Bias Alive and Well on Fox News

A couple weeks ago, I thought it was a pathetic, sickening display to see that CNN reporter arguing with the tea party protester and making it clear that she was espousing a political agenda rather than reporting the news.

Then the other morning on Fox News, Steve Doocy covered a segment about evolution being taught in Texas public schools, and it was just as shameful.  The problem, Doocy puled, was that science classes are “so one-sided” when it comes to this issue.  Yes, kind of like history classes don’t teach mythology, and chemistry classes don’t teach alchemy, and French classes don’t teach German.  In that sense, I suppose science classes are guilty of being one-sided.  Damn them for daring to solely teach…science!

Doocy’s “fair and balanced” guest was a Casey Luskin, a representative from…wait for it…the Discovery Institute.  Gee, I wonder what the Discovery Institute – the Christian group who thinks courtrooms, public opinion, and sympathetic politicians are the path to legitimate science – has to say on this matter?

In the midst of Doocy and his guest giving each other verbal shoulder massages, the managed to do the same thing that anti-evolution creationists always do: Try to appear legitimate by claiming to only be interested in good, fair science.  Mr. Luskin flat-out lied and said that his group is not interested in having creationism taught in public schools.  Just good science.  What a joke.  Go to the Discovery Institute’s website and you can see the entire purpose of their existence.

Doocy and Luskin appeared to be protesting only the fact that science textbooks still use Ernst Haeckel’s infamous recapitulation drawings and Darwin’s simplistic tree of life.  Certainly there are outdated textbooks in circulation, just as there are textbooks without any mention of the latest advances in string theory and quantum mechanics.  This should be remedied.  Darwin’s tree of life was simplistic way of showing relationships.    But what modern science has discovered is that the tree is much more like a bush that is vastly more complex than anyone could have imagined.  Evolution is not a single tree trunk, as scientists continue to try to explain and people continue to get wrong.

And recapitulation…the fact is that vertebrate embryos are strikingly similar, but no scientist is claiming that they’re identical, as Luskin said.  The things that creationists never talk about are the truly powerful pieces of evidence, such as the fact that human embryos have gill slits at an early age, as well as empty yolk sacs.

This is creationist sophistry, if not outright deception.  They know very well that modern science has affirmed and reaffirmed evolution, that there is no debate on whether evolution happened and is happening in the scientific community.  The evidence supporting evolution is so powerful as to make dissent absurd.  The only “professionals” still protesting it are a handful of Christians and Luskin’s Discovery Institute pals, most of whom openly admit that scripture is the ultimate authority.  That’s fine for them, but it’s not science; it’s the exact opposite of science.

With their kid-glove handling of these pseudo-intellectual anti-evolutionists, Fox News is painfully presenting it’s bias in this matter.

Evolution Irrationality

It’s difficult to imagine that in this day and age, with information so readily available, and with so many exquisite examples that continue to be uncovered, some evolution-denying Christians are still out there blithely saying, “Where are the transitional fossils?”

Even the most diehard anti-evolutionist out there has heard of Archaeopteryx and Australopithecus afarensis (Lucy).  They may not have heard of Acanthostega (a tetrapod with gills) or Tiktaalik (a fish with precursor elbow, shoulder, and finger joints) or Abulocetus natans (a transitional form between land mammals and whales) or Pikaia (an ancestor of early vertebrates).  They also may not know that in the fossil record, they earliest known tetrapods (four-limbed walking creatures) still had tail fins like fish, or that the earliest known limbs look like modified fins, or that the earliest known jaws look like modified gill arches.  They could be unaware of the dozens of fossils showing a clear evolutionary history of the elephant, each successively more like modern elephants.  they might not know our evolutionary past is stamped on our bodies in the form of duplicated genes and junk DNA, the appendix, the empty and useless yolk sac all human embryos develop, our faulty spines and knees, wisdom teeth, and even the wonderful gift of hemorrhoids.

Okay, I’m straying a bit from transitional fossils.  The problem is not that they don’t exist – the creationists can go look at all of them.  I’ve just named a few fairly well-known examples.  Despite the gaps in the fossil record, there are still plenty of clear-cut examples, examples so beautifully and obviously showing evolutionary change that the only real opposition is from fundamentalists.  The problem is that these fundamentalists simply don’t accept these examples as transitional.  They ask for traditional fossils, but when they’re presented, they say, “That’s just a separate species or a dead end.”  Of course, they have no evidentiary basis for such a claim.

