Re: How far back can the lungfish be traced? Does it predate its evolutionary descendants?

AN

As per my usual policy, I am responding to your private message on a creation, evolution or design topic,

[Left: Fossil may be earliest arm bone, BBC]

publicly via my blog, CED, minus your personal identifying information.

----- Original Message -----
From: AN
To: Jones Stephen E.
Sent: Friday, March 30, 2007 6:35 AM
Subject: lungfish

>Steve,
hope all is well

Thanks. I am very well, having yesterday reached my target weight of 70.0 kgs (154 lbs), a loss of nearly 17 kgs (~37 lbs) (or ~19% of my body weight) from the 86.8 kg (191 lbs) I was ~10 months ago!

>How far back can the lungfish be traced? do you know?

According to paleontologist Robert L. Carroll (1988) "the earliest-known lungfish, Diabolichthyes" is "from the Lower Devonian [~416-397.5 mya] of China":

"In contrast with all later genera, the earliest-known lungfish, Diabolichthyes from the Lower Devonian of China, shows a remarkable mosaic of characters considered typical of lungfish and primitive rhipidistians .... The pattern of the skull roof is clearly comparable with that of later lungfish, but the ventral surface of the skull shows that the basicranial articulation was still mobile and that the palatoquadrate was not fused to the braincase. The posterior portion of the braincase has not been described, but comparison with the primitive rhipidistian Youngolepis suggests that the ethmoid and otic-occipital elements were separately ossified. The premaxilla is recognizable as a distinct tooth-bearing bone of the skull margin that separates the anterior narial opening from the mouth cavity. The vomer occupies a position that is comparable to that of primitive rhipidistians, and the parasphenoid is a long, toothed element extending anteriorly between the pterygoids. In contrast with all later lungfish, the dentary retains marginal teeth. On the other hand, the teeth on the premaxilla do not form a marginal row but were exposed primarily within the mouth cavity. The teeth covering the pterygoid and prearticular are densely packed and arranged in a radiating pattern, as in later lungfish, but are not fused to form definite tooth plates. Diabolichthys is clearly allied with later lungfish in the emphasis on the palatal dentition and in the pattern of the dermal skull roof, but it retains many features that reflect an ancestry among the crossopterygians. The postcranial skeleton of Diabolichthys has not been described, but that of the slightly younger genus Uranolophus resembles that of rhipidistians ... Diabolichthys comes from a facies that is transitional between marine and continental. Other early Devonian lungfish are known from freshwater and marine deposits. All lungfish other than Diabolichthys are distinguished by ossification of the braincase as a single unit to which the palatoquadrate is fused, the loss of the pre maxillae, and the great reduction in the anterior extent of the parasphenoid. The advanced pattern of the palate and braincase are already evident in Uranolophus from the Lower Devonian of North America .... Unlike most later lungfish, Uranolophus lacks tooth plates. The pteryogoids are elongate triangular bones that cover most of the palate. Both they and the prearticulars bear tooth ridges on their margins. Well-defined tooth plates are a hallmark of more advanced lungfish. In the middle Devonian genus Dipterus ... there are large paired plates with radiating rows of denticles that occupy much of the surface of the pterygoids and smaller plates that developed from the vomers. Another pair are borne on the prearticulars." (Carroll, R.L., "Vertebrate Paleontology and Evolution," W.H. Freeman & Co: New York NY, 1988, p.148)

Although this reference is ~20 years ago, it still seems to be the case that, "The oldest fossil dipnoan [lungfish] is Diabolichthyes, from the Lower Devonian of Yunnan, China":

"Fossilized lungfish burrows of Gnathorhiza have been found in rocks as old as the Permian, with the lungfish still inside, and older (empty) burrows are known from the Carboniferous and Devonian. The oldest fossil dipnoan is Diabolichthyes, from the Lower Devonian of Yunnan, China. It is not clear whether this particular fish was marine or lived in freshwater like modern lungfish, but both marine and freshwater fossils of other groups are known. " ("Introduction to the Dipnoi: the lungfish," University of California Museum of Paleontology, Berkeley, 30 November 2004).

There are more early lungfish fossils belonging to the genus Dipterus (of which Diabolichthyes was not a member):

"Dipterus ... genus of very primitive lungfish, among the earliest known, found as fossils in European and North American Devonian rocks (the Devonian Period lasted from 408 to 360 million years ago). Very similar to the crossopterygians, the lobe-finned fishes that gave rise to the first amphibians, Dipterus retained many archaic features, including two dorsal fins and a tail that resembled a lobe-finned tail. Functional lungs were probably present in Dipterus, and a freshwater habitat is indicated. The skull bones of Dipterus, though still primitive, consist of a mosaic of small bones; Dipterus had already initiated the unusual bone pattern seen in more advanced lungfish. Similarly, Dipterus evidences the beginnings of the lungfish trend toward extreme deossification of skeletal elements. Dipterus was probably the direct ancestor of the modern Australian lungfish, the genus Neoceratodus." ( "Dipterus," Encyclopaedia Britannica Online 2007. Accessed 30 March 2007. Emphasis original. )

which were "of middle Devonian age" (~397.5-385.3 mya):

"Early lungfishes are represented by the genus Dipterus ... Dipterus, a fish of middle Devonian age, possessed many of the generalized sarcopterygian characters that were outlined above for the primitive air-breathing fishes, such as a long, fusiform body terminating in a strong, heterocercal tall, paired fins of the archipterygial type, with a strong central axis down the middle of each fin, and with subsidiary bony rays diverging on either side of this axis, and two dorsal fins. The large, heavy rounded scales were of the cosmoid type. Contrasted with these primitive characters there were various specialized features that indicate even in as early a form as Dipterus the trends that were to take place in the evolution of the dipnoans. For instance, there was considerable reduction of bone in the internal skeleton of this fish, and such a development is found in all of the later lungfishes. The braincase, too, was poorly ossified, although in those Devonian lungfishes in which the braincase has been preserved a certain amount of bone is present. Subsequent to Devonian times the ossification of the braincase was to be completely suppressed. The jaws were partially ossified, yet even here a process of chondrification was beginning that was to become typical of later dipnoans. The skull was composed of numerous bony plates. In general there was a great multiplication of bones covering the head in Dipterus, and because of this it is almost impossible to indicate any homologies between the bones of the skull in this fish and the skull bones in other bony fishes. Likewise, the dentition in Dipterus had become highly specialized. The marginal teeth were suppressed in both the upper and lower jaws, and mastication of the food was effected by large, tooth-bearing plates, those above being formed by the pterygoid bones of the palate and those below by the prearticular bones of the lower jaw. On these plates the teeth were arranged in a fan-shaped fashion, a pattern that was to be carried on through the evolutionary history of the lungfishes. Obviously such teeth were adapted for crushing hard food, and it is probable that the food of the Devonian lungfish, Dipterus, was rather similar to that of the modern Australian lungfish, consisting of small invertebrates and vegetable matter." (Colbert, E.H. & Morales, M., "Evolution of the Vertebrates: A History of the Backboned Animals Through Time," [1955], John Wiley & Sons: New York NY, Fourth Edition, 1990, Second Printing, 1992, p.63)

>i can not find on web.

Agreed that dates for the earliest lungfish fossils are hard to find on the Web. Wikipedia's article Lungfish is a good place to start, with a Taxonomic History that starts with Diabolichthyidae but no separate page on it, nor dates. But it has further external links to: Lungfish information site; Dipnoiformes at Palaeos.com and Dipnoi at the University of California Museum of Paleontology.

>does it predate its evolutionary descendants?

First, your question seem to presuppose that "descendants" must necessarily be "evolutionary," and therefore if all land vertebrates (amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals and ultimately humans) descended from "a single species of freshwater lobe finned fish" then it must necessarily have "evolved":

"Prior to the Devonian period (between 410 and 360 million years ago), nothing lived on land, save for a few spiky, low plants, some scorpions and other insects. The earth was congregated into large continents completely different from the ones we know today, and in a constant - albeit slow - state of change. There were massive freshwater lakes, and while the land was a bare, desolate place, these lakes and oceans writhed with life. ... It was during this period, often called the Age of Fishes, that the first bony fishes, the vertebrates, appeared on the scene. ... The vertebrates were divided into two groups: the ray-finned fishes, or Actinopterygii, with the single dorsal fin and paired pectoral and pelvic fins common to most modern fishes; and the lobe-finned fishes - the coelacanth, the lungfish, and the rhipidistian-whose fins appeared to sprout from the end of fleshy, limb-like lobes, almost like toeless legs. These were known as Sarcopterygii (from the Greek sarco meaning fleshy, and pterygii, wing or fin), and were characterised also by their extra dorsal fin. ... Some time towards the end of the Devonian period, a single species of freshwater lobe finned fish evolved legs. In its new guise of Ichthyostega (literally, walking fish) it crawled out of the water to conquer the land this much scientists agreed upon. What was not so certain was which of the group evolved into Ichthyostega: the lungfish, rhipidistian, or coelacanth?" (Weinberg, S., "A Fish Caught in Time: The Search for the Coelacanth," [1999], Fourth Estate: London, Reprint, 2000, pp.28,30)

in "the standard scientific theory" sense that "God had no part in this process" (my emphasis):

"In one of the most existentially penetrating statements ever made by a scientist, Richard Dawkins concluded that `the universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.' Facing such a reality, perhaps we should not be surprised at the results of a 2001 Gallup poll confirming that 45 percent of Americans believe `God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so'; 37 percent prefer a blended belief that `human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided this process'; and a paltry 12 percent accept the standard scientific theory that `human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God had no part in this process.'" (Shermer, M.B., "The Gradual Illumination of the Mind," Scientific American, February 2002. My emphasis)

If so then you would have bought into Darwin's (and Darwinists') straw man and false dilemma fallacies that I blogged about the other day that "creation" necessarily must be what Darwin in his Origin of Species called "the ordinary view of each species having been independently created."

