind limbs. I showed a drawing of the dissection of a sperm
whale showing pelvic bone, rudimentary femur and tibia, together with
muscles, nerves, and blood vessels serving these structures, with the limb tip
protruding just slightly from the side of the animal (Ogawa and Kamiya
1957). I cited one study of minke whales in which 13 out of 50 males had
rudimentary femurs, but the remainder did not (Omura 1978). I asked, if
every structure in organisms is designed by God to serve some function, as
Gish claims, how is the function of those femurs being served in the 3/4 of
minkc whales that lack them?
Then I showed a drawing of the skeleton of the early whale, Basilosaurus,
complete with liny hind legs, as reported by Gingerich el al. in July 1990. In
August 1990, at the International Conference on Creationism in Pittsburgh,
Gish told his audience that Basilosaurus was probably a reptile (Schadewald
1990). (In this challenge I said, incorrectly, that Gish called Basilosaurus a
mosasaur. Mosasaurs were Cretaceous serpentine marine reptiles with a
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superficial resemblance to Basilosaurus. Before his lecture in Pittsburgh,
Gish had seen one in the Carnegie Museum of Natural History there. Those
of us who heard him, and had also been to the Museum, surmised that this
might have been the basis for his calling Basilosaurus a reptile. (Schadewald
1990.)] In my challenge, I said that Gish, in his 1985 book, devotes half a
page to listing differences between mammals and reptiles (1985:96-97). An
expert on fossils [which is how ICR describes Gish] not being able to tell the
difference between mammals and reptiles, I said, is like a good mechanic not
knowing the difference between a gasoline and a diesel engine. I pointed out
to the audierce that my article in The Charleston Gazette, handed out before
the debate, accused Gish of calling Basilosaurus a reptile. After publication
of this article, in ICR's subsequent program in Charleston, Gish defended his
claim by saying that Basilosaurus was originally described as a reptile and
that its name means "king lizard." I showed two sentences from the 1990
article by Gingerich et al. The first of these evidently was Gish's source of
this information. But, I said, he ignored the very next sentence: "Richard
Owen demonstrated the mammalian characteristics of Basilosaurus and,
within mammals, its cetacean affinities (9)." The reference is to an 1839
paper by Owen, the most famous anatomist of his time. So I challenged Gish
to tell us once again whether Basilosaurus was a reptile or a mammal. Here
is his response, word-for-word, but with analysis by me inserted after each
component of his response. (The inserted analysis was not part of the debate.)
Can you hear me? Can you hear me? Ladies and gentlemen. First of
all let me say I'm terribly disappointed. I don't know what happened
here tonight. I've heard, and of course we've all heard. Dr. Fezer very,
very well. I understand my microphone was weak and some of you had
difficulty hearing. I don't understand that at all. I'm very sorry to hear
that. Were you up in the balcony able to hear my presentation? Were
all of you able to hear it? [Audience answers affirmatively.] Well, I'm
very happy to hear that because somebody came up here and told me
it was very, very difficult to hear. Well, I'm glad Dr. Fezer finally got
around to his challenge after his lecture.
The debate tape reveals a lowered audio volume for about one and a half
minutes during Gish's second 20-minute talk. The audio technicians told me
afterwards that our voices were so loud they had a hard time controlling
feedback. [Ed: Personal experience indicates that neither Gish nor Fezer
need worry about being heard by an audience in the same county!}
Let me say this, I did not say that Basilosaurus was a mosasaur. I said
that it was a reptile, very likely a reptile. Now, the name Basilosaurus
means "king lizard." It was classified originally as a reptile. Richard
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Owen came along later and said that he thought it had some mammalian
affinities. That's what he said in a paper published in 1838 [sic].
Note that Gingerich et al. (1990), in the sentence I quoted above, say that
Owen "demonstrated" the mammalian characteristics of Basilosaurus and,
within mammals, its affinities to whales. There is no hint of uncertainty or
doubt in their wording, contrary to what Gish implied by his choice of words.
Now, in this paper that he referred to, whichI have a copy with me,
these scientists, the only documentation that this creature is related
to whales or is a mammal was a reference to the paper by 1838. The
distinguishing features between a mammal and a reptile of this kind is
going to be found in the skull. Now, if that was a mammal it would
have three bones in the car and a single bone in the jaw and have a
mammalian type jaw joint and other characteristics of a mammal. They
did not even mention this skull.
The 1990 paper by Gingerich et al. that Gish held in his hand during his
response is "Hind Limbs of Eocene Basilosaurus: Evidence of Feet in
Whales." It is about the newly discovered hind limbs of Basilosaurus, not
about other, previously described features of this creature. The authors'
sentence citing Richard Owen clearly implies that Owen's analysis was
definitive and is accepted by the scientific community today. The reference
to whales in the title of their paper has the same implication. Schadewald
(1990) says that, according to vertebrate paleontologist Robert E. Sloan,
"Basilosaurus has no reptilian characteristics beyond its serpentine shape. Its
skull, teeth, mandible, vertebra, sternum, and limbs are all thoroughly mam-
malian."
Gish implied that Gingerich et al. should have repeated all the previously
reported evidence for Basilosaurus being a mammal and a whale, even
though the authors cited a reference where this evidence is available. Yet
Gish knows that space in scientific journals is expensive, and that authors are
expected to cite where previously reported information can be found rather
than repeat it.
By reciting some characteristics of mammalian skulls Gish simultane-
ously conveyed two false impressions: (1) that he is knowledgeable about
Basilosaurus and (2) that the evidence he was demanding docs not exist.
Now, I said I believe that thing was a reptile and let me say why I
believe it. Its fossils are found with animals that lived on the land, with
terrestrial animals, with terrestrial fossils. It's not found with fossils of
marine animals. If it lived in the sea, if it was a whale, as Dr. Fezcr
claims, why wasn't it found with fossils of marine organisms? Why
was it found with fossils of animals that lived on the land?
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Gingerich et al. (1990) say nothing about fossils of other organisms
associated with those oiBasilosaurus (not their subject), but they clearly state
that the Basilosaurus fossils were obtained from marine sandstones and
shales. Gish's assertions here seem to be derived from a different paper
(Gingerich et al. 1983) about different, earlier fossils in a different part of
the world. In that paper Pakicetus is described as "an amphibious stage in
the gradual evolutionary transition of primitive whales from land to sea."
This shows, also, what should be obviousthat association of a fossil
with fossils of terrestrial organisms is no reason to conclude that the organism
was a reptile. After all, most mammals are terrestrial. Even if there had been
evidence that Basilosaurus was terrestrial, it would have helped not one bit
in establishing it as a reptile. Such an odd blind alley may impress audiences,
but it leads nowhere.
Now, furthermore, according to this article, this creature had powerful
leg muscles. It says here that it had powerful muscles on its legs, and
the knee has a complex locking mechanism. Why would a whale have
strong powerful muscles in its legsthe hind legsand have a very
complex locking mechanism if it lived in the sea?
Gish here returned to citing the 1990 paper by Gingerich el al. about
Basilosaurus. His rhetorical question implied that this information is incom-
patible with a marine existence. In fact, the paper actually says that the hind
limbs "appear to have been too small relative to body size to have assisted
in swimming, and they could not possibly have supported the body on land."
Further analysis leads its authors to conclude, "Abduction of the femur and
plantar flexion of the foot, with the knee locked in extension, probably
enabled hind limbs to be used as guides during copulation, which may
otherwise have been difficult in a serpentine aquatic mammal." Gish bra-
zenly ripped phrases from their context and attached to them a meaning
opposite of that implied by the evidence and stated by the authors he claimed
to cite.
Now, furthermore, these people said this creature did not haveby
studying the skull, they said they could discover that it could not hear
directionally under water. A whale must hear directionally under
water. This animal could not. They said, furthermore, it could not dive
because it did not have the proper structure in the ear. You know that
some whales, the sperm whale for example, dives at 7 and 8 thousand
feel down in the water with tremendous pressure and stay down there
as long as two hours before it must come up and breathe. It has a very
special structure of uV. car to allow them to withstand that tremendous
pressure. This animal did notit did not have thatcould not hear
directionally under water.
Volume 13, No 2 9
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Gish told us previously (and correctly) that the 1990 paper by Gingerich
el al. does not even mention the skull. (An endnote does refer to the skull of
Late Early Eocene Pakicetus and contrasts it with the "more specialized
crania" of Middle and Late Eocene whales.) Now Gish claimed the authors
had much to say about the skull oIBasilosaurus. But there is nothing in that
paper resembling anything in Gish's remarks just quoted. Once again his
remarks seem to have been based, in part, on the 1983 paper about Pakicetus.
And isn't the lack of deep-diving equipment exactly what one would expect
in an animal representing an early stage in the evolution of a marine animal
from a terrestrial ancestor?
And furthermore, the pelvic bone in whales, even as this article states,
is functional. The pelvic bone in whalesthe muscles involved in
reproduction and in other functionsare fastened, anchored to that
pelvic bone. It is not vestigial. It is functional. Now, finally, the claim
that this thing had some vestigial structuresI have an article publish-
ed in the Evolutionary Theory in May of 1981the questions these
evolutionists askeddo "vestigial organs" provide evidence for evo-
lution? He said they do not. First of all, they havepractically every
one has been shown to have a functionthey are not vestigial, they
have a function. And even of the very few which we have not yet
discovered a function, that just describes our ignorance. We just don't
know what function they have. This thing did not have vestigial
structures, fully functional, and I believe the evidence does show that
it was a reptile and certainly was not a whale.
Gingerich et al. (1990) point out, "The pelvis of modern whales serves
to anchor reproductive organs." So, yes, whale pelvic bones have a func-
tion. Nevertheless, they constitute evidence for evolution because their
shape suggests tetrapod ancestry, even though they lack most of the
functions that pelvic bones, shaped as they are, serve in tetrapods. By the
same kind of reasoning, reabsorbed tooth buds, hind limb buds, and fur in
fetal baleen whales will remain as evidence of ancestral characteristics,
even if they should be found to serve some function in the development of
these animals.
The reference cited by Gish argues that one cannot logically prove that a
structure has no function (Scadding 1981:175-176). But facts that tend to
support a conclusion count as evidence, even if alternative interpretations are
possible. When most members of a species lack a structure that a substantial
minority possess, it is reasonable to conclude that that structure does not serve
an essential function. That is why, in my challenge, I mentioned the finding
of Omura that three fourths of minke whales lacked rudimentary femurs,
while one fourth had them. If these serve some essential function, how is that
function met in the whales that lack them? Gish ignored this question and
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merely repeated the standard creationist claim that all "vestigial" structures
must have some function.
This claim, as the paper cited by Gish points out, is based on the
theological doctrine that God creates nothing in vain. The author concludes
that "the vestigial organ argument is essentially a theological rather than a
scientific argument" (Scadding 1981:174).
To sum up: Gish knew this challenge might come and had prepared his
response. He even held the relevant paper in his hand during his response.
His response provides clear evidence that he had studied it. He then pro-
ceeded to mix up evidence from two papers about two different organisms.
He extracted information from both papers, in each case glaringly out of
context.
Apart from the original mis-identification of Basilosaurus as a reptile,
cited in the paper Gish was holding, Gish did not introduce a single fact that
supported his claim. He presented no evidence from that original report that
might have supported his claim. He did nothing to show that Owen and later
scientists erred in concluding that Basilosaurus was a mammal and an early
whale. He did not even claim to have studied the literature cited in the 1990
paper by Gingerich et al. And he did not claim that he himself had studied,
or even that he had ever seen, any fossils of Basilosaurus. Nor is there any
evidence that Gish would have been qualified to evaluate them if he had seen
them.
But in spite of his gargantuan ignorance on the subject, Gish, driven
perhaps by his role as ICR's "expert" on fossils, continues to announce to
the world that the real experts are wrong. Apart from the preliminary
identification, subsequently corrected by Owen, Gish did not present a single
shred of evidence that Basilosaurus was a reptile. Nor did he present any
evidence that it was not a mammal and an early whale. Yet his last sentence
emphatically asserted that he did. This is the technique of the Big Lie.
Second Challenge: On Horninld Fossils
I began my second challenge by saying that nowhere does ICR have a
greater phobia about recognizing intermediates than with regard to the human
lineage. For example, to discredit the fossil called "Lucy," Morris and Parker
(1987:160) say, "fossils of ordinary people in mid-Tertiary rock were found
in Castenodolo, Italy," so if ordinary humans are older than Lucy, then of
course Lucy couldn't be an ancestor. What they don't tell the reader is that
those fossils have been tested by a variety of methods, shown to be young
specimens (maybe 10,000 years old) buried not in a mid-Tertiary deposit but
in Pliocene deposits (Conrad 1982:15-16), just as you or I presumably will
be buried in dirt older than we are. Further up the same page, Morris and
Parker go through a litany, the same sort that Gish presented earlier in this
debate, that implies that there are just a few proposed human ancestors and
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that none of them constitute good evidence: "AH the candidates once pro-
posed as our evolutionary ancestors have been knocked off the list." Nean-
dertals, just people; Piltdown, hoax; Nebraska Man, pig's tooth; Java Man,
Peking Man, bad science, etc.
