Why Ann Coulter Thinks Evolution is False, Part Seven

“Even the evolutionists themselves can’t agree on the facts.”

In her book Godless, Ms. Coulter makes the puerile error of misinterpreting punctuated equilibrium.  For anyone unfamiliar with the finer points of evolutionary debate within the scientific community, punctuated equilibrium (PE) is a theory proposed by Niles Eldredge and the late Stephen Jay Gould.  It posits that the evolutionary history of life is not as gradual as standard Darwinism implies; Gould and Eldredge point out that species often branch “suddenly” into new species, as well as go through long periods of stasis.

You have to take the word “suddenly” in context.  What Ms. Coulter and her intellectual peers do is interpret this to mean saltation; that is, the abrupt appearance of a radically different organism, perhaps in a single generation.  They make jokes about a cow giving birth to a beaver or similar nonsense.  In Godless, Ms. Coulter said that the rapid species hopping supposedly predicted by PE is the equivalent of a “nontheological miracle.”

Soon after proposing PE, Gould and Eldredge were disconcerted by the number of creationists and media figures who took the theory out of context.  Not only does this mean Darwinism is on shaky ground, the creationists proclaimed, it also supports the idea of creation events.  (It’s humorous that they try to use the arguments posed by Gould, who was one of the leading opponents of Intelligent Design, to support their claim!  Why not take that Gould position and run with it, if they put so much stock in the man’s arguments?)

But this is simply a case of misunderstanding the theory.  What I don’t know is why otherwise intelligent people like Ms. Coulter are still doing so.

Number one, when Gould and Eldredge speak of rapid speciation events, they mean “rapid” compared to the time frames associated with the geological ages common in paleontology.  The speciation events they describe are tens or hundred of thousands of years long.  What’s more, these speciation events still operate on the basic principle of Darwinism: small insensible changes over that period of time.  Creationists like Ms. Coulter have used their limited imaginations to seize upon this idea as consistent with creationism, but the issue is nothing more than a matter of degree.  Even strict punctuation looks like Darwinian gradualism when you view it on a tighter timeline.

To be sure, punctuated equilibrium is a radical viewpoint.  Perhaps it has more validity than its main opponents (such as Richard Dawkins) think.  Or perhaps not.  This type of debate is what happens in science.  It’s vital, it’s required.  It’s how progress is made.  It’s how mistakes are found.  Science is always open to debate, it’s always a bit “unsettled.”

Debate within the scientific community is normal.  It doesn’t mean the theory of evolution is in trouble.  It doesn’t mean the precepts of natural selection are in doubt, it doesn’t mean fifty percent of scientists think evolution isn’t true, and it certainly doesn’t mean that scientists are “coming around” to creationism.  More evidence supporting evolution exists now certainly doesn’t mean that scientists are “coming around” to creationism.  More evidence supporting evolution exists now than has ever existed.  Wait a decade, and this will be true then, as well.  And you can be certain that there’ll also be creationists grasping for attention, trying to enforce their “science” in courtrooms, and coming up with new ways of stating the same ineffectual arguments in lieu of any evidence – as they’ve been doing for centuries.

Darwin’s Transparent Box

I just finished reading Darwin’s Black Box, the Intelligent Design manifesto by Michael Behe.  Along with Phillip Johnson’s Darwin on Trial, this is the must-read book for anyone who rejects the evidence for evolution and wants to put on a shroud of pseudo-legitimacy.  (If you’ve also read Ann Coulter’s book Godless, it’s clear where she gets her nonsense.)

Behe’s the biochemist who came up with the term “irreducibly complex” to describe biological systems.  His claim is a slightly updated version of the old creationist canard of personal incredulity:  “This [insert whatever structure you want] is just too complex and/or beautiful to have arisen by natural causes, so an intelligent being must have designed it.”  You could also say it like this:  “Since I personally can’t think of a way this might have developed through Darwinian selection, I”m going to claim that it isn’t possible.”