But fair enough.  I challenge these people to put their money where their mouths are.  What exactly would qualify as a transitional fossil to you?  How do you define transitional?  Can you name on clear example of something that would convince you that possibly there was evolutionary change?  If you can’t answer these questions, you have no business even speaking about this subject in rational discourse.

If you can, let’s hear it.  Creatures like Acanthostega walked around on four legs yet still had gills.  The oldest amphibians in the fossil record still look a lot like fish, while the later ones look much more like modern amphibians.  If this is not transitional, what exactly would transitions between aquatic creatures and tetrapods look like?

Evolution IQ

In a continuing quest to point out that most people who reject evolution (an even some who accept it) have no idea what they’re rejecting (or accepting), I’ve compiled a few points that should sound familiar.

1. Evolution is a random process.
2. Humans evolved from chimpanzees.
3. A giraffe evolved a long neck because its ancestors stretched to reach food.
4. A transitional species like Archaeopteryx was a creature in the process of evolving from one species to another.
5. Natural selection creates individual components of an eye and saves them up until the whole eye can be assembled.

Those five statements are extremely common and well-understood notions about evolution.  They are in the minds and on the tongues of many, many people, whether they reject or accept the evidence for the theory.  Each one of those statements is also utterly false.

1. Evolution is not a random process.  The tiny genetic mutations it uses are random, but the process that saves them and weeds out others (natural selection) is the exact opposite of random.  Note the word “selection.”  Advantageous genes are selected simply because the animals with them survive and pass them on.  Natural selection is mindless and lacks a goal, but that’s not the same as saying it’s random.
2. It’s safe to say that no modern species evolved from any other modern species.  Humans and chimps share a common ape-like ancestor from several million years ago that was neither human nor ape.
3. Genes cannot know or care what a creature does in its life, such as stretching its neck repeatedly.  That’s called Lamarckism, and it’s impossible.  A giraffe has a long neck because longer-necked giraffes survived and mated while shorter-necked ones did not.
4. No species is ever “in the process” of changing into another species.  That would require foresight and a plan, which natural selection – by definition – lacks.  Transitional species existed because they survived in their environments. 
5. Again, this myth would require foresight and planning.  Natural selection constructs slightly more complex versions of things like eyes.  Those versions are all useful in the creature in some way.

These aren’t my opinions, and they’re not my interpretation of how evolution works.  They’re certainly not original ideas that I came up with; they’re simply facts rehashed from my study of the subject.  All of them are quite clear and quite well-established in the scientific community, and they can be read in a thousand places from dozens of different experts in the field.  There should be absolutely no reason why these misconceptions should ever be voiced by any educated person.  I’m definitely not holding my breath, though.

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.”

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 It’s Wrong to Believe in Evolution

It is quite common for people to say, “I don’t believe in evolution because it’s just a theory, not a fact.”  There are two things wrong with a statement like that.

The first is the use of the word “believe.”  Evolution is not a belief to be picked up or discarded based on whether you like it or not.  This may seem like I’m splitting semantic hairs, but I think it’s important.  You don’t have to believe or disbelieve in evidence.  Either you think it’s sufficient or you don’t.  It’s better to say that you accept or reject the evidence for evolution.  Believing is something you do when there is no evidence.

The critical point here, however, is the blurring of “theory” and “fact.”  People who say things like that have a fundamental misunderstanding of what a scientific theory is.  Scientists don’t use the word “theory” like we do.  The theory of evolution is not the same as a football fan’s theory that his team is going to win the Superbowl.  The theory is a hypothesis that has been tested, modified, tested again, and proven to make accurate predictions.  Gravitation is “just a theory.”  Relativity is “just a theory.”  That doesn’t mean that they are weak or doubtful, and it doesn’t mean that fifty percent of scientists think they’re wrong.

Michael SHermer, the editor of Skeptic magazine and author of Why Darwin Matters, puts it best.  He has explained that theories and facts are not to be confused as matters of degree, as if a fact is an improved version of a theory.  Facts are the world’s data, and theories are tools to explain what the data means.

Evolution is a superalative example of a good scientific theory.  Nothing in modern biology and genetics makes sense without it.  It has been verified repeatedly in multiple fields of science such as embryology, biology, paleontology, genetics, and geology.  Of course there is still debate and questions, since this is a necessary component of science, but evidence of the mechanism of evolution has never been stronger.  The theory has withstood and answered every challenge ever posed to it.  It has made accurate predictions, which is the most important test for a theory.

In essence, people must understand that designing evolution as a “theory” is not a sign of weakness.  It is not indicative of doubt in the scientific community.  The evidence for all life on earth sharing common ancestry is as powerful as the evidence for nuclear fusion occurring in the core of the sun.  Whether you call evolution “just a theory” or a “hard fact” is simply a philosophical question.