But, I said, Dr. Eric Meiklc at the Institute for Human Origins told me last
week [mid-March 1992] that he was compiling citations to all specimens of
hominids up to the Holoccne period [which began 12-14,000 years ago], and
so far he has 1400 such specimens in his list, 64 of which are Homo erectus.
I showed my audience a just-published chart of all the places in four
continents where well-dated hominid fossils have been found (Thome and
Wolpoff 1992:82).
As to the claim that Java Man and Peking Man are based on "bad science,"
I noted that Gish (1985) devotes 17 pages to discrediting the people who found
and described Java Man and Peking Man. For example, Gish says that Dubois,
the discoverer of Pithecanthropus (Java Man), also found two fully human
skulls at the same level at "nearby" [Gish's term] Wadjak. Gish says Dubois
didn't reveal the existence of these human skulls until 192230 years later
because it would have discredited his claims that Java Man is an intermediate.
"His failure to reveal this find to the scientific world at the same time he
exhibited the Pithecanthropus specimen was deplorable since this constituted
concealment of important evidence" (Gish 1985:181). Six years earlier, in
Evolution: The Fossils Say No!, Gish (1979:125) had made the same claim,
ending by asserting "[Dubois's] failure to reveal this find to the scientific world
at the same time he exhibited the Pithecanthropus bones can only be labeled
as an act of dishonesty." Morris and Parker (1987:154) make the same claim
and cite Gish as their reference: Dubois, they say, "foundbut kept secret for
thirty yearsa human skull discovered at the same level." Other authors have
repeated the charge. Gish, in his widely distributed comic book, Have You Been
Brainwashed? (n.d.:17), says, "Dr. Dubois . . . concealed for 30 years the fact
that he found human skulls near his Java Man, and at the same level. So man
was already there when this creature was alive."
I then read an excerpt of the text of anthropologist Dr. Loring Brace's
remarks when he debated Gish at the University of Michigan in 1982:
To put the matter straight, "nearby Wadjak" is a good 100 miles of
mountainous countryside away from Trinil, the site of Dubois' Pithe-
canthropus. Nor is it accurate to call them "approximately at the same
level" when one is well over half a million years old and the other is
less than 10,000. Finally, Dubois did publish preliminary accounts of
his Wadjak material in 1889 and 1890, before his Trinil discoveries
were even made, and he recapitulated these in print in 1892 before
becoming involved in what he correctly realized was the far more
significant "Pithecanthropus" issue.
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I got the signal that my five minutes were up after the word "correctly"
in the last sentence, so I stopped there, said I would save my "punch line"
for the next challenge (and failed to summarize my challenge to Gish). Gish's
response consisted mostly of assertions that he has made repeatedly in his
books. He began thus:
I still, you knowDr. Fezer asked for this format, and it's supposed
to be a challenge, but he gives a lecture and he doesn't give the
challenge. Now, I'd like to have a challenge. The challenge apparently,
I think, what he wants me to do is to explain about this Wadjak skull.
I have read data which shows that Loring Brace is not correct in what
he says; that is not correct. That Eugene Dubois did not come out and
say that at all. As a matter of fact. Sir Arthur Keith said thisSir Arthur
Keith excusedgave the excusefor Eugene Dubois, why he did not
reveal that Wadjak skull. Sir Arthur Keith, a British evolutionist, said
this: It would just be too big a meal for people to swallow. And he said
that he found that Wadjak skull and the so-called Java Man in relatively
the same level. And it was the same level; I don't care if it's a hundred
miles apart. I don't care it it's a thousand miles apart. It's found at the
same level and he did not reveal that until 30 years later when someone
published a paper on Wadjak, and so he thought he better rush into
print then, because he would lose any credit for his discovery of
Wadjak skull. I did not accuse these scientists of being dishonest. I said
that this one person, that Dr. Dubois, was guilty ofyou could call it
dishonesty or somethinghe did not reveal that he found that Wadjak
skullthose Wadjak skullswhen he found his Homo erectus, so-
called. That is not being honest, and that's what Sir Arthur Keith
saidwhy didn't he do this, why didn't he reveal this? It would be too
big a meal for the anthropologists to swallow. And so he concealed
one, you see, until he got the other accepted. Now we don't want to
accuse anybody really. Let's don't argue about who's honest or dis-
honest. Let's deal with the facts, let's see what are the facts.
I sent a transcript of these and other remarks by Gish in the debate to Dr.
Loring Brace, who responded (1992, Pers. Comm.):
Gish is right on one point: Keith did say what Gish attributed to him,
but then Keith never made any effort to go back into the record and
read what Dubois wrote at the time of the discovery of Wadjak.
[Dubois's early reports on Wadjak are cited and described below
KDF.] (Gish] is completely wrong on his repeated assertion that the
Wadjak and the Trinil skulls came from the "same level." Neither
Dubois nor anyone else ever said that, and it would be a meaningless
statement in any case. The Wadjak finds were made in cave deposits
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in the mountains near the south coast of Java while the Trinil finds were
made in river deposits on the flood plain that occupies the northern part
of the Island. Dubois may have thought that Wadjak was early in the
Pleistocene, but he was aware that Trinil was much earlier. In fact, he
felt that it was Pliocene. He knew that Trinil was associated with a
fauna that was characterized by archaic and now extinct animals. The
Wadjak "levels," however, had animals that are now extinct in J a va -
such as the orangbut that continue to live elsewhere. Dubois was
much too good a field geologist to compare the "levels" of mountain
caves with riverine flood plains, so he never said anything about
"levels." He was well aware, however, that the fauna associated with
those two sites came from very different time levels.
Note also that Gish denied and then admitted that he called Dubois
dishonest. It takes serious chutzpah to call someone else dishonest, to lard
one's own remarks with fiction, and then to suggest that we not call anyone
dishonest and that we should deal only with "the facts."
Gish continued his response to my challenge:
And Marcellin Boule, a great French expert on human fossils, who was
an evolutionist, he went over there to study Java man and Peking man.
And he said he did not believe that those Peking man creatures were
humans or related to humans. He asked a question: Who was it that
killed and ate those Peking man creatures. Their skulls had been bashed
in so the brains could be taken out and eaten. Only the skull, teeth and
jaws were found. The post-cranial skeletons were not discovered there.
So they did not die where they were found. They had been killed
somewhere else, eaten and carried to the site where they were found.
He asked this question of this evolutionist: Who was the hunter, who
killed and ate those creatures? He said he did not believewhat he
said was thisthat he believed the evidence indicated a true man,
Homo sapiens, was the one who killed and ate those creatures. You
can't have man eating his own ancestors, that's for sure. And it was
this great French expert, Marcellin Boule. Was he correct? Then those
certainly were not our ancestors.
First, says Brace, Marcellin Boule never went "over there to study Java
man and Peking man." Gish (1979:133) wrote that "Boule had visited Peking
and Choukoutien and had examined the originals." In his debate with Gish
a decade ago, Brace (1982) called this "pure invention" and said, "Boule did
not visit Peking, he did not visit Choukoutien, and he never saw the original
specimens. Instead, as he made quite clear in print, he relied entirely on the
photographs and information furnished to hi m. . . . "Brace (1992) elaborates,
"Dubois did bring the Trinil specimen to Paris, and Davidson Black sent
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Boule the photographs that Boule later used in his discussion." Gish
(1985:192), three years after having been corrected by Brace, repeated his
earlier claim word for word. Brace's remarks in his own debate with Gish,
only slightly edited, were published in Creation/Evolution (1986), a journal
that every creationist interested in getting his "facts" right should read. Yet
Gish is still making the same incorrect claim in 1992, as if it had never been
challenged and corrected.
Brace (1992) says, furthermore, that Boule "certainly was not" an evolu-
tionist. Elsewhere Brace (1964:19) explains, "The theoretical bases of
Boule's thinking stem from the early nineteenth century position of Georges
Cuvier who attempted to explain the sequence in the fossil record by a series
of catastrophes with their attendant extinctions and subsequent invasions."
Brace (1964:33) elaborates,
Boule was an avowed champion of the study of human evolution, and
his work has been accepted in many quarters as a contribution to
evolutionary studies, but it should be pointed out that the term evolu-
tion did not have the same connotation in French paleontology that it
does to the modem synthetic theory of evolution. Albert Gaudry,
Boule's teacher and immediate predecessor [cit. to Boule 1904] was
largely responsible for introducing the concept of evolution into
French paleontology [cit. to Boule 1908], but he made a sharp distinc-
tion between "evolution" and "darwinism" [cits, to Gaudry 1878 and
to Topinard 1888]. His concept of evolution left intact the theory of
successive formations or creations. Darwinism, on the other had,
involved the theory of transformation by means of natural selection
which he refused to accept [cit. to Gaudry 1878]. Such was the
"evolutionary" theory behind the interpretation of the French Nean-
derthals by Boule.
Brace (1992) continues:
Boule's efforts to suggest that the Zhoukoudian [Choukoutien] speci-
mens [that is, "Peking man"] represented the efforts of "modern"
humans to dine at the expense of their supposedly primitive cousins
was a deliberate attempt to remove the possibility that [these speci-
mens] could serve as modern ancestorsjust the way Gish is doing.
Furthermore, it is simply untrue to say that the Zhoukoudian material
lacked evidence from the postcranial skeleton. There may have been
fewer representatives of the post cranial skeleton, and none of the long
bones were complete, but there was enough so that Weidenreich was
able to publish a 150-page monograph entitled "The extremity bones
of Sinanlhropus pekinensis" in Palaeontologia Sinica (new series D,
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No. 5). The legend that the skulls had been broken into to extract the
brains arose because the cranial base was missing from so many of
them, but it has been pointed out that this relatively fragile part of the
skull often breaks off naturally after long interment and need not
indicate deliberate intent on the part of anyone or anything. The most
recent treatment of that issue is by [Binford and Ho (1985), who]
conclude that Zhoukoudian was not evidence for cannibalism. They
suggest the activities of hyenas to account for the relative lack of long
bones and the fact that none were preserved whole. The material in the
deposits represents the activities of scavengers. For myself, I am
perfectly happy with this interpretation. Certainly there is no shred of
evidence for another hominid there, whether of more modern appear-
ance or not.
Gish concluded his response to my second challenge as follows:
Furthermore, down in East Africa, a Louis Leakey, in Bed 2, found the
remains of these Homo erectus creatures contemporary with Aus-
tralopithecus. Underneath, he found the remains of a circular stone
habitationa product of humans that is still made in Africa today. My
questions are these: If Australopithecus and Homo erectus are found
contemporary, how could one be the ancestor of the other? And if
underneath, in an earlier strata, you find the products of humans, how
could either be the ancestor of humans? Those are questions that
evolutionists have never answered.
Here is Brace's (1992) response to these claims:
As for Bed 2 of Olduvai Gorge, the erectus is Olduvai hominid 9, a
strapping male specimen, and there is evidence for the survival of a
robust Australopithecine given by the presence of two molars and a
canine tooth (Olduvai Hominids 15 and 16) also in Bed II. It is clear
that robust Australopithecines did survive to be contemporaries of
early Homo up towards the end of the Lower Pleistocene, but then the
robust Australopithecines were not the ancestors of Homo in any case.
The famous "stone circle" is at DK1 in Bed I, and it is definitely earlier,
in fact, right down at the bottom of the gorge. The claim that it had
anything to do with human habitation, however, has been quietly
dropped. I got a look at it myself when I was there in the summer of
1968, and it is only a fancied interpretation of a whole slew of rocks
spread over a large area. The part called the "stone circle" could most
easily be produced by an eddy in the torrent that had distributed the
rest of the rocks over yards of the stream bed at the bottom of the gorge.
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Supposed circles of stones that held down the bottom of tents have
been claimed for the late Upper Paleolithic in Northern Europe, but
they are highly controversial, and many archaeologists are not con-
vinced. For a circular arrangement produced by hominid activity to
have survived for two million years in an area where everything was
regularly redistributed by water activity and other natural causes is
simply too much to ask us to believe. Even if one is inclined to accept
itwhich I certainly am notthere is no possible way to tell if the
makers were modern or not. My undergraduate degree was in geology,
and those arrangements of stones looked to me just like many naturally
produced distributions that I have seen elsewhere. Only the strain of
wishful thinking could have read human intent into it.