The problem here is that Behe’s examples (bacterial flagella, cilia, the immune system, the blood clotting cascade) have been shown to be wrong.  Simpler (that’s “reduced in complexity,” for Mr. Behe) versions are found elsewhere.  For anyone interested in the science behind these examples, I would suggest Kenneth Miller’s book Finding Darwin’s God.  Miller is the biologist who testified, along with Behe, at the Dover, Pennsylvania trial over creationism in public schools.

Of course, it’s not just that Behe’s examples are wrong, it’s the fundamental idea behind trying to hold up such examples.  He has a good point that evolutionary scientists should be actively formulating theories for how these biological systems originated (and they are), and science welcomes all challenges (in fact it thrives on being challenged).  But Behe has concluded that nature screams out “intelligent design” while ignoring the fact that it simply doesn’t exist.

One of the most common arguments against intelligent design is the imperfection, waste, and vestigial structures in living organisms (junk DNA, pelvic bones on snakes, backwards wiring in the vertebrate eye, etc.).  Behe’s answer to things like this is twofold.  First, he says that maybe these inefficient structures really have a purpose we haven’t figured out yet.  Yeah, maybe.  Maybe there’s a designed purpose for wisdom teeth, hemorrhoids, and DNA that doesn’t code for any protein. Maybe there are also microscopic fairies that live in our mitochondria.  This is the courtroom equivalent of trying to introduce reasonable doubt by saying an invisible alien committed the crime.  Without any evidence backing it up, without a theory, without even a guess, it’s inconsequential.

Second, Behe accuses scientists who bring up this argument (like Miller and Richard Dawkins) of making assumptions about the mind of a designer.  A designer isn’t under any obligation to make us perfect, Behe argues, and we can’t know why he made us this way or that way.  Not only is this argument non-scientific (it can’t be tested), but it smacks of the same old religious hocus pocus: You just have to trust what God did even if you’ll never understand He did it.

Behe makes perfectly clear his delusion by using the following analogy.  He says that if a photocopier that has made ten perfect copies suddenly makes one copy that has smudges on it, that’s not a reason to assume the photocopier was developed by gradual Darwinian steps.

Nice try.  But a more appropriate analogy would be if the photocopier had a completely useless circuit or gear inside it.  A circuit or gear that does nothing, and indeed looks like a usable part from an earlier, less sophisticated model of photocopier.  Machines designed by intelligence never have things like that; living machines designed by natural selection do.

President Obama

The other night I heard Ann Coulter call Barack Obama a “socialist who wants to surrender.”  What’s funny about a statement like that is a great many of Obama’s supporters and political allies probably wouldn’t disagree!  (Imagine that, Obama supporters agreeing with Ann Coulter.)  I mean, he surrounds himself with America-hating, Marxist-leaning scumbags like “Reverend” Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, and some of the people in groups like Acorn.  He’s comfortable with George Soros, Media Matters, and the Daily Kos.  Louis Farrakhan and Hezbollah have voiced their support for him.

Let’s look at the two charges in Ms. Coulter’s statement.  First, Obama wants to surrender (in Iraq).  What would have happened, had we listened to Obama’s plan a couple years ago and pulled out Iraq in defeat and humiliation?  What would have happened to Iraq if we’d listened to Obama and decided that the Surge wasn’t going to work?  Maybe Obama doesn’t consider this “surrender,” but I guarantee that al Qaeda would have.  How would Obama like to see thousands of Muslim extremists cheering in the streets that they “defeated America?”  Christ, he still can’t even admit that the Surge was the right plan!  And where was his vote to condemn the “General Betray Us” ad created by his political pals?

I’m inclined to agree with Obama that going into Iraq was probably the wrong move overall.  If we could do it all over again, we wouldn’t take that route.  But that doesn’t make Ms. Coulter’s statement any less true.  Surrender is still surrender.  The point here is not whether we were wrong about Iraq in the first place; the point is whether pulling out (surrendering) would be yet another mistake.