And therefore if "species ... had descended, like varieties, from other species":

"In considering the Origin of Species, it is quite conceivable that a naturalist, reflecting on the mutual affinities of organic beings, on their embryological relations, their geographical distribution, geological succession, and other such facts, might come to the conclusion that species had not been independently created, but had descended, like varieties, from other species. Nevertheless, such a conclusion, even if well founded, would be unsatisfactory, until it could be shown how the innumerable species inhabiting this world have been modified, so as to acquire that perfection of structure and coadaptation which justly excites our admiration." (Darwin, C.R., "The Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection," John Murray: London, Sixth Edition, 1872, Reprinted, 1882, p.2)

then (according to Darwin, Darwinists - and you??) they "had not been ... created" at all!

Second, according to Colbert & Morales, evolutionists don't claim that the "evolutionary descendants" of lungfish were anything other than lungfish, i.e. "the lungfishes ... are not and never have been on the direct line of evolution leading from fishes to the first land-living vertebrates" because they ""show too many specializations, even in the earliest known stages of their evolutionary history":

"The ability of the lungfishes to breathe air is certainly suggestive of an intermediate stage between fishes and land-living vertebrates. (In this connection it is interesting to note that the Australian lungfish is able to `walk' along the bottom of the rivers or pools in which it lives by using its paired fins like legs.) Yet in spite of such specializations in the lungfishes directed toward a method of surviving out of the water, the total evidence points quite clearly to the fact that these vertebrates are not and never have been on the direct line of evolution leading from fishes to the first land-living vertebrates. Briefly the lungfishes show too many specializations, even in the earliest known stages of their evolutionary history, for vertebrates that might occupy an intermediate position along the line from fishes to amphibians." (Colbert & Morales, Ibid., pp.62-63).

Third, if your question is "does it, the earliest fossil lungfish, predate" the earliest tetrapods, then the answer appears to be no, because the earliest fossil tetrapod humerus dates from the Late Devonian (~385.3-359.2 mya):

"The Early Evolution of the Tetrapod Humerus," Shubin, N.H., et al., Science, Vol. 304, 2 April 2004, pp.90-93 A tetrapod humerus from the Late Devonian of Pennsylvania has a novel mix of primitive and derived characters. A comparative analysis of this fossil and other relevant humeri from the Devonian shows that the role of the limb in propping the body arose first in fish fins, not tetrapod limbs. The functional diversity of the earliest known limbs includes several different kinds of appendage design. This functional diversity was achieved with a humeral architecture that was remarkably conserved during the Devonian. ...

(although it was controversial-see BBC "Fossil may be earliest arm bone" above) or even "about 10 million years" earlier in "the late Frasnian [~385.3-374.5 mya] (mid-Late Devonian)":

"Comment on `The Early Evolution of the Tetrapod Humerus'," Ahlberg, P.E., Science, 17 September 2004 ... In their analysis of humeral evolution in early tetrapods (taken here as meaning vertebrates with limbs), Shubin et al. (1) described a suite of derived characters that represents a significant advance on previous analyses (2-4). This makes their negative assessment of GSM 104536, the humerus provisionally attributed to Elginerpeton pancheni (2, 4, 6), all the more surprising. The specimen (see Fig. 1, A to F) derives from the late Frasnian (mid-Late Devonian) locality of Scat Craig in Scotland, and is thus about 10 million years older than the Catskill Formation humerus ANSP 21350 that forms the centerpiece of the Shubin et al. study (1, 7). ...

So the fossil evidence is consistent with the common ancestry of lungfish and tetrapods (and therefore of all land vertebrates: amphibians, reptiles, birds mammals including humans with fish), as the Young-Earth Creationist Kurt Wise admitted, in that they "are fossils that stand intermediate between the group from which they are descendent and the one to which they are ancestral-both in stratigraphic position and in morphology", including "Ichthyostega among the amphibians":

"Another class of fossil evidence comes in individual stratomorphic intermediates. These are fossils that stand intermediate between the group from which they are descendent and the one to which they are ancestral-both in stratigraphic position and in morphology. They have a structure that stands between the structure of their ancestors and that of their descendants. However, they are also found in the fossil record as younger than the oldest fossils of the ancestral group and older than the oldest fossils of the descendent group. ... And examples of stratomorphic intermediates do exist. Mammal-like reptiles stand between reptiles and mammals, both in the position of their fossils and in the structure of their bones. The same can be said of the anthracosaurs, which stand between amphibians and reptiles, and the phenacodontids, which stand between the horses and their claimed ancestors. In like manner, some fossil genera are stratomorphic intermediates in the group in which they are classified. They are the oldest fossils known in the group and most similar to the group from which they are supposedly descendent. Examples include Pikaia, among the chordates, Archaeopteryx among the birds, Baragwanathia among Lycopods, Ichthyostega among the amphibians, Purgatorius among the primates, Pakicetus among the whales and Proconsul among the hominoids." (Wise, K.P., "The Origin of Life's Major Groups," in Moreland, J.P., ed., "The Creation Hypothesis: Scientific Evidence for an Intelligent Designer," InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove IL, 1994, pp.226-227)

But common ancestry is not necessarily evolution, since, as Christian philosopher Del Ratzsch has pointed out, God could intervene supernaturally in chains of ancestral descent, and "leave unchallenged ... that all species derive ultimately from some common ancestor":

"Suppose contemporary evolutionary theory had blind chance built into it so firmly that there was simply no way of reconciling it with any sort of divine guidance. It would still be perfectly possible for theists to reject that theory of evolution and accept instead a theory according to which natural processes and laws drove most of evolution, but God on occasion abridged those laws and inserted some crucial mutation into the course of events. Even were God to intervene directly to suspend natural law and inject essential new genetic material at various points in order to facilitate the emergence of new traits and, eventually, new species, that miraculous and deliberate divine intervention would by itself leave unchallenged such key theses of evolutionary theory as that all species derive ultimately from some common ancestor. Descent with genetic intervention is still descent-it is just descent with nonnatural elements in the process." (Ratzsch, D.L., "The Battle of Beginnings: Why Neither Side is Winning the Creation-Evolution Debate," InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove IL, 1996, pp.187-188).

Which then would not be evolution at all":

"Darwin ... wrote in a letter to Sir Charles Lyell, the leading geologist of his day: `If I were convinced that I required such additions to the theory of natural selection, I would reject it as rubbish...I would give nothing for the theory of Natural selection, if it requires miraculous additions at any one stage of descent.' [Darwin, C.R., Letter to C. Lyell, October 11, 1859, in Darwin, F., ed., "The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin," [1898], Basic Books: New York NY, Vol. II., 1959, reprint, pp.6-7]. This is no petty matter. In Darwin's view, the whole point of the theory of evolution by natural selection was that it provided a non-miraculous account of the existence of complex adaptations. For what it is worth, it is also the whole point of this book. For Darwin, any evolution that had to be helped over the jumps by God was not evolution at all." (Dawkins, R., "The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design," W.W Norton & Co: New York NY, 1986, pp.248-249. Emphasis original)

but rather "divine creation", i.e. "God ... influencing key moments in evolutionary [sic] history" (my emphasis):

"At first sight there is an important distinction to be made between what might be called 'instantaneous creation' and 'guided evolution'. Modern theologians of any sophistication have given up believing in instantaneous creation. ... many theologians ... smuggle God in by the back door: they allow him some sort of supervisory role over the course that evolution has taken, either influencing key moments in evolutionary history (especially, of course, human evolutionary history), or even meddling more comprehensively in the day-to-day events that add up to evolutionary change. ... In short, divine creation, whether instantaneous or in the form of guided evolution, joins the list of other theories we have considered in this chapter." (Dawkins, Ibid., pp.316-317)

>best
AN

Thanks. And the same to you.

Stephen E. Jones, BSc. (Biology).