Then it was time for my third challenge. However, first I had to complete
the "punch line" (I should have called it the "bombshell") of my second
challenge: I showed a transparency saying, "The Wadjak skulls reported:"
followed by citations to three reports by Dubois, dated 1889,1890, and 1892,
concluding with, "Gish says Dubois didn't reveal the Wadjak skulls until
1922." Then, to sum up, 1 showed a transparency with the following state-
ments, and commented that they pertained, not only to Gish's treatment of
Dubois, but also to his treatment of a number of other scientists who
described Peking man.
In 1979 bookGish makes false, derogatory statements.
In 1982 debateBrace points out these errors to Gish.
In 1985 bookGish makes same false, derogatory statements.
I then continued with a third challenge, not reported here, which revealed
the miserable scholarship behind Henry Morris's favorite argument for a
young earth: the declining magnetic field argument developed by Thomas
G. Barnes. I concluded with, "Dr. Gish, if your people can produce this kind
of scholarship, how do you expect to get the scientific respect that you so
urgently want?" Gish responded,
Dr. Fezer, you set the format for this. We're following the formal
you suggested. Now, I suggest you hold to that format. You're given
five minutes to give me a challenge, and I answer the challenge.
Now, you're not supposed to take your next time, your next chal-
lenge, to go back to the old data in the previous challenge. You're
violating your rules and regulations. Now, I'll just say thisthose
quotes you put up there, those so-calledin Dutch and everything
elseI have had a refutation of the notion that Dubois revealed that.
He did not reveal it in those publications, and it was just a false
claim. Now, if you have five minutes to give me challenge, you stick
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to that five minutes, but don't take your period to go back to these
previouschallenges.
Calling Barnes a "brilliant physicist," Gish then went on to deal with my
challenge regarding ICR's selection of Barnes as the first dean of its Graduate
School.
Contrary to Gish's assertion, I did not violate my own rules. In a December
9,1991 letter to Pastor Barnhart, I said, "The first minute of the challenger's
next challenge may be devoted to comment about the responder's previous
response." Through all negotiations before the debate Gish never challenged
that Since Gish here, for the third time in three responses, began by attacking
me on a matter irrelevant to the substance of my challenge, it now seems
reasonable to claim that this was a deliberate diversionary tactic.
Gish's indignation that Dubois had the gall to publish his findings in the
Dutch language makes it seem most unlikely that Gish ever read those three
reports. But that did not prevent him from denying that Dubois reported his
Wadjak skulls in them. Brace (1992) provides translations of passages
reporting on the Wadjak skulls from Dubois's 1890 report (1890a), as well
as from another article written by him in 1890 (1890b). Regarding Dubois's
1892 report, Brace says:
On page 60, [Dubois) notes his own work in the caves of the limestone
mountains in the Wadjak District, and he mentioned the discovery of
"a fossil human skull. . . of a race encountered in contemporary Aus-
tralia (or Papua)." He went on to note that "there in September 1890
they found a second human skull" page 61 "with the same racial
characteristics as the one found previously."
It is true that Dubois did not publish a detailed analysis of his Wadjak
materials until 1922, and they are still the subject of continuing research and
reinterpretation (Storm and Nelson 1992). But Dubois immediately reported
their existence, together with a preliminary interpretation of them. Gish's
charge that he kept them secret for 30 years is false.
Conclusion
Gish's responses to my first two challenges clearly demonstrate that Gish
will say, with rhetorical flourish and dramatic emphasis, whatever he thinks
will serve to maintain, in the minds of his uncritical followers, his image as
a knowledgeable "creation scientist." An essential component is to lard his
remarks with technical detail; whether that detail is accurate or relevant or
based on unambiguous evidence is of no concern. When confronted with
evidence of his own error, he resorts to diversionary tactics and outright
denial.
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What is true of his speech is also true of his books. In 1982 Brace pointed
out to Gish many errors and misrepresentations in his writings. An author
concerned about getting his facts right would certainly, when accused of error
by a recognized authority, seek out the relevant evidence. Yet Gish never
asked Brace to cite his sources, and Gish's 1985 book contains most of the
same errors and misrepresentations that he had published in 1979. Even
though, in 1986, Brace published the text of his debate remarks, with citations
to his sources, Gish continues to promulgate the same errors. Other scientists
have also tried to straighten out Gish. There is little evidence that Gish
modifies what he says to take this criticism into account. Appearance is
everything. Truth seems not a high priority.
I conclude that a debate format that includes alternating five-minute time
intervals still separates challenge and response too much to keep Gish honest.
What is needed is a format in which (1) Gish faces a panel of experts, one
for each field in which Gish dabbles. Like Brace, these experts need to be
thoroughly familiar, not only with their own field, but also with what Gish
has said about it. (2) The panelists strike a large gong every time that Gish
gives false testimony, which signals their turn to interrupt and correct him.
In this report I quote about eleven minutes of Gish's remarks. By sometimes
allowing errors to accumulate before correcting him, I needed to interrupt
the transcript of his remarks only eleven times.
Henry M. Morris, founder of ICR and still president, described its program
in 1972:
Our ultimate effectiveness will depend upon scientific and educational
acceptance.. . . We believe the I.C.R. program of creationist research,
writing, and teaching by qualified scientists offers the only feasible
method of restoring creationism to a respected position in our educa-
tional and social systems.
ICR has made no progress toward this goal. Scientists with credentials
forfeit their credibility by dishonest behavior. Morris himself set ICR's low
standard. (Fezer 1985 provides a point by point analysis of one of Morris's
writings.) Little wonder, then, that ICR's vice-president suffers from the
same problem.
Epilogue
A song in Gilbert and Sullivan's Patience tells how to be an "aesthetic
sham." The first verse, appropriately modified, does the job for the scientific
sham:
If you're anxious for to shine in the scientific line as a man of knowledge
rare,
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You must gel up all the germs of the scientific terms and plant them
everywhere,
You must get behind a podium and prevaricate ad odium about your
knowledgeable state of mind,
The meaning doesn't matter if it's only idle chatter of a scientific kind.
And your followers will say,
About your deceptive way,
If that good man expresses himself in terms too deep for me, "Why, what
a knowledgeable man that knowledgeable man must be."
Acknowledgements
I thank Dr. C. Loring Brace for much help in analyzing Gish's claims, for
allowing me to quote from his letters, and for reviewing that part of this
manuscript involving my second challenge, and Robert J. Schadewald for
suggesting the title of this paper.
References
Binford, Lewis R., and Chuan Kun Ho. 1985. Taphonomy at a Distance: Zhouk-
oudian, 'The Cave Home of Beijing Man?' Current Anthropology 26(4):413-
442.
Brace, C. Loring. 1964. The Fate of the 'Classic' Neanderthals: A Consideration of
Hominid Catasfcrophism. Current Anthropology 5(l):3-43. [Includes com-
ments by 17 other anthropologists and Brace's reply.]
. 1982. Text Read by C.L. Brace in 'Debate', Creation vs. Evolution, with
Duanc T. Gish at Hill Auditorium, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor,
March 17, 1982. Unpublished. 66 pp. Obtained from Tiles of National
Center for Science Education. Some of this material was later published as
Brace 1986.
. 1986. Creationists and the Pithccanthropines. Creation!Evolution 6(3): 16-23,
Issue 19.
. 1992. Letters to Karl D. Fezer, July 8 and August 7.
Conrad, Ernest C. 1982. Are There Human Fossils in the "Wrong Place" for Evolu-
tion? Creation!Evolution 3(2): 14 -22, Issue 8.
Dubois, Eugene. 1889. Over de wcnschclijkhcid van een onderaoek naar de diluvialc
fauna van nederlandsch-indic, in hct bijzonder van Sumatra. Natuurkundig
Tijdschrift voor Nederlandsch-lndie, Decl XLVIII. Achste Scric Deel 9:148-
165. [The transparency I showed during the debate erroneously included this
reference, which, according to Brace (1992), does not mention the Wadjak
materials. Brace says that Dubois's first mention and description of the first of
the skulls that later came to be known as Wadjak is in the following letter which
was read at a meeting of the directorate of the Natural History Society of the
Netherland Indies on 14 March 1889. The letter was included in the report on
that meeting by its chairman at the 11 April 1889 meeting, but that report was
not published until 1890.]
LICENSED TO UNZ.ORG
. 1890a. Letter to Dr. C. Ph. Sluiter, included in a report by Jannsen van Raay,
chairman, Vergadering der Dircctie, gehouden op 14 Maart 1889.
Natuurkundig Tijdschrift voor Nederlandsch-lndie, Deel XLJX, Achste Serie
Deel 10:209-211. [cited by Brace 1986 and 1992].
. 1890b. Palaeontologische onderzoekingen op Java. Verslag van het
Mijnwezen in Nederlandsch-lndie, 2 Kwartaal, pp. 18-20; 3 Kwartaal, pp.
12-15. [cited by Brace 1986 and 1992].
. 1892. Verslag van het Mijnwezen in Nederlandsch-lndie over het Jaar
1890-1891. Jaarboek van het Mijnwezen in Nederlandsch Ost-lndie
20(2):60,61. [cited by Brace 1986 and 1992].
. 1922. The Proto-Australian Fossil Man of Wadjak, Java. Proceedings,
Koninklijke Akademie van Wetenschappen le Amsterdam. 23:1013-1051.
[cited by Brace 1986].
Fezer, Karl D. 1985. Dr. Morris and the Green River Formation. Creation!Evolution
Newsletter 5(6): 16-20.
. 1993. Creationism: Please Don't Call It Science. Creation!Evolution
13(l):45-49, Issue 32.
Gingcrich, Philip D., B. Holly Smith, and Elwyn L. Simons. 1990. Hind Limbs of
Eocene Basilosaurus: Evidence of Feet in Whales. Science 249:154-157.
, Neil A. Wells, Donald E. Russell, and S.M. Ibrahim Shah. 1983. Origin of
Whales in Epicontincntal Remnant Seas: New Evidence from the Early Eocene
of Pakistan. Science 220: 403-406.
Gish, Duane T. n.d. Have You Been Brainwashed? San Diego: Creation-Life Pub-
lishers.
. 1979. Evolution? The Fossils Say NO!, 3rd ed. San Diego: Creation-Life
Publishers.
. 1985. Evolution: The Challenge of the Fossil Record. El Cajon, CA: Crea-
tion-Life Publishers.
Linehan, Edward J. 1979. The Trouble with Dolphins. National Geographic 155(4):
506-541.
Morris, Henry M. 1972. Director's Column. ICR Acts and Facts 1(1 ):3.
, and Gary E. Parker. 1987. What is Creation Science? rev. ed. El Cajon, CA:
Master Books.
Ogawa, Teizo, and Toshiro Kamiya. 1957. A Case of the Cachalot with Protruded
Rudimentary Hind Limbs. Sci. Rep. Whales Res. Inst., Tokyo 12: 197-208.
Omura, Hideo. 1978. Preliminary Report on Morphological Study of Pelvic Bones
of the Minke Whale from the Antarctic. Sci. Rep. Whales Res. Inst., Tokyo 30:
271-280.
Scadding, S.R. 1981. Do 'Vestigial Organs' Provide Evidence for Evolution. Evolu-
tionary Theory 5: 173 176.
Schadcwald, Robert J. 1990. Gish Reclassifies Basilosaurus as a Mosasaur? NCSE
Reports 10(5): 11.
Storm, Paul, and Andrew J. Nelson. 1992. The Many Facets of Wadjak Man.
Archaeol. Oceania 27: 37^46.
Thome, Alan G., and Milford H. Wolpoff. 1992. The Multiregional Evolution of
Humans. Scientific American 264(4): 76-83. B 2 1
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Henry M. Morris
on Racism
I
Richard Trott
nstitute for Creation Research president Henry M. Morris, among
many other creationists, has repeatedly stated that evolutionary theory
is often used as a pillar of racism. For example, in The Troubled Waters
of Evolution Morris (1974:164) writes:
As the 19th century scientists were converted to evolution, they were
also convinced of racism. They were certain that the white race was
superior to other races, and the reason for this superiority was to be
found in Darwinian theory.
It is instructional to examine the following passage by Morris in his book
The Beginning of the World (1991:147) in that light.