Then we have the term “socialist.”  Okay, we all know that Obama isn’t a socialist in the strictest sense.  But certainly it’s fair to say that he subscribes to some socialist tenets.  We’re talking about a guy who wants nearly a trillion dollars in spending entitlement programs.  A guy who continuously spouts a populist message of class warfare and wealth redistribution.  I read The Audacity of Hope:  Obama supports salary caps for CEOs!  He had the audacity to claim that wealthy Americans have too much by giving a list of what he sees as extraneous luxuries!

Then we have his vice president on TV saying that it’s “patriotic” for the wealthy to pay more taxes.  Biden even shamelessly used the word “take” when talking about taxing the rich.  So now you’re unpatriotic if you disagree with non-producing politicians deciding how much of your money they should take and where it should go.  I find that absolutely amazing.

If left-wing guys like Alan Colmes want people to stop referring to Obama as a socialist, maybe he should tell him to stop preaching a message of taxing the rich and giving to the poor.  Obama shrouds it thusly: “There are things we must do, and the only way to pay for these things is by taxing those who are doing well.”  He makes it sound like he’s only doing what’s necessary, like making the best of a wave that’s crashing over us by surfing it.

Of course, the operative word here is “must.”  Things we “must” do.  What a crock.  What Obama really means is, “There are things I think we should do to remake America in my very left-wing vision.”

Why Ann Coulter Thinks Evolution is False, Part VI

“Natural selection is a tautology.”

For those who don’t understand Ms. Coulter’s tactic of pointing out the tautological nature of a phrase like “survival of the fittest,” it is this: Natural selection is a pointless repetition that collapses upon itself.  It becomes a truism that can’t be falsified, which means it is not science.  It’s like saying, “The fittest organisms are the ones that pass on their genes, and they are passing on their genes because they are the fittest.”  It says nothing about the world, it’s meaningless.  You might as well say the color red is red because it has the properties of being red.

Upon first hearing this nonsens you might frown and ask, “So what?”  This is a foolish word game, a smirking bit of charlatanry, a philosophical trick to divert attention from the fact that the creationist has no empirical data to present.

All of us – including Ms. Coulter – know that natural selection works.  Even the staunchest creationists don’t deny that it can at least make small changes like alter the shape of a bird’s beak, or bring the sickle-cell trait to humans in malaria-ridden parts of the world.  Indeed, creationists often hijack natural selection to try to add scientific legitimacy to their Great Flood myth.  In order to get around the logistical problems of fitting so many animals on a ship, they say that Noah took only one “kind” of each animal.  For instance, only one feline pair was aboard the Ark, and after the flood was over, every modern feline, from tigers to tabbies, “adapted” from that one founding pair.

The only problem creationists have with natural selection is that they can’t accept it can make bigalterations, like changing one species into another.  They admit natural selection works, they just imagine some evanescent roadblock that prevents many small changes adding up to bigger ones.  In Ms. Coulter’s book Godless, she makes her position clear by demoting natural selection to only being able to make small changes within a species.

You can call evolution a theory, you can call it a fact, you can say natural selection is tautology – none of that matters.  The manner in which human beings label something doesn’t alter reality.  There is empirical evidence that natural selection is a real force that works changes in the real world.  You can go look at it.  There’s nothing esoteric about it, and no amount of creationist word-finagling is going to change the fact that we can all watch it happen with our own eyes.

Regardless, if Ms. Coulter wants to play this game, I can accommodate her.  Yes, it is a fact that every creature in nature cannot survive and pass on its genes.  There is a struggles for resources and mates.  Some creatures die while others live on.  This is a truism, but it’s not a tautology.  If, for instance, every creature was identical, loved for the same length of time, and asexually reproduced one identical offspring, then Darwinism would be wrong.  It could not be applies to the real world.

Evolutionary theory makes testable predictions about adaptations, about group selection, about sexual selection, and even about whether certain traits are adaptations at all.  Natural selection, or “survival of the fittest,” is not a tautology at all.  It is testable scientific theory – which means it can be falsified.