---

Exodus 10:21-29. ²¹Then the LORD said to Moses, "Stretch out your hand toward the sky so that darkness will spread over Egypt-darkness that can be felt." ²²So Moses stretched out his hand toward the sky, and total darkness covered all Egypt for three days. ²³No one could see anyone else or leave his place for three days. Yet all the Israelites had light in the places where they lived. ²⁴Then Pharaoh summoned Moses and said, "Go, worship the LORD. Even your women and children may go with you; only leave your flocks and herds behind." ²⁵But Moses said, "You must allow us to have sacrifices and burnt offerings to present to the LORD our God. ²⁶Our livestock too must go with us; not a hoof is to be left behind. We have to use some of them in worshiping the LORD our God, and until we get there we will not know what we are to use to worship the LORD." ²⁷But the LORD hardened Pharaoh's heart, and he was not willing to let them go. ²⁸Pharaoh said to Moses, "Get out of my sight! Make sure you do not appear before me again! The day you see my face you will die." ²⁹"Just as you say," Moses replied, "I will never appear before you again."

`Dr. Pusey was mistaken in imagining that I wrote the 'Origin ' with any relation whatever to Theology' (Darwin) #2

Continuing from part #1 with this second part of my multi-part post about Darwin's dishonesty when it came to protecting his theory,

[Left: The Straw Man Argument, University of Michigan]

in his claim that: 1) "Dr. Pusey [in his 1878 sermon, "Un-Science, Not Science, Adverse To Faith"] was mistaken in imagining that I wrote the 'Origin ' with any relation whatever to Theology" and 2) "when I was collecting facts for the 'Origin,' my belief in what is called a personal God was as firm as that of Dr. Pusey himself" (my emphasis).

First, as I pointed out in part #1, in actual fact Darwin used the word "creation" (or its cognates) in his 1872 final edition of his Origin of Species at least 109 times, and almost always in a pejorative sense, including eleven instances where Darwin attacked what he claimed was the then "ordinary view" of creation (my emphasis).

Second, as Dr. Pusey quoted in his sermon, Darwin in his Descent of Man (1871) wrote that his primary objective in his earlier Origin of Species (1859) was "to shew that species had not been separately created" and even if it turned out that his theory of natural selection was false (i.e. Darwin "having exaggerated its power, which is in itself probable"), Darwin hoped that he had "at least, as I hope, done good service in aiding to overthrow the dogma of separate creations" (my and Pusey's emphasis).

That is, as Pusey correctly pointed out, "It was then so far, with a quasi-Theological, not with a scientific object, that he [Darwin] wrote his book", i.e. "He wished `to overthrow the dogma of separate creations" (my emphasis). :

"Mr. Darwin urges this in self-defence against critics of his book. `I may be permitted to say, as some excuse, that I had two distinct objects in view; firstly, to shew that species had not been separately created, and secondly, that natural selection had been the chief agent of change, though largely aided by the inherited effects of habit, and slightly by the direct action of the surrounding conditions. I was not, however, able to annul the influence of my former belief, then almost universal, that each species had been purposely created; and this led to my tacit assumption, that any detail of structure, excepting rudiments, was of some special, though unrecognised, service. Any one, with this assumption in his mind, would naturally extend too far the action of natural selection, either during past or present times. Some of those who admit the principle of evolution, but reject natural selection, seem to forget, when criticising my book, that I had the above two objects in view; hence, if I have erred in giving to natural selection great power, which I am very far from admitting, or in having exaggerated its power, which is in itself probable, I have at least, as I hope, done good service in aiding to overthrow the dogma of separate creations.' [Darwin, the Descent of man, P. 1. c. 2. p. 61.] It was then so far, with a quasi-Theological, not with a scientific object, that he wrote his book. He wished `to overthrow the dogma of separate creations.' Why? With the all-but-infinity of creation, which the telescope unfolds, what are we, that we should object to any mode of creation, as unbefitting our Creator? A result, which is arrived at under a bias, lies under a suspicion as to its validity. People catch at what seems to them evidence, on what seems to them previous probability. The reproach is cast upon Theologians; it is not likely to belong to them alone." (Pusey, E.B., "Un-Science, Not Science, Adverse To Faith: A Sermon Read by H.P. Liddon at the University of Oxford, 3 November 1878, James Parker & Co: Oxford, 1878, pp.25-26. Emphasis original).

Therefore it was a blatant falsehood for Darwin to claim that he "wrote the 'Origin ' with any relation whatever to Theology" (my emphasis)!, when: 1) in it he attacked "creation" at least 109 times (including what he claimed was "the ordinary view of ... creation" 11 times ); and 2) he had already admitted seven years before in his Descent of Man (1871) and repeated in the Second Edition (1874), that in his Origin of Species he "had two distinct objects in view"; "firstly," religious "to shew that species had not been separately created, and secondly," scientific "that natural selection had been the chief agent of change" (my emphasis):

"I may be permitted to say as some excuse, that I had two distinct objects in view, firstly, to shew that species had not been separately created, and secondly, that natural selection had been the chief agent of change, though largely aided by the inherited effects of habit, and slightly by the direct action of the surrounding conditions. Nevertheless I was not able to annul the influence of my former belief, then widely prevalent, that each species had been purposely created; and this led to my tacitly assuming that every detail of structure, excepting rudiments, was of some special, though unrecognised, service. Any one with this assumption in his mind would naturally extend the action of natural selection, either during past or present times, too far. Some of those who admit the principle of evolution, but reject natural selection, seem to forget, when criticising my book, that I had the above two objects in view; hence if I have erred in giving to natural selection great power, which I am far from admitting, or in having exaggerated its power, which is in itself probable, I have at least, as I hope, done good service in aiding to overthrow the dogma of separate creations." (Darwin, C.R., "The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex," John Murray: London, First Edition, 1871, Vol. 1, pp.152-153)

Therefore Pusey was correct in his observation that:

"It was then so far, with a quasi-Theological, not with a scientific object, that he wrote his book. He wished `to overthrow the dogma of separate creations.'" (my emphasis)

Note that the above does not depend on whether Darwin was right in his 109+ attacks on what he called the "ordinary view" of creation. My argument only is that Darwin was dishonest in privately denying Pusey's claim that "It was ... with a quasi-Theological, not with a scientific object, that he wrote his book" and claiming that, "Dr. Pusey was mistaken in imagining that I wrote the 'Origin ' with any relation whatever to Theology'" (my emphasis).

However, in fact Darwin's claimed "ordinary view of each species having been independently created" was "merely a straw man-set up only to be knocked down," as even Darwinist historian Barry G. Gale acknowledged:

"Darwin's contrast of the explanatory powers of his theory with the Creationist, especially in the areas of geographical distribution, morphology embryology, and rudimentary organs, represents, I think, the strongest line of arguments in the Origin. ... Yet even here, where Darwin's arguments are strongest, nagging questions remain. For example, a reader of the Origin might be justified in wondering what Creationist view Darwin is referring to. Perhaps this is a problem more for the present-day reader. Darwin's contemporaries may have known exactly what he meant, though I doubt it. Often the Creationist position seems merely a straw man-set up only to be knocked down. The constraints on space in the Origin, which led Darwin to abandon his original intention of arguing on both sides of the mutability issue, add to this feeling. The result is that the Creationist position is never clearly defined in the Origin." (Gale, B.G., "Evolution Without Evidence: Charles Darwin and The Origin of Species," University of New Mexico Press: Albuquerque NM, 1982, p.139)

The fact is, as Oxford theologian Aubrey L. Moore (1848-1890) pointed out, Darwin did not get his "ordinary view of each species having been independently created" from "Augustine nor Aquinas nor Bacon" nor "the Bible, nor the Fathers, nor the Schoolmen" but from the poet John "Milton, whose description of the creatures emerging fully-formed from the earth"in Paradise Lost "was Darwin's favourite reading in his youth, and always accompanied him on his excursions from the `Beagle':

"It was odd, Moore felt, that the question between the mutability or immutability of species should ever have appeared to be a religious question at all. Who invented the doctrine of immutability? not Augustine nor Aquinas nor Bacon; the true culprits were Milton, Ray and Linnaeus-and especially Milton, whose description of the creatures emerging fully-formed from the earth had been accepted as authoritative. Since we know that Milton was Darwin's favourite reading in his youth, and always accompanied him on his excursions from the `Beagle', let us remind ourselves of the picture of creation given in Paradise Lost. It is that which Darwin spent the next twenty years in trying to blot out from his imagination:

[on the sixth day of creation God bids the earth bring forth beasts, each after his kind]

                         The Earth obey'd, and straight
Op'ning her fertile womb team'd at a birth
Innumerous living creatures, perfect forms,
Limb'd and full grown....
The grassy clods now calv'd; now half appear'd
The Tawny-lion, pawing to get free
His hinder parts, then springs as broke from bonds,
And rampant shakes his brinded mane; the ounce,
The libbard, and the tiger, as the mole
Rising, the crumbl'd earth above them threw
In hillocks; the swift stag from under ground
Bore up his branching head; scarce from his mould
Behemoth biggest born of earth upheav'd
His vastness; fleec't the flocks and bleating rose
As plants; ambiguous between sea and land
The river horse and scaly crocodile.
                         Book VII, 453 ff.

