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From: dubois@uwmacc.UUCP (Paul DuBois)
Newsgroups: net.origins
Subject: The Great Commission
Message-ID: <1147@uwmacc.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 24-May-85 17:55:24 EDT
Article-I.D.: uwmacc.1147
Posted: Fri May 24 17:55:24 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 26-May-85 20:17:29 EDT
Distribution: net
Organization: UW-Madison Primate Center
Lines: 88


>> [Paul DuBois]
>> It seems to me that the responsibility for dissemination of
>> information relating to alternative theories of evolution rests
>> squarely on the shoulders of the evolutionist.  Don't you agree?  

> [Mike Huybensz]
> As a matter of fact, evolutionary biologists have not been commanded by god
> to go out and spread evolutionary biology to the world.  Most professional
> biologists are squirrelled away in universities.

Then they can quit complaining when their work does not appear in the
textbooks.

> If biologists are scurrilously proselytizing for secular humanism as many
> creationists think they are, creationists have little to worry about.

I think that in general creationists view the situation more along
the lines of secular humanists proselytizing for evolution.

> The real problem is that of bringing proper educational materials to
> teachers.  (Scientist doesn't necessarily equal teacher, as all too many
> college students learn.)  The textbook industry is quite slow to absorb
> new ideas in science.  Partly because what sells textbooks is who they
> appeal to and who they don't offend.  It's quite likely that many children
> will not learn about punctuated equilibrium because of the efforts of
> people like the Gablers in Texas.

It's quite likely that many more people have been exposed to p.e.
because of the noise that creationists make about it, than have been
exposed to it because of evolutionary scientists.  They just won't
hear about it in a way you like.

The textbook industry may be slow to absorb new ideas.  It would appear
that they are even slower to get rid of erroneous or unsupported ones,
as well.  Such as the idea that the horse forms a nice orthogenetic
lineage instead of a confusing bush at best.  This is *known*.  Such as
the idea that processes such as simple allelic substitution like we see
in the peppered moth accounts for macroevolution.  This is *by no
means* demonstrated.  Yet it gets parroted all over the place.  And
this general idea isn't just put forth in textbooks written by
non-scientists.  Take a look at E O Wilson's book _Life on Earth_
sometime.  Here's part of it [p653]:

"Each of the examples of micro-evolution examined, involving shifts in
the frequencies of small numbers of genes, could be multiplied a
hundredfold from reports in the scientific literature.  Biologists
have been privileged to witness the beginnings of evolutionary change
in many kinds of plants and animals and under a variety of situations,
and they have used this opportunity to test the assumptions of
population genetics that form the foundations of modern evolutionary
theory.  The question that should be asked before we proceed to new
ideas is whether more extensive evolutionary change, macro-evolution,
can be explained as an outcome of these micro-evolutionary shifts.
Did birds really arise from reptiles by an accumulation of gene
substitutions of the kind illustrated by the raspberry eye-color gene?

"The answer is that it is entirely plausible, and no one has come up
with a better explanation consistent with the known biological facts.
One must keep in mind the enormous difference in timescale between the
observed cases of micro-evolution.  Under natural conditions the
nearly complete substitution of the melanic gene of the peppered moth
took fifty years.  Evolution of the magnitude of the origins of birds
usually, perhaps invariably, takes many millions of years.  As
palaeontologists explore the fossil record with increasing care,
transitions are being documented between increasing numbers of
species, genera, and higher taxonomic groups.  The reading from these
fossil archives suggests that macro-evolution is indeed gradual,
placed at a rate that leads to the conclusion that it is based upon
hundreds of thousands of gene substitutions no different in kind from
the ones examined in our case histories."


Hitching quotes this passage in his book and comments:  "It is the
whole and only passage on the subject [of macroevolution], verbatim.
No doubts or contrary arguments about the mechanism of macro-evolution
appear anywhere."  I looked it up to see if it is really true.  It is.

Did you ever hear anything different than this in school?  I didn't.
The confidence exuded by this passage is truly a marvel to behold,
particularly in view of the fact that the general conclusion presented
by the excerpt is hardly generally agreed upon.

-- 
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Paul DuBois     {allegra,ihnp4,seismo}!uwvax!uwmacc!dubois        --+--
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