I suggest an actual tautology for Ms. Coulter to consider, the creationist staple knows as the cosmological argument for the existence of God: “There must be a first cause because everything has a cause.”

Sexism and Bias in Politics

I’m so sick of hearing the Republican, right-wing cavemen out there demeaning women in politics.  They created an attack machine against Hillary Clinton in the primaries, claiming that her mothering skills were suspect, and that she “couldn’t run her own household, let alone the free world.”  Yep, those patriarchal Republicans are so typical in their hatred of strong, independent women.

The preceding paragraph is total bullshit, of course.  It was Michelle Obama who made the crack about Hillary Clinton not being able to run her own household.  The Republicans never had any sexist attack machine against Senator Clinton; the Obama sycophants in the media managed that all by themselves.  It’s clear where the true sexism is today.

Enter Sarah Palin, and we suddenly have an US Weeklycover that screams “Babies, Lies, and Scandal.”  We suddenly have liberal women on TV questioning whether Governor Palin should be running for vice president when she has a young child at home.  We suddenly have Democrats who are suspicious of her ethics because her seventeen-year-old daughter Bristol is pregnant.  We suddenly hear Hitler references and fabrications about the “true” mother of Palin’s baby.  Barack Obama has never been asked a single tough questions about his policies or his dubious personal relationships: McCain’s running mate is announced and less than week later she’s already been slammed harder and more often than Obama ever was.

This double standard is absolutely sickening.  Silly me, thinking that a strong, intelligent woman with a family who’s running for the second-highest office in the country should elicit pride from everyone, especially women and particularly feminists.  Instead, one of Governor Palin’s “sisters” in the media asked whether she should be running for vice president because she has a young child at home.

How about this woman ask whether Barack Obama should be vying for the most important job in the world – by her rationale, won’t he be neglecting his two young daughters?  Could you imagine if Republicans said something like this about a female Democratic candidate?  Could you imagine the feminist marches, the public outcry, the demands for an apology?

But hey, Sarah Palin is pro-life and owns a gun – so who really cares?  It’s not like we can expect Gloria Steinem or any other fair-weather feminist to come rushing to her defense.  I remember Ann Coulter once remarking that some feminists despise her (Coulter) so much that although they’re normally against rape, they’d make an exception in her case.   Irrational partisanship has grown so ridiculous nowadays that I’m not even sure how much of exaggeration that is anymore.  After all, there are people who celebrate when a Republican gets cancer.  Michael Moore claims that “God is on our side” when a hurricane disrupts the Republican Convention. 

Here’s what’s funny:  The most apt coverage of Bristol Palin’s pregnancy came from Stephen Colbert.  After talking up a “shameful story” concerning Sarah Palin’s daughter (which everyone assumed to be the teen pregnancy), Colbert revealed his criticism: Palin had inflicted her daughter with the name Bristol.   He didn’t say a word about the pregnancy.  If only the “real” journalists would learn from Colbert.

I myself am pro-choice and socially progressive.  I think Palin’s position on having creation “science” taught in public schools is absurd.  I’m also a convicted felon.  And yet I wouldn’t repeat half the nasty, insulting, sexist things that are being said about Governor Palin and her family.  This entire election has become a circus, a popularity contest, a quest for scandal and entertainment.  You’ll find more depth and integrity on an episode of Big Brother.  Everyone needs to calm down and stick to the issues that are actually important.  Most of all, they need to grow up.

Why the World Needs Ann Coulter

It’s not only annoying when people are hampered by political correctness; it’s downright dangerous.  By “hampered” I mean afraid to speak up and criticize bad behavior because it might get them labeled a bigot.  The prime example of this nowadays is the rank cowardice of people who won’t criticize fundamentalist Islam for fear of being called “intolerant” or “anti-Muslim.”