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 Creationists are Delusional About the Fossil Record

No one seems to have let the creationists in on this, but the fossil record is loaded with transitional species.  Here are a few that creationists either don’t know about or choose to ignore.

1. For the evolution of human beings, we have many examples, beginning with the oldest known hominid, Ardipithecus ramidus.  There are the many Australopithecines such as anamensis, afarensis (Lucy’s species), africanus, and ghari.  There is the Homo genus: rudolfensis, habilis, ergaster, and erectus.  All of these species – at least from the standpoint of intelligence, walking upright, tool-use, and language and culture - are more advanced than modern apes and less advanced than humans.
2. Archaeopteryx is a prime example.  It had feathered wings like a bird, but it also had teeth and a tail like a reptile.  No modern bird has teeth.  This is clearly transitional between a reptile-like creature and a bird.
3. Tiktaalik is another beautiful portrait of evolution.  It was discovered just a few years ago in Canada.  It’s a 375-million-year-old fish that has the precursor structures for shoulders, elbows, and even fingers.  This is clearly a transition from fish to land animals.
4. We have a good description of the evolution of even-toed land mammals into whales, with clear transitional fossil species such as Ambulocetus natans.
5. Pikaia is a Cambrian transitional species between invertebrates and vertebrates, and there are older protovertebrates in the Lower Cambrian, as well.
6. Acanthostega, an amphibian-like creature with full gills, is a transitional species between fish and amphibians that is often described as a “fish with legs.”
7. We have a great many fossil transitions between reptiles and mammals such as the therapsids, they cyndonts, and the ictidosaurs.
8. We have an excellent picture of the evolution of the elephant, from little Paleomastodon 34 million years ago, to Gamphotherium, Primelephas, the extinct Mammuthus, to the twenty-two distinct species over the last six million years, to the modern Elephas maximus (the Indian elephant) and Loxodonta africana (the African elephant).

Of course, the creationists always say the same thing:  These are separate species, not transitional.  Perhaps they should be asked how they know this.  Perhaps they should be asked what standard of evidence they utilize for determining if a fossil is transitional or not.  Perhaps they should be asked how many such examples have to be shown before they’re willing to admit even the possibility.  Perhaps they should be asked that if the above examples are not transitional, what exactly a transitional species would look like.

There are many gaps in the fossil record, especially between closely-related species.  One reason is that times frames shorter much than ten million years are difficult to view in the geological record; there isn’t “room.”  Another reason is that fossilization is simply a rare event.  But a plenitude of transitions between large groups of animals is present.  The supposed rarity of transitional species in the fossil record is a myth.  Don’t ever let a creationist try to tell you otherwise.

Why Ann Coulter Thinks Evolution is False II

“If evolution were true, there should be humans with eyes on their feet and fish that mutated fur in the fossil record.”

Ann Coulter has garnered fame and wealth using the gimmick of controversial statements.  I will take the above claim, paraphrased from her best-selling book Godless, in a general sense.  What she seems to be saying is that since natural selection is unguided and operates upon random genetic changes, there should be fish with fur, humans with eyes on their feet, and all sorts of aberrations and missteps in that vein.  I can assume that Ms. Coulter believes that evolution progresses that way: by throwing out a wide variety of large mutations and keeping certain ones.

At least she has the right idea.  It is the scale that she’s misinterpreting.  The idea that huge leaps of that sort (called saltations) contribute appreciably to evolution has never been taken very seriously.  Darwinism operates with small, insensible changes – each one somehow advantageous to the organism – that are passed down to descendants because those particular organisms survive where others do not.  No evolutionary biologist subscribes to the notion that complex biological parts like eyes or fur were evolved in single leaps as Ms. Coulter is suggesting.  This is one of the great and extremely common fallacies creationists use to try to make natural selection appear silly.

Perhaps it is possible for a control gene to mutate and produce an entire eye on a human’s foot, some facsimile of fur on a fish, or any other freakish anomaly we can imagine.  We all know mutations of that degree, while rare, do occur, but that doesn’t mean thy have any measurable effect on evolution.  More specifically, that doesn’t mean they would lead to a species of monsters that might leave examples behind in the fossil record.