The descendants of Ham were marked especially for secular service to
mankind. Indeed they were to be "servants of servants," that is "ser-
vants extraordinary! Although only Canaan is mentioned specifically
(possibly because the branch of Ham's family through Canaan would
later come into most contact with Israel), the whole family of Ham is
in view. The prophecy is worldwide in scope, and, since Shcm and
Japheth are covered, all Ham's descendants must be also. These
include all nations which are neither Semitic nor Japhetic. Thus, all of
the Earth's "colored" racesyellow, red, brown, and blackessen-
tially the Afro-Asian group of peoples, including the American Indi-
ansarc Hamitic in origin and included within the scope of the
Canaanitic prophecy, as well as the Egyptians, Sumcrians, Hittitles,
and Phoenicians of antiquity.
At this point, Morris discusses the achievements of the people he terms
"Hamitic." He then continues (p. 148):
Richard Trott, formerly a computer programmer, is currently a graduate student at
Rutgers University, Trenton, NJ.
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Henry M. Morris on Racism
Yet the prophecy again has its obverse side. Somehow they have only
gone so far and no farther. The Japhethites and Semites have, sooner
or later, taken over their territories, and their inventions, and then
developed them and utilized them for their own enlargement Often the
Hamites, especially the Negroes, have become actual personal servants
or even slaves to the others. Possessed of a genetic character concerned
mainly with mundane matters, they have eventually been displaced by
the intellectual and philosophical acumen of the Japhethites and the
religious zeal of the Semites.
Morris concludes that this is not racist by invoking a strange definition of
racism. Somehow, if other human beings are responsible for the plight of a
group of people, that is racism; however, if someone (such as Morris)
believes that a general line of people (such as the "Hamites") are "possessed
of a genetic character" that makes them innately less "intellectual," "philo-
sophical," and "religious" than the rest of humanity, this is not racism.
Morris, for additional mitigation, couples this with an allowance for individ-
ual exceptions. He writes (p. 148):
These very general and broad national and racial characteristics obvi-
ously admit of many exceptions on an individual genetic basis. It is
also obvious that the prophecy is a divine description of future facts,
in no way needing the deliberate assistance of man for its accomplish-
ment. Neither Negroes nor any other Hamitic people were intended to
be forcibly subjugated on the basis of this Noahic declaration. The
prophecy would be inevitably fulfilled because of the innate natures of
the three genetic stocks, not by virtue of any artificial constraints
imposed by man.
I questioned Henry Morris about this issue personally in North East,
Maryland, on July 18, 1993, shortly after he gave an address at a Christian
service. Morris claimed that these pronouncements are not racist because
there are "Black Jews" and Black "Indians" who are not Hamitic. (Note that
this appears to be flatly contradictory to Morris' claim, quoted above, that
"all of the Earth's 'colored' racesyellow, red, brown, and black" may be
Hamitic.) Furthermore, Morris pointed out that there are whites who have
been slaves and are not Hamitic. It is peculiar that any mention of white
Hamites is conspicuously absent from Morris' book. Of course, the issue is
not whether Morris believes all "swarthy people" are Hamitic, but rather
whether he believes that the lineages that are Hamitic are, in general,
genetically predisposed to be less "intellectual," philosophical," and "relig-
ious" than other lineages. (Incidentally, Morris confirmed to me that he
believes African Americans are Hamitic.)
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Henry M. Morris on Racism
In our conversation, Morris also made a big deal about individual excep-
tions to the prophecy. Of course, I am not concerned with whether or not he
believes that there arc some exceptional individuals within each of the three
supposed genetic slocks; I am concerned with whether Morris believes one
of the three is, in general, genetically inferior and more "mundane." Arguing
there are some some exceptions to the prophecy does not address this issue.
Acknowledgements
The author thanks Dan Ashlock, James Lippard, and Dr. Henry Morris
for their kind assistance and constructive criticisms. B53
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Were There Birds
Before Archaeopteryx?
Thomas J. Wheeler
E
volutionists often cite Archaeopteryx as one of the best examples
of an intermediate or transitional form. Thus, it is important for
creationists to discredit the status of Archaeopteryx as an inter-
mediate. One approach is to claim that Archaeopteryx was a
"true bird," and therefore not an intermediate at all. Several books that
analyze creationist arguments (for example, McGowan, 1984:110-126) have
shown this claim to be invalid. A second approach is to claim that the
Archaeopteryx fossils are fakes; Fred Hoyle and N.C. Wickramasinghe have
proposed that the feather impressions are the work of a forger, and Ian Taylor
has further promoted this charge. However, paleontologists working with
these specimens have refuted the claim of forgery (Charig et al., 1986;
Dickson, 1987). Moreover, the subsequent report of an additional specimen
of Archaeopteryx with impressions of feather shafts (Wellnhofer, 1988)
further argues against this claim. A third approach, which is the subject of
this article, is to claim that true birds were living by the time of Archaeop-
teryx, and thus Archaeopteryx cannot be an intermediate.
This argument is logically flawed, as pointed out by Strahler (1987:423).
Earlier (p. 420), he defined a transitional form as follows:
A transitional form, then, is judged to be an "intermediate" when its
morphological features, or characters, are a combination of two distinct
taxa.
According to this definition, an intermediate form need not lie on the
direct line of descent connecting two groups. If Archaeopteryx had been on
a side branch of avian evolution that retained features intermediate between
reptiles and more modern birds, it could have existed at the same time as, or
even later than, the latter. Alternatively, Archaeopteryx could have been on
Thomas J. Wheeler is Associate Professor of Biochemistry, University of Louisville
School of Medicine. He has been active in researching and responding to creationist
claims since 1982.
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Were There Birds Before Archaeopteryx?
the direct line of descent, with some populations persisting relatively un-
changed while others evolved to more modern forms.
The argument that true birds preceded Archaeopteryx is based on two
fossil discoveries. The first, in 1977, was identified as a bird in preliminary
news accounts. However, further study showed that it is probably non-avian,
and it may not even be older than Archaeopteryx. The second discovery,
reported in 1986 and given the name Protoavis, is currently controversial
among paleontologists.
The Jensen Discovery
It was the first of these supposed pre-Archaeopteryx birds that prompted
my research when I noticed that it was being cited by creationists. Here is
how Duane Gish (1985:116) described the discovery:
A recent discovery by paleontologist James Jensen has dealt an espe-
cially serious blow to the claims that Archaeopteryx represents a
transitional form between reptiles and birds. Jensen has found what he
believes to be fossil remains of undoubted modem birds in rocks of the
Upper Jurassic, the rocks in which Archaeopteryx has been found.
Regardless of what one believes about the time scale or the geological
column, this discovery, if ultimately verified, means that Archaeop-
teryx was a contemporary of modern birds. John Ostrom, commenting
on this turn of events, has been quoted as saying, "It is obvious that we
must now look for the ancestors of flying birds in a period of time much
older than that in which Archaeopteryx lived." Evolutionists have long
maintained that contemporaries could not have an ancestor-descendant
relationship but if related, they must have evolved from a common
ancestor sometime in the past.
The references given by Gish are to preliminary news accounts in Science
News (112:198 (1977)) and Science, rather than regular research articles. The
Science article (Marx, 1978) described the find by Jensen of an apparent
femur of a bird, and reported the preliminary conclusions of John Ostrom
("one of the principal developers of the evidence regarding the evolutionary
role of Archaeopteryx"):
Ostrom says that it looks more like a bird bone than anything else.
While he has some reservations about the identification, he asserts, "If
it's not a bird bone, I don't know what else it is." . . . Although the
paleontologist says the identification of the new fossil is about 90
percent certain, he points out that it is not exactly like any of the
numerous bones of modern birds with which he has compared it. This
is not especially surprising. More disturbing to him is the fact that the
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Were There Birds Bejore Archaeopteryx?
fossil is not perfectly preserved and a portion of the head may be
missing. In other words, the femur head may be more reptilian in
character than it appears.... All in all, Ostrom thinks that it would be
premature to knock Archaeopleryx off its perch as the oldest form of
bird without additional evidence.
The article concluded by noting that
Jensen thinks that he may have found such confirmatory evidence in
the form of another, more complete fossil femur excavated just a few
feet away from the one in question. According to the Brigham Young
investigator, this second femur is very similar to that of modern birds.
Ostrom has not yet examined this latest find, however. Until he does,
the situation will remain very much up in the air.
In 1981, Jensen published two accounts of his discoveries, one of them
in a Japanese journal (Anima 1981:33-39), the other in Encyclia, a publi-
cation of the Utah Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. The latter
(Jensen, 1981) included photographs and drawings of the specimens, as
well as a general discussion of bird evolution and the place oi Archaeop-
teryx. The key specimen was identified as part of the tibiotarsus of a new
genus, Palaeopteryx, "representing the most advanced bird known from
the Jurassic Period." Two other specimens, a synsacrum and a femur, were
identified as "avian-likc," while another (half of a femur) was identified
as "Archacoptcryx-likc."
The facts that paleontologists continued to regard Archaeopteryx as the
earliest bird-like animal, and that Gish cited preliminary news accounts
rather than regular research papers many years after the discovery, sug-
gested that the fossils turned out not to be from birds after all. To see what
their status was, I wrote first to Oslrom, then to Jensen. Ostrom (1987)
wrote,
Jim Jensen did find fragments that he thinks are avian, but I am not
convinced (I have studied the fragments) and do not agree with him.
The quotation attributed to me that Gish repeats againis NOT a quote
from me. It originally was "quoted" in Science News and I wrote a letter
requesting them to publish my denial, but they did notand never even
acknowledged my letteror position. . . .Jensen's specimens exist,
but it appears that only Jim believes these to be avian, and those
ornithologists] who have seen the material are not about to accept it
as "modern" in any sense. I definitely do not accept it as certifiable
avian.
Jensen (1987) wrote,
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Were T/iere Birds Before Arcluicopteryx?
The supposed quotations by me in Science News (1977), and Science
(1978), citing Jensen on Archaeoptcryx and evolution are both spuri-
ous, resulting from one telephone interview a woman at Science
initiated with me, after which she wrote what she thought I said, putting
words incorrectly into my mouth. I strongly protested to the editors but
it did no good. I am still angry about it because these creationist clowns
keep flaunting it as "evidence" for their nebulous crusade.
I am not aware of any "ornithologistfs]" having examined the specimen
in question, as Ostrom states, and then publishing on it but Dr. Kevin
Padian, one of Oslrom's students definitely agreed with me, at one
time, that the specimen had close avian affinities. Our later studies led
away from that identification and we arc now assigning it to the
theropods.
We have a paper in review naming a new Upper Jurassic pterosaur
genus/species from the Uncompahgre Fauna (Jensen 1987); describing
various small specimens; reidentifying any Dry Mesa specimens in
question, including the "avian tibiotarsus" (Jensen 1981), to be noted
as a deinonychoid distal radius, which should satisfy Ostrom.
Jensen also noted that associates of Gish had talked with him two or three
years earlier and were greatly disappointed when he informed them of the
misquotation.
Kevin Padian (1988) also wrote to me, saying that the fossil in question
could belong to a bird but is more likely from a small deinonychosaur
similar to Deinonychus or Velociraptor, which as you may know are
the closest dinosaurs to the bi rds. . . . two other small femora in that lot
may belong to the same group: again the preserved characters are good
enough to place them to this taxonomic level but not good enough to
distinguish between deinonychosaur and bird. My own suspicion is
that they arc not from birds.
He also wrote that the age of the Morrison Formation, which includes the
beds containing the fossils, is controversial. These particular beds, which lie
near the lop of the formation, had recently been dated al 135 million years,
making them younger than Archaeopteryx (about 150 million years old).
The paper containing the reidentifications described in the letters of
Jensen and Padian appeared in 1989 (Jensen and Padian, 1989). Two of the
specimens, one previously identified as belonging to the bird Palaeoptcryx
and the other previously described as "Archacopteryx-like," were assigned
to the group Maniraplora (which consists of deinonychosaurs and birds). The
two other specimens previously identified as "avian-like" were reidentified
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as ptcrosaurian, and were tentatively assigned to the new species Mesadac-
tylus ornilhosphyos.
In their concluding paragraph, the authors wrote:
With this paper, the authors also hope to put to rest controversies and
fallacious statements about the early history of birds that have been
generated, mostly in the popular scientific press and in tracts written
by fundamentalist religious authors. No material described here is
unquestionably avian. Most is ptcrodactyloid. Several specimens per-
tain to the monophylclic group formed by birds and dcinonychosaurs.
Archaeopteryx is the earliest known bird; these Morrison sediments
are younger than the Solnhofen limestones from which Archaeopteryx
comes.
Thus, the early reports misquoted both Jensen and Ostrom, and neither
they nor Padian now believes that the material discovered by Jensen is avian.