If then, neither the Bible, nor the Fathers, nor the Schoolmen support it, why should modern Christians feel obliged to defend an exploded scientific theory? [Moore, A.L., "Science and the Faith," Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co: London, 1887, pp.178ff.]" (Willey, B., "Darwin's Place in the History of Thought," in Banton, M.P., "Darwinism and the Study of Society: A Centenary Symposium," Quadrangle Books: Chicago IL, 1961, pp.8-9).

In fact Darwin was well aware (and therefore was additionally dishonest for pretending otherwise) that there was in his day a range of creationist positions (as there are today), some of which did not claim that "each species ha[d] been independently created," but in fact accepted universal common ancestry (as I do) but argued that God had guided and/or supernaturally intervened at strategic links in the chains of descent.

Indeed Richard Dawkins says there were "many Victorians [who] thought that the deity had intervened repeatedly, at crucial points in evolution" and in fact Darwin in October 1859, a month before he published his Origin of Species, had written about their position, tacitly acknowledging that there could have been "miraculous additions at any one stage of descent" but rejecting that outright on naturalistic philosophical (i.e. "non-miraculous") grounds:

"The Duke of Argyll, for instance, accepted the evidence that evolution had happened, but he wanted to smuggle divine creation in by the back door. He wasn't alone. Instead of a single, once and for all creation in the Garden of Eden, many Victorians thought that the deity had intervened repeatedly, at crucial points in evolution. Complex organs like eyes, instead of evolving from simpler ones by slow degrees as Darwin had it, were thought to have sprung into existence in a single instant. Such people rightly perceived that such instant 'evolution', if it occurred, would imply supernatural intervention: that is what they believed in. .... Darwin perceived this too. He wrote in a letter to Sir Charles Lyell, the leading geologist of his day: `If I were convinced that I required such additions to the theory of natural selection, I would reject it as rubbish...I would give nothing for the theory of Natural selection, if it requires miraculous additions at any one stage of descent.' [Darwin, C.R., Letter to C. Lyell, October 11, 1859, in Darwin, F., ed., "The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin," [1898], Basic Books: New York NY, Vol. II., 1959, reprint, pp.6-7]. This is no petty matter. In Darwin's view, the whole point of the theory of evolution by natural selection was that it provided a non-miraculous account of the existence of complex adaptations. For what it is worth, it is also the whole point of this book. For Darwin, any evolution that had to be helped over the jumps by God was not evolution at all." (Dawkins, R., "The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design," W.W Norton & Co: New York NY, 1986, pp.248-249. Emphasis original)

To be continued in part #3 with Darwin's second claim that:

"... when I was collecting facts for the 'Origin,' my belief in what is called a personal God was as firm as that of Dr. Pusey himself" (Darwin, C.R., Letter to C. Ridley, November 28, 1878, in Darwin, F., ed., "The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin," [1898], Basic Books: New York NY, Vol. II., 1959, reprint, pp.411-412).

Stephen E. Jones, BSc. (Biology).

---

Exodus 10:1-20. ¹Then the LORD said to Moses, "Go to Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart and the hearts of his officials so that I may perform these miraculous signs of mine among them ²that you may tell your children and grandchildren how I dealt harshly with the Egyptians and how I performed my signs among them, and that you may know that I am the LORD." ³So Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and said to him, "This is what the LORD, the God of the Hebrews, says: 'How long will you refuse to humble yourself before me? Let my people go, so that they may worship me. ⁴If you refuse to let them go, I will bring locusts into your country tomorrow. ⁵They will cover the face of the ground so that it cannot be seen. They will devour what little you have left after the hail, including every tree that is growing in your fields. ⁶They will fill your houses and those of all your officials and all the Egyptians-something neither your fathers nor your forefathers have ever seen from the day they settled in this land till now.' " Then Moses turned and left Pharaoh. ⁷Pharaoh's officials said to him, "How long will this man be a snare to us? Let the people go, so that they may worship the LORD their God. Do you not yet realize that Egypt is ruined?" ⁸Then Moses and Aaron were brought back to Pharaoh. "Go, worship the LORD your God," he said. "But just who will be going?" ⁹Moses answered, "We will go with our young and old, with our sons and daughters, and with our flocks and herds, because we are to celebrate a festival to the LORD." ¹⁰Pharaoh said, "The LORD be with you-if I let you go, along with your women and children! Clearly you are bent on evil. ¹¹No! Have only the men go; and worship the LORD, since that's what you have been asking for." Then Moses and Aaron were driven out of Pharaoh's presence. ¹²And the LORD said to Moses, "Stretch out your hand over Egypt so that locusts will swarm over the land and devour everything growing in the fields, everything left by the hail." ¹³So Moses stretched out his staff over Egypt, and the LORD made an east wind blow across the land all that day and all that night. By morning the wind had brought the locusts; ¹⁴they invaded all Egypt and settled down in every area of the country in great numbers. Never before had there been such a plague of locusts, nor will there ever be again. ¹⁵They covered all the ground until it was black. They devoured all that was left after the hail-everything growing in the fields and the fruit on the trees. Nothing green remained on tree or plant in all the land of Egypt. ¹⁶Pharaoh quickly summoned Moses and Aaron and said, "I have sinned against the LORD your God and against you. ¹⁷Now forgive my sin once more and pray to the LORD your God to take this deadly plague away from me." ¹⁸Moses then left Pharaoh and prayed to the LORD. ¹⁹And the LORD changed the wind to a very strong west wind, which caught up the locusts and carried them into the Red Sea. Not a locust was left anywhere in Egypt. ²⁰But the LORD hardened Pharaoh's heart, and he would not let the Israelites go.

`Dr. Pusey was mistaken in imagining that I wrote the 'Origin ' with any relation whatever to Theology' (Darwin) #1

This multi-part post is as a result of reading the critique of Darwin's Origin of Species, "Un-Science, Not Science, Adverse To Faith" (1878)

[Left: Edward Bouverie Pusey, Project Canterbury]

by Darwin's contemporary, Edward B. Pusey (1800-1882), the Oxford Professor of Hebrew (and the author of a great commentary on Daniel which I own), and then Darwin's response to it in a private letter to a C. Ridley (who apparently was H.N. Ridley, director of the Botanical Garden of Singapore) who had written to Darwin asking him questions about it.

In his letter Darwin gives two further examples of his dishonesty when it came to protecting his theory, claiming that: 1) "Dr. Pusey was mistaken in imagining that I wrote the 'Origin ' with any relation whatever to Theology" and 2) "when I was collecting facts for the 'Origin,' my belief in what is called a personal God was as firm as that of Dr. Pusey himself" (my emphasis):

"I just skimmed through Dr. Pusey's sermon, as published in the Guardian, but it did [not] seem to me worthy of any attention. As I have never answered criticisms excepting those made by scientific men, I am not willing that this letter should be published; but I have no objection to your saying that you sent me the three questions, and that I answered that Dr. Pusey was mistaken in imagining that I wrote the 'Origin ' with any relation whatever to Theology. I should have thought that this would have been evident to any one who had taken the trouble to read the book, more especially as in the opening lines of the introduction I specify how the subject arose in my mind. This answer disposes of your two other questions; but I may add that many years ago, when I was collecting facts for the 'Origin,' my belief in what is called a personal God was as firm as that of Dr. Pusey himself, and as to the eternity of matter I have never troubled myself about such insoluble questions. Dr. Pusey's attack will be as powerless to retard by a day the belief in Evolution, as were the virulent attacks made by divines fifty years ago against Geology, and the still older ones of the Catholic Church against Galileo, for the public is wise enough always to follow Scientific men when they agree on any subject ; and now there is almost complete unanimity amongst Biologists about Evolution, though there is still considerable difference as to the means, such as how far natural selection has acted, and how far external conditions, or whether there exists some mysterious innate tendency to perfectability. " (Darwin, C.R., Letter to C. Ridley, November 28, 1878, in Darwin, F., ed., "The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin," [1898], Basic Books: New York NY, Vol. II., 1959, reprint, pp.411-412).

As to 1) Darwin's claim that "Dr. Pusey was mistaken in imagining that I wrote the 'Origin ' with any relation whatever to Theology" (my emphasis), this is false and Darwin must have known it to be false.

That is, it is yet another example of what eminent British geneticist C.D. Darlington (1903-1981) noted, that "Darwin was slippery" employing "a flexible strategy which is not to be reconciled with even average intellectual integrity (my emphasis)":

"These were virtues or accidents. But side by side with them were what I shall describe as vices. These, we now have to admit, were almost as great a help, almost as valuable a combination in achieving his success, as the virtues that accompanied them. By that I mean his public and political success in mass conversion. These vices were of three kinds: a conservative outlook in every respect except the evolutionary hypothesis; a failure to recognize or to relate his own ideas, his larger ideas, with those of others working in the same field; and a flexible strategy which is not to be reconciled with even average intellectual integrity: by contrast with Wallace, Lyell, Hooker, Chambers or even Spencer, Darwin was slippery." (Darlington, C.D., "Darwin's Place in History," Basil Blackwell: Oxford UK, 1959, p.60)

First, as I have documented, in my web page: "Darwin's references to `creation' (or its cognates) in his The Origin of Species, 6th Edition, 1872," Darwin used the word "creation" (or its cognates) in his final edition of his Origin of Species at least 109 times, and almost always in a pejorative sense.