The rarity of such saltations is reason enough, but something Ms. Coulter seems to be forgetting is that natural selection only operates if the genetic alteration is somehow beneficial to the organism.  The majority of mutations are deleterious to an organism’s survivability; this is far more pronounced for large mutations.  Her mutant genes for fish fur and podiatric eyes would have to be inherited from parents who manage to survive and mate with other such genetic monsters.  If Ms. Coulter can make a valid argument for how fur on fish or eyes on human feet will help the organism pass on its genes (and not hinder it), I’m sure the scientific community would like to hear it.

Ms. Coulter’s tactic is to make people chuckle with incredulity.  Her criticism of evolution can be summated to: “You’d have to be a godless, immoral idiot to believe the wacky things these evolutionists claim.”  She then proceeds to name absurdities that have nothing to do with Darwinism and are instead characteristic of juvenile misconceptions.  There are honest arguments to be made against evolution and good questions to be asked, but in her book Godless, Ms. Coulter is so hampered by faith-based certitude and illiteracy in the subject that she fails to reach any level of intellectual seriousness.

No, Ms. Coulter, there most definitely should notbe fish with fur, humans with eyes on their feet, or any similar foolishness from your imagination in the fossil record.  In which study or book did you read the evidence for that – or is it merely based on your personal opinion of evolution?  You repeatedly referred to the biologist Michael Behe as a source – I would enjoy hearing him publicly admit that this point of yours is valid.  Can you produce one serious scientist who agrees with your argument?  Better yet: Can you produce one serious scientist who would not be moved to pity if they heard such blatant ignorance from a person trying to argue against evolution?

I would refer Ms. Coulter to Mark Twain: “Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.”

Why Ann Coulter Thinks Evolution is False I

“Earthworms should have evolved bigger brains by now.”

This statement was taken from Ms. Coulter’s book Godless: The Church of Liberalism.  As a college-educated person who claims to have studied the subject, her illiteracy is stunning – but I’m not setting up a straw target here.  Her book is a national bestseller, purchased by millions of people who now have an impressive array of completely bogus arguments against evolution.  Misinformed drivel like this is why so much anti-intellectualism suffuses the American public’s understanding of evolution, so my opinion is that Ms. Coulter’s outlandish claims should not go unchallenged.

The assertion that earthworms or anything else should have evolved intelligence by now is loaded with the implication that evolving intelligence is an intrinsic part of evolution.  Ms. Coulter is stating a version of a very common point, a tired rehash of the misconception that there is a goal in nature to build microbes into men, and that human beings are somehow more evolved than everything else.  Her question is: “If evolution is true, why haven’t earthworms evolved bigger brains yet?”

The short answer would be: “Because they are under no compulsion to do so.”  Natural selection doesn’t build complexity or intelligence automatically or on purpose.  Complexity or intelligence are not even necessarily advantages.  Consider how something as relatively simple as a virus (which is nothing but a DNA or RNA copying program surrounded by protein) can slaughter millions of “higher” animals like human beings and alter the history of our species.  The world has been blanketed by microbial life for billions of years because they are extremely successful at propagating themselves, and they don’t need an inkling of intelligence to pull it off.

From an evolutionary standpoint, all that matters to earthworms (or any other creature) is propagating their species.  Yes, certainly some creatures could increase their chance of passing on their genes if they evolved higher intelligence.  The same could also be said for flight, and sonar, and being able to run seventy miles per hour, and having bony armor plating and sharp claws.  Us humans could increase our odds of passing on our genes if we were all born looking like movie stars.  Also, for that matter, if we were born immune to cancer.  So what?  This point is completely irrelevant.  Natural selection can’t look ahead and determine what might be advantageous to an organism, then decide to start building that mechanism.  It can’t look ahead at all.  Ms. Coulter should know better.

Just because we can imagine something would be advantageous to an organism doesn’t automatically mean natural selection can or will pull it off.  Elephants will never fly, no matter how much appropriate selective pressure is put on them.  This is because any possible intermediate stages leading to elephantine flight would not be advantageous to the creature (due to constraints of weight, aerodynamics, etc.).  Elephants have drifted too far in one direction, and natural selection is incapable of starting over from scratch; it must act upon variation that is already there.  Similarly, whales and dolphins have not evolved gills, though that might seem like a logical step to us, considering their environment.  They have instead developed alterations (efficient lungs, blowholes, and better diving skills) on what already exists.

This matter is indicative of a pervasive delusion that must be put to rest forever.  In asserting that “earthworms should be more intelligent by now,” “crocodiles should have opposable thumbs,” or anything along that line of thought, creationists like Ms. Coulter should realize that they’re not making a case against natural selection.  They’re not even talking about natural selection.  What they’re doing is attributing some goal and purpose to nature – which means they’re arguing with themselves.