To his credit, Gish (1985) referred to the need to verify the nature of the
Jensen discovery. Also, he did not refer to this find in a later article (1989)
on Archaeopteryx, although it continues to be mentioned in some creationist
publications (e.g., Matrisciana and Oakland, 1991:103). However, he appar-
ently did not investigate the status of the fossils i n the preparation of his 1985
book (or did not report the results of such an investigation); rather, he used
an outdated and inaccurate preliminary account.
Protoavis
A more recent fossil discovery also has been regarded as a challenge to
the status of Archaeopteryx. In 1986, Sankar Chattcrjec revealed the
discovery of fossils "claimed to be of two crow-sized birds" in a 225
million-year old formation in Texas, according to a report in Nature
(Beardslcy, 1986). Chatlerjee identified several avian features in the
fossils, and assigned them to a new genus, Protoavis. While he found no
feather impressions, he felt there were quill nodes on the bones. Quoting
from the Nature article,
Protoavis seems certain to reopen a long-running controversy on the
evolution of birds, in particular whether the common ancestor of birds
and dinosaurs was itself a dinosaur. Protoavis, from the later Triassic,
appears at the time of the earliest dinosaurs, and if the identification is
upheld it seems likely that it will be used to argue against the view of
John Ostrom of Yale University that birds are descended from dino-
saurs. It also tends to confirm what many paleontologists have long
suspected, that Archaeopteryx is not on the direct line to modern birds.
It is in some ways more reptilian than Protoavis, and the period
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Were There Birds Before Arclweopteryx?
between the late Jurassic Archaeopteryx and the worldwide radiation
of birds in the Cretaceous has to some seemed suspiciously brief.
The article also noted that Ostrom had examined the finds and expressed
reservations:
Ostrom stresses, however, that the remains are very fragmentary, and
while agreeing with Chatterjee's tentative classification says the case
is not finally proven.
In contrast to Chatterjee, Ostrom saw no indirect evidence for feathers.
Newspaper and magazine reports describing the Chatterjee discovery
sometimes expressed cautious views of paleontologists. However, in general
they gave the impression that a revolutionary finding had displaced Archae-
opteryx from its status as the earliest bird. Before long, creationists (e.g.,
Gish, 1989) began to cite it as further evidence that Archaeopteryx could not
be an intermediate.
In their letters to me, Ostrom and Padian commented on this new find.
Ostrom (1987) wrote,
As for Chatterjee's "Protoavis," I have seen that material too, and have
similar reservations. It might be a bird, but it is so poorly preserved and
prepared that I would not like to make such a claim. It will always be
doubtful as far as I'm concerned, until more and better material is
available.
Padian (1988) noted that Chatterjee had been publicizing the discovery for
two years, yet had still not submitted his description for a peer-reviewed
publication. However, it appears that Chaucrjee was forced into public
discussion of the material earlier than he might have chosen. As a condition
of his research grant from the National Geographic Society, he had to report
to them on his work; it was the Society that issued the 1986 press release
announcing the discovery (Zimmer, 1992).
Paleontologists had to wait three more years before a research paper
describing the work finally appeared (Chatlerjcc, 1991). Even then, the
description was restricted to the cranial anatomy, although photos of the other
bones were included. Thus, an additional publication will be needed to
complete Chatterjee's analysis. This is important because until he publishes
his full analysis, he is not obligated to allow other investigators access to the
fossils.
A summary of the history of Protoavis, along with the assessments of
several paleontologists, was published in Discover (Zimmer, 1992). Other
commentaries include Ostrom (1991) and Anderson (1991). Paleontologists
who are described as being critical of Chatterjec's interpretations include
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Were Tliere Birds Before Arclweopteryx?
Ostrom, Jacques Gauthier, Michael Parrish, Tim Rowe, and Alan Feduccia.
Among their reasons for criticism are: 1) The material is very poorly
preserved, with some bones being squashed and broken beyond recognition.
2) The material is very incomplete. For example, the bone identified as the
furcula (wishbone) is just a fragment, which some critics feel was misiden-
tified. 3) The bones were all removed from the matrix, such that their spatial
relationships cannot be determined (although Chalterjee provided sketches
of their locations in the matrix). 4) It has been suggested that the bones may
actually be from several different animals. 5) Given the poor state of the
material, Chatlerjcc's extrapolations from it to deduce the behavior of
Protoavis may be unwarranted. 6) Challerjee's analysis "describes the
cranial fragments from an avian perspective only," without consideration of
other possibilities (Oslrom, 1991).
Paleontologists who were described in various articles as being more
sympathetic to Chatterjee's interpretations include Larry Martin, Walter
Bock, Sam Tarsitano, and Nicholas Hotton. In contrast to Chatterjee's critics,
Martin and Tarsilano reject the prevailing scenario of dinosaur to bird
evolution. They feel that birds more likely evolved from other types of
reptiles. If Protoavis was a bird, it would support their case, since Protoavis
appears to have preceded much of the evolution of bird-like dinosaurs. It is
interesting that Chattcrjcc (1991) favors the dinosaur connection, though he
acknowledges the problem that small theropod dinosaurs sufficiently old to
be ancestral to Protoavis are lacking in the fossil record.
Chatterjee (1991) also constructed a phylogcnetic tree of Mesozoic birds,
based on his own cladistic analysis. According to this tree, Archaeopteryx
represents the most primitive type of bird, with its ancestors splitting from
the avian lineage before Protoavis; thus, it would have been a "living fossil"
persisting after more modem forms such as Protoavis had appeared (and
could still be regarded as a transitional form according to the definition given
earlier).
The Discover article (Zimmcr, 1992) also noted that Chalterjee hoped to
publish his concluding paper in 1993; it would not only describe the remain-
ing bones, but would also discuss a more recently-discovered fragment of
Protoavis. Following this publication, other researchers will begin to have
access to the bones. Given the skepticism expressed to date, Protoavis seems
likely to remain controversial for years to come.
Other Early Birds
Before drawing some conclusions from these challenges to the status of
Archaeopteryx, I would like to note some recent fossil discoveries that clarify
bird evolution after Arc haeopteryx. Until recently, there had been a large gap
in the fossil record of birds between the late Jurassic Archaeopteryx and
various toothed birds of the late Cretaceous (including the hespcromiihi-
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Were There Birds Before Arc}\aeopteryx?
forms and Ichthyornis). Now, however, three types of early Cretaceous birds
are known; these are approximately 120 to 140 million years old. From oldest
to youngest, these are: Sinornis santensis, from China (Sereno and Rao,
1992); the Las Hoyas bird, from Spain (Sanz et al. 1988); and Ambiorius
dementjevi, from Mongolia. A cladistic analysis (Sereno and Rao, 1992)
indicated that the lineages leading to these three forms diverged in the same
order from the line leading to the hesperomithiforms and more modern birds,
although this branching order was admittedly tentative.
These three new discoveries can be considered intermediate forms be-
tween Archaeopteryx and later birds. They shared some primitive features of
the former, but were much more adapted to powered flight and perching in
trees (Barinaga, 1992).
Another important new discovery, also transitional between Archaeop-
teryx and modern birds, is that of a flightless bird from late Cretaceous
deposits in Mongolia (Altangerel et al. 1993a). It was originally given the
name Mononychus, but since this had been used previously, the substitute
Mononykus was proposed (Altangerel et al. 1993b). Unlike the specimens
discussed above, which are crushed into essentially two-dimensional forms,
the two specimens of Mononykus were preserved in three dimensions, and
thus should yield new information on early bird evolution (Milner 1993).
Meanwhile, there have also been two recent descriptions of fossils that
might illuminate the ancestry of Archaeopteryx. Milner and Evans (1991)
reassessed Lisboasaurus estesi, a specimen from Portugal that earlier had
been classified as a lizard. They concluded that it was instead closely related
to the troodontid dinosaurs. A more tentative conclusion was that it was
closely related lo Archaeopteryx (a news item in Nature (353:601) describing
the work was entitled "Early Bird"). The specimen is about 160 million years
old, which predates Archaeopteryx. Elzanowski and Wellnhofer (1992)
reported a Mongolian specimen they named Archaeornithoides deinosaur-
iscus. This was also identified as a close relative of the troodonlids, and it
was suggested to be the closest non-avian relative of Archaeopteryx and other
birds (although it lived much later than Archaeopteryx, in the late Creta-
ceous). Itwill be interesting to sec how other paleontologists will assess these
fossils, as well as Protoavis, in the years to come.
Conclusions
One general point to be made is that preliminary news accounts can be
misleading, and may not accurately represent the views of quoted scientists.
The true mark of a scientific discovery is its publication in a peer-reviewed
journal. In the case of Jensen and Padian.it appears that careful study during
the preparation of such a publication led them to revise their own initial
conclusions. In other cases, reviewers of a submitted manuscript may make
important suggestions that lead to revisions in the conclusions (in the case of
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Were T\\ere Birds Before Archaeopteryx?
poorly performed work, the manuscript may not even be published). One
should be suspicious of a discovery, particularly a revolutionary one, which
has still not appeared as a paper long after its initial announcement. (In his
book Scientific Creationism, Morris (1985:162) refers to experiments that
allegedly cast doubt on radiocarbon dating. However, the citation is to a 1971
abstract for a presentation at a scientific meeting. The fact that over a decade
later Morris was unable to cite a regular paper describing this work suggests
that it did not survive rigorous scientific scrutiny.)
A second point is that publication of a study does not guarantee that the
findings are correct. While we have no sure way of knowing which are correct
and which are not, a useful approach is to see how the work is received by
experts in the field (ideally, it would also be reproduced or confirmed by
additional discoveries). In the case of Protoavis, Chatterjee's assessment of
his findings was eventually published, but the work has so far failed to
convince some of the leading paleontologists working on bird evolution.
Perhaps this negative assessment will change as the specimens are subject to
more study, or as other specimens are found and described. However, for
the time being Chatterjee's views seem to represent a minority dissent from
the prevailing ideas on bird evolution. Creationists often cite such minority
views without explaining why they have failed to achieve acceptance.
A third point is that the pattern of evolution is a complex one, with many
branchings and dead ends rather than straight lines leading to modern forms.
It is very difficult to know if one fossil form was ancestral to another, or just
a close relative; indeed, cladistic analyses (e.g., Sereno and Rao, 1992) will
generally treat all of the fossils under consideration as occupying terminal
positions on branches rather than being ancestral to other forms. When only
a few fossils related to a given evolutionary transition (such as to humans or
to birds) arc known, it is easy to envision them as intermediates lying directly
on the line of descent. However, as more fossils are discovered, it may not
be clear how they were related and which, if any, is ancestral to modem
forms. It is ironic that even though our knowledge of evolution is enhanced
by such new findings, the problems involved in their interpretation may make
it appear to the lay public that we know less than before! Creationists take
advantage of this confusion, and cite disagreements among experts as i f they
were a reason to reject the entire evolutionary scenario.
With respect to Archaeopteryx, new discoveries are forcing a reevalu-
ation of how birds evolved. However, none of them call into question the
conclusion that birds evolved from reptiles (most likely dinosaurs). This
conclusion is based on various lines of evidence, not just the existence of
Archaeopteryx. Moreover, even if Challcrjcc is correct, and Archacoptcryx
was a "living fossil" descended from a form that long before had branched
off from the line leading to modern birds, it still represents a distinct
combination of reptilian and avian features that provides powerful evi-
dence for evolution.
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References
Altangercl, Perle, Mark A. Norell, Luis M. Chiappe, and James M. Clark. 1993b.
Flightless Bird from the Cretaceous of Mongolia. (Correction) Nat ure 363:188.
Altangerel, Perle, Mark A. Norell, Luis M. Chiappe, and James M. Clark. 1993a.
Flightless Bird from the Cretaceous of Mongolia. Nature 362:623-626.
Anderson, Alun. 1991. Early Bird Threatens Archaeopteryx'& Perch. Science 253:35.
Barinaga, Marcia. 1992. Evolutionists Wing It With a New Fossil Bird. Science
255:796.
Beardsley, Tim. 1986. Fossil Bird Shakes Evolutionary Hypothesis." Nature 322:
677.
Charig, Alan J., Frank Greenaway, Angela C. Milner, Cyril A. Walker, and Peter J.
Whybrow 1986. "Archaeopteryx is Not a Forgery." Science 232:622-626.
Chatterjee, Sankar. 1991. Cranial Anatomy and Relationships of a New Triassic Bird
from Texas. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B332:277-342
Dickson, David. 1987. Feathers Still Fly in Row over Fossil Bird. Science 238:475-
476.
Elzanowski, Andrzej and Peter Wellnhofer. 1992. A New Link Between Theropods
and Birds from the Cretaceous of Mongolia. Nature 359:821-823.
Gish, DuaneT. 1989. As a Transitional Form Archaeopteryx Won't Fly. Impact, No.
198.