You can hardly blame them, I suppose.  Every time such a point is made – every time someone says that traditional Islam is oppressive to women, that thousands of so-called moderate Muslims cheered in the streets on 9/11, that anti-Semitic hatred and extremism is being preached in mosques, that we should favor scrutiny of people of Middle-Eastern descent over scrutiny of elderly Caucasian ladies at the airport – the PC Police cry foul and say “you’re unfairly labeling all Muslims, you big meanie!”

Never mind that no one said the first thing about “all” Muslims.  Look at what happened to Salman Rushdie.  Look at what happens when an elderly British teacher names a teddy bear after the prophet.  Look at what happens when a Danizh cartoon lampoons the prophet.  Look what happens when Ayaan Hirsi Ali says that by current laws, the prophet would be a child molester. (What is untrue about that, considering that he took a wife whose age was a single digit?)

Just because someone is criticizing the bad aspects of Islam doesn’t mean they’re criticizing all Islam, and it doesn’t mean they’re criticizing only Islam.  No reasonable person thinks that all Muslims are terrorists, or that the overall message of Islam is violent jihad.  I like to think that the civilized world is beyond such simple-minded stereotyping.  But to say that we don’t have a right to criticize terrorist murderers sworn to destroy us because they happen to be Muslims is absurd.

This problem isn’t solely limited to challenges of fundamentalist Islam.  If you censor Barack Obama, you become a racist.  Challenge Hillary Clinton, and you’re sexist.  Ask tough questions about God or faith, and you’re being disrespectful of people’s beliefs.  This is nothing but a way of slinking away from our responsibility to deal with the tough issues.  It’s intellectual laziness, it’s moral cowardice, and worst of all, it damages our ability to use reason.  How can we have an honest discussion about anything if we’re forced at every turn to worry about hurting someone’s feelings?

Recently I even saw a man on TV claiming that the term “black hole” is racist against blacks.  Words fail me.

It is to this end that I say the world needs more people like Ann Coulter.  Not because I agree with her, not because I think she’s always fair, not because I think people should mimic her viewpoints.  I wouldn’t repeat some of the things she’s said.  Hell, almost everyone I know calls her a heartless bitch for what she said about those 9/11 widows – and I’m talking about convicted felons here!

The point is that she’s not afraid to be despised by the PC Police.  She doesn’t care if they point that finger at her.  She won’t be guilt-tripped into silence by dingbats who whine about feelings getting hurt at the expense of critical inquiry.  If for no other reason, that makes her voice an important one.  If you can’t stand her, then let everyone know the reasons why.  Argue with her.  If she’s as horrible as you say she is, shouldn’t it be simple to expose her?  Wouldn’t it be more constructive to try to prove her wrong instead of trying to shut her down with shackles of political correctness?

Why Bill O’Reilly is Right About Radical Liberals

Foremost among the irrationality of the radical left is the conspiracy theory about 9/11.  This is an utterly unsurprising movement if you consider that millions of Americans also subscribe to notions such as alien abductions, power crystals, astrology, and the prattling of hucksters like Sylvia Browne and John Edward.  We had the grassy knoll, Area 51, and Pearl Harbor – this is just the latest installment of America’s fascination with being gullible, and yet another example of how walking the road of nonsense is vastly easier than using your brain.

To answer this foolishness about 9/11, don’t believe any authority figure, don’t listen to Rosie O’Donnell or Willie Nelson, don’t accept it because you hate George Bush – just look at the evidence.  It’s non-negotiable and it isn’t colored by ideology or bias.  Evidence is only evidence.  Yes, you’re right, burning jet fuel isn’t hot enough to melt steel.  It is, however, hot enough to weaken it significantly.  Really, it looked to you like a controlled demolition brought the buildings down?  Then why did they start collapsing from the exact points where the planes hit them?  Yes, there really was wreckage at the Pentagon and yes, there really was a great deal of structural damage to Building Seven.  (For an impressive array of evidence debunking this garbage, I suggest the 2006 Vol. 12, No. 4 issue of Skeptic magazine.)

Was there incompetence leading up to 9/11?  Were there simple things that could have been done to prevent it?  Were warning signs ignored?  Most definitely.  But you can say the same for every tragedy that happens.  Hindsight is much better than twenty-twenty.