Here, for example, are eleven instances of where Darwin in his Origin attacked what he claimed was the then "ordinary view" of creation (my emphasis):

"It would be difficult to give any rational explanation of the affinities of the blind cave-animals to the other inhabitants of the two continents on the ordinary view of their independent creation." (Darwin, C.R., "The Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection," John Murray: London, Sixth Edition, 1872, Reprinted, 1882, p.111)

"On the ordinary view of each species having been independently created, why should that part of the structure, which differs from the same part in other independently created species of the same genus, be more variable than those parts which are closely alike in the several species? I do not see that any explanation can be given. But on the view that species are only strongly marked and fixed varieties, we might expect often to find them still continuing to vary in those parts of their structure which have varied within a moderately recent period, and which have thus come to differ." (Ibid., pp.122-123)

"In the vegetable kingdom we have a case of analogous variation, in the enlarged stems, or as commonly called roots, of the Swedish turnip and Ruta baga, plants which several botanists rank as varieties produced by cultivation from a common parent: if this be not so, the case will then be one of analogous variation in two so-called distinct species; and to these a third may be added, namely, the common turnip. According to the ordinary view of each species having been independently created, we should have to attribute this similarity in the enlarged stems of these three plants, not to the vera causa of community of descent, and a consequent tendency to vary in a like manner, but to three separated yet closely related acts of creation. " (Ibid., p.125)

"Mammals offer another and similar case. I have carefully searched the oldest voyages, and have not found a single instance, free from doubt, of a terrestrial mammal (excluding domesticated animals kept by the natives) inhabiting an island situated above 300 miles from a continent or great continental island; and many islands situated at a much less distance are equally barren. ... Yet it cannot be said that small islands will not support at least small mammals, for they occur in many parts of the world on very small islands, when lying close to a continent; and hardly an island can be named on which our smaller quadrupeds have not become naturalised and greatly multiplied. It cannot be said, on the ordinary view of creation, that there has not been time for the creation of mammals; many volcanic islands are sufficiently ancient, as shown by the stupendous degradation which they have suffered, and by their tertiary strata: there has also been time for the production of endemic species belonging to other classes; and on continents it is known that new species of mammals appear and disappear at a quicker rate than other and lower animals. Although terrestrial mammals do not occur on oceanic islands, aerial mammals do occur on almost every island. ... Why, it may be asked, has the supposed creative force produced bats and no other mammals on remote islands? On my view this question can easily be answered; for no terrestrial mammal can be transported across a wide space of sea, but bats can fly across." (Ibid., pp.350-351)

"The naturalist, looking at the inhabitants of these volcanic islands in the Pacific, distant several hundred miles from the continent, feels that he is standing on American land. Why should this be so? why should the species which are supposed to have been created in the Galapagos archipelago, and nowhere else, bear so plainly the stamp of affinity to those created in America? There is nothing in the conditions of life, in the geological nature of the islands, in their height of climate, or in the proportions in which the several classes are associated together, which closely resembles the conditions of the South American cost: in fact, there is a considerable dissimilarity in all these respects. On the other hand, there is a considerable degree of resemblance in the volcanic nature of the soil, in the climate, height and size of the islands, between the Galapagos and Cape Verde archipelagoes: but what an entire and absolute difference in their inhabitants! The inhabitants of the Cape Verde Islands are related to those of Africa, like those of the Galapagos to America. Facts such as these, admit of no sort of explanation on the ordinary view of independent creation: whereas on the view here maintained, it is obvious that the Galapagos Islands would be likely to receive colonists from America ? and the Cape Verde Islands from Africa; such colonists would be liable to modification, - the principle of the inheritance still betraying their original birthplace." (Ibid., p.354)

"The relations just discussed, - namely, lower organisms ranging more widely than the higher, - some of the species of widely-ranging genera themselves ranging widely, - such facts, as alpine, lacustrine, and marsh productions being generally related to those which live on the surrounding low lands and dry lands, - the striking relationship between the inhabitants of islands and those of the nearest mainland - the still closer relationship of the distinct inhabitants of the islands in the same archipelago - are inexplicable on the ordinary view of the independent creation of each species, but are explicable if we admit colonisation from the nearest or readiest source, together with the subsequent adaptation of the colonists to their new homes." (Ibid., p.359)

"We can see why characters derived from the embryo should be of equal importance with those derived from the adult, for a natural classification of course includes all ages. But it is by no means obvious, on the ordinary view, why the structure of the embryo should be more important for this purpose than that of the adult, which alone plays its full part in the economy of nature. Yet it has been strongly urged by those great naturalists, Milne Edwards and Agassiz, that embryological characters are the most important of all; and this doctrine has very generally been admitted as true." (Ibid., p.368)

"Geoffroy St. Hilaire has strongly insisted on the high importance of relative position or connexion in homologous parts; they may differ to almost any extent in form and size, and yet remain connected together in the same invariable order. We never find, for instance, the bones of the arm and fore-arm, or of the thigh and leg, transposed. Hence the same names can be given to the homologous bones in widely different animals. ... Nothing can be more hopeless than to attempt to explain this similarity of pattern in members of the same class, by utility or by the doctrine of final causes. The hopelessness of the attempt has been expressly admitted by Owen in his most interesting work on the 'Nature of Limbs.' On the ordinary view of the independent creation of each being, we can only say that so it is; - that it has pleased the Creator to construct all the animals and plants in each great class on a uniform plan; but this is not a scientific explanation. " (Ibid., pp.382-383)

"There is another and equally curious branch of our subject; namely, serial homologies, or the comparison of the different parts or organs in the same individual, and not of the same parts or organs in different members of the same class. Most physiologists believe that the bones of the skull are homologous - that is, correspond in number and in relative connexion - with the elemental parts of a certain number of vertebræ. The anterior and posterior limbs in all the higher vertebrate classes are plainly homologous. So it is with the wonderfully complex jaws and legs of crustaceans. It is familiar to almost every one, that in a flower the relative position of the sepals, petals, stamens, and pistils, as well as their intimate structure, are intelligible on the view that they consist of metamorphosed leaves arranged in a spire. In monstrous plants, we often get direct evidence of the possibility of one organ being transformed into another; and we can actually see, during the early or embryonic stages of development in flowers, as well as in crustaceans and many other animals, that organs, which when mature become extremely different are at first exactly alike. How inexplicable are the cases of serial homologies on the ordinary view of creation!" (Ibid., p.384)

"As natural selection acts by competition, it adapts and improves the inhabitants of each country only in relation to their co-inhabitants; so that we need feel no surprise at the species of any one country, although on the ordinary view supposed to have been created and specially adapted for that country, being beaten and supplanted by the naturalised productions from another land. Nor ought we to marvel if all the contrivances in nature be not, as far as we can judge, absolutely perfect, as in the case even of the human eye; or if some of them be abhorrent to our ideas of fitness. We need not marvel at the sting of the bee, when used against an enemy, causing the bee's own death; at drones being produced in such great numbers for one single act, and being then slaughtered by their sterile sisters; at the astonishing waste of pollen by our fir-trees; at the instinctive hatred of the queen-bee for her own fertile daughters; at ichneumonidæ feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars; or at other such cases. The wonder indeed is, on the theory of natural selection, that more cases of the want of absolute perfection have not been detected." (Ibid., pp.414-415)

"On the ordinary view of each species having been independently created, why should specific characters, or those by which the species of the same genus differ from each other, be more variable than generic characters in which they all agree? Why, for instance, should the colour of a flower be more likely to vary in any one species of a genus, if the other species possess differently coloured flowers, than if all possessed the same coloured flowers? (Ibid., pp.415-416).

Continued in part #2.

Stephen E. Jones, BSc. (Biology).