Gish, Duane T. 1985. Evolution: The Challenge of the Fossil Record. El Cajon, CA:
Creation-Life Publishers.
Jensen, James A. 1987. Letter to Thomas J. Wheeler, December 29.
Jensen, James A. 1981. Another Look at Archaeopteryx as the 'Oldest' Bird. Encyclia
58:109-128.
Jensen, James A. and Kevin Padian. 1989. Small Pterosaurs and Dinosaurs from the
Uncompahgre Fauna (Brushy Basin Member, Morrison Formation:
?Tithonian), Late Jurassic, Western Colorado. J. Paleont. 63:364-373.
Marx, Jean L. 1978. The Oldest Fossil Bird: A Rival for Archaeopteryxl Science
199:284.
Matrisciana, Caryl and Roger Oakland. 1991. The Evolution Conspiracy. Eugene,
OR: Harvest House Publishers.
McGowan, Chris. 1984. In the Beginning...: A Scientist Shows Why the Creationists
Are Wrong. Buffalo: Prometheus Books.
Milner, Andrew R. and Susan E. Evans. 1991. The Upper Jurassic Diapsid Lisboasau-
rus estesia Maniraptoran Theropod. Palaeontology 34:503-513.
Milner, Angela. 1993. Ground Rules for Early Birds. Nature 362:589.
Morris, Henry M. (ed.) 1985. Scientific Creationism (2nd edition). El Cajon, CA:
Master Books.
Ostrom, John H. 1991. The Bird in the Bush. Nature 353:212.
Ostrom, John H. 1987. Letter to Thomas J. Wheeler, February 23.
Padian, Kevin. 1988. Letter to Thomas J. Wheeler, February 23.
Sanz, J.L., J.F. Bonaparte, and A. Lacasa. 1988. Unusual Early Cretaceous Birds from
Spain. Nature 331:433-435.
Sereno, Paul C. and Rao Chenggang. 1992. Early Evolution of Avian Flight and
Perching: New Evidence from the Lower Cretaceous of China. Science
255:845-848.
34 Creat i on/ P/ volut i on
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Strahler, Arthur N. 1987. Science and Earth HistoryThe Creation'Evolution Con-
troversy. Buffalo: Prometheus Books.
Wellnhofer, Peter. 1988. A New Specimen of Archaeopteryx. Science 240: 1790-
1792.
Zimmer, Carl. 1992. Ruffled Feathers. Discover, May, 44-54.
NOTE: This article was originally based on correspondence carried out in
1986-88 and submitted to Creation/Evolution in 1988 and its forthcoming
publication was announced in Creation/Evolution Newsletter 8(4). I have
now updated it to take into account some more recent developments. 1323
Complete Your Back-Issue
Collection of Creation/Evolution
Issue
t
s9
ue
shell
Issue 20
A creationist tour of the
Grand Canyon
Fossil insects: pests of
creation
Punctuated equilibria
and the origin of species
Issue 21
Morality, religious sym-
bolism and the creation-
is! movement
An astronomical critique
of Biblical chronology
Creationist footprints on
the Paluxythe trail
continues
Issue 18
Evolution and testability
What did Karl Popper re-
ally say about evolution?
Issue 19
Creationists and the
human fossil record
Plagiarized errors and
molecular genetics
Issue 28
A "Transitional forms"
checklist
Evolution of improved
fitness by random selec-
tion
Bobbing for dinosaurs:
forensic science and the
JHood
Volume 13, No. 2 35
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Darwin Prosecuted
Darwin On Trial
by Phillip E. Johnson, 1991
Reviewed by Eugenie C. Scott
P
hillip Johnson is a professor at the University of California's
prestigious Boalt Hall School of Law, and until the publication of
Darwin on Trial was unknown as an evolution-basher. This book-
certainly establishes his credentials, however, and we will have
Phillip Johnson to kick us around for a long time.
Darwin on Trial is an antievolution book, not a "scientific creationism"
book. It complements the anti-evolutionism of the scientific creationists, and
provides fuel for those who want to get evolution out of school classrooms.
As such, it is important to get the word out as to why the book fails to prove
that evolution as a scientific idea is on the skids. Also, Johnson comes from
a major university and writes smoothly. As a result, his book has attracted a
lot of attention, reportedly selling 40,000 hard-back copies during its first
months on the market and now published in a second edition.
Like many conservative Christians, Johnson is concerned with the
implications of evolution. Although he states in his book that theistic
evolution (evolution that is God-directed) is possible, he doubts it. He is
not a young-earth creationist, and in fact, is almost contemptuous of their
point of view. He accepts that the earth is old, but rejects evolution, thus
he is perhaps describable as an old-earth creationist. His concern with
evolution is primarily religious: if evolution by natural selection (Darwin-
ism) really happened, then it is not possible for life to have purpose and
for the universe and Earth to have been designed by an omnipotent,
personal God. He feels that life would have no meaning, and moral and
ethical systems would have no foundation. Thus his goal in Darwin on
Trial is to demonstrate that Darwinian natural selection is impossible;
therefore evolution didn't lake place; therefore his theological views are
preserved. He stresses that Darwinism is inherently an atheistic, naturalis-
tic philosophy.
Physical anthropologist Eugenie C. Scott is is the Executive Director of the National
Center for Science Education, Inc., Berkeley, CA.
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Darwin Prosecuted
Out of His Element
Let me stress that my objections to Darwin on Trial are not because its
author lacks a Ph.D. in science. Science is not a secret activity that can be
performed or understood only by priests in white coatsI've argued long
and hard to try to make science explicable to nonscientists, and to demystify
science as a way of knowing. But if one wishes to step out of one's area of
expertise, scientist or nonscienlist, it behooves one to make a careful study
of the new area, and carefully weigh one's pronouncements. If I were to
critique the newest developments on astrophysics, or medieval art history,
or patent law, I would have to first acquaint myself with not only the
fundamentals of physics, art history, or law, but also astrophysics, medieval
art history, or patent law. Similarly, it behooves Johnson to study not only
science, but that particular and complicated science known as evolution.
Johnson has grasped the general picture of evolutionary biology, and even
some of the details, but he lacks the deep understanding that is required to
make the criticisms he makes. A deep understanding of a field comes from
careful study of relevant literature, including primary sources, and commu-
nication with specialists in the field. Indeed, Darwinism has been critiqued
by evolutionary biologists, but there is a clear difference in quality and
nuance between their criticisms and those parroted by Johnson. Perhaps this
is because he got most of his information from a suspect source: the criticisms
of evolution he offers are immediately recognizable as originating with the
"scientific" creationists, (although Johnson disdains young-earth creation-
ism, and speaks disparagingly of Biblical literalism).
We find the usual "gaps in the fossil record," "natural selection is a
tautology," "there are no transitional fossils," "mutations are harmful,"
"natural selection is not creative," "microevolution does not explain macro-
evolution," "natural selection only produces variation within the kind," and
the vertebrate eye and the argument from design, just as in any standard
Institute for Creation Research tract. Those of you who are up on creationist
literature will be unsurprised to hear that Johnson even tells the tired old Colin
Patterson/American Museum of Natural History story, as an example of the
"conspiracy" of scientists to "protect" Darwinism from criticism. (See Re-
ports 12(4):U-15.)
And this, frankly, is another reason why this book needs to be coped with,
and not ignored. In many ways, it is a slick repackaging of scientific
creationist materials, though far more sophisticated, and as a result, it holds
more potential for harm. It has already been presented to one school board
that I know of, as supporting "evidence" for how "arguments against evolu-
tion" should be included in the science curriculum. This, of course, is just
another variant of the familiar creationist "equal time" argument. Creationist
organizations from the Institute for Creation Research, to the Bible-Science
Association, to Access Research Network (formerly Students for Origins
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Darwin Prosecuted
Research) have promoted Johnson's book in various ways. Even though his
views differ from theirs in important ways, "an enemy of my enemy is my
friend," in the words of the proverb.
In addition to creationist sources, Johnson quotes extensively from die
secondary scientific literature, citing works by well-respected authors such
as Gould, Futuyma, Dawkins, and others. Now, most he cites are quite
competent scientists and historians and even leaders in the field, but the
works cited are usually those written for laypersons, such as Gould's Natural
History columns. A casual reader would necessarily miss a great deal of the
detail and nuance of the arguments, though perhaps acquiring an under-
standing of the broad sweep of contemporary evolutionary science.
As a result of his reliance on creationist sources, Johnson makes a lot of
flat-out mistakes. Archaeopleryx is not mostly bird; the British Museum did
not prevent the inspection of the Piltdown fossils; Zuckerman studied pre-
1970 Australopithecines, so his comments on early human evolution are
essentially irrelevant; most mutations are not harmful. But mostly the prob-
lems in his book reflect subtle misunderstanding of how science worksand
knowing or unknowing misstatements of theory in evolutionary biology.
Johnsonian science assumes that something that is not currently fully
understood is perhaps un-understandable. He concludes, for example, that
the Cambrian fossil explosion, the origin of the first replicating molecule,
and the evolution of whales or bats are "difficult problem(s)" for evolution,
as if the fact that we don't know all the details of evolution somehow proves
evolution didn't take place.
This ignores the consilience factor: the vast amount of detail from natural
history that is compatible (only) with the idea that evolution actually took
place. If we don't know every link in the fossil phylogeny of bats, why would
this make us give up on the idea of evolution, when so many other sources
of data support it? We have evidence that evolution occurred from compara-
tive anatomy, geology, biogeography, biochemistry, astronomyall shout-
ing that change has taken place during the history of the universe. We can
predict from comparative anatomy the fossil sequence tetrapod-reptile-mam-
mal before we even look at the rocks. This entire monument is not about to
be disassembled because we don't know exactly how bats evolved from
primitive inscctivorcs. Consilience is a phenomenon that creationists seem
to have great difficulty with, so they ignore it. So does Johnson.
For someone who writes so extensively about fossils, he has remarkably
little understanding of what paleontologists do, as shown by his treatment of
the legged and fooled fossil whale, Basilosaurus. In his notes at the end of
the book (which provide illuminating glimpses into his mind-set) he states
his skepticism that the legs and feet really belong to the specimen: "The
article states that 'Limb and foot bones described here were all found in direct
association with articulated skeletons of Basilosaurus isis and undoubtedly
represent this species.' Although I accept the authors' description for pur-
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Darwin Prosecuted
poses of this chapter, I confess that expressions like'found in direct associa-
tion with' and 'undoubtedly' whet my curiosity. Is itcertain thatBasilosaurus
had shrunken hind limbs, or is it only certain that fossil foot bones were found
reasonably close to Basilosawus skeletons?" Amazing! "Found in direct
association" is a term of art in archaeology and paleontology referring not
only to proximity but to context (position, geological features, evidence of
disturbance or intrusion, etc.) The phrase doesn't mean, "we think in an
offhand manner that maybe these bones go together," but Johnson seems
unaware of this. How can someone criticize the fossil record and have so
little understanding of what paleontologists do? In addition, to criticize an
interpretation of a specific fossil, one should know the comparative anatomy
involved. The discoverers oiBasilosaurus fortunately are skilled anatomists
able to tell whether a set of fossil leg and fool bones did or did not articulate
with the body as a whole.
Perhaps his greatest misunderstanding of evolution is his expectation of
what a "transitional form" should be like. His goal, of course, is to discredit
his version of Darwinism, which stresses slow, gradual evolution. (Johnson
sometimes means Darwinism, and sometimes means Neo-Darwinism, but
that is another issue.) Like the ICR's Duane Gish, Johnson will not accept
evolution unless a lineage can be recreated showing every individual speci-
men from A to Z. If mammals arose from reptiles, for example (which
technically, they didn't, but from a tetrapod common ancestor), then to
"prove" this, evolutionists would have to show them a fossil that is 25%
mammal and 75% reptile, then one that is 50:50, and one that is 25% reptile
and 75% reptileand then kindly fill in the gaps, please. What great
confidence this shows in the fossil record! Fuluyma (1982:191) puts it best,
"The creationist argument that if evolution were true we should have an
abundance of intcimediate fossils is built by exaggerating the richness of
paleontological collections, by denying the transitional series that exist, and
by distorting, or misunderstanding, the genetical theory of evolution."
The way Darwin expected the fossil record to look is irrelevant to modem
evolutionary theory; Darwin died 112 years ago. We can reasonably expect
theory to change in a century. To quote Futuyma (p. 191) again, "The
supposition that evolution proceeds very slowly and gradually, and so should
leave thousands of fossil intermediates of any species in its wake, has not
been part of evolutionary theory for more than thirty years." But Johnson
flogs the gradualist horse because it serves his purpose to discredit evolution.