The Bush-hating rolls right from the 9/11 conspiracy nuts.  Fine, George Bush is a horrible president, he led us into a war for the wrong reason, he has discredited America on the world stage, he has spent money like crazy and raised the national debt, he condones water-boarding, the PATRIOT Act has taken away some of our liberty.  Those are all valid points.  Argue them and elect a Democrat if that’s what you want.

But please, for the sake of rationality, stop the nonsense.  None of that makes Bush evil or diabolical, or a power-mad dictator trying to turn this country into a totalitarian state.  He’ll be gone in a few months with no more money or power than he had when he was first inaugurated.  Barack Obama will be sitting in his place, and then what will you have to whine about?  Other than a quasi-socialist nanny state, that is?

The liberal ideologues who are convinced of their holiness rank pretty high on the irrationality scale.  These are the people who can’t seem to cede a point or accept an explanations if it comes from the mouth of a conservative.  They can do nothing but discredit them, insult them, and leap on any opportunity to call them racist or bigoted in some other way.  Conservatives are Americans, and just because you disagree with their ideology doesn’t mean they’re automatically wrong in everything they say.  Again: Evidence are only evidence.  It doesn’t matter if it’s presented by a conservative or a liberal, a Republican or a Democrat, Bill O’Reilly or Bill Moyers.

Regardless, conservatives have every right to their opinions.  Ann Coulter may be cruel for saying that 9/11 widows are enjoying their husband’s deaths, but she doesn’t deserve to be shouted down or hit with pies.  You might no agree with Rush Limbaugh’s opinions, but you should be defending his right to express them.  Sean Hannity may be a hypocritical demagogue for claiming he’d turn down the Nobel Peace Prize because it had been given to a terrorist like Yassir Arafat and then twenty seconds later saying it should be given to the US troops, but that doesn’t make him a liar. 

Here’s a crazy idea:  If you disagree with these people, argue with them.  Meet them in debate.  If they’re half the liars and idiots you say they are, it should be simple to expose them, right?

Why Ann Coulter Thinks Evolution is False V

“The evidence found in nature supports creationism.”

Here’s how creationists like Ms. Coulter seem to prove that their deity exists: “Since there are gaps in the fossil record, unanswered questions about the evolutionary history of life, and debate in the scientific community, evolution must be wrong – which of course means that creationism is correct.”

For once, I’d like to see them stop trying to attack something that doesn’t fit their creation myth and instead come up with some evidence of their own.  You can’t prove God exists by trying to poke holes in the theory of evolution; this is applying the either-or logic fallacy.  The creationists are saying that either Hypothesis A is correct or Hypothesis B is correct.  Oh really, why is that?  Can there not be a Hypothesis C?  But this is how they operate.  If they find any question about evolution that a scientist can’t answer, they crow triumphantly: “Ha-ha! We will by default.”

This tactic is the best they can come up with.  They do it because they have no case.  They can produce no evidence whatsoever, and their only explanation is that divine magic explains every tough question.  Imagine Einstein trying to prove relativity merely by trying to poke holes in Newton’s theory.  Moreaptly yet, imagine if Charles Darwin had tried the creationist method rather than actual science: “There are things you creationists don’t know about God?  Very well, we automatically win.  God must not be real, and a natural process must have created life.  No, we can’t explain how this process works, and we don’t even have to because Nature works in mysterious ways, but obviously it’s true because you can’t answer every question about God.”  Absurdities are more humorous when they’re close to the truth.