---

Exodus 9:13-35. ¹³Then the LORD said to Moses, "Get up early in the morning, confront Pharaoh and say to him, 'This is what the LORD, the God of the Hebrews, says: Let my people go, so that they may worship me, ¹⁴or this time I will send the full force of my plagues against you and against your officials and your people, so you may know that there is no one like me in all the earth. ¹⁵For by now I could have stretched out my hand and struck you and your people with a plague that would have wiped you off the earth. ¹⁶But I have raised you up for this very purpose, that I might show you my power and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth. ¹⁷You still set yourself against my people and will not let them go. ¹⁸Therefore, at this time tomorrow I will send the worst hailstorm that has ever fallen on Egypt, from the day it was founded till now. ¹⁹Give an order now to bring your livestock and everything you have in the field to a place of shelter, because the hail will fall on every man and animal that has not been brought in and is still out in the field, and they will die.' " ²⁰Those officials of Pharaoh who feared the word of the LORD hurried to bring their slaves and their livestock inside. ²¹But those who ignored the word of the LORD left their slaves and livestock in the field. ²²Then the LORD said to Moses, "Stretch out your hand toward the sky so that hail will fall all over Egypt-on men and animals and on everything growing in the fields of Egypt." ²³When Moses stretched out his staff toward the sky, the LORD sent thunder and hail, and lightning flashed down to the ground. So the LORD rained hail on the land of Egypt; ²⁴hail fell and lightning flashed back and forth. It was the worst storm in all the land of Egypt since it had become a nation. ²⁵Throughout Egypt hail struck everything in the fields-both men and animals; it beat down everything growing in the fields and stripped every tree. ²⁶The only place it did not hail was the land of Goshen, where the Israelites were. ²⁷Then Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron. "This time I have sinned," he said to them. "The LORD is in the right, and I and my people are in the wrong. ²⁸Pray to the LORD, for we have had enough thunder and hail. I will let you go; you don't have to stay any longer." ²⁹Moses replied, "When I have gone out of the city, I will spread out my hands in prayer to the LORD. The thunder will stop and there will be no more hail, so you may know that the earth is the LORD's. ³⁰But I know that you and your officials still do not fear the LORD God." ³¹(The flax and barley were destroyed, since the barley had headed and the flax was in bloom. ³²The wheat and spelt, however, were not destroyed, because they ripen later.) ³³Then Moses left Pharaoh and went out of the city. He spread out his hands toward the LORD; the thunder and hail stopped, and the rain no longer poured down on the land. ³⁴When Pharaoh saw that the rain and hail and thunder had stopped, he sinned again: He and his officials hardened their hearts. ³⁵So Pharaoh's heart was hard and he would not let the Israelites go, just as the LORD had said through Moses.

Re: Carnivorous plants as "Behe's mousetrap" #1

AN

Further to my interim message: "As is my normal practice,

[Above: Nepenthes villosa pitcher plant, Wikipedia]

I will respond in due course to your private message on my blog CreationEvolutionDesign, after removing your personal identifying information," here now is the first part of my multi-part response.

----- Original Message -----
From: AN
To: Stephen E. Jones
Sent: Sunday, March 18, 2007 2:04 PM
Subject: Carnivorous plants as "Behe's mousetrap"

>Hi Mr. Jones,
>
>As an amateur collector of carnivorous plants, I was very curious as to the origin and lineage of the Nepenthes pitcher plants. If you have not seen a Nepenthes pitcher plant, a minute's perusal on Google image search is well worth your time, they're spectacular.

I cannot recall if I have ever seen a pitcher plant `in the flesh', but I probably have, e.g. in Singapore's botanic gardens. But I agree that they are spectacular (see above). I definitely have seen a Venus flytrap (Dionaea muscipula) because several years ago I bought one in a pot, but it died!

>Your site was the first link I found when searching for information on this topic:
>
>Quote: http://members.iinet.net.au/~sejones/PoE/pe12plnt.html
>
>"I would like to see a detailed, step-by-step, Darwinian explanation of how the natural selection of random micromutations produced the elaborate traps of carnivorous plants, like the pitcher plant and the Venus flytrap. But I suspect there are none, because if there were, the Darwinists would not waste there time on peppered moths and finch beaks! Like Behe's mousetrap, all these parts are needed to be working together simultaneously as a coordinated system to catch insects."
>
>While I fully admit my ignorance on the origin of Nepenthes pitcher plants (hence my search!), I thought I'd give you a tour of how Venus Flytraps came about and do not, in fact, constitute an "unevolvable" Behe's mousetrap.

Professor Michael Behe, as far as I am aware, does not claim that anything is "unevolvable." He is in fact on record as stating that his position is "evolution occurred, but was guided by God" (my emphasis):

"[Eugenie] Scott refers to me as an intelligent design `creationist,' even though I clearly write in my book `Darwin's Black Box' (which Scott cites) that I am not a creationist and have no reason to doubt common descent. In fact, my own views fit quite comfortably with the 40% of scientists that Scott acknowledges think `evolution occurred, but was guided by God.' Where I and others run afoul of Scott and the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) is simply in arguing that intelligent design in biology is not invisible, it is empirically detectable. The biological literature is replete with statements like David DeRosier's in the journal `Cell': `More so than other motors, the flagellum resembles a machine designed by a human' [DeRosier D.J., "The Turn of the Screw: The Bacterial Flagellar Motor," Cell, Vol. 93, 1998, p.17]. Exactly why is it a thought-crime to make the case that such observations may be on to something objectively correct?" (Behe M.J., "Intelligent Design Is Not Creationism," Science, dEbate, 7 July 2000 ).

Therefore, in that sense, Behe would presumably accept that everything biological, including "Carnivorous plants" such as "Nepenthes pitcher plants" and "Venus Flytraps," are "evolvable".

Behe's claim is that "some biochemical systems, such as the blood clotting cascade or bacterial flagellum, are resistant to Darwinian explanation because they are irreducibly complex, i.e. are "a single system which is composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, and where the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning" (my emphasis):

In Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution (Behe 1996) I argued that some biochemical systems, such as the blood clotting cascade or bacterial flagellum, are resistant to Darwinian explanation because they are irreducibly complex. I defined irreducible complexity as a single system which is composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, and where the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning. (1996, 39) The difficulty for Darwinian theory is that an irreducibly complex system cannot be produced directly (that is, by continuously improving the initial function, which continues to work by the same mechanism) by slight, successive modifications of a precursor system, because any precursor to an irreducibly complex system that is missing a part is by definition nonfunctional. (1996, 39) To illustrate the concept with a familiar example for a general readership, I pointed to a simple mechanical mousetrap, composed of several parts such as the base, hammer, spring and so on, and noted that the absence of any of the parts destroys the mouse-catching ability of the trap. Darwin's vision of natural selection gradually improving function in `numerous, successive, slight modifications' (Darwin 1859) appears not to fit well with such systems. I went on to argue that, since intelligent agents are the only entities known to be able to construct irreducibly complex systems, the biochemical systems are better explained as the result of deliberate intelligent design." (Behe, M.J.*, "Self-Organization and Irreducibly Complex Systems: A Reply to Shanks and Joplin," Philosophy of Science, Vol. 67, No. 1, March 2000), pp. 55-162)

Therefore, since Behe has confined his claim for irreducible complexity to "biochemical systems" he would not (and as far as I am aware has not) claimed that either the pitcher plant or the Venus flytrap are "unevolvable", in the sense that they are irreducibly complex.

It was my claim that, "Like Behe's mousetrap, all these parts are needed to be working together simultaneously as a coordinated system to catch insects" and therefore they are possibly irreducibly complex in the sense of my definition of "irreducible complexity":

"Any complex biological system which could not plausibly have been formed by numerous successive slight modifications."

Therefore if my organism-level "mousetrap" arguments in this post fail, that does not mean that Behe's molecular-level "mousetrap" arguments fail. The latter stand or fall separately on their own merits.

>Trichomes are tiny hairs on plants. They can block UV light, secrete stinging material (as in nettles), or secrete sticky stuff. Petunias, potatoes, and other such plants produce sticky-tipped trichomes to keep tiny bugs away! Here's a couple close-up shots of defensive trichomes, one of a petunia and one of a verbena:
>
>[...]

Thanks for these fine examples (which I looked at and then deleted the link because they would identify you), but having completed a biology degree in 2004, I am well aware of what trichomes are.

>But, as it turns out, aside from protecting themselves from would-be pests, these plants put themselves in an interesting position. When such a plant is in a low-nutrient, high-sun, high-moisture environment like a swamp, the selective pressure to make any use of the buffet at their fingertips is enormous.

While I am sceptical of Darwinian (i.e. natural selection of random micromutations) explanations for complex systems (including "the elaborate traps of carnivorous plants, like the pitcher plant and the Venus flytrap), I do not rule them out, and I would have no major problem if they were proved to be true. As I have mentioned in previous posts [09-Jan-07 & 04-Nov-06], since 2003 (with minor variations), I have stated on my testimony page that "I would have no problem even if Darwinian evolution was proved to be 100% true":

"I would have no problem even if Darwinian evolution was proved to be 100% true (i.e. its facts, not its philosophy), because the God of the Bible is fully in control of all events, even those that seem random to man (Prov. 16:33; 1Kings 22:34). Jesus said that not even one sparrow will die unless God wills it (Mat. 10:29-30), which means that God is fully in control of natural selection. But if the Biblical God really exists there is no good reason to assume in advance that Darwinian (or any form of) naturalistic evolution is true!"