Modern evolutionists, on the other hand, are more concerned with tracing
the pattern of evolution, rather than tracing a specific lineage down to the
gnat's eyelash. The pattern of evolution is more likely to be shown across a
broad series of lineages within an evolving taxon. Transitional structures are
sought, rather than individual specimens showing precise intermediacy in all
anatomical structures. Evolutionists consider a transitional structure to be
one that shows characteristics of more than one taxon. Thus a number of
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Darwin Prosecuted
fossils sometimes called reptile-like mammals show characteristics of mam-
mals and also of more primitive tctrapods. These characteristics are espe-
cially clear in the skull, and particularly the lower jaw.
It would take a very long essay to criticize all or even most of the
misleading, or just plain wrong, statements Johnson makes about evolution-
ary biology. For example, "Darwinists do not in principle deny the funda-
mental discontinuity of the living world, but they explain it as being due to
the extinction of vast numbers of intermediates that once linked the discrete
groups to their remote common ancestors" (p. 87). Wrong. First of all, the
discontinuity of modern groups is not something embarrassing to "Darwin-
ists" which they arc trying to deny. Discontinuity exists, and it exists because
of the process of speciation, which produces reproductively isolated groups
of organisms through a number of well-understood processes of heredity.
The hierarchy of taxa produced by evolution would be discrete regardless of
whether we had examples of every intermediate species. It is just how we
expect evolution to work, but Johnson does not understand this. As one reads
the book, one stops over and over to say, "No, that's not quite right." It is as
if Johnson is talking about a familiar topic, but he gives it a spin that requires
careful readingsort of like discussing a zebra as a horse-like quadraped
distinguished by a stiff mane and black and red stripes.
Johnson demonstrates another problem that I have not seen discussed in
many other reviews (see Hull, 1991, Hurwitt, 1991, Jukes, 1991, Quinn,
1991, Gray, 1992). He clearly docs not understand the meanings scientists
give to many of their terms. He deliberately conflates pairs of ideas that
properly are separate. I have selected a few of these for discussion.
Evolution is Not Evolutionism
First, Johnson defines evolution as if it were an ideology: evolutionism.
Evolutionism to him is a philosophy that excludes the possibility of divine
intervention occurring during evolution. Some individuals have made an
ideology out of evolution, but Johnson errs in assuming that therefore
evolution itself is an incorrect explanation of the history of the universe.
The quality or usefulness of a scientific idea is independent of the
philosophical implications one may or may not draw from it. The fact that
one can take a scientific idea and make an ideology out of it does not mean
that every treatment of this idea will require an ideological treatment. If a
high school teacher someplace should decide that photosynthesis is the
foundation for a new religion, that doesn't mean that other teachers should
cease teaching photosynthesis. Yet Johnson worries greatly lhatchildren will
learn evolutionism rather than "just" evolution, and then lose their faith in
there being a purpose for life. In this regard, let me reassure Johnson that in
speaking with hundreds of teachers all over the country, I have found that
when evolution is taught, evolution is taught, not evolutionism. Most teachers
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Darwin Prosecuted
appear to be strongly (and conventionally) religious. I know of no recent
national survey, but a recent survey of Texas teachers shows a high degree
of church attendance (80%) (Markley, 1991).
Science is not Philosophical Naturalism
Johnson protests that Darwinism cannot be extricated from atheistic,
materialist philosophy. Evolution is defined in Darwin on Trial as "fully
naturalistic evolution, meaning evolution that is not directed by any
purposeful intelligence" (p. 4). In this he errs, as do many "scientific"
creationists, in conflating the necessary methodological materialism of sci-
ence with philosophical materialism or naturalism. Naturalism is a philoso-
phy stating that God does not have anything to do with the universe, about
which science, as a non-thcistic (rather than anti-theistic) enterprise, can say
nothing. Like the more familiar ICR creationists, Johnson doesn't want to
allow science to be a purely naturalistic, materialist exercise; he insists on
the right to retain the possibility of divine intervention or guidance.
Unfortunately, for him, that is just not the way science operates in the late
20th century, and for good reason. Naturalistic explanations have been found
to be far more fruitful in the explanation of natural phenomena than super-
natural ones. The problem with supernatural explanations is that, correct or
incorrect, they cannot be rejected, and science proceeds by rejecting expla-
nations rather than "proving" them true. If you want to know whether the
earth goes around the sun or the sun goes around the earth, you'll get a lot
farther if you posit testable, natural explanations rather than untestablc ones
from supernatural revelation. The Hare Krishnas, based on their under-
standing of the Vedas, believe that the sun is closer to the earth than is the
moon. Do you want revelation or empiricism to determine where to send the
Apollo mission?
Evolution Is Not the Same As Darwinism
Johnson conflates evolution and Darwinism, believing that by disproving
Darwinism, he can demonstrate evolution could not have occurred.
Evolution is a statement about the history of the universe: that the universe
has a past. The message of evolution essentially is that change has occurred,
as opposed to special creation's view that all the galaxies, solar systems,
planets, and organisms in the universe were specially created all at one time.
The difference between an evolutionist and a creationist is not "Did God
create?" but "What is the history of the universe?" Did everything we see
today occur all at one time, or is the universe of today different than it was
in the past? Also, evolution refers to a very broad spectrum of natural
phenomena: from galaxies and stars and solar systems, to geological phe-
nomena, to organic life.
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Darwinism is a mechanism by which part of this spectrum of history
may be explained, in whole or in part. Darwinism attempts to explain
organic evolution, at least in major part, by natural selection. But Darwin-
ism is only one possible explanation for the history of life. If Darwinism
were to be discovered not to explain organic evolution, this would have
nothing in the universe (literally) to do with whether stellar or galactic
evolution took placeor even whether organic evolution took place.
Johnson does not recognize that by trying to disprove organic evolution by
natural selection, he leaves untouched the explanation of organic evolution
by oilier mechanisms. But he really doesn't care. His main concern is
whether human evolution, one small component of this great sweeping
theory, is adequately explained by natural causes, or requires supernatural
purpose and design.
The Origin of Life is Not the Same as Evolution
The Big Bang Is Not the Same as Evolution
Like the scientific creationists, Johnson confuses the origin of life and the
Big Bang (the origin of the universe) with evolution. This is rather like
confusing starting up the car's engine with driving away. It is necessary to
start the engine to go anywhere, but there is nothing inherent about starting
the car that tells you whether you are going to work, or to the corner store,
or just idling in the driveway. The origin of life and the Big Bang are both
interesting scientific problems, and, as they do with any scientific problem,
scientists are attempting to explain them with natural rather than supernatural
explanations. Clearly, there is much more to be learned about both, but it
appears as if it is possible to explain these phenomena naturally. This
possibility is offensive to creationists, who demand that supernatural forces
must be invoked. Still, logically, whether the origin of the universe and the
production of the first replicating molecule are ever fully explained with
naturalistic explanations has nothing to do with what happened subsequently.
Did evolution take place, or not?
Just as the ICR's Duane Gish in his debates shifts smoothly to the origin
of life when his debate opponents are sufficiently knowledgeable to defend
the fossil record, so Johnson apparently thinks the incompleteness of expla-
nations for the origin of life/Big Bang appear to the general public as soft
underbellies of evolution.
Materialism, Religion, and Darwinism
Johnson presents a narrow view of science, an inaccurate view of evolu-
tion/Darwinism, and even a narrow theology. In a 1992 speech Johnson
remarked:
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Our discussion today is over whether belief in Darwinism is compatible
with a meaningful theism. When most people ask that question, they
take the Darwinism for granted and ask whether the theism has to be
discarded. I think it is more illuminating to approach the question from
the other side. Is there any reason that a person who believes in a real,
personal God should believe Darwinist claims that biological creation
occurred through a fully naturalistic evolutionary process? The answer
is clearly "no" (Johnson, 1992, p. 4).
Applying the lawyer's "cold, dispassionate eye for logic and proof as
touted on his book's dustjacket, Johnson manages to set up another strawman
that docs not accurately reflect the real relationship between evolution and
religion. Evolution is presented as a "fully naturalistic process," implying an
antithesis between evolution and the supernatural. This certainly is not the
position of the majority of Christians in the US today, neither Catholic nor
main-line Protestants.
Johnson confuses the necessary methodological materialism (or natural-
ism) of science with philosophical materialism/naturalism. Science neither
denies nor opposes the supernatural, but ignores the supernatural for meth-
odological reasons. The history of science has shown that progress comes
from logical and empirical study rather than reference to revelation or to inner
psychological states. That's how we play our game; his basketball won't
work on our baseball field. The essence of science is empiricism and control
of variables, and if there is an omnipotent God, it certainly can't be controlled
like temperature or humidity. Science has made a little deal with itself:
because you can't put God in a test tube (or keep it out of one), science acts
as if the supernatural did not exist. This methodological materialism is the
cornerstone of modern science.
Materialism also is the cornerstone of mathematics. It may be the case
that God caused 2+2 to equal 4, but ultimate cause is irrelevant to the
mathematical applications that can be made to 2+2 = 4. Scientists no more
accept supernatural explanations for phenomena than mathematicians would
accept a solution to a mathematical problem based on revelation. Yet no one
claims mathematics is antircligious. Neither is science.
Johnson fails to recognize the necessity for methodological materialism,
because of his concern for philosophical materialism's attack on his theol-
ogy. The process of evolutionary change, like any scientific process, must be
studied without reference to the supernatural. Johnson is certainly welcome
to criticize philosophical materialism if he wishes to, but such a criticism is
irrelevant to science.
This conflation of methodological materialism with philosophical mate-
rialism also confuses two very different types of causation: proximate and
ultimate. Science deals only with proximate cause; religion deals with
ultimate cause. If God produced the Big Bang, or the first replicating
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molecule, science can tell us nothing about this, because the supernatural is
outside of the realm of things that science can explain. Statements of ultimate
cause may be true or false or in between, but they are not testable through
the method of scientific discovery. They must be tested using other canons
of thought, if they are testable at all. Johnson states that it is possible that God
created through evolution, an alternative to a "fully naturalistic evolutionary
process," but he doubts it.
This, however, is the position embraced by the majority of main-line
Protestant and Catholic theologians: theistic evolution. I define theistic
evolution as evolution governed by natural processes but begun by and/or
guided by God. (There are many varieties of theistic evolution, as there are
many nuances of the understanding of God in Christianity.) We can under-
stand the natural processes using the methods of science, but we cannot
understand the ultimate cause.
Johnson wants to prove that Darwinism is not science but an outgrowth
of materialist philosophy. He does not recognize theistic evolution as a
common compromise between the facts of science and the desire to retain a
religious perspective. Darwinism (evolution by natural selection) can be
taught (and in my experience, is taught most of the time) without expressly
presenting its implications for conservative Christian theology. But it cannot
be denied that Darwinism has implications for conservative Christian theol-
ogy of the kind espoused by the scientific creationists, and even the kind held
(I assume) by Johnson. To explain this, let me review a little history.
If nothing else evolves on this planet, religion does. The medieval Chris-
tian God was an anthropomorphic character (remember Michelangelo's The
Creation), male, old, wise, sitting on a throne, dispensing justice and watch-
ing every sparrow that falls. He had human attributes: he "walked" in the
Garden with Adam and Eve, he "rested" on the seventh day, he had (espe-
cially in the Old Testament) human emotions of anger, revenge, and wrath,
as well as love. This traditional God created a universe for humankind, and
our "kind" was at the pinnacle of creation.
Then came Galileo and heliocentrism. It has taken us 300 years, but
finally we have gotten the idea that far from the world being created central
to the universe, it is actually a rather minor (if special and oh-so-lovely)
planet whirling in a predictable and knowable orbit around an undistin-
guished star off in the boondocks of an arm of one galaxy among millions.
Few (except for the geocentric wing of the "scientific" creationistsand
believe it or not, there is one) feel great upheavals in their theology because
of the triumph of heliocentrism (and sphericity) over geocentric and
flat-earth Biblical literalism.
But it will take us longer to get over Darwin. It was bad enough to have
to learn that the universe wasn't prepared specially for Homo sapiens, but
then to find out that our "kind" did not stand on the top of the Great Chain
of Being, but was produced by the same general processes that produced
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cockroaches and gerbils, and that, further, we are genealogically linked to
cockroaches and gerbils and every other creature on earth, was more than the
medieval version of Christianity still practiced in the 19th century could bear.
Evolution occurred. Partly (but not exclusively) as a result of Darwinism,
Catholics and most Protestant sects began thinking of God as a more abstract
entity: perhaps more distant but ultimately more powerful and awe-inspiring.