Leaping to “God did it,” is not only intellectually torpid, it also fails as a reasonable replacement.  Why did God spend two billion years of history watching only microbial life before He decided to make something more complex?  Why did He wait 570 million years after His Cambrian “creation event” before creating humans?  Ninety-nine percent of all the species that have ever existed are extinct.  Did God create all the uncountable species that have ever lived, including all the unsuccessful ones, each at different points throughout billions of years?  If so, why does it appear as if He tried out some species, allowed them to go extinct, then moved on to other species that appear more like the modern ones we see today?  Why did He create dozens of species of elephant-like creatures, each progressively more like modern elephants, and allow all but two to go extinct?  Why did God put so much junk in our DNA that just happens to look like detritus from an evolutionary past?  Why did God give chimpanzees twenty-four chromosomes, then fold two of the human chromosomes together to give us twenty-three?  In tracking mitochondrial DNA, why haven’t geneticists found a bottleneck that would indicate when and where God created the first man and woman?  Why did God give whales nonfunctional hipbones and femurs?  Why did God give give us wisdom teeth, flawed spines and knees, and an appendix?  Why did He create so many intermediary species between aquatic creatures and four-limbed walking creatures?  Between reptiles and mammals?

In her book Godless, Ms. Coulter never goes any further than trying to discredit evolution.  She doesn’t present an alternate theory to answer any of these questions.  Even if we take away the theory of evolution, she can’t even begin to explain how the geological record and life’s history supports the idea of a creator, let alone the anthorpocentric interventionist deity from her particular fairy tale.  She never presents on shred of evidence that points to the existence of a creator.  The only so-called argument she makes is this: “My opinion is that the evidence for evolution is inconclusive, so therefore (my) god exists and designed everything.”

Why Ann Coulter Thinks Evolution is False IV

“There are no transitional species in the fossil record.”

A pervasive theme throughout Ann Coulter’s criticism of evolution in her book Godless is the supposed rarity of transitional species in the fossil record.  This is perhaps the most common creationist argument against evolution and – like most of them – it is driven not by the facts but by a spiritual need to deny something that makes them uncomfortable.

Fossilization is a rare event.  Animals don’t just fall on the ground and become fossils.  Most of them are eaten by predators and scavengers, then broken down by parasites and bacteria.  Fossilization requires organisms dying in particular ways, sedimentation being distributed correctly, and preservation for millions or hundreds of millions of years.  Even when fossils are laid down, time periods of ten million years or less are generally too small in the fossil record to be viewed by paleontologists, so transition fossils between species in these time frames are rarer than not.  The fossil record has many gaps.

This is unfortunate, but these are facts, not excuses.  Another fact is that transitional species are abundant in the fossil record, especially between large groups of animals.  Creationists do not acknowledge them for a very simple reason that I’ll return to in a moment.  Here are three prime examples that immediately come to mind.  Archaeopteryx is a fossil transition between reptiles and birds.  It has feathered wings like a bird, but teeth and a tail like a reptile.  No modern bird has teeth.  Tiktaalik is a 375-million-year-old fist with the precursor structures for shoulders, elbows, and even fingers.  Acanthostega is an amphibian-like creature with legs and full gills, a transitional species between fish and amphibians.

I chose these for the creationists because they present clear structures that are precisely the definition of “transitional.”  I could go on, pointing out the many species of hominids such as Australopithecus afarensis (Lucy’s species) and Homo habilis; the transitions between reptiles and mammals like the therapsids and cynodonts; the clear transitional history of the elephant, horse, and rhinoceros; transitional species between land mammals and whales like Ambulocetus natans; and fossil portraits of ancient shellfish and crustaceans.  None of it will matter.  No amount of transitional data found in the fossil record will ever convince a diehard creationist.  To every such example, Ms. Coulter and those of her ilk say, “That’s just a separate species.  It was a dead end.  It’s not transitional.”

Yes, but based upon what evidence?  Your creation story?  Your discomfort at the possibility of not being the crowing achievement of a designer?  The fact that you must deny each and every one?

Here’s a question:  What exactly would qualify as “transitional,” Ms. Coulter?  For example, the transitional fossils between fishlike creatures and the first tetrapods (four-limbed walking animals) are numerous and quite demonstrable.  The earliest of them still had tail fins like a fish.  The first limbs to show up in the fossil record look like modified fins.  The first jaws in the fossil record appear to be modified gill arches.  Creatures like Acanthostega walked around on four legs and still had gills.  Later amphibians in the fossil record look much more like modern amphibians than fish.  Even today there are fish that gulp oxygen from the air and walk on land and climb trees with their fins.