I don't buy the endlessly regurgitated but fallacious Darwinian propaganda (which I presume, like the `blind leading the blind' (Mt 15:14) they actually believe) that just by showing how the design was implemented, and Darwin didn't even do that-just how it might have been!:

Darwinism. The theory of how EVOLUTION might have come about which constitutes the great contribution to science made by Charles Darwin (1809-82). Darwin saw the evolutionary process as a series of adaptations: plants and animals differ one from another in their hereditary endowments, and those variants which equip an organism specially well to cope with the exigencies of the ENVIRONMENT will be preserved in the 'struggle for existence' and will thus become the prevailing type. Darwin used the term NATURAL SELECTION for this process of discrimination, mainly to avoid the lengthy periphrases that would be necessary to avoid its animistic overtones (see ANIMISM), of which he was fully aware. At the turn of the century Darwinism was seriously faulted for its explanatory glibness: 'the natural selection of favourable variations' was a formula that fitted all phenomena too well. In due course Darwinism had to be reformulated in the new language of Mendelian (see MENDELISM) GENETICS, and this revised doctrine, the prevailing one today, is called neo-Darwinism." (Medawar, P.B., "Darwinism," in Bullock, A. & Trombley, I., eds., "The Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought," [1977], Fontana Press: London, Revised Edition, 1988, p.200. Emphases original)

that thereby shows there was no design, e.g. "Darwin pointed out that no supernatural designer was needed; since natural selection could account for any known form of life":

"Darwinism removed the whole idea of God as the creator of organisms from the sphere of rational discussion. Before Darwin, people like Paley with his famous Evidences could point to the human hand or eye and say: `This organ is beautifully adapted; it has obviously been designed for its purpose; design means a designer; and therefore there must have been a supernatural designer.' Darwin pointed out that no supernatural designer was needed; since natural selection could account for any known form of life, there was no room for a supernatural agency in its evolution." (Huxley, J.S., "`At Random': A Television Preview," in Tax, S. & Callender, C., eds., "Evolution After Darwin: Issues in Evolution," University of Chicago Press: Chicago IL, Vol. III, 1960, pp.45-46)

But as the late great Princeton theologian Benjamin B. Warfield pointed out almost a century ago, "Some lack of general philosophical acumen must be suspected when it is not fully understood that ... Every teleological system implies a complete causo-mechanical explanation as its instrument":

"The antiteleological zeal of Mr. Darwin is well known. the vigor with which-as, for instance, in his correspondence with Asa Gray-he repelled the intrusion of teleology into his system betrays his fundamental thought. The antiteleological implication of Darwinism taken in its strictness when it becomes a system of pure accidentalism-is obvious. But it could have been hoped that by now we had got well beyond all that. Some lack of general philosophical acumen must be suspected when it is not fully understood that teleology is in no way inconsistent with-is, rather, necessarily involved in-a complete system of natural causation. Every teleological system implies a complete causo-mechanical explanation as its instrument. Why, then, should the investigators of the causo-mechanical explanation array themselves in polemic opposition to the very conception of governing purpose? Above all, why should they make their recognition or nonrecognition of teleological factors the test of the acceptability of theories? This gives the disagreeable appearance to the trend of biological speculation-we do not say of biological investigation-that it is less interested in science for science's sake, that is, in the increase of knowledge, than it is in the validation of a naturalistic worldview; that it is dominated, in a word, by philosophical conceptions not derived from science, but imposed on science from without." (Warfield, B.B., "Review of Vernon L. Kellogg, `Darwinism Today: A Discussion of Present-Day Scientific Criticism of the Darwinian Selection Theories, together with a Brief Account of the Principal and Other Proposed Auxiliary and Alternative Theories of Species-Forming' (New York: Henry Holt, 1907)," Princeton Theological Review, Vol. 6, October 1908, pp.640-50, in Noll M.A. & Livingstone D.N., eds, "B.B. Warfield: Evolution, Science and Scripture: Selected Writings," Baker: Grand Rapids MI, 2000, p.250)

Having said that, like most Darwinist explanations I have encountered, your argument is already fallacious. It is not "these plants," i.e. these present-day plants" that require explanation. They are indeed (like all plants and animals) adapted to their current environment, as Harvard geneticist Richard Lewontin pointed out, "all organisms are already adapted" (otherwise they would be extinct):

"If ecological niches can be specified only by the organisms that occupy them, evolution cannot be described as a process of adaptation because all organisms are already adapted. Then what is happening in evolution? One solution to this paradox is the Red Queen hypothesis, named by Leigh Van Valen of the University of Chicago for the character in Through the Looking Glass who had to keep running just to stay in the same place. Van Valen's theory is that the environment is constantly decaying with respect to existing organisms, so that natural selection operates essentially to enable the organisms to maintain their state of adaptation rather than to improve it. Evidence for the Red Queen hypothesis comes from an examination of extinction rates in a large number of evolutionary lines. If natural selection were actually improving the fit of organisms to their environments, then we might expect the probability that a species will become extinct in the next time period to be less for species that have already been in existence for a long time, since the long-lived species are presumably the ones that have been improved by natural selection. The data show, however, that the probability of extinction of a species appears to be a constant, characteristic of the group to which it belongs but independent of whether the species has been in existence for a long time or a short one. In other words, natural selection over the long run does not seem to improve a species' chance of survival but simply enables it to `track,' or keep up with, the constantly changing environment. " (Lewontin R.C., "Adaptation," Scientific American, Vol. 239, No. 3, September 1978, pp.157-169, p.159)

What requires explanation is how they originated, presumably millions of years ago, by "a detailed, step-by-step, Darwinian explanation of how the natural selection of random micromutations" or other mechanism.

Now although I mentioned "the pitcher plant" in that web page of mine you cited, my main interest is in the Venus flytrap, and so to simplify what would otherwise be a too long and complex response (it is already going to be multi-part), from now on I am only going to comment on the Venus flytrap, which you say above is your main interest too.

I look forward to your "tour of how Venus Flytraps came about" with "a detailed, step-by-step, Darwinian explanation of how the natural selection of random micromutations produced the elaborate traps of carnivorous plants, like the ... Venus flytrap" (my emphasis)!

To be continued in part #2.

Stephen E. Jones, BSc. (Biology).
CreationEvolutionDesign

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Exodus 9:8-12. ⁸Then the LORD said to Moses and Aaron, "Take handfuls of soot from a furnace and have Moses toss it into the air in the presence of Pharaoh. ⁹It will become fine dust over the whole land of Egypt, and festering boils will break out on men and animals throughout the land." ¹⁰So they took soot from a furnace and stood before Pharaoh. Moses tossed it into the air, and festering boils broke out on men and animals. ¹¹The magicians could not stand before Moses because of the boils that were on them and on all the Egyptians. ¹²But the LORD hardened Pharaoh's heart and he would not listen to Moses and Aaron, just as the LORD had said to Moses.

Terrorist a braggart with a liking for sins of the West

Today's The West Australian newspaper had an

[Left: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Daily Mail]

unwebbed article on terrorist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed titled, "Terrorist a braggart with a liking for sins of the West." However, I found it webbed at London's Daily Telegraph as follows:

Murderous trail of the one-time playboy who turned to terror, Daily Telegraph, Alex Spillius, 17 March 2007 ... Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's claim of responsibility for almost every major Islamist terror plot in the past dozen years comes as no surprise to those who have followed his murderous career. In 2002, 10 months before his arrest, he bragged to an al-Jazeera journalist on the record that he was behind the September 11 attacks and happily elaborated on the planning. "We first thought of striking at a couple of nuclear facilities but decided against it as it would go out of control," he told the interviewer, Yosri Fouda. However, as the camera started rolling, Mohammed struggled to form even the few phrases of classical Arabic with which al-Qa'eda operatives were supposed to begin discussions. This was no surprise. In contrast to most of al-Qa'eda's senior leaders, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed liked to indulge in the sins of the Western civilisation that his movement is devoted to wiping out. ...

Richard Dawkins in his The God Delusion accepts uncritically the terrorist propaganda as "articulated ... by bin Laden himself" that Islamic jihadists are motivated by religion, i.e. "Why would anyone want to destroy the World Trade Center and everybody in it? ... The answer is that men like bin Laden actually believe what they say they believe. ... Because they believed that they would go straight to paradise for doing so":

"Once again, Sam Harris put the point with percipient bluntness, taking the example of the Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden ... Why would anyone want to destroy the World Trade Center and everybody in it? To call bin Laden `evil' is to evade our responsibility to give a proper answer to such an important question. Why would anyone want to destroy the World Trade Center and everybody in it? To call bin Laden `evil' is to evade our responsibility to give a proper answer to such an important question. `The answer to this question is obvious - if only because it has been patiently articulated ad nauseam by bin Laden himself. The answer is that men like bin Laden actually believe what they say they believe. They believe in the literal truth of the Koran. Why did nineteen well-educated middle-class men trade their lives in this world for the privilege of killing thousands of our neighbors? Because they believed that they would go straight to paradise for doing so. It is rare to find the behavior of humans so fully and satisfactorily explained. Why have we been so reluctant to accept this explanation? [Harris, S., "The End of Faith," W.W. Norton & Co: New York, 2004, p.29]" (Dawkins, R., "The God Delusion," Bantam Press: London, 2006, pp.303-304. Emphasis original)

Which in turn was, according to Dawkins, "because they have been brought up, from the cradle, to have total and unquestioning faith" (emphasis original):

"The respected journalist Muriel Gray, writing in the (Glasgow) Herald on 24 July 2005, made a similar point, in this case with reference to the London bombings. `Everyone is being blamed, from the obvious villainous duo of George W. Bush and Tony Blair, to the inaction of Muslim `communities'. But it has never been clearer that there is only one place to lay the blame and it has ever been thus. The cause of all this misery, mayhem, violence, terror and ignorance is of course religion itself, and if it seems ludicrous to have to state such an obvious reality, the fact is that the government and the media are doing a pretty good job of pretending that it isn't so.' Our Western politicians avoid mentioning the R word (religion), and instead characterize their battle as a war against `terror', as though terror were a kind of spirit or force, with a will and a mind of its own. Or they characterize terrorists as motivated by pure `evil'. But they are not motivated by evil. However misguided we may think them, they are motivated, like the Christian murderers of abortion doctors, by what they perceive to be righteousness, faithfully pursuing what their religion tells them. They are not psychotic; they are religious idealists who, by their own lights, are rational. They perceive their acts to be good, not because of some warped personal idiosyncrasy, and not because they have been possessed by Satan, but because they have been brought up, from the cradle, to have total and unquestioning faith." (Dawkins, Ibid., p.303. Emphasis original).