Deism, the idea of God as ultimate creator through lawsa Divine Watch-
maker who winds up the universal clock and then lets it tick on according to
established regularities ("laws"), was strengthened during the 19th century
and is today a prominent component of main-line Christian religion. But not
of fundamentalist, Biblical literalist religion. This theology seeks a personal,
involved God with a special (if unknown) plan and purpose for mankind.
Johnson is correct when he says that Darwinism has implications for
religion, especially fundamentalist religion, but so does natural history in
general. Observations by naturalists, evolulionarily-inclined or not, show
nature as a not very peaceable kingdom. Some really yucky things go on out
there, and it is difficult to imagine them being the direct product of a
beneficent creator God who prizes humankind above all else in creation.
There is evil as well as good on this earth, and suffering and pain afflict both
the deserving and the innocent, and there is a lot of suffering and painmore
than would seem to be reasonable if man were just being punished for the
Fall. And if man is being punished for the sins of Adam, why does animal
life have to suffer so much? A rather unpleasant-looking videotape being
advertised currently appears to be a sequence of scenes wherein animals
claw, bite, crush, slash, and tear one another apart, for food, defense, sexual
competitionor fun. A killer whale seizes a seal in its mouth and smashes
it against the beach; a male lion rushes into a group of cubs sired by another
and rips them apart; hyenas tear the throat out of a zebra colt. Just another
day on planet earth. The more we learn about the natural world, the more it
appears to be a not very humanely-designed placewith or without the
insights of natural selection theory.
Meanwhile, philosophers and theologians have long debated the evil and
suffering experienced by our own species. It didn't start new with Darwin.
Why arc some children born with congenital diseases who will live only a
few painful years, and then die horribly, and others children suffer from a
lack of food, or shelter, or abuse by parents? Poverty-stricken people seem
to go from famine to hurricane to earthquakehow can this be "planned" or
"designed?" (Here again, science gives only the proximate answers to these
questions: the strips of DNA that go awry and produce the Tay-Sachs baby,
or the atmospheric pressure systems that produce the hurricane, or the social
and political currents that produce civil wars, famines and other human
disasters. It can't give us the ultimate answers.) Theologians have long
debated whether our sometimes nasty and brutal world is the product of
special consideration of a benign deitya topic is beyond this review.
Volume 13, No. 2 45
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Darwin Prosecuted
As Rachels (1990) points out, the reason Darwin caused such a theological
stir was that he replaced teleology, or purpose, in science with natural causes.
And this is what Johnson finds so offensive about Darwinism. This is not the
time nor the place to go into a discourse on teleology in biology, nor the
reasons why scientists no longer accept ideological explanations (see
Dawkins, 1986). The argument from design is dead in science, and if Darwin
hadn't killed it, it would have died off from some other cause.
But why does the death of teleology in science necessarily mean the death
of teleology in religion? An individual can recognize that the natural world
operates according to natural laws that we can discover, and still maintain a
belief in purpose for life. Certainly many theistic evolutionists do just this.
Humanists, who reject the supernatural, see purposes for their individual lives
and for life in general. But Johnson is correct that most forms of theistic
evolution surmise a less-engaged God than that of his own theology.
Summary
Darwin on Trial attacks evolution by natural selection in an attempt to
bolster a theology based on a personal God who created humankind for a
reason, and gave us a purpose. It does this by trying to convince the reader
thai evolution did not occur, and that Darwinism, as a mechanism, is
inadequate to explain how descent with modification could have occurred.
The arguments are recycled arguments from the discredited "scientific"
creationists, although they are presented with style and persuasiveness.
The book fails to disprove evolution, but the spirit behind it deserves to
be recognized by all scientists. Johnson reflects the anguish expressed by
many conservative Christians who believe that something terribly important
is lost if evolution is true, and especially if the way things changed is through
the wasteful and unattractive mechanism of natural selection. To someone
who is serious about religion, Darwinian evolution needs to be coped with,
and it may not be psychologically easy. Unfortunately, the job of a science
teacher is to leach state of the art science, and that means evolution. Students
who do not understand evolution cannot be said to be scientifically literate.
Each student brings a somewhat different background of experiences and
altitudes to any class, and only the student can resolve conflicts between what
is brought to the class and what is taught in it. But it is also imperative that
the teacher not make this job more difficult by gratuitously inserting his or
her own philosophy into the course. It is not essential to the teaching of
evolution to teach evolutionism as a materialist philosophy, but this is a major
concern of conservative Christiansand Phillip Johnson.
There certainly are scientists such as William Provine and G.G. Simpson,
whose statements encourage Johnson's view that Christian children are being
taught evolutionism rather than "just science." But there are no good data
showing the frequency with which a college or high school teacher accom-
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Darwin Prosecuted
panies the teaching of "evolution occurred, and here's how it happened" with
"therefore you must give up your belief in God." My personal experience is
that this is exceedingly rare; Johnson worries that it predominates.
Many religious individuals, including scientists, accomm<xlalc their the-
ology to evolution. Johnson, on the other hand, prefers to accommodate
science to his theology. Regardless of one's views on materialism as a
philosophy, in science, it is a methodological necessity. Darwin on Trial
deserves to be read by scientists, not for its scientific value, which is
negligible, but for its potential social and political impact.
Darwin on Tirol, by Phillip E. Johnson, 1991, is published by Regnery
Gateway Publishing Company, Washington, DC.
References
Dawkins, R. 1986. The Blind Watchmaker. NY: W. W. Norton.
Futuyma, D. 1982. Science on Trial. The Case for Evolution. NY: Pantheon.
Gould, S.J. 1990. An earful of jaw. Natural History. March, p.12 ff.
Gray, T. 1992. The Mistrial of Evolution. The Banner April 13,1992, p.13.
Hull, D.L. 1991. The God of the Galapagos. Nature 352:485-486.
Hurwitt, R. 1991. Of Ape and Nonsease. The Origin of the Specious. East Bay Express
April 1991, p.l ff.
Johnson, P.E. 1992. Darwinism and Theism. Address delivered at symposium,
"Darwinism: Scientific Inference or Philosophical Preference," sponsored by
the Foundation for Thought and Ethics. Dallas, TX, March 26-28, 1992.
Jukes, T.H. 1991. The Persistent Conflict. J. Molec. Evol. 33:205-206.
Marklcy, Melanie. 1991. Study finds state teachers conservative. Houston Chronicle,
11/6/91, p. Al.
Montagu, Ashley. 1984. Introduction. Science and Crealionism. A. Montagu, Ed.,
NY: Oxford University Press.
Quinn, Arthur. 1991. A Brief for the Prosecution. California Monthly (101(2):23-24.
Rachels, James. 1990. Created from Animals: The Moral Implications of Darwinism.
NY: Oxford University Press.
Schoch, Russell. 1991. The Evolution of a Creationist. California Monthly 101 (2):20-
22. EH
Volume 13, No. 2 47
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Replies
Reply to Landau and Landau
David A. Bradbury
Orchard Lake, MI
I
n "Random Protein Formations and the Origin of Life" (Landau and
Landau, C/ZiWinter 1991-1992), the authors purport to challenge"... one
of the stronger creationist arguments." This is the mathematical basis sup-
porting the conclusion " . . . .that life could not have originated by random
processes."
As an evolutionist I examined this problem for many years, only to find
myself intellectually compelled to acknowledge (albeit reluctantly) the
legitimacy of the creationists' position on this important issue. This Lan-
dau and Landau 'challenge,' being based solely upon non-applicable,
author-selected relationships, is as disappointing as it is deceptive. It does
not address any of the well-defined probability factors actually cited by
creationists in developing their "stronger" arguments, as required by good
science.
Rather, the statement of the improbability of a random origin of life
presented for challenge, "20 , or 1.27 x 10 , essentially an impossibility
(Gish 1972)," is a totally out of context misrepresentation. It is not found in
the Gish reference cited, as implied. And it is not a reasonable creationist (or
evolutionist) approximation of the slated random formation of a "typical
small protein" from a real-world, nutrient-rich 'soup.' These figures are
merely an expression of the number of different ways 20 units (aminos) might
link into a protein chain 100 uniLs long. Though seemingly large, this
strawman figure is (embarrassingly) hundreds of orders of magnitude
smaller than those appearing in actual creationists' arguments.
Any legitimate challenge to the mathematical improbability of the
spontaneous formation of a typical 'average' biologically useful protein
(much less, the "origin of life" noted in the title) must at least address the
following:
The number of amino-like compounds formed and co-existing in
nature greatly exceeds the 20 unique forms found in all life. Inclusion
Ed.: These replies are being published one to two years delayed because of editorial
and space available glitches, not because their authors were slow to respond.
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Replies
of any one of these other equally chemically active forms is typically
lethal. As such, say "50" (or more) must be substituted for the unnatural
"20" considered by the Landaus, and the new figure becomes 50 .
The average protein in simplest life is closer to 400 links than 100 ("typical
small protein") selected by the authors. To reflect this real world considera-
tion, the figure must again be dramatically increasednow to 50 . And
this represents only ONE of the 200 to 600 different proteins that must be
simultaneously present (and properly scquenced) for a simplest 'living' cell.
This problem is further compounded in that the energy/forces required to
build proteins are even more efficient in destroying them. Factored in, these
S7ROO
phenomena produce improbabilities upwards of 10" . (See Evolution:
Possible or Impossible, by James F. Coppedge, Zondervan Books, 1973, p.
167.)
The artificial basis for, and the failure of the Landaus to address any of
the actual, clearly stated creationist positions appears unappreciated by your
readers. Indeed, it has already been twice cited to me (once by a teaching
science Ph.D. who should know better) as refuting this long-troublesome but
still scientifically unchallenged argument. NCSE publications are known to
quickly correct/denounce errors and/or exaggeration in creationist publica-
tions and should do so in the case of evolutionary writings in its journal, as
well.
Ed: This issue will be addressed further in the future. One correction to the
above: The creationist argument re: chance and odds has definitely been
"scientifically challenged," whether or not one accepts the results. A glance
at the C/E Index shows about three column inches of references in CIE alone.
Volume 13, No.2 49
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Replies
Comment on Zimmerman and Defining
"Evolution"
Ronald H. Pine
Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy
Aurora, IL
Z
immerman (C/E 29) found that only 4.6% of responding U.S. Congress-
men and 0% of responding Ohio House and Senate members recognized
the statement "Evolution occurred because different individuals left different
numbers of offspring" as the best of five provided "definitions . . . of the
modern theory of evolution." I find this definition (synopsis?) sufficiently
devoid of meaningful content that supposed ignorance of it on the part of
respondents doesn't necessarily explain why it was not chosen. Everyone for
thousands of years has known that different individuals "left" different
numbers of offspring (I have two children, my brother has one, for example),
but if knowledge of this most elementary fact should somehow take one a
considerable way down the road to our modern understanding of evolution,
then it seems odd that we did not get any farther than we did in our acceptance
and understanding of the process long before the 19th century. Missing from
the statement is any hint of "long-term-lineage-thinking," variation, or he-
redity. Exactly what happens to the offspring that are "left" is what is crucial,
not just their numbers. If this were not so, we should expect to find evidence
of relentless long-term increases in the numbers of offspring produced in
every evolutionary line on Earth. The important point os that (inheritable)
properties of the organisms in question influence long-term multigenera-
tional success in leaving relatively large numbers of descendants. Although
I have railed for years against use of the misleading phrase "survival of the
fittest" (one of Zimmerman's less-favored alternative choices), it at least
expresses the essential point that it is the particular characteristics possessed
by organisms that are crucial in long-term evolutionary "success"and if I
had been sent the questionnaire I would have (most reluctantly) had to choose
that statement as the best answer available on his list of options. ^ ^
E2ZS
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Correspondence
As the instructor of mystery fiction appreciation course for our local
community college I read the article "Science at Bob Thurston University"
by Kathryn Lasky Knight (Issue 30, 1992)) with great interest. Today's
mystery readers are a demanding lot, not only demanding interesting "mys-
teries" but also good characterizations, authentic locales, and valuing the
presentations of different sides of moral dilemmas, as well as logical solu-
tions. Readers want to know not only who committed the crime, but whyand
within a logical format.
It seems to me that there is a great mystery book out there that will set
creationists based on dogma and faith against evolutionists with arguments
based on concrete scientific evidence.
1 never expected to see reference to mystery fiction in CIE; what a nice
surprise.
Roberta Ann Henrich
Victoria, B.C., Canada
CORRECTION: A reference was omitted from Karl Fe7.er's "Crea-
tionism: Please Don't Call It Science," in CIE 32:
Gish, Duane T. 1985. Evolution: The Challenge of the Fossil Record.
El Cajon, CA: Creation-Life Publishers.
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Issue 33 Winter 1993

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