If this is not transitional, what exactly wouldt ransitions between aquatic creatures and tetrapods look like?  How many examples must be shown before Coulter and her intellectual peers consider them transitional?

My guess would be that no amount of evidence will ever be sufficient.  Some creationists will continue to say “separate species” until the end of time, denying that these examples are exactly what evolution predicts will be found, denying even the possibility that they are evidence for common ancestry.  And why?

In the words of Jim Carrey in the movie Liar Liar: “Because it’s devastating to my case!”

Why Ann Coulter Thinks Evolution is False III

“Evolutionists can’t explain the Cambrian Explosion.”

This is another claim from Ann Coulter’s best-selling book Godless: The Church of Liberalism.  It includes a criticism of some warped version of Darwinism that Ms. Coulter appears to have gleaned from watching the movie Waterworld (in which Kevin Costner’s character had evolved gills and webbed feet).  I can only hope that her readers understand that the application of her otherwise impressive acumen does not extend to the theory of evolution.

In this, however, Ms. Coulter finally makes an honest point.  She infers from it the wrong conclusion, but the point is valid.  About 570 million years ago, there is a place in the fossil record where something like forty different phyla (major groups of animals based body plan) seem to arrive suddenly.  Before this time, there were only a couple of major phyla.  Then, boom – an amazing diversity seemingly overnight.

Of course, the “overnight” is in geological terms, which in this case means ten to fifteen million years.  To be sure, that is still a relatively short period of time to explain all the various body types that appeared, but let’s keep the record straight.  When Ms. Coulter and her peers state that the animals of the Cambrian era appeared “suddenly as if placed there by a designer,” remember that their goal is to take any unanswered question in science and use it to validate their creation story.

No, scientists haven’t been able to explain the relative abruptness of the Cambrian Explosion.  So what?  No one has yet explained how quantum theory can encapsulate gravitation, or why most of the matter in the universe is “dark.”  Should this invalidate all the evidence for quantum theory, gravitation, and modern cosmology?  I hate to break this to creationists like Ms. Coulter, but here it is: Scientists don’t have all the answers.  Indeed, they’ve never made any such claim.  Their only claim is that they try.

Conversely, it is the creationists who seem to suffer from a lack of humility.  They have the answer to everything – if you can call it an answer.  “God did it” is their solution to everything that hasn’t been explained yet.  They used to say it when a volcano erupted or when people got sick; now they search for “irreducible” complexity in parts of cells that somehow keep getting less and less complex.

Perhaps the notion of increasing oxygen levels in Cambrian times spurring rapid evolution has a ring of truth.  Perhaps there was no real “explosion,” and the answer is simple that most of the Precambrian ancestors didn’t fossilize.  This probably has some validity since many had soft bodies that usually don’t fossilize well.  Try this, Ms. Coulter:  There are whole groups of Cambrian creatures that are totally absent from the fossil record after the so-called explosion – does that mean we should stop looking for them and say God whisked them all out of existence?  Who gets to decide which questions are deserving of more study, and which should be abandoned for the notion that “God did it?”  Should we assume that a magic spell is the answer for every difficult question about the natural world, or only the ones that directly challenge the biblical creation myth?

This type of Dark-Ages thinking thwarts discovery and human progress.  Imagine of Crick and Watson, for example, had scratched their heads and said, “Well, I just can’t see how this double-helix thing could work.  It’s never going to be solved.  Since we can’t understand it, there must not be a natural explanation.  Let’s just say an intelligent designer is required and scrap the whole project.”  Unexplained does not mean inexplicable, Ms. Coulter.

Science makes provisional claims and allows for constant testing and revision.  It is an ongoing process that answers more questions as we progress – but we only progress because we continue to try rather than towel and attribute every tough question to God waving His magic wand.