But this is contradicted by the facts. Apart from there being hundreds of millions of devout Muslims who are not suicide bombers, terrorists like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed are not particularly (if at all) religious, as the Daily Telegraph article continuing makes clear, "while plotting the hijacking and bombing of a dozen US airliners ... he frequented nightclubs and pole-dancing bars in Manila with some regularity" and he was"not very religious himself" (my emphasis):

... In the mid-1990s, while plotting the hijacking and bombing of a dozen US airliners and, to a lesser extent, the assassination of Pope John Paul II, he frequented nightclubs and pole-dancing bars in Manila with some regularity. In Kuala Lumpur he reportedly buzzed a high-rise building in a helicopter where one of his numerous girlfriends was staying, ringing her from the cockpit and telling her to look out of the window. He would introduce himself as a wealthy businessman from Qatar, which had some truth - he worked as an engineer for the government in the Gulf state for a time. Peter Bergen, the author and leading expert on al-Qa'eda, said: "I think he really was in it for the fun. To use a horrible metaphor in this context, he was having a blast. "He was obviously pathologically antisemitic but not very religious himself. He wasn't one to quote Saudi clerics." ...

Like other al-Qa'eda leaders, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's qualifications were purely secular and military, not religious:

... Mohammed, often referred to in security circles as KSM, was al-Qa'eda's principal ideas man. He came to Osama bin Laden with the concept for September 11, having failed to pull off the precursor plan in south-east Asia. It was the head of al-Qa'eda who scaled down the US operation from 10 to four aircraft, and appointed Mohammed Atta as the brutally efficient leader of the suicide force. The south-east Asia plot placed Mohammed on the authorities' radar screen but he evaded capture until March 2003, using 27 aliases and a variety of fake passports. American security sources once referred to him as the Forrest Gump of al-Qa'eda because he was involved in so many plots in so many places. The French issued an arrest warrant for his involvement in the suicide bombing of a Tunisian synagogue in 2002, and he was linked, by suspects, to the 2002 beheading of the American reporter Daniel Pearl and to the Bali bombing in the same year. ...

And "His taste for the good life aside, he closely matched the profile of al-Qa'eda leaders" being "well educated and familiar with the West" and "a professional terrorist" (my emphasis):

... His taste for the good life aside, he closely matched the profile of al-Qa'eda leaders. He was well educated and familiar with the West, gaining an engineering degree from the North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University. He was born in Kuwait in either 1964 or 1965, but his family was originally from Baluchistan, a Pakistani province bordering Afghanistan. After graduating he settled in the Pakistani city of Peshawar, where the American-backed jihadist movement against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan was based, and bin Laden was a behind-the-scenes wealthy backer. Mr Bergen estimates that to some degree Mohammed was involved in most of the 31 plots he cited in his testimony to the Guantanamo tribunal. "It is entirely plausible. He was involved for so long. He was a professional terrorist." ...

Alister and Joanna McGrath in their "The Dawkins Delusion?" make the same point that while "For Dawkins, it is obvious that it is religious belief that leads to suicide bombings," in fact "empirical studies of why people are driven to suicide bombings," as for example Robert A. Pape's "definitive account of the motivations of such attacks, based on surveys of every suicide bombing since 1980, religious belief of any kind is neither necessary nor sufficient to create suicide bombers" (my emphasis):

"Dawkins would, I think, protest that religious world views offer motivations for violence that are not paralleled elsewhere - for example, the thought of entering paradise after a suicidal attack. [Dawkins, "God Delusion," pp.303-304] Yet this conclusion is a little hasty and poorly argued. The God Delusion is to be seen as one of a number of books to emerge from the events now universally referred to as '9/11' - the suicide attacks on buildings in Washington and New York. For Dawkins, it is obvious that it is religious belief that leads to suicide bombings. It's a view that his less critical secular readers will applaud, provided they haven't read the empirical studies of why people are driven to suicide bombings in the first place. As Robert Pape showed in his definitive account of the motivations of such attacks, based on surveys of every suicide bombing since 1980, religious belief of any kind is neither necessary nor sufficient to create suicide bombers - despite Dawkins' breezy simplifications. [Pape, R.A., "Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism," Random House: New York, 2005] (Remember, the infamous `suicide vest' was invented by Tamil Tigers back in 1991.) Pape's evidence is that the fundamental motivation is political: the desire to force the withdrawal of foreign forces occupying land believed to belong to an oppressed people, who have seriously limited military resources at their disposal. This isn't what Dawkins will want to hear, but it is an important element in reflecting on how this phenomenon arose, and what might need to be done to end it." (McGrath, A. & McGrath, J.C., "The Dawkins Delusion?," SPCK: London, 2007, pp.49-50. Emphasis original).

But then this must be well-known to Dawkins, since it was the subject of a New Scientist article of 23 July 2005 (a day before the Muriel Gray article above and so while Dawkins was still writing his book), which reported on "Ariel Merari, a psychologist at Tel Aviv University who has traced the background of every suicide bomber in the Middle East since 1983" and found that "suicide terrorists are better off than average for their community and better educated," "They don't have to be Islamic extremists either, or even radicalised by faith," and in fact "the modern pioneers of suicide terrorism, the Tamil Tigers" (who the McGraths point out above invented the "suicide vest") "are secular Marxist-Leninists" (my emphasis):

"ASK someone to sketch a personality profile of a typical suicide bomber and the chances are it would not come close to describing the four young men who, it seems, blew themselves up in London two weeks ago. Even from their friends and families the refrain has been, `I can't believe he would have done such a thing - not him.' And when you look at who they were, it is hard to believe. There was Mohammad Sidique Khan, father and teaching assistant, loved by the children he taught and well respected by his community; Hasib Hussain, the `nice lad' from a close-knit family; Shehzad Tanweer, the cricket-loving sports science graduate; and Germaine Lindsay, a young father described as `dead brainy' by a schoolmate. None of them had a criminal record, none was mentally ill, none was especially poor, and they were mostly well educated. All of them grew up in the UK. In short, they were not what you'd expect in a suicide bomber. Except you'd be wrong. Most suicide bombers anywhere in the world appear to be normal. Study after study has shown that suicide terrorists are better off than average for their community and better educated. They are also rarely suicidal in the pathological sense. Ariel Merari, a psychologist at Tel Aviv University who has traced the background of every suicide bomber in the Middle East since 1983, has found symptoms of mental illness or drug and alcohol abuse in very few. They don't have to be Islamic extremists either, or even radicalised by faith. True, the London bombers were all Muslims, as are the vast majority of suicide attackers in Iraq, Afghanistan and Israel. Yet many of the suicide bombers in Lebanon in the 1980s were from secular Christian backgrounds. And one of the modern pioneers of suicide terrorism, the Tamil Tigers, are secular Marxist-Leninists." (Bond, M., "Turning ordinary people into suicide bombers," New Scientist, 23 July 2005).

As I observed in my January 2006 post, "The Problem with God: Interview with Richard Dawkins #6," "Actual research shows that `Suicide bombers ... are usually far from being the ... religious fanatics ... they are often portrayed as" and in fact they "are often secular, well-educated individuals" ("What makes bombers tick?," The Age, May 14, 2004) ... That is, they are more like Dawkins than Billy Graham or Mother Teresa!" (my emphasis).

Stephen E. Jones, BSc. (Biology).

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Exodus 9:1-7. ¹Then the LORD said to Moses, "Go to Pharaoh and say to him, 'This is what the LORD, the God of the Hebrews, says: "Let my people go, so that they may worship me." ²If you refuse to let them go and continue to hold them back, ³the hand of the LORD will bring a terrible plague on your livestock in the field-on your horses and donkeys and camels and on your cattle and sheep and goats. ⁴But the LORD will make a distinction between the livestock of Israel and that of Egypt, so that no animal belonging to the Israelites will die.' " ⁵The LORD set a time and said, "Tomorrow the LORD will do this in the land." ⁶And the next day the LORD did it: All the livestock of the Egyptians died, but not one animal belonging to the Israelites died. ⁷Pharaoh sent men to investigate and found that not even one of the animals of the Israelites had died. Yet his heart was unyielding and he would not let the people go.